Living longer?

from BBC




How long can we expect to live these days?
Life expectancy has increased by one to two years in men and women every ten years. We're now living longer, and not just longer but also healthier lives. We still experience periods of ill health and dependency before death - that hasn’t changed – it’s just that now it happens later.


Why are we living longer?
There are two main reasons. The first is better healthcare treatment and the successful battle against infectious diseases. Vaccination programmes made a huge difference to combating diseases such as diphtheria, TB and smallpox. The second factor is a higher standard of living - for example, improved childhood and maternal nutrition and higher quality housing. We've also managed to improve healthcare for older people. A lot of money is now spent on older people, treating cancers, mental health and heart disease, which has brought down death rates.


What are the most important things we can do to live longer?
Increasing your life expectancy is about looking at your life and asking what you can do to make yourself happier? Often this is down to taking control, sometimes through physical activity or healthy eating. This then leads a person to feel more in control and starts them thinking about their health behaviour. People will revert to unhealthy behaviour unless they look at their entire life.


Do we underestimate the importance of other lifestyle factors such as sleep and stress?
I think we can do. Stress isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it's about controlling it. If your life's out of control and you can't do anything about it then that can lead to things like road rage. This kind of stress can increase your risk of heart attacks, violent behaviour and depression, but stress can also be an important natural state. Basic ageing is about damage versus repair. We repair our body through sleep so it’s important to get seven to eight hours of high-quality sleep each night. The body's repair mechanisms can be knocked out by smoking, which affects every cell in the body, diminishing its ability to repair. Similarly, if we drink too much we don’t sleep properly and this doesn’t give the body a chance to recover.


How do you calculate a person's biological age?
If you're interested in your biological age, there are five main areas you can consider to see if you're living a healthy lifestyle: emotional wellbeing, social networks, nutrition, physical activity and risky behaviours.
Try our online quiz to see how you rate and whether you need to make any lifestyle changes.


What steps can parents take to ensure children live a healthy life?
Happy, well-nurtured children tend to receive the emotional support that helps them adopt a healthy lifestyle. We need to be responsive to their emotional needs. It’s also important they learn about healthy eating and exercise. The five-a-day programme is good for children because they can make their own choices. If you say: “Eat your greens, they’re good for you”, they probably won’t. If you let them know five a day is good, but that they can choose what they have, that's more appealing.


What do you say to someone who says it’s too late to change their habits?
The biggest benefits of changing your behaviours come later in life. Of course, we should try to improve our health as early as possible, but it’s never too late. In old age a small difference can affect a person’s independence - something we call the 'fitness gap'. In fact people aged over 60 tend to be most successful in giving up smoking.


What are the main things people worry about as they get older?
The two main concerns are money and health. Money-wise, it’s personal finance and how that may affect their wellbeing. People also worry about their health, particularly losing their independence and becoming a burden on friends and family - it’s an altruistic concern.

Daily prayer and good health

by Beverly Goldsmith

Reprinted from the November 13, 2006, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.



“When do you pray?”
asked the radio host. “Do you pray first thing in the morning or last thing at night?” This was the question I was asked while being interviewed as a Christian Science lecturer on the Australian program Good Health Matters. The program was exploring the connection between spirituality and good health for the first time, and the host revealed on air that she had never thought of prayer as having a part to play in maintaining health. And she certainly hadn’t thought of it as a moment-by-moment activity one could undertake throughout the day.At one time, I’d been in the same position. I wasn’t aware of the significant role that spiritual thinking played in achieving well-being. But this changed when I began to read the Bible along with Science and Health.

Health is the outcome of close communion with God.
As I studied these two books, I learned that health and healing are the outcome of a person’s close—and constant—communion with God. And I saw that God, as infinite Spirit, is the source of wellness. Since He is the divine cause, His creation, which includes each one of us, reflects the divine energy of Spirit. Because of this, every person includes God-given vitality, strength, wholeness.So what has to be done to live an active, healthy life? I’ve found the answer is to pray daily to secure and preserve one’s good health—and to be persistent with those prayers. In doing so, I include these three fundamentals: Pray for and about yourself; be specific; and pray regularly, every day, throughout the day. Before praying for the world, for someone else, it’s important first to be clear about your own relationship with God. Praying for oneself is not a selfish activity. I’ve found that if I want to be well and help others be well, my prayers have to be personal—about me, for me.

