Understanding the soul – introduction
Certainly everyone has heard of the soul. If you were brought up with a traditional religious upbringing then you know of it as something that must be saved. The soul however is something that you are. During physical life we don’t put much thought into understanding the soul but on the deepest level of our consciousness we can sense our soul. We even use terms like “soul searching” which in a very real sense is an accurate description of looking deep within ourselves. We talk of soul mates or knowing someone on a soul level. We use the term “old soul” to describe someone who is loving, compassionate and wise. Sometimes the love we have for someone comes from deep within our soul.
Knowing the soul allows you to think about continuous growth, not just the growth that occurs in one lifetime but of many lifetimes. It also allows you to start viewing your life in a far different context. In other words you can start to think of this life as one of many, many lives you have experienced. You can start to ask yourself what this life is teaching you or more specifically what you are here to learn. You can start to view life from a higher perspective or higher consciousness and start asking yourself what you are learning from the many situations in your life.
Everyone has experienced the feeling of having done something before, right? These are called moments of Deja Vu. Or how about recurring dreams of the same landscape, scene or situation? I myself have had dreams of places that seem so familiar. They are not places of this lifetime, but in the dream I am intimately familiar with the landscape. These dreams have occurred throughout my life, but always have the same familiarity as if I have been there thousands of times.
Understanding the soul – Past relationships
How about people we know in our life, doesn’t it seem we have a natural tendency to feel so comfortable with some people and yet have bad feelings about others? Don’t we all feel we know certain people on a level much deeper than others? For instance you may feel a certain connection with one parent over another, or one sibling over another. The closeness we feel with some friends seems as if it goes deeper than one lifetime and yet some relationships seem adversarial throughout life. How about marriages and those relationships? Why do some couples go through their entire life as best friends and others go through two or more marriages? In those failed relationships there seems to be something else at play. It seems there is a certain karma at play or a certain lesson to be learned.
The soul is the collection of all life experiences. It would be pretty shallow and empty if it was a collection of experiences from just one lifetime. The fact is we have many lifetimes and have had many experiences. The soul is the sort of unique personality that develops with all of our experiences. As a being with a free will consciousness, the soul is everything we have ever done with that free will consciousness. The law of cause and effect, along with karma, demands we must experience the effects of what we do with our free will.
It is critical to know all the love we give ultimately benefits our self and all the hatred and anger we give out only serves to hurt ourselves into the future. Forget about any notion of a creator judging you. Your soul will judge itself against the ultimate reality of love and will seek to rectify its actions in order to balance the unloving acts against others. This is why on a subconscious level we seem to be attracted to certain people and have a negative reaction to others. We are trying to learn how to love everyone all the time. This is ultimate truth, the only thing that keeps us from loving all the time is our ignorance and the domination of our ego.
Perhaps you have heard the phrase, “We are spiritual beings having a human experience,” well, it is the precept of this series. Sometimes I forget how much of a stretch it may be for people to believe in this idea. For myself, my years of searching along with my awakening experience have led me to conclude the truth of the soul. It has become truth for me or more precisely, “I know.” The quote at the beginning of this post sums up the importance of “knowing.” To “know” of your soul or more appropriately to know of yourself is a life changing revelation. Once you are fully aware of your soul, you will have a completely different view of life and “yourself.” Once this occurs you may understand my quote on the impact of an idea.
It is natural to start out as a skeptic when we don’t have physical measurable facts. If one has faith even the size of a mustard seed, they can make the jump to searching for more information to make them a believer. A believer is one who then relies on the faith of believing, whether it is believing others, believing the teachings of the great enlightened avatars or the teachings of a religious group. The final stage of learning however is knowing. Once a person truly knows it becomes truth and this truth is life changing because it changes the reality of life. If you have not read the information on consciousness, I strongly encourage you to do so at this time. These two subjects of soul and consciousness are strongly interrelated. A person is going to have a very hard time believing in the concept of the soul if they are unwilling to raise their level of consciousness. There is no judgment here, only a caveat if one wishes to reap the benefit of understanding their soul.
