Points of Interest, vol 2. #6

After an all too long break it’s back, the best and brightest of all things Mind, Soul, and Body on the internet-that I could find, anyway.  I am a bit short on introduction today, dig in and enjoy-

Points of Interest, vol. 2 #4

In an effort to return to a regular weekend schedule, I present the creme de la creme of my web browsing put together in a mere five days time, and still overflowing with thoughtful, touching, funny and poignant goodness.  Today I have peer support, intuition, schizophrenia, salience, religiosity, spirituality, diet soda, cotton candy, and a bunch of other vaguely defined subjects.  So pull up a chair, sit down and dig in to the absolute best I could find on the internet-

From the Archives: Disability and Human Potential

First Published January 15th 2008.

     I work up close and personal with disability everyday. When people found I was going into child neurology their first question was often, “why”? I often hear about how it’s too sad or too depressing.

Fellow physicians struggle with the fact that there often isn’t anything we can do to fix severe cerebral palsy or neurodegenerative disease, to name but a few. There is something in our nature that makes us shrink from the deformed and debilitated.

Points of Interest #28

Welcome, one and all to my wrap up of all the best posts to be found on-line in my adventures in cyberspace.  This time we have no worries, the importance of intelligences, the fine line between creativity and madness, wet bugs and so much more, so dig in.

Putting the pieces together again

    As mind/brain and spirit/body dualism have slowly broken down over the past century, puzzling consequences have been left in its wake.  Nowhere are these consequences more evident than in psychology and neurology.  We take seriously the charge to heal the mind and the brain.  We research it, learn about it, ponder over it, all in the hope that someday we will be able to cure illnesses that are currently untouchable. 

Dementia, Schizophrenia, Stroke, Traumatic Brain injury, to name just a few all have permanent and dire consequences for the individuals involved.  The individual’s very mind, consciousness, personhood, spirit, whatever you choose to call it–their very essence or being is changed,  irreversibly at present, by the disease.  To have a sick brain is to become less human in a very real sense. 

Spirit and Mind

I posted before about how I see a clear difference between brain and mind. Today I want to explore the difference between mind and spirit. There are those in the Scientific field who would disagree and are endeavoring to explain away consciousness, and spirituality as a pure brain physical phenomenon.