God created everyone in His intelligent likeness.
Why? Because as an individual, I’m responsible for what I think, and thus how I feel. It’s my job to examine my thinking and put out any unhealthy thoughts and fears. God created me, and everyone, in His intelligent likeness, which means each person has the ability and wisdom to think and reason spiritually about himself or herself. Accepting responsibility for my well-being has led me to make sure that I pray for myself each day. I like to do this by affirming that whatever God is, I am, as His reflection. God has formed all of His children in His perfect image. Thus, as His daughter, I can affirm that as God is Spirit, so I am spiritual. As God is Life, so I am active. As God is Soul, so I am harmonious. As God is Love, accordingly I am cared for. I have inherited good health from my Father-Mother God, and this is permanent spiritual health because I am His reflection forever.

Preventative prayer needs to be precise scientific reasoning.
To be effective, and to exercise control of the body, prayer for oneself should be focused. I like to think of it this way: If I needed to replace a leaking tap in the kitchen, I wouldn’t engage an accountant to do the job. Curative and preventive prayer has to be more than just an all-purpose, general activity; it also needs to be precise, hit-the-nail-on-the-head scientific reasoning. In order to achieve this, it’s vital to check on the thoughts we entertain. Every day, all kinds of thoughts come to the door of consciousness. Some are spiritual, good, and are thus health-giving. Others are mortal, and produce illness and disease. Detecting which is which, is an essential defense in maintaining health. Mary Baker Eddy described this form of prayer as the practice of spiritual anatomy. She wrote in Science and Health: “Anatomy, when conceived of spiritually, is mental self-knowledge, and consists in the dissection of thoughts to discover their quality, quantity, and origin. Are thoughts divine or human? That is the important question. This branch of study is indispensable to the excision of error. The anatomy of Christian Science teaches when and how to probe the self-inflicted wounds of selfishness, malice, envy, and hate. It teaches the control of mad ambition. It unfolds the hallowed influences of unselfishness, philanthropy, spiritual love. It urges the government of the body both in health and in sickness.”

I have to shut out thoughts of illness or fear.
This alerts me to be aware of what I let into my thinking. If thoughts of illness and fear are trying to come in—or have already entered my thought—then I have to shut them out. Ruminating over ill health, dietetic theories, or the latest bug going around does not result in wellness. Speculating about them intensifies fear and the possibility of succumbing to them.However, just shutting out descriptions of disease is not enough. Defensive prayer not only closes the door on unhealthy thoughts and fears, but also immediately lets in spiritual conclusions about one’s self. For instance, at one time I was feeling worn-out and overworked. As soon as I recognized the falsity of the conclusion that my work could cause fatigue and weariness, I shut out this notion by refusing to reiterate silently or aloud that I was tired from working too hard. Then I immediately affirmed that God was supplying me every moment with vitality and stamina, boundless endurance, and get-up-and-go.

I rejected the notion of fatigue.
I recognized that the vigor of Life animated my being every second of the day, and that the spiritual source of these qualities could never be depleted. As I continued to reject the notion of fatigue and to replace it with the truth about my real tireless being, I was quickly back to my normal lively self. To claim each day that wellness comes from God and is ours by reflection, is essential. However, health-sustaining prayer is more than thinking nice spiritual truths for a few moments and then walking away from them to get on with usual activities. The Bible teaches us to “pray without ceasing.” This instruction advises me to do more than pray once a day for myself. It reminds me to be alert constantly, moment by moment, to what I’m letting into my thinking. This is active, alert prayer. It takes practice, but it’s worth the persistent effort.

