Spirit And Health

SUN., FEB. 20, 1983, 6:52 AM
FARM, FRONT OF FIRE

Your study/discussion session last evening went well, and you have the findings that shall guide you in developing next month’s content. So hear a Teaching on this morning which addresses that most favored combination… spirit and health. You have many meditations that speak to this, certainly, but I am perfectly willing to offer you an “update”.

First, appreciate the interrelationship. Any assessment of health must include some estimation of the quality of spirit development. On the other hand spirit can grow and develop under all conditions of physical and mental health, except the extremely severe. Your Mother’s condition of last summer is your most vivid example of a mental illness overcoming the expression and growth of spirit. Still, you must also remember that it was a time of spirit development for you, your Father, and your sister. So while circumstances prevent the show of spirit in one, the same situation may engender spiritual health in others involved.

My most persistent theme, one you now are presenting comfortably, is that spirit is the unifying dimension of health, that aspect of self that does not seek to dominate but to work for balance among the other dimensions. Consider, as an example, this vocational dimension of health, that seems to be important enough for your culture now to merit “separate status”. (It seems appropriate to Me to talk about health for a specific culture and for a designated time, rather than always trying to be universal.)

When spirit is strong and well-developed… when you have spiritual well-being… there is the best balance in seeking or in maintaining a place in the world of work. In your culture at this moment “these are different times”, and no one’s job is secure in the sense that it was five or ten years ago. Yet know that as your spirit develops and you let it guide and unify it shall be the best means to the balance that continues to be valued. The person of spirit who has a job tends to be productive and among those most valued.

Even so, situations like Diane’s do develop, where the one with the power is one of minimal spiritual health, bringing vocational suffering to one as spiritually strong as Diane. It, of course, becomes a challenge for growth, an experience that ultimately shall help her spiritually and vocationally despite the suffering and anxiety it brings now.

When a person does not have a job, as was the case with John Patrick, spirit leads the way to finding or creating an opportunity… and gives the mind and body the balanced urge to learn, quickly and well, what it is necessary to know to be successful.