More Than Molecules

Before going further, there is something about MBS (Mind-Body-Spirit) balance that I need to address. When speaking of body or mind, meaning is straight forward. Everyone relates to their own thoughts and bodily sensations. Spirit though, is a different matter. Therefore, I need to define what I mean when using that term.

Spirit is energy expressed in living relationship. 

“What the heck is that”, one might ask? Let’s take an example.  “Love”, is a feeling that dictionary definitions fail to capture. You know what it is when you feel it. But if you were to look it up,   something is missing.  Merriam-Webster defines love as: “strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties”. The Oxford English Dictionary defines love as: “An intense feeling of romantic attachment felt by one person for another”. There is nothing wrong with those definitions, but there is clearly no “Spirit” in them. 

The love you share with a spouse, romantic partner, friend or family member is energy expressed in living relationship. This is what I mean by “Spirit”. 

For there to be any kind of a relationship, like love for instance, three things must hold true. There must be a subject, say that is me. There must be an object, say that is you. And then, (and this is the really important part), there must be a mutual connection, a relationship. Relationship requires  connection. What is that connection? Well, it’s hard to answer that, especially if that relationship is love! We feel it, but we are at a loss to adequately describe it. So, is it real? Where are the molecules of love?  I guess a bio-chemist might say that love is created by chemical expressions in the body. That may be true, but it’s not the whole story. My body’s expression of dopamine or whatever chemicals are involved differs from yours and yours of course, differs from mine. Yet, we become one, in love.

With apologies to the hard-core materialists out there, love is more than molecules! “Spirit” is “the living energy of relationship”. If that relationship refers to God, fine! If that relationship refers to a family member, fine!  The cultivation and balancing of the “living energy of relationship”, of “Spirit”, is fundamentally important to one’s well-being. It is as the philosopher Ken Wilber describes it,  “The Miracle of We”.