When God breathed the breath of life into man and man became alive, there was more than just being alive, and consciousness involved for Humankind to flourish. For the universe to be complete, it must become fully conscious of itself. Man is part of this awareness process. The emphasis here is on the ‘fully conscious’ part, and that is what constitutes our spiritual health. That is why God said, ‘Let us make man in our own image’, and He did. For lower order things, such as a frog, plant, or a bird, simply being alive is all there is, and the process is complete. Humans are different because for each of us, even at that, our awakening process is not yet complete.
Lower order things need not understand what they are because they live by instinct alone. For man to be complete he must not only see and understand his environment, but he must also perceive fully himself. Moreover, he must further understand himself not just as a man, part of others in community, he must fully understand himself as a unique individual different from all others, as well as being just like them. He must become as deeply aware of himself as he is as deeply aware of his environment, to integrate into it.
What God did next is very profound and extremely important, for His next act started the whole spiritual awakening and spiritual health dynamic in motion for each of us. Genesis 2:19 recorded that God brought all the animals to Adam for Adam to name, not God. And it is further recorded that whatever Adam named them was to be their name. What was the purpose of this, you may ask. God did not want Adam to see all things through God’s eyes, but through Adam’s eyes, for in the separate purpose of each individual, those views are all different. The emphasis in each of our unique views is because they are skewed by the curiosity in our fifth spiritual act which is dreaming our own dream (or finding our talent or gift). More about all that below.
When we are born all parts of us need to be actualized, massaged, stimulated, moved to become useful. We need to be forced to use all parts of ourselves, physical, emotional, and spiritual to become functional. In other words, we must need to use them to become aware that we have them, and that is exactly what God was doing with Adam. God was helping Adam learn how to walk and use his hands to make tools which are physical, but He was also teaching Adam how to use his spiritual skills through seeing things through his own eyes, which is the first step to each of us finding our own unique selves. This is the beginning step to our developing our spiritual health. This first step starts our creative imagination as well: When God brought a horse to Adam to name, He knew some would just see a horse, and others would see a passion, a lifestyle of working with horses, using them to round up cattle and become cowboys, or start in them a passion to become a veterinarian. The common name started with Adam, but the individual thing we all name something starts within each of us.
God was teaching Adam how to see things through his own eyes, instead of God’s eyes. We hear a lot in church about how we are to see things through God’s eyes, but we must learn that we have eyes and an individuality of our own first. Part of seeing things through God’s eyes is to first see our world through our own eyes. Do not be confused, at some point those are both the same. We talk elsewhere about our seven spiritual activities which we must do to be fully human and be fully our individual selves at the same time.
Those spiritual activities, which are also gifts, which are also spiritual rights, are: Seeing things through our own eyes, feeling our own feelings, thinking our own thoughts, and choosing our own choices. Beyond that are our three even deeper spiritual activities which are: Dreaming our own dreams, building our own dreams, and sharing joyously our dreams with all Humankind. These all happen in an order, for there is a hierarchy that must be followed for all of them to grow to maturity in your life. Once started they will happen simultaneously all the time. The first act of seeing things through our own eyes is closely linked to the fifth act of dreaming our own dreams (or finding our own talent or gift), as mentioned above.
Spiritual health begins when we are nurtured in childhood. In a setting of love and attention, we will naturally become aware of what we want to draw, write, build, create music, go discover something, be or do something we have a gift for being or doing. This is when we become aware of our uniqueness, and our difference from all other persons that have ever lived. To get this individuation process rolling we must first see things through our own eyes, which is what God was wanting Adam to do when He told him to name all the animals. There was a horse in there somewhere.
Spiritual unhealth happens when we experience poisoning settings without nurturing and love, and reptilian people force us to see things and ourselves through their eyes and not our own. ‘Who told you that you were naked?’ personifies what we can be forced to believe about ourselves that is a lie. If we cannot see things through our own eyes, then we cannot do the next following three spiritual things, nor can we do the last three spiritual things to manifest God’s highest will for each of us. The first four are about us all being alike, the last three are about us all being different and unique. Cactus plants thrive in the dry hot desert with thick skin and thorns, sensitive caring humans do not. God uses our emotionally barren desert experiences for two reasons: The first is to make us stronger in some ways, such as to make us aware of the suffering others are going through. The second reason as a holding place while life and settings are being prepared for our entry to enjoy and let our gifts emerge.
Our spiritual health can be recovered with psychotherapy with professionals in extreme cases, and with sharing our feelings and needs with our closest loved ones in lesser states of need. Whether on an extreme scale involving direction by the courts in the judicial system, or by urging from family members to save a marriage and family, the process is the same. The first task is to reunite ourselves with how we see things realistically or unrealistically. Then we examine the processes creating how we feel about things perceived. Thirdly then we look closer at how we think in our world, such as, do we associate a loving attempt by one close to us as a threat to our dignity and invasion of our privacy. This might occur if someone were to offer us a ride to work when our car broke down and we became angry and say we do not need their help. Lastly, we would look at the choices we made based on the previous three mental activities. When we realize that the choices we made were improper, we can then look again upstream at the way we incorrectly saw it, then at the resulting incorrect bad feelings it created, the faulty thoughts we had behind it, and again look at why we chose that particular bad response as best and most relevant.
All emotional and spiritual health must be restored beginning on the lower four mental activities. After the first four mental activities of correctly seeing things through our own eyes, feeling our own feelings, thinking our own thoughts, then making our own best interest choices, have been reestablished, then the following deeper three spiritual levels of imagining our own dreams, building on our dreams, and lastly sharing joyously our gifts, will then rise into view on our radar. Spiritual health is how fully we do all these seven spiritual activities, sharing our highest self to Humankind. Who we truly are is contained in these seven activities. Living within in these seven acts lies the Kingdom of Who We Are, and What We Are to Become.
When acting outside of these seven things, resources will be driven from us, scarcity will manifest, and our own kind will scatter from our lives. Do not let previous scarcity and painful losses keep you from seeing things through your own eyes, and the following other six spiritual acts. Past painful needs and losses were hardships you were meant to endure, not because you were unworthy of better, but to teach you something important which was needed to make you more complete and much stronger in wisdom. In other words, our past pains contain lessons from which we must learn our soul lessons, and possibly await our time to emerge.
Spiritual health recovery happens in two ways. To understand this, we will look at ourselves as an automobile: A car needs repair from wear and damage, and the defective parts, in this case, our thinking and mental health processes, need software replacement for restored mental functioning. Also, an automobile needs fuel for energy to operate. Therapy for mental confusions is our repairs, and beyond that is the separate need for nurturing, love, and emotional support for fuel to then live our spiritual lives to their fullest. Spiritual health requires maintenance if damages in our thinking are present, and continuous love and nurturing for fuel to reinforce our seeing things through our own eyes. If we get back to this, then the use of our six spiritual acts will happen automatically. What are the animals God has brought into your presence for you to name?
Just for the record, this is an emotional and spiritual encouragement ministry. We are selling nothing here and are not at the present time even set up to take donations, and probably never will. Your healed life is our reward enough, and we are very pleased with that. If you want to, please share your strength with others in your future so our nurturing can live on.