The Axis
How the spirit expresses itself through mind and body, and how grace keeps freedom alive, from Chapter VI: I
In the previous chapter, we were talking about the spirit, and I promised we would explore the relationship between the spirit and the mind (not excluding the body).
Now is the time to perform that delicate surgery, separating the two within the context of their role in our core identity. To do this, we will recall what has already been said about the spirit and the mind. Once we see the two clearly, we can attempt to separate them (only to stitch them together again, as they are essentially inseparable — just a teaser).
Body, Mind, Spirit
We have well established the mind as the narrative self, the one that becomes observable once we are mindful, where the stream of our thoughts flows — all the stories, interpretations, our memories of the past, and dreams of the future. We understand the spirit as the core self, our identity, the one observing the entirety of our lives, observing the thoughts, while also having the ability to assign them value — which, again, is only narrated by the mind and then observed by the spirit. Don’t worry if this feels densely interwoven at the moment; that is a perfectly sound feeling.
We still need to add the spirit’s main distinction and value — the spirit is the one suggesting the direction of our thoughts and decisions — rooted in its free will. I cannot emphasize this enough, as it is the core of the human being, our divine existence.
We, our core I, the spirit — is holding the immense, gigantic capacity of the free will.
We always can, and we always do choose. Even if we choose not to choose. Our life is one big, continuous choice.
Now we will cut a bit deeper, just to continue in the finest surgery: mind and spirit, distinct realms, are interwoven into one entity — where the spirit is the divine subject and the mind is its earthly manifestation. Thus, the spirit — our I with our free will — expresses itself through our mind.
I have to acknowledge: I myself feel the internal tension while writing this, as we are basically separating the inseparable, though we can navigate it with careful attention.
Spirit, the I, has the free will to make decisions that are manifested through the mind. That manifestation is, again, observed only by the spirit, as the mind has the quality of narrating, not observing. And thus, what the spirit perceives is the reflection of itself — of its own intentions and decisions — via the mind.
Meaning, one could probably exist without the other, though in silence.
From a scientific point of view, we would say that without the somatic signal, our I, the observer, cannot claim the body. There is indeed in our brains a dedicated center — the medial prefrontal cortex — which activates exclusively when reflecting on self-traits (e.g., “Am I polite?”) rather than in response to other cognitive inputs.
Numerous theories exist regarding how the spirit and the mind are connected, how the spirit might affect the mind, and how it perceives its own reflection. We may theorize about spiritual mind-modifying frequencies, or about some higher-dimensional interventions in the creation and blocking of thoughts, about the spirit interfering between time frames (as it seems that time may be quantized), or the brain having all neurons firing across its centers while the spirit stops unwanted impulses (those not aligned with its intent) and adjusts the final thought within the limitations of the brain’s potential. For me, the closest approach is that we are in a constant stance, which directly affects our decisions. (Therefore, it is important to cultivate our opinions and stance.)
To have a complete picture of the spirit-mind-body axis, we have to understand that the mind is essentially the process occurring in the brain, hence its substrate is the body (as the brain is part of the body); we cannot physically dissect the mind — we can observe its expression in neuroscientific imaging (EEG, fMRI, etc.), but we dissect the brain, the body.
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As the vehicle of the mind is the brain with its neuronal pathways and biochemistry, we have no choice but to accept our physical limitations and perceive through our mind merely a limited and distorted image of our spirit and our intentions. We are the spirit, but we are embodied, so in the end everything is expressed only in neurology and biochemistry, through our body, in our brain, as our mind. (Thus, the more we care for ourselves, with humility and love, the clearer the picture becomes.) We have our memories, our learned reactions and habits, we have our genetic predispositions, manifesting in anatomy — everyone differs in which centers are more developed and which are less so — resulting in a diversity of capabilities in processing different inputs. No two people are the same, so I repeat, please, never ever compare yourself to others, nor to your past self, it is nothing more than a big lie — whether you praise yourself or shame yourself.
