| The Trinity of Body Mind Soul | | | | in a sort of brute force way, the mind shapes our |
| 01st December 2005 | | | | lives much more than most of us realize. Its tools |
| Author: Amy Biddle | | | | may appear to be more refined. Rather than the |
| We are all spiritual beings, each of us with the gift of | | | | power of hammers, muscles, and the opposable |
| a body, mind, and soul. When we are not very aware | | | | thumb, the mind has the power of attention, belief, |
| of our essentially spiritual nature, we tend to identify | | | | and observation. With these tools, the mind shapes |
| ourselves as just one thing or the other. Some of us | | | | our world in a way far more profound than bulldozers |
| think we are this body that does things, or we're a | | | | and chain saws. We can visualize a whole new life for |
| mind that has to figure it out. Our soul, we may | | | | ourselves and watch it manifest without our bodies |
| imagine, is something that floats up and may or may | | | | forcing anything. |
| not live on after we die. | | | | The challenging thing about the mind, for most of us, |
| As we grow in spiritual awareness, we develop a | | | | is that it encompasses both conscious and |
| more integrated understanding of ourselves. We | | | | unconscious attitudes, beliefs, and desires. It is our |
| come to know ourselves as spiritual creatures, | | | | whole mind that creates our circumstances, not just |
| operating through a unified trinity of body, mind, and | | | | the part we're aware of. This explains why we so |
| soul. These three facets of self allow us to have a | | | | often experience the frustration of our conscious |
| creative experience of life in (at least) three | | | | beliefs and desires. The conscious mind has only a |
| dimensions simultaneously. | | | | fraction of the mind's total power. |
| Through the body, we can experience and affect our | | | | Fortunately for us, neither the body nor the mind is in |
| physical environment. We can build shelters, make | | | | total control. If there seems to be a stalemate |
| clothing, and find or grow food. We can feel pleasure | | | | between our conscious desires and our unconscious |
| and pain. Our brains (which are organs of our bodies) | | | | beliefs and attitudes, attention to the third aspect of |
| can learn by conditioning to survive on the physical | | | | ourselves can help us get unstuck. The soul has |
| plane. Our bodies have their own consciousness. An | | | | direct access to all wisdom, power, health, and love. |
| example of this is in body memory. Have you ever | | | | The soul is the part of us that lives in the vast |
| found it useful to "dial" a frequently used phone | | | | collective pool of good that is God. When we |
| number in the air when you need to remember it? | | | | integrate our whole selves through regular attention |
| The information seems not to be stored in your | | | | to the soul, we find that we are neither mind nor |
| head, because the fingers that dance that pattern so | | | | body alone, but that both our minds and bodies give |
| often have their own memory. | | | | fuller expression to our spiritual essence. |
| While the body can affect our physical environment | | | | |