What Is “Spirit”?

It's pretty straightforward for most of us to sense our physical, mental and emotional energies. We can sense when each of those energies are high or low, almost as if they were batteries (see my description of energy batteries). But “spirit” and “spirit energy” can be harder to sense.

At least they have been for me. Spirit has been a mystery to me until fairly recently. I am not a religious person, so I’m kind of on my own to figure out what my spirit is. A couple times when I have confessed to someone that I don’t know what my spirit is, the other person has often said, "Oh, but you're very spiritual." They seemed sure about it, but it still wasn’t clear to me what they were talking about.

Until a few years ago when I finally figured out my own definition. (If you already have a definition that works for you, terrific, stick with that. I am not looking for converts here. Just offering my thoughts.)

The word "spirit" comes from the Latin word spirare, meaning breath. When we are born, we take our first breath to begin our life. We aspire to our dreams, and can be inspired - an idea or vision suddenly appears inside our heads, making us gasp with excitement. When we are excited and energized, we are in high spirits. When discouraged, our spirits are low. When we die, we expire, breathing our last breath as we leave our body.

To me, those iconic “breaths” that we take - literal or figurative - are movements of our spirit. Our spirit is expressed through our unique set of passions, motivations and inspirations - the things we are motivated to do on this Earth.

What do you aspire to? What has inspired you? What are your passions? What makes you feel on fire with excitement? Those are reflections of your spirit.

So that is my belief now. Our spirit is our unique sense of purpose, reflected in those breath-like moments when we feel inspired to act.

Spirit energy, then, is the extent to which we feel motivated, energized and inspired in daily life. When we are following the calls of our spirit, our spirit energy is high. We feel jazzed. When we do not or cannot follow them, our spirit energy is low. We feel dull, bored, unmotivated, resentful.

I guess those people were right, then: I am a spiritual person. I get it now. This definition, which I totally made up, makes sense to me and is actually very helpful in my life. I recognize now the feeling of my spirit moving, calling me to do something. I know how satisfying it is to follow those calls as often as possible, even when it’s something I’m “not supposed” to do or “don’t have time” for.

What do you think of this view? Do you hear your spirit calling to you? Are you inspired a lot? How would YOU define “spirit”? I’m curious. Email me!