We Are Spiritual Beings

“Perhaps the root cause of stress is not overbearing bosses, ill-behaved children or the breakdown of relationships. It is the loss of a sense of our soul. If so, all the ways in which we have attempted to ease stress cannot heal it at the deepest level. Stress may heal only through the recognition that we cannot betray our spiritual nature without paying a great price. It is not that we have a soul but that we are a soul.”

     I find it both surprising and refreshing that a medical doctor would say that human beings are first and foremost spiritual beings, but this is precisely what Rachel Remen, M.D. claims. She was trained to treat the body, not the soul. She was taught to become skillful and knowledgeable about matters physical, not spiritual, but her own journey through serious illness has led her to affirm that we are more than our bodies.

     Because the pressures and pace of life often leave us stressed out mentally, burned out emotionally, and worn out physically, we tend to seek remedies specific to these conditions; tonics such as relinquishing worry about what we cannot control, detaching from negative feelings, and rest and exercise for our bodies. But as important as these palliatives are, they do not get to the root cause of the problem. If Remen is right, the cause of our depleted state is the failure to realize that “we are a soul,” and the cure for this malaise is to affirm ourselves as such.

     “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience,” claims Jesuit priest and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin, “we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” When we lose touch with this truth, when we become lost in the vortex of life’s demands, and when soul becomes something we have rather than who we are, the vacillations/vexations of life will inevitably lead us to the doorway of stress. But when we embrace our spiritual nature and allow ourselves to be enveloped by the aura of its quiet presence, life can become more manageable and we may find ourselves less stressed.