I check each thought to see if it is Godlike.
Praying specifically and consistently for oneself relates to every aspect of the day—from the routine activities to the more momentous events. That’s why before I get out of bed in the morning, I spend five minutes affirming that my well-being is present and within. Then, even as I brush my teeth, shower, or do the laundry, I continue to check each thought to see if it is health-sustaining and Godlike. At night when retiring, I give thanks to God for His love and care, and I defend myself with the recognition that sleep cannot change my knowledge of the truth about my being. Mrs. Eddy emphasized this point: “. . . if you fall asleep, actually conscious of the truth of Christian Science,— namely, that man’s harmony is no more to be invaded than the rhythm of the universe,—you cannot awake in fear or suffering of any sort” (Retrospection and Introspection, p.61).Anyone can discover the benefits of praying specifically for himself or herself, throughout the day. The effect is powerful, restoring wellness and maintaining good health. It enables those who consistently fine-tune their prayers to live a happy, active life—and to bless others in the process.




Beverly Goldsmith is a teacher and practitioner of Christian Science in Brisbane, Australia.

Our goal is:

Changing identities during spiritual travel

article by spiritualtravel.org





Everyone knows what it is like to be embodied living in the physical world from day to day. In what ways does the individual's identity, self-concept, and body image vary during spiritual travel?
One fascinating aspect of spiritual travel is the ability to shift from one's normal body image to a different form. Taking on an identity or form different from one's normal body image happens on occasion during spiritual travel.
It sometimes happens spontaneously and advanced practitioners can probably choose to create a new body image through visualization. Some claim that those who reside in the more ethereal places seem to use this ability to change shape as a form of artistic creativity. They are said to be able change bodies the way we in the material world change clothes.
An example of a change in body image can be found in the section on shape-shifting at this site.
However, it is more common to find one's self with little or no bodily sensation thus creating the sense of having no body at all than to shift shapes.
One of the basic lessons learned during spiritual travel is that the soul can take many forms and identities when outside the body. However one generic thing that happens repeatedly is the soul or individual becomes a kind of energy or vibration. The qualities of this difficult to describe "energy based identity" differ much like the varying qualities of color and texture differ on the surface of a body of water such as a lake. The surface of the water changes so much depending on the kind of wind and the quality of the natural light as it reflects off the surface.
Raymond Moody talks briefly about these alterations in body image that occur during near-death experience:
I have heard this new body described in many different terms, but one may readily see that much the same idea is being formulated in each case. Words and phrases which have been used by various subjects include a mist, a cloud, smoke-like, a vapor, transparent, a cloud of colors, wispy, an energy pattern, and others which express similar meanings. Raymond Moody, Jr. M.D., Life After Life, (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1976), p 50 However, it is important to remember that those undergoing a near-death experience are usually experiencing out-of-body states for the first time. The above terms are descriptive of how such persons felt immediately after their accident or injury when they first found themselves outside their physical body. Spiritual travelers are likely to experience a wider variety of identities than those described as occurring during near-death experience.
Generally, this kind of experience is very important for the following reason. Once the individual gets acquainted with this unusual way of being during spiritual travel, it is not such a big step to mysticism since once the soul becomes aware of its own energetic nature and essence, it can approach the mystical areas of light and sound with a sense of relatedness. One form of energy is not so easily alienated by another form of energy, whether in the form of another disembodied individual or a vast ocean of light or sound. This is one way in which spiritual travel in the psychic areas prepares the individual soul for its encounter with ultimate Truth or God.
There are many who write on the subjects of mysticism and meditation who talk of the illusion of separateness, and how true spirituality consists of overcoming this illusion. However, when the individual's consciousness is focused within the body, the barriers which account for this feeling of separation are solid and substantial. It is during out-of-body experience that the self becomes permeable and can merge partially or fully with other forms of consciousness and states of being.
In whatever form the individual takes as he or she experiments, the freedom to vary one's bodily form and identity can be one of the beautiful and fascinating aspects of spiritual travel.