After all this, we breathe out a bit, as I provide some background context. What I described was portrayed long ago and is validated across major theological concepts, though terminology varies. Western traditions generally emphasize the unity of the spirit and the mind; therefore, you will not often encounter their distinction, since the term soul is predominantly used as their integration (which in Latin literally corresponds to psyche). Meanwhile, many Eastern traditions use terms such as heart or spirit, which refer to a reality realized through life itself, while remaining interwoven with the mind.
To my mind, if it were such a crucial distinction conditioning our freedom and happiness, it would likely be better explained across theologies. Perhaps, then, this fine surgery serves more as a clarification of the I for the purpose of reading this book than as a crucial moment for healing. Honestly, at first, I didn’t want to get to this so deeply, but trust me: without this distinction, the writing was a mess — so much was left unexpressed in a gray zone that it felt really clunky.
Nevertheless, what is important and what we definitely want to avoid is collapsing this distinction into a dualism of two hostile entities. They can be conflicting, or rather miscommunicating, but the mind will never willingly oppose the spirit, as the mind does not possess free will — even though it has its biological limitations and processes. But those are conditions, not intentions.
For our further reading, it is important to apprehend that our identity is spiritual, while accepting what we have and that we cannot blame our mind or body for any of our own choices or indeed present conditions. Acknowledging and accepting what we are and what we have is the path to understanding and embracing our freedom.
Grace
After establishing the spirit-mind–body axis, we are still missing one element. If the spirit and the mind existed only within the context of the material world, life itself would be terribly random, and free will would be essentially reduced to the luck of what we receive from the world. I am not excluding this idea, as our core self, the spirit, could still choose from what it encounters. That said, it does not align with my experience, observations, or studies.
We are missing the final piece of the puzzle in this picture: grace — the manifestation of transcendence, which we briefly mentioned in the previous chapter as God’s call. We may use whichever terminology one prefers: energy flow, unity, universal law, etc., which expresses itself in our lives as intuition, conscience, guidance. The core concept is that there is something all-embracing that influences our lives, thoughts, decisions, calling us toward our best.
Grace is the dynamic presence of God in our lives, sometimes more obvious, sometimes as a whisper, calling us to our fulfillment. We can certainly encounter grace in this world, through people or situations, when it is registered by our bodily sensations, mentally processed by the brain, finally reaching our spirit, which perceives the divine touch. We can also experience God’s grace directly touching our spirit, mind, or body, without prior sensory stimulation. In both cases, the final receiver is the spirit, the I, with its intrinsic longing, called the spirituality, and its free will, which is always in the process of deciding.
Deciding.
In free will.
Always.
This is the core of the entire book, which we will further develop and examine from different perspectives. But take heed. Until we accept — at least rationally at first — that we truly always have free will to decide, we are directly restraining ourselves within the decision to stay passive, in ignorance, entrapped in spiritual and mental rigidity.
Do not get confused here: to have free will does not mean to have the free will to act. It may be the free will in our stance. Here, I recommend the book Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Since the concept isn’t exactly compressible, I would basically need to rewrite the whole book here. Which definitely does not make any sense. And I do not have the copyright.
But to put it into a simple example: if I am the father of starving children and I decide to steal food, I cannot say I did not have a choice. I had a choice — to let them starve. Nonetheless, I freely decided — within the limits of my possibilities (external and internal) — to steal the food, as I reasoned that it was better to steal the food than to let the children starve. And if I do not have a choice to act, I still have a choice of my mental and spiritual stance, even if it can be difficult to grasp and may take time to find a way to approach it.
However, we will have a whole chapter on freedom, as the realization of free will, and also on responsibility, as a counterweight to freedom. For now, it is important to comprehend that grace is a divine, immanent presence, as natural as the principles of the material world, sustaining us with the continuous faculty of free will, regardless of external conditions.
Next, we will explore what obscures our light.
