The soul and the spirit are mostly viewed as being the same thing, but the topic allows for an interesting exercise in perhaps describing the spirit as the expression of our soul while we are alive and have bodies to work with. When we are alive, we have abilities, senses, and the whole of life as experienced with a working body. Our spirits can then be seen as the physical expression of our souls, when we have a body that allows us to become involved in so much that is going on with the real world.

Our spirits are the expression of our souls in relation to how we feel, what we sense, and how well we can get around to feel and sense. With our brains, we have mood, ability to sense, ability to perceive reality, and ability to think up thoughts. If we are in pain, our spirits may be more limited than when we feel well. We are focusing on the pain, why it is there, how wrong it is to be in pain, and how much more difficult it is to interact with and to enjoy the world when pain is present.

When we are free of pain, our spirits and brains are free to focus on people, places and things in the world. Our senses are gratified by movement, tasting food, breathing fresh air, seeing, smelling, touching and hearing. Our minds process the physical inputs and our spirits express how we are tolerating, enjoying, or despising the inputs.

When we are compelled to act by our brains, our spirits drive us to act as we do, to cause damage and destruction, to prevent damage and destruction, to change something into something else, to enjoy or despise something as it is, or even to attempt to change a person into another person, as we do when we care for children and want them to learn something new. We make use of our hands and feet and arms and legs and eyes and ears and tongues and genitals to make love. We make use of our systems to evacuate toxins and no longer needed bulk from food.

Our spirit motivates us to use our bodies to exercise to elevate our mood and to keep our muscles, ligaments, tendons, circulatory systems, and bones in shape. Our spirit motivates us to enjoy sex, which elevates the mood and allows us to reproduce. We ingest substances just to enjoy the elevation in mood that comes from food or drink or drugs, including drugs which eliminate pain. This affects our spirit, which drives us to interact with the world in impaired ways, but with that elevated mood!

Sometimes our spirit is broken. (Rarely is it ever said that the soul is broken). Sometimes our spirit becomes more desirous of mood alteration or negative and destructive action than is good for the body and for the living of life. Sometimes damage to our brains, untreatable pain, other suffering, or limitations of the body is a terrible challenge to our spirits, sometimes to the point where there is no will to live. There is a desire to shed the body and all of it's burdens.

Perhaps the combination of body and spirit serve to develop our souls until we no longer have functioning bodies. Then life continues in the form of the soul and the spirit, in pure form, with no need for sensory inputs or for physical interaction with the world (or worlds).

Learn more about this author, Elizabeth M. Young.
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