>

5/18/12

The Spirit Never Dies

Even as the house burns down and is abandoned...

Physical disease and illness can lay waste to human body just as wind and fire can tear a house apart. A metaphor arises if you consider the physical being of a body as a house to the spirit and soul. One interpretation of the analogy is a house may be destroyed and vacated but the former inhabitants live on earth somewhere else. This can happen also in a very real sense to a person living with a chronic disorder that is disabling and usually fatal. The person you see, visit and talk with is visible in front of you but if you're discerning and know them for who they really are you're not seeing the shell left of their physique. They have in a very real sense moved their spirit into another anatomy although not visible to our myopic vision. For them their spirit, soul and personage inhabit a different place. One they have created with their internal strength and vision that allows them to be as mobile as they are able and keeps their mind from dwelling on physical limitations.


This happened to me once decades ago when for a long period I was in a physical state that confined me to a hospital bed and after that took time to restore my body to its previous condition. Others I've known are not able to do that since their physical condition is unchanging or deteriorating. I see in my sister who braves Scleroderma that as her body changes and becomes less functional and confining that she has already moved into another body that I recognize as being one similar to the one she once had but above all functional. Her spirit hasn't died and needs a house that it may dwell if only in the mind it resides. I recognize that to a skeptic and hard realists this is all specious and suspect and for them I am sorry since their coping mechanisms always seem to be at a minimum tinged with anger and bitterness. All I can vouch for is my personal experience where I inhabited a different being I imagined as like a tree, with roots, trunk, branches and twigs nourished by the warmth of the sun and feed by living water.

This is why I photograph a lot of trees and create visual art with them.

2 comments:

  1. I guess I'm not a skeptic or a hard realist because this post makes complete sense to me...I'm trying very, very hard not to go off on a tangent about how skepticism and "realism" seem to be the domain of angry progressives, and I guess mentioning it at all means I failed a little, but if they don't get it, I pity them.

    I've only once been so sick I thought I might be dying, but it was an invaluable experience. I was me, but also not me; I don't remember consciously thinking of myself as another form but my mind was definitely working in that way, noticing but not "thinking", if that makes any sense. It was two days on the bedroom floor, and the cats never left my side. That never happened before (or since) and despite the rap on cats I find the whole thing comforting, looking back at it. Honestly, I didn't think anything at the time except that I noticed I wasn't thinking. It was a weird scene, my friend. :)

    My story doesn't begin to explain what you're talking about, but I think in my tiny way I understand it, or at least feel it.

    I could type all night (and might do that at some point) but I'd rather just shut up and feel good about life and think of people I love and wish you and your family all the best...no clue what the best is, so I just wish peace and love and happiness, however it decides to show itself. :)

    Great post, sir.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Actually Mike your story not only begins to explain it but it does explain it. It is a sort if out of body yet still within the body experience while still alive and I know that may not make sense to a lot of people but it will to you and I and others who understand the experience since we've had our own versions of it.

    My sister seems to be getting much better care here in the "big city" of Phoenix and not to knock small cities since I like to live in them...medical care has a lot to be desired in them. Long story short for an entire year it seems up where she lives they've been treating a lot of things but not the two major ones the need care in her situation: heart and lungs. So once again she has pulled out of this for now anyway but it will be a bit before she goes home.

    Although I don't write it in the post I find skeptics, strict atheists, hard realists who for some reason also very often are progressives to be generally rather bitter and angry about life in general. At that I'll stop and thank you for your fine comment and stopping by!

    Thanks Mike.

    ReplyDelete