As I came near the end of writing my series on “Understanding the soul,” it occurred to me how much a life can be affected by this knowledge. I understand many people may not be drawn to such information or even believe in such a concept. There may also be those who inherently believe in a soul but that’s about the extent of their knowledge or interest. I want to emphasize in this introduction why it is so important to fully understand the concept of the soul and the benefit you as the reader/believer/knower may get out of it. I have put together an outline summary of just some of the benefits to fully understanding, absorbing and accepting the truth of your soul. If you become fully cognizant of the soul and know this part of yourself, it will forever change your life for the better. Understanding the soul is a critical step in one’s spiritual progression.
Here are the specific reasons and rationale for understanding your soul:
- A sense of peace knowing there is no such thing as death, life is continuous.
- Knowing that nothing can ever hurt you, you can dispel the fear emotion. If we are eternal then what can possibly happen to us other than having to experience our own karma due to our ignorance.
- If we lose someone we love, we have only lost their physical presence, we will see them again, we will reunite with their soul. They are forever with us and will sometimes make their presence known to us.
- Our family is much larger than we can imagine.
- During this lifetime we may have the notion of husband, wife, mother, father, sister, brother, best friend, etc.. The fact is souls only play these parts in this particular lifetime. In other lifetimes they have played many other roles.
- We have many soul mates that show up in our life. Surely everyone can sense their relationship with certain people goes much deeper than one lifetime. Some of these relationships may be adversarial as we work out our karma with them while some are loving and nurturing.
- On the deepest level we are one with all other souls.
- The ability to “lighten up.”
- Life is just an experience in learning and every situation we struggle with is meant to be an experience to learn. Knowing we come into physical life over and over again for the opportunity to learn allows us to not take any particular situation so seriously. It also allows us not to take a physical life so seriously.
- We are all in a state of becoming. The ultimate state is a universal perfection enabling us to be companions and co-creators to the creator. Everyone will ultimately reach this perfection and we are given eternity to do so.
- A better sense of accountability to ourselves.
- It is one thing to be threatened into behaving a certain way, it is quite another to desire a loving and compassionate state of being for ourselves. This desire to extend love and compassion to everyone around us will ultimately raise our spiritual level and will allow us to ascend beyond the continuous cycle of birth and death in the physical realm.
- There is a very simple law of karma which implies as you use your free will you will experience the effects of the same in the future. Acts of love, compassion, gratitude and peace will be experienced bringing us closer to unity and oneness. Acts of hatred, selfishness, anger, judgment and cruelty must also be experienced in like manner and sends us further into separateness and isolation.
- No thought, intention or deed goes unrecorded. Edgar Cayce (a noted amazing psychic) would often state while accessing the Akashic records he could not tell if someone actually did something or just thought it. Thoughts are very real and they are each recorded in our soul memory and each will be balanced.
- You are free to live your life as you see fit and utilize your free will to direct your life in any way you choose. In doing so if you force your will on another thereby altering someone else’s free will then you must experience the effect of the same yourself. As you use your thoughts each is recorded in the universal consciousness and therefore has an effect on your own soul and it’s compatibility with the highest universal consciousness. The ultimate aim is 100% compatibility with the highest level of spiritual attainment.
- The wonderful thing about karma is we are each moment working on our future experience. Every thought, action and intention determines our future experience. Every moment we are compassionate, loving, grateful and peaceful we are creating a future experience with more of the same. Every moment we are out of alignment with those feelings and emotions we set the conditions for the same in our future. This seems like such a simple thing to understand and yet so many go through life not considering this basic fact. By having a firm understanding of the soul we can keep it front and center to our daily lives and at the forefront of our present moments. “Only through spiritual awareness can we be the steward of our soul.”
- A release of most judgment. (This judgment incidentally is what creates all the pain, torment and suffering in our life.)
- First and foremost we can stop being so hard on ourselves, we must stop judging within ourselves before we can learn to stop judging outside ourselves. We can learn to be compassionate towards ourselves realizing we have been created perfect. It is only our ignorance that clouds the purity of what we are.
