The evolutionary process operating in external physical and social environments led to development of mind. The same process functioning on inner environments of the mind led to development of consciousness.
Our humanity has evolved through interactions with and adaptations to a progression of environments: the biological, social, cognitive, and consciousness itself. In our evolutionary development, increasing degrees of observation combined with greater complexity of mentally mapping of these environments provided a wider range of adaptability to the uncertainties and changes in each of these successive environments.
We have seen ego emerge as a mental function of self-awareness, and soul came into being with self-conscious self-awareness. Ego is a cognitive function of the mind to integrate the many aspects of body and mind. Consciousness evolved out of the functioning of mind and cognition. Soul is a function of consciousness itself.
The soul function of consciousness allows us to assign varying levels of value and significance to the innumerable aspects of the physical, social, mental and conscious elements of our lives. It makes possible the complex articulation of morals, and ethics, and applies reason to its mental activities. It seeks to perceive and create truth, beauty, and meaning within the context of existence. From all of this, soul frames a greater reality in which to dwell, a reality which transcends the material and social, yet interacts and exists along with them.
But the evolutionary process continues to shape and transform consciousness as it does all things. With ever increasing complexity and articulation of consciousness, higher levels of awareness are generated along with higher level integrative functions which amalgamate previous levels of awareness in larger contexts of aggregation with multiple other categories of consciousness.
Mind provided a point of observation to perceive and evaluate material and social environments. Consciousness provided a new vantage point for observing the mental, social and material. Soul makes possible the observation and evaluation of consciousness itself, along with the mental, social and material.
Soul allowed us to become human. But since ancient times we have also recognized the human capacity for a level of consciousness that generates a perspective from which we can integrate even more of experienced reality. It makes possible the continuity of our individual perceptions into the living flow of existence itself.
Spirit is a state of consciousness that extends itself beyond the limited personal life into the living whole of all that is. It subsumes all separations and distinctions in an undivided experience of reality that encompasses everyone and everything.
Spirit immerses the personal soul in a conscious universal experience of all things, awakening awareness of living as part of the whole. Spirit happens when we take our conscious awareness and our language-thought capabilities, to a higher vantage point. We can perceive the whole of our humanity, the world, and the universe with all its potential for both wonder and pain, delight and suffering, and become part of it all.
What does it mean to live as spirit? See the next post.
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