How to grow spiritually

by W. Dale Oldham


Conquer Frustration

Since we are social creatures, all of us are affected to some degree every day by the conduct of those about us. The other fellow’s mood affects us; if he laughs and smiles, we laugh and smile. But if he is surly, angry, and hostile, that, too, will have its effect on us. Surrounded as we are by people, it is often difficult, if not impossible, to have our own way; and when we can’t have our own way, we often become frustrated. No one can do as he pleases in every situation. Who can have all he wants of everything? Who can long remain free of unpleasant responsibilities and duties? Is there anyone on earth who is not faced now and then with irksome frustrations?
As we grow older, most of us learn to handle such things. We catch the ball and throw it back; we don’t let it knock us down. We have learned how to accept the give-and-take of life. We keep up our courage, maintain a healthy sense of humor, and fight the good fight of faith. But not everyone has learned how to do this. There are those around us who suffer interminably tinder frustrations they have never learned how to handle. Often they feel they are facing a wall, which is thick, threatening, and impenetrable. They feel as if they were caught in a vise, which is slowly closing on them. The difficulty may be one of lingering illness, loneliness, or a family situation, which stubbornly refuses to come to adjustment. Perhaps a husband or wife has an unfaithful companion who refuses to settle down to a life of fidelity. What a trying situation that can be! Or the children as they grow up may be wandering away from the church that cradled them in the years of their childhood. Or it may be a matter of insufficient finances, a case where a fixed income is being bombarded month after month by a spiraling inflation. With one’s back everlastingly against the wall, and bills piling up, who can avoid a certain degree of frustration?
Of course, we cause a great many of our own frustrations by the way we live. Uncontrolled persons cause themselves, as well as others, many a headache. It ought to be possible for all of us to first analyze our problems and then do something constructive to heal the situation. A classic example of frustration is the New Testament account of Paul and Silas as they attempted to evangelize Asia Minor. They were all packed and ready to move into Bithynia, when the Spirit of the Lord said an emphatic “No!” The door they had planned to enter was slammed in their faces. That was frustrating! But what did they do about it? They simply accepted the closed door as being God’s will, then looked for another door that was open.
God never closes one door but what he opens another. Paul and Silas found that open door, entered, and what were the results? First, the church was established at Philippi and became Paul’s most beloved charge. Also, they found Lydia and won her to Christ. She probably was one of the most important and influential women of the early church. Third, they went through the painful, yet gloriously victorious experience in the Philippian jail, where, although they were fastened in stocks after being severely whipped, they sang songs in the night. As a result of this prayer meeting, the jail doors swung open and they could have escaped had they chosen to go. But they stayed, and as a result witnessed the conversion of their jailer and his entire family. You see, in forbidding Paul and Silas to enter Bithynia, God had a higher purpose in mind. Had they been disobedient, they would have missed the victories which later came to them, and probably would have failed miserably at Bithynia, God’s way is always the best way. Always! If you think his way is sometimes hard for you, remember that any other way is bound to be harder.
Sometimes when we are in difficulties with a person, or with our family, we need to sit down and take a good objective look at ourselves. It may be that our own poor attitudes are directly responsible for many of our troubles. Sometimes it is hard for us to realize how our personalities rub people the wrong way. We need to be absolutely honest in any such self-examination. So many times we are almost entirely responsible for our troubles.
Take the case of the big league baseball pitcher who went into a serious slump one season, losing several games in a row. Strange about a pitcher: some days he is just right and the ball goes sizzling across the plate under perfect control. But there are other days when he can’t control the ball for the life of him. While the slump was on, this pitcher couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. But next time he was really “in the groove” he had some slow-motion movies made as he pitched the game. Later, in another slump, he did the same thing. Afterward he set up two projectors side by side and showed both films at the same time. He found that when he was in a slump, he always pushed his left foot forward about three inches farther than when he was pitching well.
