Spiritual or Human?

wil

wil

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There is a saying, "We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

Do you buy that?

If so why do we try to be more spiritual?

If we believe we are perfect spirtual beings incarnated in 3D to experience love and gravity and emotions and a skin....why work toward being more spiritual and not just being a better human...or is that the same thing?
 
Well, I'm not sure I agree with the statement. I think we are humans which means we are body and spirit together. The way the statement if phrased it's like we could be a bodiless soul, then we incarnate, and then we go back to being a bodiless soul.

Personally I have no knowledge of what if anything we are before we arrive in this life and I have no experience or testable objective knowledge of what happens in the next. I trust by faith that this is not the end and we go on. The Christian faith teaches that we go on in a raised, transformed body. I don't really know exactly, objectively, what that means, except that we don't exist as bodiless souls. I have no reason to reject that for another teaching about the afterlife.

With respect to what we are doing in this life, we love. That is the human spiritual experience worth having and working on.
 
I'd shorten the saying to just, "We are."

And leave it at that.
 
Not sure I buy into it Wil. The term "spiritual" means so much to me these days that I'm not sure I can imagine "not spiritual"
And what is it exactly that is made more spiritual? What are we trying to make perfect that isn't already what it was created to be? If what is real exists and what is not real merely dissolves what is there for us to do?
 
Spiritual being. Human being. I am not sure there is a difference.

For various reasons, I feel like I've lived before. I don't know that all my lives were human. As a child, it was tough for a long while to grasp that I really was in this body, and it was limited in the ways that it was. Then I grieved. My body was a prison, a cage. I wanted to be free.

Then my very human life led me to understand the value and joy found in this incarnation, in this body- with all its accompanying pains and limitations. And I found freedom within this skin.

Whether I am here and in my body because it is some way to learn a lesson, or to teach a lesson to others, or because it is really who I am and the rest is imaginary, I don't know. While reincarnation makes the most sense to me given my own feelings and experiences, I don't really know if I was around before this life or what will happen to me after I die. I am comfortable with the not knowing.

What I have found is more important than asking what I am and what happens to me later is asking how I can love and become more connected with God now. The now never seems to disappoint. Whether I am a spirit being a human, or a human through and through... God is there, and the best I can offer is all I have- body, mind, and soul/spirit- for refinement in grace.
 
wil said:
There is a saying, "We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

Do you buy that?
Click to expand...

Yup, I regularly buy spirits, whisky predominantly. We all have our modes of self-gratification :rolleyes:
 
wil said:
There is a saying, "We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

Do you buy that?
Click to expand...

Not if it means that are are non-human. We are human beings having a human experience. We have "spirit" in that we have conscious minds, so we are also spiritual (human) beings have a spiritual (human) experience.

why work toward being more spiritual and not just being a better human...or is that the same thing?
Click to expand...

It's the same thing to me.


eudaimonia,

Mark
 
Namaste all, thanx for the responses.

As the concept goes in earth we are in a human shape and with a human body.

Luna expresses concern that there is not a body in another dimension.

Is that a concern for others?

Would you object to being a point of light...or in spirit?

thoughts?


(no not in a bottle Tao, although I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy)
 
wil said:
Namaste all, thanx for the responses.

As the concept goes in earth we are in a human shape and with a human body.

Luna expresses concern that there is not a body in another dimension.

Is that a concern for others?

Would you object to being a point of light...or in spirit?

thoughts?


(no not in a bottle Tao, although I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy)
Click to expand...

Please don't manipulate my meanings wil. I did not express any 'concern.' My post is explicitly neutral on the point. If you want to take the point up for debate that's fine for you, but don't project any kind of 'concern' about it onto me.
 
lunamoth said:
Please don't manipulate my meanings wil. I did not express any 'concern.' My post is explicitly neutral on the point. If you want to take the point up for debate that's fine for you, but don't project any kind of 'concern' about it onto me.
Click to expand...
Namaste Luna,

Please accept my apologies. I am encouraging discussion not debate. I agree with you, I have no 100% knowledge from whence I came or where I'm going what pre?life or afterlife looks like.

Concern may have been the wrong word when I read your thoughts/beliefs regarding bodiless souls. I am not implying or insisting that others need to take on other belief systems, simply trying to discuss and identify what they are.

I have no solid notion in anyway in this regard, I do however have a sort of state of anticipatory excitement surrounding the possibilities.
 
wil said:
I have no solid notion in anyway in this regard, I do however have a sort of state of anticipatory excitement surrounding the possibilities.
Click to expand...

That about sums up my thoughts on the afterlife. I see no reason to choose any one belief over the others. I figure I'll find out when I arrive. I understand the mainstream doctrine of my primary and secondary religions on the matter (they don't agree) and I can see what makes the most sense to explain my own experience, but none of that amounts to much for me in the way of real knowledge. I have faith that whatever comes after this life is exactly what it should be, and I can't do any better to prepare than to worship God and serve others right now.

But I must confess that due to my own experience of life as a human being, I have never felt like I was entirely a human being. I relate to trees and most animals far better than to humans. I have to work at being a human, if that makes sense. While I entirely agree that I am in a body and brain, and that may be all there is and exactly what I was created to be, if you're a person for whom being human is not easy nor natural, it is understandable, I would think, that you'd be skeptical of the matter.
 
our human experiences over time has separated us from nature/divine/spirit
hence the overwhelming need for the majority to either - 1/ identify with a religion that promises that reconnection, or - 2/ become an addict to spirit manifested in a/ spiritual drink b/drugs [the smoke as spiritual] c/ sex as union d/shopping as filling the existential gap.

so we are humans having a spiritual experience that seems unspiritual to some since some of these activities are destructive to self and others.
 
wil said:
There is a saying, "We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

Do you buy that?

If so why do we try to be more spiritual?

If we believe we are perfect spirtual beings incarnated in 3D to experience love and gravity and emotions and a skin....why work toward being more spiritual and not just being a better human...or is that the same thing?
Click to expand...
Given my understanding about the terms I agree with the statement.
Our bodies (to me) are like suits of clothes (such a great treasure hid within earthen vessels, they say).
I see the zen story of shooting a target with an arrow as a great analogy to this, in that in order to achieve the perfect shot, we must let the arrow hit the target rather than make it do so.
Perfection is in our inner nature, but our material selves do get in the way with all their chattering monkey-like ways.

We do not need to "become more spiritual" as we already are "spiritual".
Spiritual is (to me) the "life force eternal" or "the eternal awareness", of which we are an intrinsic part.
We cannot separate ourselves from this, but we can play pretend games with ourselves and imagine that we are alone.
Some people are very advanced in such crazy skills.
 
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