- As we witness one person hurting another, judgment may bring our emotions to a point of rage, sadness, anger, or contempt. These are not pleasant emotions meant to make us feel happy. By understanding the soul we can be at peace knowing karma is either being balanced or karma will ultimately be balanced in the future.
- Secondarily if we understand karma to be the ultimate learning tool, we start to realize all of life is meant to move the soul towards higher consciousness. Every conceivable lesson learned along the way is just part of the process. The trick is to recognize the lesson in every situation otherwise the lesson will be repeated over and over until we learn the lesson.
- This does this mean cruel hateful acts of violence should be looked upon as ok. Certainly if given the choice or opportunity to help we should, but we must understand no bad deed will go unbalanced. Furthermore the fact we have condemned something feeling punishment is necessary goes back to judgment, which serves only to hurt ourselves. The creator does not judge our life; instead the creator established the law of cause and effect with karma as a learning tool. It is our own soul that follows the law; we decide how karma will be paid back and at what rate. On the deepest level our own soul is accountable to itself.
- We must also remember as we judge others so too shall we be judged.
- We can look upon our own life and realize we are responsible for every part of it.
- Prior to being born we picked the people meant to be a part of this life experience. We in our spiritual conscious state decided to play our part in repaying karma and having karma repaid to us. While a general outline with possible paths was picked for our life prior to coming here, we can modify it or alter it substantially with our free will. Either way, we have the life we made for ourselves.
- To blame others for our circumstances is a true sign of spiritual ignorance; it indicates a complete lack of understanding the soul.
- It allows us to approach every situation as a potential learning experience instead of a judgment experience.
- We start to think in terms of unity.
- As our soul reaches its highest state, we become more universal in our consciousness. We think in terms of a unified consciousness, there is nothing but harmony and co-creation, there are never any harmful private thoughts. As humans we think in terms of privacy as if no one hears our private thoughts but the reality is every thought is recorded and makes an impression on the universal consciousness.
- By realizing there are no private thoughts, we can start to train ourselves, on how to get back to the formless consciousness that marked our original state.
- By thinking cooperatively and treating others as an extension of self we are building up a karmic pattern of unity. The only way to realize our original spiritual state is by concentrating our thoughts towards this end. The law of cause and effect is forever working in our life giving us what our thoughts send forth. Thoughts are the most powerful thing in creation; with them we create our reality.
- We are able to view life from a higher perspective and from this complete view we see and observe life differently. It is as if we have peered behind the curtain to reveal the secret of existence.
- We realize everything has a purpose, our goal then is to contemplate that purpose or just to accept the purpose serves everyone’s higher learning.
- We realize everyone is in a state of becoming, we stop judging just as we would not judge a baby that soils its diaper. We cannot expect everyone to be on the same level. This invokes compassion for those who still need to learn certain lessons. It invokes respect, gratitude and a desire to learn from those at higher levels.
- We accept “everything is as it should be.”
- We are no longer afraid to pursue our passions in life.
- We can always find our peace amid the chaos.
- We become a conduit of love rather than seeking love from another person.
- We become a source of encouragement for others, bringing people together in unity.
- We lose our desire for toys and material goods which bring only temporary satisfaction, concentrating instead on that which can only be felt by the heart.
- We realize we are all connected, we are all one. No one is alone.
- We transcend the ego.
There is so much information available to corroborate the truth of the soul. All you need is an open mind and a willingness to seek this information and you will find it. There are many credible sources and examples that exist and I will present these sources as my website evolves. However, no amount of evidence can change a closed mind unwilling to have faith. Whatever we believe with conviction becomes truth for us.
I hope you will enjoy the 6 part series of Understanding The Soul.
In the next post “Understanding The Soul – Part 2 of 6” we will discuss the origins of the soul and the attributes given to it.
Applying the idea:
Very simple…. be willing to keep an open mind…
Please share if you found this post to be meaningful. I would love to hear your comments and thoughts…
Thank you for reading. : )