Of course, we who have never stood in his place would think that all he’d have to do to correct the defect would be to pull that left foot hack three inches. But this pitcher was smarter than that, so he asked himself why he was pushing that left foot forward. After considerable analysis, he came to the conclusion that it happened when he was “over-pressing”, and he was pressing because he was anxious and afraid, filled with apprehension. He happened to be a man of strong religious faith, so he began to pray earnestly about his problem and the cause of it. Before long he was his old self, his pitching once again under normal control.
This isn’t just a story. It is a good illustration of what happens to you and me once in awhile. God meant for us to live with faith in him; when fear replaces faith, we start pressing, just like this pitcher. We become tense, and our tension is quickly relayed to those about us. What we send out we get back. Poor attitudes result in poor living. Fear produces tenseness: then anxiety seizes us, and our whole personality changes. In such a state it is easy for us to become moody, blue, and irritable. It is easy also to blame all our trouble on someone else, making him the scapegoat for our own personality inadequacies. We need to learn that many frustrations, which cannot be handled in any other way can be taken care of with ease when we manifest a genuinely Christian spirit.
You can’t rid yourself of frustrations by fighting them. That is the wrong approach. Frustrations can be handled successfully only by a new inner Christian attitude. Remember, the very things, which are happening to you, have come to other people from time immemorial. These things are not unique to you. Paul told the Corinthians, “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man” (1 Cor. 10:13). Then be added, “But God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able.” But this is a promise only for those who live and walk in the spirit of Christ. One of our difficulties lies in the fact that so often we want God to deal with our problem, when he wants to deal with us, to change us. How often the power of the problem evaporates when he gets us where we ought to be. And again, we often want the Lord to change the other fellow’s attitudes, when if our attitude changed, his would follow. As Art Linkletter says, “People are funny!”
Again, many of our frustrations come because of the difference between our avowed ideals and our conduct. The resulting inner civil war tears us to pieces. The answer to this problem is humble, loving obedience to God. You won’t solve your personality problems, then, by moving to another state or taking, another job. You will carry your problems with you wherever you go until they are cleared up by your own change of attitude. A few years ago a New York bus driver, frustrated and bored, decided to do something about it. So one day, instead of following his usual route, he swung west across the George Washington Bridge and drove clear down to Florida. Not that this solved his problems, for he carried them all right along with him in the bus. The trip back to New York with the police was not nearly so exhilarating as was the trip south. We can conquer inner problems only by receiving inner help. The hobos, bums, and drifters seek to solve their problems by “chucking it all,” but they only add to their problems by turning their backs upon reality.
It would not be difficult to give you several psychological panaceas for frustration out of the textbooks, but let’s take a short-cut and say that to belong wholly to Christ, to manifest his spirit, and to love people with genuine Christian love is probably the only enduring answer to a sense of frustration because it deals directly with motives and with personal relationships. Of course, everyone experiences frustration to a certain degree. Jesus did. Listen, “Jesus, full of the Spirit, returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness” (Luke 4:1–2a).* Forty days without food. Have you ever been desperately hungry? Those were forty days of frustration. Forty days tempted by the devil. But because the Master held steadfast and true we read, “Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and ministered to him” (Matt. 4:11).*
We conquer every foe by living close to God, by being filled to overflowing with his love and grace; but the power must come from inside our hearts, as we give God full control. When we live in Christ, angels come to minister to us in time of need, just as they ministered to him. But the battle is in the heart, and victory will be found not in the changing of circumstances, but in fortifying your soul with the love of the Christ who said, “My peace I give unto you.” So don’t cry next time the door to some Bithynia is slammed in your face. Cheer up. Look up in faith and trust, and say, “Well, Lord, what better thing do you have in mind?” And ask it with the assurance that a “better something” is really there.

