We are all spiritual beings, each of us with the gift of a body, mind, and soul. When we are not very aware of our essentially spiritual nature, we tend to identify ourselves as just one thing or the other. Some of us think we are this body that does things, or we're a mind that has to figure it out. Our soul, we may imagine, is something that floats up and may or may not live on after we die.

As we grow in spiritual awareness, we develop a more integrated understanding of ourselves. We come to know ourselves as spiritual creatures, operating through a unified trinity of body, mind, and soul. These three facets of self allow us to have a creative experience of life in (at least) three dimensions simultaneously.

Through the body, we can experience and affect our physical environment. We can build shelters, make clothing, and find or grow food. We can feel pleasure and pain. Our brains (which are organs of our bodies) can learn by conditioning to survive on the physical plane. Our bodies have their own consciousness. An example of this is in body memory. Have you ever found it useful to "dial" a frequently used phone number in the air when you need to remember it? The information seems not to be stored in your head, because the fingers that dance that pattern so often have their own memory.

While the body can affect our physical environment in a sort of brute force way, the mind shapes our lives much more than most of us realize. Its tools may appear to be more refined. Rather than the power of hammers, muscles, and the opposable thumb, the mind has the power of attention, belief, and observation. With these tools, the mind shapes our world in a way far more profound than bulldozers and chain saws. We can visualize a whole new life for ourselves and watch it manifest without our bodies forcing anything.

The challenging thing about the mind, for most of us, is that it encompasses both conscious and unconscious attitudes, beliefs, and desires. It is our whole mind that creates our circumstances, not just the part we're aware of. This explains why we so often experience the frustration of our conscious beliefs and desires. The conscious mind has only a fraction of the mind's total power.

Fortunately for us, neither the body nor the mind is in total control. If there seems to be a stalemate between our conscious desires and our unconscious beliefs and attitudes, attention to the third aspect of ourselves can help us get unstuck. The soul has direct access to all wisdom, power, health, and love.

The soul is the part of us that lives in the vast collective pool of good that is God. When we integrate our whole selves through regular attention to the soul, we find that we are neither mind nor body alone, but that both our minds and bodies give fuller expression to our spiritual essence.