THE INTERPLAY OF THE PHYSICAL, MENTAL, EMOTIONAL AND SPIRIT ASPECTS OF THE SELF

The Core Four layers of the self, the mental, emotional, physical and spirit bodies, are interconnected parts of a whole; they all feed into each other in a symbiotic way.  

For instance, the emotional body can have an intense impact on the mental body, such as when someone is in the initial stages of falling in love.  Similarly, the emotional body is impacted greatly by the mental body; there is no emotion without a preceding thought.  The mental body can also impact the physical; some thoughts can make us physically sick.  The emotional and the mental bodies can bring a stasis of the spirit, such as with depression.  And, similarly, an unstoppable spirit can overcome the greatest of physical, mental and emotional hurdles. 

Although all four of the Core Four elements of the self are interwoven, the physical body tends to be the last place where issues show up; if it occurs in the physical, it tends to have pre-existed somewhere else in the Core Four first.  Many serious physical illnesses aren’t as random as you might imagine.  For instance, addictions are often caused by emotional, spirit and mental enmeshment around an unresolved issue, causing a range of complications that later show up in the body as illness.

And while it is common for all Core Four aspects to be in exchange with each other, it is also common for us not to examine that exchange; we tend to allow it, even when it is negative, as if it were acceptable and immovable.  Sometimes we are not even consciously aware of it at all. 

So, while we may try to help our bodies by physically working out, challenging ourselves mentally through advanced education, helping our emotions by going to therapy, or our spirits by positive thinking, there is still a limited understanding in the west of how these four interplay with each other in an holistic way, and what the consequences of those exchanges might be.  

For example, it is known that in the last 20 years, at least four times as many US military personnel died of suicide than died in active combat.  (Over 7,000 died in combat, over 30,000 died by suicide in the same years.)  

We know these suicide statistics, and we can guess that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a cause, but we do not have the correlative knowledge to connect PTSD and suicide in veterans, and so do not have the necessary policies, and mental health care provisions, in place to prevent those suicides.  We simply don’t connect the emotional impact of war on the senses, and what that impact might deliver.  (See Ed Tick’s book, ‘War and the Soul, Healing Our Nation's Veterans from Post-Tramatic Stress Disorder’.)  

Why is that?  Historically, it could be argued, that US soldiers were more highly valued solely as ‘fighting machines’ who could follow orders, without the need for emotional or mental processing.  In other words, not seeing these soldiers as ‘persons’ with interconnecting mental, emotional, spiritual and physical systems. This logic divided the person into parts and elevated the need for physical combative strength, with possible mental acuity, but devoid of attributes or needs that were considered ‘weak’ or ‘vulnerable’ (emotional/psycho-spiritual attributes).

Instead of seeing the person as compartmentalised parts, it is more preferable, and safer, to see them as interconnected parts of a whole, and to address issues in this way.

‘CORE FOUR’ AND THE SOUL AS THE SILENT OBSERVER

While the Core Four interplay constantly, the soul aspect tends to stand apart, removed, and behave in a very different way.  Instead of taking on direct suffering when human life gets difficult, the soul aspect is more detached and it observes, or parts of it flees.  There is good reason for this.  The immortal aspect to us has a much higher level of consciousness than the emotion-mind-body-spirit self, so it does not judge what it sees.  On the one hand this is because it has a greater understanding of why people do things and, so, has a greater compassion for them in their struggle.  On the other, this is because all divinity respects Free Will and allows people to do what they wish.  However, if the soul is inhabiting a body that is experiencing harrowing injury, such as in war, or childhood abuse, parts of that soul can flee to outside the body, in order to avoid a soul death.  Soul loss of this kind can leave the Core Four self feeling ‘empty’ or ‘vacant’ or ‘dead inside’.  

To heal this, first therapy, for instance in the form of psychotherapy, must occur for the emotion-mind-spirit to heal from the PTSD or the shattered psyche, so that the Core Four can become a solid, ‘safe place’ again.  Once intact, the fragments of the soul can return, which can be done through the shamanic practice of ‘soul retrieval’.  In the west, we don’t have any treatment for soul loss, but in many indigenous cultures the concept of soul loss is so widely known that it is common for victims of a car accident, for example, to seek the assistance of a shaman for soul retrieval, within three days of the accident.    

While it might seem that the soul aspect is simply self-serving, observing as it wishes and fleeing when it must, the opposite it true.  This immortal part of ourselves is divine, which, by definition means that it is ‘in service’, and because it is us, it is in service to us.  This means that our soul will never override our Free Will, but also that it will always act in our highest good.  

In the next blog in this series, we will look at how the soul is our compass for evolution and how, once we have stopped relying upon the mind for direction, we can be navigated safely into higher and higher levels of awareness and consciousness, that is both good for us individually and for us as a species.