The best message ever

Towards a Naturalistic Spirituality

(What follows is an outline of how naturalism can serve as the basis for an authentic spirituality. For a more detailed article which compares naturalism with traditional faiths in their approach to spirituality, see Spirituality Without Faith.)

A naturalistic understanding of spirituality
The spiritual experience - the experience of meaning, connection and joy, often informed by philosophy or religion - is, from a naturalistic perspective, a state of the physical person, not evidence for a higher realm or non-physical essence. Nevertheless, this understanding of spirituality doesn’t lessen the attraction of such an experience, or its value for the naturalist. We naturally crave such feelings and so will seek the means to achieve them consistent with our philosophy.

The dilemma for naturalists
But the question for the naturalist arises: how, as someone who doesn’t believe in transcendent, otherworldly connections, or in ultimate meanings or purposes, can I legitimately evoke such feelings? That is, how, consistent with naturalism as my guiding philosophy, can I find the same emotional resonance or the same sorts of consolations that my religiously or supernaturally inclined friends experience? What is spiritually uplifting about naturalism?
For naturalism to evoke spiritual states akin to those evoked by religion, the follower of naturalism must find that the conclusions of her philosophy have profound, positive psychological consequences. The conclusions must resonate with her basic human needs for connection and meaning, even though, paradoxically, naturalism tends to undercut the easy presumption of overarching purposes. What then, are some of the conclusions of naturalism, and how might they affect the person who holds them? Although the conclusions for the most part seem negative, in that they deny dearly held assumptions common to most religious views, it may be that the very act of freeing ourselves from these assumptions can generate the exhilaration and joy of freedom, of discovering a tough but liberating truth, in which uncertainty moves us in the same way that certainty does others. This is an experience which counts as spiritual, even though no spirits are involved.

The cosmic connection
Most generally, naturalism places us firmly within the natural realm, extending from quarks to quasars. The scope of this realm as depicted in our sciences is nothing less than staggering. It is a far more varied, complex, and vast creation than any provided by religion, offering an infinite vista of questions to engage us. What naturalism takes away in terms of a central, secure role for us in God’s kingdom is more than compensated for by the open-ended excitement of being part of something whose dimensions, purpose and precise nature may never be known. In accepting a naturalistic view of ourselves, we trade security for surprise, certainty for an unending, perhaps unfulfillable quest for understanding, and easy platitudes about salvation for a flexible, mature accommodation to the often difficult facts of life and death.
That we are alive and sentient, with the capacity to form an understanding, however provisional, is the source of much amazement to the naturalist, since after all, none of what we consist of is sentient. Such amazement (and there are thousands of natural facts that can evoke it) can be the start of spiritual experience. That the stuff of our bodies came originally from the initial big bang, transmuted by stars and expelled in supernovas, seems a supremely satisfying connection to the most far flung corners (in both space and time) of the universe. This deep sense of connection forms a central aspect of spiritual feelings. The aesthetics of the natural world contribute as well, from the most sophisticated of the human arts, to the colors of Brazilian agate, to the grand structure of the great galactic wall. Best of all, though, is that naturalism shows that creation can’t be tied up neatly by our understanding: we will always stand in wonder at the vastness of possibilities in nature, those realized and those unrealized, knowing that we comprehend just a fraction of what might be known, and knowing that there is no end to it. Faced with all this, the naturalist, if she is capable of letting go into a non-cognitive response, may discover feelings of profound awe, delight, and surrender, feelings typical of religious revelation but now felt in the context of a world view consistent with the most hard-edged empiricism. Although it is not widely known, the full appreciation of naturalism and its implications can be as intoxicating, perhaps more so, than any religion yet devised. Philosophy link: Faith, Science, and the Soul.

No ultimate purpose
It is easy to see that from a naturalistic perspective there cannot be any ultimate purpose to existence: as soon as any purpose is proposed, one can simply ask why that purpose should drive existence, as opposed to some other purpose. Even if God created us to glorify him and his works, we are still creatures that can ask why God himself exists. As questioning creatures, we will always be in the position of being able to second guess any overarching meaning someone attaches to the universe. In short, our intelligence guarantees that we will never rest secure in a comfortable interpretation of existence, since we can see that existence is always prior to its interpretation.
The initial psychological response to this dilemma is often the melancholy feeling that life is therefore devoid of meaning. Since we can never construe an ultimate purpose, what’s the point, anyway? But on second thought, once we see the logic of the desire for ultimate meaning - that by its very nature it is an unsatisfiable demand - we can begin to laugh about it, and savor our position as a very curious one indeed. It turns out that smart creatures will never be in a position to satisfy themselves about meaning, at least of the ultimate variety. That fact itself is rather a compelling discovery about existence, one that prevents a complacent, boring acceptance of the status quo from ever setting in. There is no way things are ultimately meant to be, so existence becomes a work in perpetual progress (not towards a goal, however), whose outcome is never settled. We therefore stand perpetually surprised, curious, and wondering. We cannot easily set aside our demand for meaning, but instead of being disappointed about its frustration, we find ourselves free to play with existence (or to be its playthings, perhaps), to create local meaning in activities we find intrinsically satisfying, and get caught up in our human drama, knowing that the drama is set on a much larger stage whose dimensions may never be determined, and which exists for no reason. The direct appreciation of this "no meaning, no reason" aspect of existence can have a profound, and positive psychological impact: we are free of any confining purposes; we are free of the deadening certainty that we have a set role to play and a "correct" goal to achieve; we are liberated to be perpetually amazed at the sheer, startling fact that something exists, not nothing, and that we are part of it. Amazement, wonder and the feeling of connection are arguably central components of the spiritual experience.

