Personal "health", personal "spirituality" are the same thing. A human being isn't a conglomeration of parts, but one holistic integrated complex and dynamic working whole. And disagreeing with many traditional views, a human being isn't a "spirit" trapped in a physical shell.

In the views of many, the human "spirit" is what you experience as your total "person". It is your fullest sense of your own life, your passions, your specific experiences, your memories, values, your knowledge and wisdom, your talents, skills, imagination, goals, achievements, physical health, mental health, etc. "Spirit" is everything that makes you "you". Of course, like many others, I reject the idea of a "mystical" spirit. "Spirit" is all-natural but it is still as wondrous to me and to those who agree with me on the nature of "spirit" as it is to anyone else. In fact, I believe a full understanding of and appreciation for the "spiritual" isn't genuinely possible until one agrees "spirit" is and only can be a naturally based phenomenon. When you deny the material roots or material source of the spiritual, you cut yourself off from genuine spirituality in insurmountable ways until you recognize where "spirit" actually comes from and appreciate it for what it is.

"Spirit" as the sum total of a person is directly affected by one's physical and mental health and, of course, one's physical and mental health are directly affected by one's sense of "spirit". Our languages make it difficult to speak of such things but, suffice to say, I think of health and spirit as one thing rather than two, just as I reject the artificial division of "mind" and "body". Mind is body is mind. There is no affecting one without affecting the other. There is no infuencing one's health without harming or feeding the spirit and vice versa.

This has the meaning, at least in my own mind, that: taking an aspirin, taking a bath or shower, combing one's hair, applying lotion to one's hands or chapstick to one's lips, eating an apple or your vegetables or a hot bowl of oatmeal are spiritual acts as much as lovemaking, walking through a beautiful forest, collecting flowers, holding your ailing mother's hand, playing with a child, watching a fire burn down, or pleading in prayer and so many other things one might call "spiritual" experiences. Whatever it is you do or say or experience that nurtures, preserves or improves your life is for health, is for spirit.

They are one and the same.

Eventually one has to realize that "beauty" doesn't exist in anything inherently but is rather a very personal estimation applied to whatever we wish or withhold from what we do not wish. Although we call it "looking for beauty" in something external, what's actually happening is we are discovering our own internal ability to see in beautiful ways and to define what we personally mean by "beauty". A sunset, after all, is just a sunset - it is the self that sees and makes it beautiful, or finds it ugly or, worse, a commonplace. Regardless of our estimation of the sunset, the sunset itself is unchanged by our vision or lack of it. Some have looked at what many consider to be beautiful paintings and seen only ugliness and have attempted to destroy them. Others look at things that are instinctively ugly or even commonplace to many of us and somehow seen astonishing beauty instead. They have a vision most of us do not.

What do I look for in "beauty"? I look for the answers to who I am and who I am becoming. I am what makes the world beautiful and joyous or something else. I am where the power of those emotions exists. To have beauty, I need only choose to see it, to experience it. To have joy, I need only choose to allow it no matter the context in which I find myself.

Unlike with a single human being, it is impossible to know the full potential cycle of life for the entire species. We cannot know whether we are collectively in our infancy or at some other stage in our full development - if it can even be said there is some ultimate end to it. Without knowing the ultimate end, we cannot determine the stages themselves. Truly, we do not yet have a single extraterrestrial life with which to make comparison and any intellectually honest answer would require many examples of "life out there". Statistically, it is said there must be abundant other life in the universe. Although I have fond wish for that to be true, I'm also aware that somewhere and at some time there must be or must have been a "first life" and there's yet no sound reason to say we are not the first just as there is none to warrant saying we are. The answer is indeterminate. If we judge ourselves by our ignorance regarding how much life there actually is in the universe, its nature and location, one is compelled to say we are simply toddlers in that respect. Surely a truly "mature" species has a more complete knowledge of life beyond their own world. All we actually have is speculation. Some are working very hard to turn at least a small piece of speculation to tiny but cold hard fact.

Compared with other species on the planet, one might say we are further along in complex consciousness but, again, looking at our mismanagement of the complex, dynamic and highly interdependent environment upon which we all completely rely, it's not entirely clear whether our additional complexity is a survival advantage or disadvantage here on Earth. With regard to the rest of the universe, it is certainly unclear what advantages and disadvantages our complex consciousness gives us. There are certainly some who think we are much better off staying home and foregoing everything but a simplistic awareness - "Don't ask questions" is their motto - but aren't there always? I suppose I count myself among those fully prepared to ask every question I'm able to ask and chance adventure as deep into the unknown as I'm able to get before I am stopped by the inevitable ignorances. Personally, I can think of no life more fulfilling than to continuously seek what I have not experienced, what I do not know or understand. Curiosity is what keeps my heart beating and without the constant wander, the constant question - "Is this all that I am? Is there nothing more?" I would surely perish. Of course, I've in no way experienced all that can be experienced right here at home, but I've always believed that to fully understand the nature and value of "home" one must venture until the journey leads unavoidably back to where one began. Call it "home" if you like. I call it the "center" and have never entirely known it to have an identifiable place or time as much as it is an evolving idea I carry with me wherever I happen to be. I suppose I will find that "center" when my personal need to journey comes to an end.

What we can say is we seem sufficiently and collectively mature enough to begin asking this question but there is a far greater number of us unprepared to ask it than there are those with the insight to ask and perhaps find some piece of an answer. It is always the few that lead the many.

Perhaps it will not always be so.

As for what has pushed my transitions through moment to the next in my life, you probably have already guessed - an obsessive curiosity and a deliberate attitude that I will never reach a point where any of my answers are entirely satisfying. I'm at peace with the fact that, as much as I wish contentment, I will never have it and I even encourage discontentment to avoid my one and only fear - apathy.

Paradoxically, the joys my lack of contentment brings me through constant discovery give me a measure of contentment that, as you might guess, makes a bit nervous. I continually seek serenity and, when I momentarily find it, I'm soon driven to end it before it begins to sink in.

I sometimes envy those for whom serenity is everything, their depth of place, their intensity of time. Maybe they too sometimes envy the adventurer their restlessness and unique discoveries. Certainly, one is encouraged to think the ideal human life is a blend of the two. I like to think there is a purpose for both extremes in the universe we've all yet to experience.

If each of us saw the universe as a living thing, we would see it and ourselves genuinely for the first time. The simplest path to that point of view is to see and accept the truth - "universe" and "I" are not two - they are the same. They are one. They, in fact, are not "they". Universe is you and YOU are universe self-aware and asking the question.

The living, conscious universe ... is you and, of course, every living consciousness. The question seems to be seeking a universal life and consciousness somehow separate from you, from me, from Earth. If universe is "all that exists", YOU are necessarily the life and consciousness you seek. We humans see the lives and consciousnesses on the planet as "many" but they are all irrevocably tied to one another as "universe". Where is this "many" but in our own minds? Where is "separation", "division", "isolation" but in our own misunderstanding?

Universe - you - ought to ask instead - why do I not already extend "me" to all that is - everywhere, everywhen? Why do I not already embrace all that is "me"? Why do I look to be apart from from that which is inseparable, from that without which I could not and cannot exist? Why do I not already see myself - universe - as "living", as "conscious"?

Why You-niverse, do you divide yourself from yourself? What is it you do not see? What is it you do not understand? What is you will not see or will not understand?

What is it you wait for, what do you need to be genuinely whole?

My Gaia friend Enlightened Thinker has generously shared Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" in honor of this month's poetry celebrations. In keeping with my own passions for poetry, I thought I too would offer a favorite poem by one of those sensitive souls who grant us such insightful art.