Not too early today, but not bad considering it was 11:30pm last night, when I finalised the photo album holding my photos of the last two Sunday’s taken at the now defunct Discovery Centre for Spiritual Living. It was close to one am today when I hit the sack. The album still has to be posted on my site, but it is ready to go, though I will have to add a few missing names.

I started on this album after the dinner dishes and news, taking me almost two hours to get it finished with about fourteen images and text making up the album. Posting my daily entry is a daily affair so to speak, but my last album was Canada Day 2014! More like a yearly event, requiring the use of long dormant skills, but I have my own examples to follow and that helps.
This way, I am my own guide!

Preparing for the end of biological life is a task of old age, just like growing up needs to be done when your body is young.

This album was my major event for yesterday, along with the composition and posting of my daily entry and the activities reported in the same. I am still reminiscing about the impact that JK’s passing has on me, being surprised about its persistence, since I saw him maybe half a dozen times and always socially.

This impact may be because he was sixteen years younger than I am, making me realise that my life is probably not less vulnerable then his. This brings me face to face that I too, am moving towards the end of my life in this body as we know it.

Food for thought obviously and not to be repressed, so as to not disturb my comfort zone. Preparing for the end of biological life is a task of old age, just like growing up needs to be done when your body is young.

This is quite a bit of philosophical thought for the Diary, but I am a thinking man and just can’t keep it all neatly divided between my categories of ‘Diary’ and ‘Writings’. SO be it!

After a short coffee break I continue with some thoughts on body, soul and spirit. These three standard concepts from the time of the Middle Ages, I presume, are still to me the most useful ones to deploy. The Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate dictionary gives usage dates for soul and spirit as from before the twelfth and in the 13th century respectively. All three words and concepts are rooted in old English and old high German.

The word body is clear as to its meaning and what it is, where as soul and spirit are quite often used one for the other. Spirit, the younger concept relates to breath, whereas soul relates to essence.

The link between breath and spirit refers to something leaving the body and hopefully returning too. The saying ‘bless you’ after a sneeze is meant as a good wish to have a good spirit return after the one that just left with that sneeze! Breathing one’s last breath means to die, implying that something - the spirit - has now left the body permanently.

The idea of soul is closer to one’s experiences in and of the body closely linked to the emotions. Soul music comes to mind here, which came into the language around 1958, same source as above. ‘Souled’ from the Middle Ages meant ‘being whole in feelings‘.

Combining these descriptions and their use I utilise the following model to describe our human experience. The spirit connects with the body at time of birth, while the soul becomes the registry of and is formed by the experiences of living in the body. This formed soul leaves the body at its death to return to link to the spirit, conveying its content of lived experience.

The spirit connects with the body at time of birth, while the soul becomes the registry of and is formed by the experiences of living in the body.

In addition I assume that the spirit with the soul content assimilates the experiences lived in the body after its death. The result of this assimilation then results in an outcome of choice for continued existence into some vehicle, which could be the earthly body again, to start the experience of a new life on this planet.

This is the cycle of existence of a conscious being that I use to order my thoughts, concepts and experiences as a human being. There maybe many other possibilities, but like William Ockham advised ‘don’t multiply concepts beyond necessity‘, to which I add: ‘in order not to become confused’. Each idea must have a function if it is to be given a place in a model describing our experience as a human being.

This morning I blessed my body, saying that without it the spirit would have few experiences - through the soul I may add to stay with my model.
<10:58am

With an after lunch, after thought: We should balance our lives between life in the body - our primary occupation - and awareness of our connectedness to our spirit through the essence of our soul.
<11:24am and 11:48 with edit~