Jesus

Spirit and soul are often confused one for the other. They are, in fact, quite different. Spirit is understood as animation, motivation, thrust. Soul is intuited as alone, unique.
Soul has no rational basis unless Plato’s pseudo-metaphysical argument is taken seriously. In that case our soul is immortal, having existed from before our birth and continuing to exist after our death. The fact that it is ours temporarily is inconsequential, and our affect on it is minimal if at all. As a person of faith, I do not accept that. I believe a soul is given us at birth by God, that it is our essence, so to speak, that it has no form or substance, that it is pure potential (much as energy is potential in a boulder on the edge of a cliff) and that we begin to shape our soul as soon as we begin making decisions. I believe that at any moment in our existence our soul has been shaped by the sum of all our decisions up to that point, that this is what God values in us, and that this is what we are held accountable for if we are held accountable at all.
Spirit is what drives us. This does have some rational basis if viewed from an evolutionist perspective. I do not refer to the chemical processes that activate our bodies, but to the energy that impels us toward some distant goal as yet unseen, the energy generated by our determination to stay alive, morphed in times of our assured existence into a determination to dominate. Our spirit is our emotional response, our awareness of immediacy, our instinctual response to whatever challenges us, physically and mentally. Our spirit is our awareness of being alive.
We show spirit in our enthusiasm, in our energetic activity. The more determined we are, the more spirited are we perceived as being. This is not a rational response to the world around us, though thought may be generated by it. This is an emotional activity, an instinctual response, an intuitive proclivity. In our deepest despair, our spirit raises us up. Our greatest challenges encourage our greatest spiritual response. When life is easy and all our needs are satisfied, our spirit is not. It becomes dull and we become insensitive. Those around us suffer and we do not care unless and until their suffering challenges us. Then our determination to dominate may be stimulated, not to dominate the dominated who are already suffering, but to dominate the suffering itself. Perspective can thus determine our decision to act. We become whole by sharing that which has depressed us. Everyone benefits.
When we are spiritual, we seem to separate from our physical self. It is as if our determination to stay alive suddenly becomes pure energy without purpose, consuming us. This experience can be exhilarating and calming, or it can be the blood lust of battle leading to indiscriminate slaughter of everyone and/or every living thing in sight.
If spirit is what drives us, what real purpose could it possibly serve outside our bodies? As I said before, this experience can be pleasurable and relaxing in and of itself or following some emotional outburst, but it seems to serve no purpose other than allowing our body and mind temporary respite. There may be a feeling of transcendence, but this is an illusion, a mythological interpretation of a sense of well-being. There is no place to which we might transcend. However transcendence, when viewed mythologically, can communicate deep truths to those who listen with open hearts. The idea of transcendence can lead to a deeper understanding of ourselves, but it can also mislead. The problem is with those who can’t see beyond the surface and thus interpret spirit literally as something apart from us, pushing us forward. The ancient Greeks did that with their mythology, losing the inspiration it contained in favor of factual interpretation with little or no value except to subject themselves to the whims of priests and fortune tellers.
What about spirits (ghosts)? If spirit is what drives us, why do we call ghosts "spirits"? I do not believe in ghosts nor in incorporeal spirits of any kind, be they demon, angelic, or human. A belief in ghosts, demons, and/or angels is one of the byproducts of confusing spirit with soul. The soul, it is believed, is immortal, but it has no substance though it takes shape as our decisions mold it. Spirit is the energy that drives us forward day by day. It has no shape, but seems on the instinctive (intuitive) level to be the very embodiment of life itself. It can be perceived as having substance, as being substantial. If we forget that the soul has been molded by decisions, and instead mold it in the shape of the deceased or in the shape of our worst nightmares (our deepest fears) or our highest hopes (protector, companion), then transpose the presumed life force (spirit) into its substance, we have a phantasm.
The heathen in us accepts the spiritual as an explanation for what we do not understand -- whether it be the wind, the air we breathe, fire, the shapes we see in clouds and in shadows and in the bark of trees, the apparent attempt of breath to escape our bodies and its seeming attachment to us as we draw it back in, faces in the fire, the sound of fire as it consumes what fuels it and its apparent attempt to consume us. The heathen in us, even when we know better -- when we understand what makes the air move, the purpose of respiration, and the chemistry of fire -- still believes deep within us in the spiritual implications.
The pagan in us grasps the spiritual for its potential profit and/or power. It sees prophecy as giving us power over the future or, failing that, power over those around us. It sees interpretation of the way the wind blows, the bird flies, the trees sway, and thousands of other chance occurrences as having significance and as a means to gain advantage or to influence the behavior of others. It empowers some objects as ornaments of protection and/or of power, and others as potentially dangerous and to be avoided and feared. It empowers places in much the same way, to be revered and sought out or to be avoided. We cross our fingers for luck or for protection. We wear special articles of clothing or make special gestures for luck and for protection. Even when we know all of this is meaningless, deep within us something still responds to the spiritual implications of chance and feels a need to protect itself from them or to use them to our advantage. We continue to participate in the lottery or other games of chance knowing full well that we will not win, yet feeling that we might.
The atheist in us turns to money, weapons, property, family, and friends for protection from chance. We say we are not taking chances, that we make decisions based on observation and experience, but we treat these things as more than what they are, just as the heathen treats the unknown and the pagan treats chance. We give them a spiritual significance far beyond their actual power to protect. We become dependent on them to an unrealistic extent. Money-the-tool becomes money-the-more-we-have-the-more-we-need. (We give our weapons and our property names and treat them with love and affection. Weapons and property [tools] become weapons and property [an extension of ourselves].) Family and friends too often either hold us back and/or push us beyond our capacity depriving us of our spirit, our will to survive, by becoming our spirit, our will to survive.
Though all of these survival attributes (instincts, intuitions) have contributed and continue to contribute to our survival, their interrelationship can confuse our rational thinking and cloud our judgment if we make no effort to understand and appreciate their contribution to what we are, to what we can become, and to our rational thinking. They add color and they add purpose, but they can distort. We must learn to enjoy that distortion, basking in it but not letting it overwhelm our good sense or prevent us from learning more about the world around us. Denying what we know to be true in favor of what we want to be true should not be the spirit that drives us, but we do not want to lose the spirit that drives us by taking away the instincts, the survival skills developed over millions of years, that fuel that spirit. We need to allow, even encourage, our rational and irrational skills to work together enabling us to function as fully developed human beings.