Like Body, Like Spirit

I think that there's a link between the body and the spirit in that the condition of one is likely to affect the condition of the other. Mostly, I've noticed that when I'm hungry or physically weak, I feel spiritually weak as well (unless I'm fasting, in which cases the extra praying adds spiritual strength to counteract the weakness from hunger). When I'm sweaty or dirty, I often don't feel that great on the inside either. When a person's body is injured or attacked, it can cause them to have negative feelings to ward their fellow man, or even toward God, as though their spirit had been attacked as well - and it could be the case that it was.

I've said before, quite some time ago, that we are dual beings. Our bodies and spirits are strongly connected to each other, to the point where I believe that anything that happens to either one of them will probably affect the other. Anything that injures or weakens the body will injure or weaken the soul. At the same time, anything that strengthens or heals the body can bless the spirit as well.

Also, people with strong spirits often have unusually strong bodies. I'm talking about people who are very old, but have enough mental resilience to keep up a physically active lifestyle, and people who are faced with terrible illnesses but who have such powerful faith that they beat the odds and endure or overcome their physical conditions much longer or sooner than anyone expected them to. There are probably also some spiritually weak people who seem to always be suffering from physical pains or illnesses.

It could just be a frame of mind thing. If both the body and the spirit affect the mind, which they do, and the mind affects both the body and the spirit, which it does, then maybe there doesn't need to be a direct link between the condition of the body and the condition of the spirit to explain the apparent correlation. Perhaps feeling physically clean causes our minds to think of ourselves as being clean, which can help us to be spiritually clean as well. And when we feel spiritually strong, we think of ourselves as being strong, which can help us be physically strong as well.

Anyhow, whether there's any scientific or scriptoral evidence to back this up or not, I think that there's a link between the body and the spirit, so that anything that strengthens or blesses one will strengthen and/or bless the other. The point of blogging about this is to remind myself to take better care of my physical body. I mean eating more fruit, practicing better hygiene, getting more exercise, and establishing better sleeping patterns. There are even commandments relating to most of those things, so keeping those commandments has got to do something beneficial to my spirit somehow, whether it's the result of some innate link, the blessings of keeping commandments, or something else.

I'm going to go do some exercise, and then take a shower. I bet my spirit will feel pretty good after that.