2. Each According to Its Kind

At this point you might be tempted to start thinking thoughts such as “how do my spirit, soul and body interact with each other?” This is actually another really great question, however, I would ask that for now that again we park it. These kind of questions are much better dealt with once we have made some definable progress in developing our spiritual nature. For practical purposes the only important thing is to hold our agreement that spirit, soul and body are three separate natures that should not be confused. It follows logically from this that each nature needs to be developed in a way that is specific to itself. Activities that might develop our body do not necessarily develop our soul, and likewise activities that develop our soul do not necessarily develop our spirit. Our soul enjoys certain things that our body does not and vice versa.

To give some examples. Mathematics is very beneficial to my soul, it helps me to develop my mental strength and ability. When we are actively engaged in the practice of mathematics however, this is not very exciting or rewarding for our body. The practice typically involves sitting still in one place, in a set position so that our mind can function at full capacity without any interference from our body. Another example would be physical exercise. It is well know to many gym goers that our minds find repetitive physical exercise pretty boring and non stimulating. In the first example, our mind is receiving stimulation, but not our body, whereas in the second example it is the other way around. This is quite easy for us to understand when it comes to body and soul, however because both spirit and soul are invisible it is more difficult to grasp this. Suffice it to say that mathematics is equally uninteresting to the spirit as it is to the body, and likewise activities that our spirits find stimulating can be very uninteresting to our soul.

The point of these examples is to get across how important it is to recognise that there are three separate areas of development and we need to pay attention to the types of things we need to do to develop each of our three natures according to how they are designed. To return to the examples above, if we try to develop our spirit only by the practice of mathematics, we are not going to see much progress. That would be the same as thinking that by regularly exercising our body we can develop our mathematical ability. It is obvious to us that if we want to develop our body, then we need to exercise the body - we can’t get fit just thinking about it - and likewise, if we want to develop our mind, then we need to exercise our mind. What is less obvious is that if we want to develop our spirit, then we need to exercise our spirit. The bottom line here is that the spirit, soul and body all need to be developed according to their kind.

In our society we spend most of our time and effort developing our soul. That is a good thing in that we recognise that in order to become strong we need to exercise and do work. It is a bad thing in that it is unbalanced because we ignore a much bigger and richer area to develop which is our spirit. This is why we experience such frustration with life.