This is going to be really esoteric, random, and possibly high falootin'. Not like the restaurant, though. I don't think like the restaurant, anway. Anyway. I was reading this book and it had a little about a God-concept from back in the old Platonic days (I'm resisting making a horrendous ancient-Greece-platonic-men joke), where the god-figure is the prime mover, who sets everything in the universe in motion without being moved itself. And a few different angles on that same thing, but it's late and I'm sticking with that. Then I completely randomly thought of some article I read way back about some people viewing aikido as a spiritual practice. Then I thought of the zen idea of something being still and yet in motion at the same time - ye old moon's reflection on water, etc. Then I wondered whether that zen idea might be applied to the prime mover, which led to me wondering whether the idea of the prime mover might be combined with that zen idea to describe an ideal mental state for an aikido practitioner, based on the principles of the discipline. Then I remembered that some zen practices view attempting to achieve an ideal mental state as a way of getting closer to God/unity/nature/etc. And that's how (I think) I now understand maybe why aikido might be viewed as a spiritual practice.
      That breaks things.