The Real and Vulnerable Human You
By Julie Daley
“In Indigenous ways of knowing, we understand a thing only when we understand it with all four aspects of our Being – mind, body, emotion, and Spirit.”
– Greg Cajete, as quoted in Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
THE FOUR ASPECTS
Mind. Body. Emotion. Spirit. In many traditions, these are the four aspects that are integral to living a life that is connected, compassionate, and in deep relationality to the living essence of life in all its forms.
Of course as I’m sure you’ve already noticed, these are the four aspects of your Quadrinity. Each morning we have the opportunity to do a Quad Check. When we wake up, we can ask each aspect what there is to know in the moment and for the day. Knowing what is present for each aspect is important to living the day guided by our Spiritual Selves.
HUMAN & SPIRIT
I graduated from the Hoffman Process over 17 years ago. One thing that has become abundantly clear to me since that day is how vital, essential, and dynamic both our humanity and spiritual nature are to each other. This might seem obvious, but for many of us these two views of self can feel paradoxical. We might ask, “How can what feels so fallible and imperfect be integral to the Light?”
You are Whole in your Quadrinity. I tend to see my humanity as my intellect, emotional self, and body. After recently completing the Q2, though, I now see my Dark Side as a key piece of my humanity. The Dark Side affects our intellect, emotions, and body. We hold the effects of negative love in these three aspects. After using Process tools and practices to disconnect these negative love patterns, we emerge with a clearer mind, a more adult and responsive emotional self, and a body that’s been freed from so much pain, stiffness, and contraction.
These three aspects are what hold the unconscious compulsivity that has caused us to behave in ways we wish we hadn’t. In many ways, these patterns are part of our humanity. We never get rid of the Dark Side, but we can lessen its effects on us, on our lives, and the people around us.
REAL AND VULNERABLE GUIDED BY YOUR SPIRIT
Our Spiritual Self cannot be conditioned. It can never be affected by negative love programming. It is the guide for our lives. Our purpose comes from Spirit. When we continue to use our tools to disconnect from patterns, we enable our intellect, emotional self, and body to express the beauty, grace, and creativity of our Spirit.
To be fully human is to be the real and vulnerable ‘human’ you, guided by your Spiritual Self. By living and expressing this guidance of your Spiritual Self, you will be beautifully human, experiencing successes and failures, engaged in relationships that are sometimes easeful and sometimes not, and with the very real physical stuff we experience in our human bodies. The goal, if there is one, isn’t to be free of our humanness, but rather to live it fully. It is to know how supremely human we are by knowing how beautifully alive we are.