Igniting the Fire Within

Igniting the Fire Within

The leading effectiveness guru, Stephen Covey, explains that when we achieve wholesome and proper integration among the Four Areas of human nature, we experience something akin to ignition of a fire when all the proper elements in their proper proportions with sufficient heat explode into combustion.

The Four Areas are as follows: physical, mental, social/emotional, and spiritual. All humans to be effective must cultivate each of the Four Areas with sufficient time and energy. What happens when we neglect our Physical Area? We all know: we become lethargic, less energy, less explosive enthusiasm in our work and play, and we deteriorate and do not experience life as forceful as we would like. What happens when we neglect our Mental Area? We become more easily vulnerable to emotional appears of others, we become obsolete on our jobs by not keeping up with the state of the art, we cannot deal with life as effectively because we lack the ability to thinks things through in a rational, straight-forward, and clear sense. What happens when we neglect our Emotional Area? We become cold, we lose the passions that fire our lives with energy for things like career and family, we become jaded, we become less effective in working in teams to accomplish join endeavors. What happens when we neglect the Spiritual Area? We lose meaning in life, we find the classic literature of the ancients “dead, dull and boring,” we find that tradition is uninteresting, we become addicted to the “newest, and latest and greatest” regardless of whether or not it is good, and we cannot connect what we do with the wider contribution to civilization.

As Ex-Pentecostals, which areas have we most lacked in among the Four, or have we lacked in all areas? I think that as Pentecostals we made the serious mistake of thinking that we were doing Spiritual things when, in fact, we were doing purely Emotional things. How is this? Spiritual brings meaning in our lives, and there was not much serious meaning to Pentecostalism since it is an anti-intellectual, hyper-emotion-based nonsensical religion. Thus, I think that we lacked Spirituality, but severely overdosed on Emotionalism. I think that many within Pentecostalism are not encouraged to develop their Mental capacities. Again, an emotional based religion neglects the mind in favor of emotions, just like it seeks emotionalism over serious Spiritual meaning. The overdose of Emotionalism within Pentecostalism may even be injurious to the Physical faculty. To indulge in Emotionalism when things feel good, maybe we were tempted to overeat because it feels good, which would injure our Physical Area.

Anyway, I am not settled yet in my analysis of this particular subject, and I wonder what many of you think about these issues. I think that Covey’s insight is very valuable. Sometimes he uses the symbols for the Four Areas: Body, Mind, Heart, and Spirit. I must clarify that Spiritual does not necessarily mean religion. Spirituality revolves around Meaning and Conscience – what refreshes us and connects us to greater things than the range of the moment on one hand, and things that connect us to the Good things on the other hand; in other words, doing the right thing.

When these Four Areas are proper balanced and integrated, we experience an explosion of energy within our lives that takes us to a higher level. Then, we are truly living life to the fullest and focusing on What Matters Most in our lives. We Ignite the Fire Within and have an explosive amount of energy that increases exponentially above that which we are capable that where we were before – not just by a factor of two times more or ten times more, but ten thousand times more. Then, we are truly free.

Body – Physical

Mind – Mental

Heart – Emotional/Social

Spirit – Spiritual

JP Istre