No free will
A naturalistic understanding connects the human organism to the larger physical world in all respects, via genetics and environmental influences. Since we don’t, on this understanding, exist as independent, immaterial agents directing our behavior from a causally disconnected vantage point, this means we don’t have free will in the traditional sense. We cannot have done other than what we did in a given situation.
This means that persons are not first causes, rather they are links in the natural unfolding of the world in space and time. As much as we experience ourselves as separate egos, deliberating our fates one decision at a time, our very deliberations are entirely included in this unfolding.
This insight may at first disturb us, since we might suppose we are nothing more than passive puppets, moved at the whim of forces beyond our control. But we are not even puppets, since there is no one separate from the various forces, processes, and states that comprise the person-environment complex to be pushed around. We are, in fact, fully connected parts of the whole, identifiable as separate persons to be sure, but neither causal masters nor victims.
The psychological consequences of this realization are manifold. Without giving up the sense of our own identity and particularity (pretty much impossible, short of profound experiences of ego loss, which may themselves be of value in the right context) we feel a deep connection to the world around us, since that world is, after all, where each aspect of ourselves originates. A relaxation ensues from letting go of the illusion that we must continually "steer" ourselves through life, from realizing that our decisions themselves arise on their own out of the circumstances that constitute our body and its environment. We don’t choose our character or motives from some independent vantage point; they are the creations of life and culture themselves, not the artifacts of a causally autonomous ego. Freed from the burden of being our own creators, we nevertheless don’t passively resign ourselves to fate, since we understand that as creatures fully embedded in the world, our actions do indeed have causal effects which sometimes make all the difference. The naturalistic dismantling of free will frees thus connects us and liberates us: we are parts of the evolving whole that can witness the evolution and add interesting twists to the outcome by virtue of the capacities that life has given us. But since we are such parts, we can let go of the rather arrogant and ultimately disabling presumption that we stand outside creation. As Alan Watts said, You Are It, and the direct appreciation of this connectedness becomes part of a naturalistic spirituality. Philosophy link: Free will page.

Not knowing what’s going to happen next: being surprised by life
As naturalists, we understand there are few certainties, either in how life will work out, in how we are supposed to behave, or in what to believe. There is no finally correct way to be and no master plan that determines our role, either as individuals or as a species. Instead, we are part of nature which unfolds on its own, in a grand experiment to no point or purpose. For us, this experiment involves pain and pleasure, these being aspects of nature in its form (our form) as semi-autonomous, sentient beings. So despite our best efforts, life will shock us with unexpected tragedy and if we’re lucky, some triumphs. We can’t help but act as we do, constituted as we are, but we can’t, except within very broad limits, predict just what we’ll do next, or what will happen to us. We don’t know just what we’ll think or feel or say in the very next moment, let alone the next day, week, or year.
This lack of certainty about life and its outcome adds an inevitably tragic aspect to the naturalistic stance, since things may not work out to our liking, and often don't. But equally, it adds the element of perpetual surprise and novelty: we don't ever know quite what's next. Both the possibility of tragedy and the probability of surprise add their distinctive flavor to a naturalist's spiritual experience. There is darkness as well as light, the unknown as well as the known, and the pull between them.

