# Thoughts on being an SP



## giraffegator (Dec 28, 2014)

Maybe this should have gone in the cognitive functions area, apologies if so - it is essentially a couple of reflections I have on extraverted sensing that I wonder if you all agree with.

First is learning process. I do squash with my husband and I also do improvisation sometimes. I've realised that having something explained to me first doesn't help and merely makes me impatient. I can't learn how to do something and then do it - I have to do it until I get it right, then I am quite able to analyse it to pieces. I just have to have physically experienced it first.

Second is spirituality. I don't mean any particular religion, just in general. A lot of the idea in western culture about spirituality is very intuitive-focussed, and there's this idea that sensors can't really be spiritual because the world is not spiritual, or that because sensors enjoy physical experiences, they must be completely devoid of depth and just party all the time with no thought involved.
Well I am a very spiritual person, and I find my spirituality in physical objects most of the time - the ideas they represent are cool too, but the way I experience it and "get to" it is by the experience. For example, Easter is my favourite holiday because you have the feast of lamb and bread and wine, and we might do a passover with the salt and the bitter herbs and eggs and all that. For me, sharing those meals and drinking the wine, experiencing the flavours and the textures, is very spiritual. I imagine an N might focus directly on the ideas, and I like the symbolism of it as well, but the symbolic thing behind wouldn't mean anything without the direct object. Or another example is swimming. While swimming I feel very spiritually connected to nature and to God because I'm immersed in this amazing substance that feels so good and looks so beautiful (I'm obsessed with how light and water interact, it's so beautiful). Also the feeling of my body doing something in a good, strong, right way feels spiritual to me... like when I get a physical action just right.

I don't know if that made sense! I'm trying to put something very wordless into words. Does anyone relate to any of the above?


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## Catallena (Oct 19, 2014)

Have you considered SFJ? 

The finding spirituality in things and talking about sharing these traditional meals with others seems very Si-Fe. 

I can't really relate.


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## giraffegator (Dec 28, 2014)

Yes people have suggested ISFJ for me before. It's possible. I'm not sure it's the tradition of it necessarily that I find spiritual though. It's more like the symbolism of it, but it's a very physical kind of symbolism. I kind of think of it as Se-Ni related but I could be completely wrong about what I think the functions are.

Also I wonder if you relate to the first thing? @Catallena


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## Fire Away (Nov 29, 2013)

^I really get what you mean about being a believer and a sensor. 

I'm fairly new to Christianity, and by new, I mean like a year or so. I'm so connected to the world around me and focusing on sights, smells, and tastes, that spiritual things have almost never fazed me.

When other Christians talk about 'the spirit', I just don't feel it. I see happy people with ambition and confidence, but I don't "feel" it like them. My daily life is so separated from spiritual/intuitive feelings that It's easier for me to be an atheist, and I was an atheist for my whole life almost, but I asked and my prayers where answered.

To me, there's the tangible world around me, and than there's the world that I can't see. A world that I can change by my own initiative and a world that I can't.

I hope the more I read and study I can really get in touch with this stuff, but for now it feels so out of reach that it makes no sense. But the fact that I'm so in tuned with the physical world, might give me more of an edge in whatever God wants me to do, than the average spiritual joe who never leaves his cave. 

^Who knows? I'm optimistic about what my future holds, and I know I'm going to have a good life.


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## giraffegator (Dec 28, 2014)

@TopCatLSD Hey awesome to see a fellow Christian SP around  To be honest when people who have grown up in the church talk about "the Spirit" half the time we're talking about a strong feeling we have. I would take it with a pinch of salt. It took me a while and a real shake up to find an authentic faith of my own and to realise how much I just fell in with the common jargon and ways of thinking in my church.

Not that people don't have experiences of the Spirit, but I think everyone is different. For me, all my experiences are pretty much as I described, embedded in my experience of the real world, and I think there's a great precedent for that. Jesus' parables were almost always like that - he talks about the richness of the earth, the chaff and the grain, the colour of the grape, the dust of the road, the beautiful feeling of water in a dry mouth, and the plumage of the birds when he's describing spirituality. I love that. It's like, the ultimate appreciation and love of life.

Especially at Christmas we can remember that actually the spiritual and physical worlds are not that separate, and that God endorsed the physical world and all we do here by coming and being part of it himself. So, yeah, don't feel that just because you experience the world a bit differently and are more in tune with the physical than your N friends, that you can't be spiritual. It's all one, and you have a different way of experiencing. The N people need us to remind them that physical doesn't equal evil!

I've found a helpful prayer technique to help me experience God is imaginative or contemplative prayer, where you imagine yourself in a scene, all the smells and colours and sounds. That's the other times I've experienced God most powerfully is when I was doing that.


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## QueenofEagles (Sep 19, 2011)

You are definitely sp in my book. Wow, I cant believe you were able to put that into words. But, I agree very much with most of what you're saying. Wow.

Swimming, yes, I feel the same way. 
Feeling the spiritual literally. It says Yahweh makes the liturgy flames of fire (heb.1:7). Fire is something you can physically feel. You have to read Psalm 104. It's full of amazing imagery. They're all examples of spiritual reality. http://biblehub.com/web/psalms/104.htm


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## giraffegator (Dec 28, 2014)

Wow I love that Psalm. I love this: 

"4Yahweh, how many are your works! In wisdom have you made them all. The earth is full of your riches.

25There is the sea, great and wide, in which are innumerable living things, both small and large animals.

26There the ships go, and leviathan, whom you formed to play there.

27These all wait for you, that you may give them their food in due season.

28You give to them; they gather. You open your hand; they are satisfied with good."

I really like the word "riches".. don't know why... just, that idea of how rich and good and bountiful the world is. And I love the idea of God like watching over the animals and taking care of them. I think there's a bit like that in Job as well that I really like... it's here

especially 38:39 - 39:30 ... it's just basically God waxing eloquent on how great all the animals are.

From that Psalm 104 I also like the line "wine that makes glad the heart of man, oil to make his face to shine, and bread that strengthens man's heart." ... it's those kind of experiences that are so deep to me.

And it's so awesome that you understood what I was saying and have the same experience! I've been feeling it for years... well I guess probably my whole life, and I'm only just now able to start articulating it. And it is so exciting to have somebody understand.
Once when I was about 20 I made a roast lamb for everyone in my church service at Easter, and brought wine (drinking age lower here!) and fresh bread. No one seemed to comprehend what it was about for me, so even though I enjoyed sharing the meal I was a bit disappointed that people weren't getting the spiritual significance of it. Or something. I don't even know, it's so hard to express. Anyway, @SeedofDavid, it's so supercool getting your comment! Sometimes being an S can be lonely too I guess, it's nice to realise I'm not alone in the way I view my faith.


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## QueenofEagles (Sep 19, 2011)

Yeah, I was thinking of how a sensor (Se) even experiences other ppl almost indirectly. It's not really. But, I experience someone very much by watching their movements and interactions with everything around them. The tone of their voice, their eye movements, the way they touch things/ppl. I was thinking that this is, or probably seems, indirect compared to some of the more intuitive styles of experiencing people.


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