Consciousness and feelings as strictly physical states
Another conclusion of naturalism is that the mental and physical are one, that perceptions, feelings, emotions, thoughts and the rest all consist of suitably organized matter, the brain. As much as it may seem to be the case that our mental lives constitute a separate realm, science shows that there is nothing over and above the brain, or any similarly organized system, whatever its physical makeup, that needs to be invoked to explain consciousness.
This non-dual conception of consciousness gives us new respect for the "merely" physical, for our bodies and our fleshly existence. In what we call our mental lives, the material world evokes a representation of itself that takes on a rich set of qualitative characteristics determined by a massively complex functional architecture. From a naturalistic perspective, there is no insubstantial essence behind or inherent in such qualities, instead they arise mutually as a system of relations and differences that the brain uses to track the world. Although it isn’t literally miraculous that the world of experience just is the physical brain, it is indeed a marvel that such is the case; it is quite an astonishing fact. That every nuance of feeling and every twitch of thought is the material world at play can spark a profound experience of wonder, and provides a satisfying, unified conception of oneself: the mental and physical bound together as a natural phenomenon. Philosophy link: Function and Phenomenology.

No self that survives death
Naturalism disallows the existence of the soul. There is nothing about a person that survives death, so we cannot hope for a better world in the hereafter, or for reincarnation in this world. But, there is no nothingness at death, either. One is not plunged into the void, to rest there eternally. Just as we don’t experience any "nothingness" before birth, neither will we experience it after death. Therefore, we need not fear death as an ending that we can experience.
How should we feel about death, then, as naturalists? Although we still have our biologically programmed fear of death to contend with, and we may regret projects unfinished or the loss that our death might inflict on others, our death itself does not concern us directly at all. But if we still dread our ending, we should keep in mind that consciousness overall does not end, since others are still alive and being born. Death and birth actually insure the radical refreshment of consciousness, and that might be construed as a good thing (although some Buddhists, for instance, would just as soon consciousness stopped arising altogether, so this view may not give them comfort).
What we don’t know, at the moment of our deaths, is what will be next (although it won’t be nothingness, we know that). As naturalists, death confronts us with a total cognitive impasse, an ultimate limit on what we as individuals can predict or control. We may at first reflexively recoil at this prospect, but maybe we can jump in, and give ourselves up to this ending of knowledge and control with an enthusiastic curiosity. Not that we ourselves, as this particular person about to end, can ever know what’s next, but that there will be a next moment for someone, at least, we can be assured. Our last moments, then, can be ones of profound anticipation and surrender, not to the void, but to the inevitable change in which we participate that sweeps all before it. Philosophy link: Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity.

No perfect or final knowledge
A corollary of being a fully integrated part of a naturalistic whole is that we cannot step outside the system to observe it. We look at the universe from a particular perspective, and even science inevitably reflects our particularly human constitution: we see what we are "designed" by evolution to see, even in our mathematics, perhaps. This means that our world views and philosophies, including naturalism itself, do not occupy a finally privileged position; they are subject to pragmatic change and improvement, and do not represent what the world might be "in itself".
The naturalist, then, may not be as dead serious or dogmatic in how she espouses naturalism compared to how others espouse their philosophies or religions. This is another aspect, driven by naturalism, of not knowing what is ultimately the case, of being forced not to cling to any certainty. Part of the spiritual experience is to leave the realm of thought for a non-discriminative state (or at least a state in which cognitive distinctions play a lesser role). Being less attached to a particular conception of how the world necessarily is, or must be, may leave the naturalist more receptive to entering such a state. (Not that the naturalist abandons her cognitive style or preferences; such a feat is nearly impossible, short of brainwashing or drug overdose.) Fewer preconceptions about what a spiritual experience must be like, or involve in the way of dogma, make it possible for the naturalist to find wonder and enchantment in many ordinary aspects of life. The distinction between the sacred and the profane gives way to the possibility that a simple, unheralded moment might be the gateway to an immediate apprehension of connection. The here and now become primary, since there are no guarantees of a perfect truth to be attained or a salvation to come later. As much as we strive to achieve understanding, there is no final understanding to achieve (except perhaps this very insight), which means there is no point in putting off the celebration of the present, if we find we are so moved. Philosophy link: Anti-foundationalism page.

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