What is Soul?

I have had a feed from A Creative Journal on my Reader for months now. I enjoy it. This is the first time I’ve wanted to link to it for something. In this case, the topic of the post is a journal prompt link and in particular the prompt that was chosen to illustrate how inspiring the prompt can be:

Think about what a soul is. Do you believe you have a soul? Do animals? Is it possible to sell your soul? Have you ever met anyone you felt didn’t have a soul? Can a soul be beautiful, ugly? Define soul and then spend time in your journal writing what this means to you.

I have been doing Morning Pages the past few days. This series of questions is a good topic for doing MP’s, so I thought I would do them here today instead of in my private blog as this is a good topic for this blog.

Before I get started on my answers to these questions, I just wanted to share something with you. There’s a WordPress blog on this topic of art and creative process and the work of Julia Cameron called the Artists Way out of which the relatively well known meditation practice amongst artists called Morning Pages springs from. I haven’t explored the blog yet, but it looked damned good at a glance and would tell you a bit more about this meditation practice and give you examples of the kind of inspiring clues to living and creating that can spring from the MP meditations.

In any case, back to my own pages work….I’m just going to give a couple minutes to each question in the form of free association writing and then finish with several more of whatever springs to mind….

Do you believe you have a soul?

I know that I have a soul. I have felt it. My own inner vision shows it to me. It is expressed in a winsome smile that comes over me when I think of those I love. It is there in that overflowing amazing surge of loving passion that I so frequently feel for those I adore. It is there in the way that I go still in response to all sorts of things…just listening and feeling. That might be from a wound caused in the moment that I fear any movement at all will cause to engulf me or it may be the stunning beauty of the landscape that suddenly comes into view. I remember once having this sense of wonder that at this moment in time, I was seeing something that would change the future in ways that I cannot imagine for a very long time…and that they would not be good outcomes…that was when i heard what happened in NY and elsewhere on 9/11. This has come to pass…and it was there in those weeks of panic attacks that I could not explain or attribute to anything and which disappeared as soon as I knew. Only something greater than my intellect could tell me about 9/11 when there were no words for it in the ethers…because the changes are not really about the losses of life, but about the changes in how everyone now views the world as so dangerous that its worth giving up our rights in order to be safe…that safety is worth the price of freedom. Those changes in our perspective will bring about untold impacts on our society and the land. We have only begun to view that. And my soul is in me when I know despite moments of profound loss that I am quite fine and that I will have another chance. My turn will come. There will be another time for this or that.

Do animals?

Yes. Of course I have no proof that even you have one. I only know it is true. I can sense it with all the normal senses and others that we have no real words for. And I sense this in animals also. Not all of them have a strong aware soul. But some do. We recognize them in that they have incredibly special personalities or are especially sharp in some way. I have a cat friend who has lived with me three times now in this life. His names were Sabrina who lived with me from the ages of 4 until I was 19; Tigger who lived with me in my mid 30’s for just a few years and now Kola who has been with me for about 4 years now. An old soul. *smiles* He’s a most interesting little being. As a person with unusually sharp non-ordinary senses, I have seen in each instance he’s lived with me a huge black jaguar over laying his body. The same loving intelligence exists in his yellow green soul eyes. HIs body has had black fur twice in these times I’ve known him, but once it was a black and silver tabby and he still had the jaguar around him. I’ve never seen that with any other cat before. He intimidates huge…and I do mean giant dogs. They back peddle and all he has to do is sit and look at them. *grins* He is gentle in his own way. He will discipline other cats, but only when he perceives them as a threat will he break any skin. He’ll fight without claws otherwise. And he never needs to be shown something more than once or twice. Even complicated things.

Is it possible to sell your soul?

I think it is possible to injure yourself and leave parts of the soul consciousness in time or place or with another person. Most people do it without any knowledge that they’ve done it. Sell it…? I think its only possible to lend it. Your soul is yours. No is always the most powerful word on a spiritual level. It is a law…one which functions no matter what. It is only intellectual belief which changes an outcome to something which looks like its sold and cannot be regained. It is only that we don’t know how to take it back. And it is also that we do not make the rest of ourselves a place that welcomes the part back…so it tromps off again. For some reason this one feels like a power thing…and I don’t blog about those kinds of things…so I will leave this question here.

Have you ever met anyone you felt didn’t have a soul?

I haven’t personally no. I have not seen a soul-less body. I do not think it is possible to live long without a soul. Perhaps if you stick the body on life support you can make it do so, but I don’t think that it will stay alive otherwise. It is the soul that maintains the life of the body. Without it, the body stagnates and stops renewing itself. It stops living in now. Only the soul makes it possible to continually move forward through time…which I feel is the very definition of life. I have heard that there are magics that can create something called a zombie…but I still don’t think its soul-less…I think it just is trapped in the body with almost no way to make it work to own itself….if that makes sense. It is, I suppose, something like sitting in a bus that’s run by a robot which is taking you for a ride. The soul is still in there, so the body is still alive, but its not quite thriving and it will sicken and die in that state eventually. I have never seen such a thing, but I believe it is possible to do this to someone…but only because their will is not strong with its no…compared to another person’s yes, backed by a formidable will.

Can a soul be beautiful, ugly?

I think this is a strange question. A soul is pure energy. Is an atom beautiful or ugly. It is what it is. I cannot think of anything to write about on this topic, but the purpose of this is to write for a moment or two, so that is what I’m doing. I think that soul is mostly beautiful…but it can become ugly in its vibration if it is constantly poisoned with things that sicken it….I think that we are composed of a unique song and that our song is what it is in part because of what we feed it, how we behave, how we think and who we associate with. These are the sources of nourishment or of poison that impact our soul song.

Define soul and then spend time in your journal writing what this means to you.

Soul is happiness, I’ness, joy, bliss, ideas, experiences, wisdom, blessing…it is the All, formulated as something unique and personal. I do not know if it becomes and then becomes formless in terms of its I’ness. Most of us can agree that we let go of We’ness to get a body. But some think we retain our individuation between lives and some think we let it go and rejoin the all. I do not know for sure. I know that I have the sense of power and age in my soul that I do not always sense in others. Some seem incredibly young, unaware and ignorant of their glory to me…painfully so. I have met such once or few-born people who are both very stupid and very smart. Intelligence seems to have nothing to do with it. I have met some people who have incredible magnetism spiritually but are behaving like they’ve no awareness at all, so it doesn’t seem to be about spiritual awareness either. I’ve met either kind of soul who were beautiful and talented or not. It seems to be a soul thing, not a personality or body thing. So I do not know if we let go the I’ness or not. Perhaps it is as simple as some of us choose to let our I’ness go and others hold to it, so that they accumulate wisdom and power and are able to remember again and again. I do not know. Perhaps that’s a question for the Dalai Llama. It is not a thing which may be proved at this point in human history….so there’s no science to satisfy the masses….and really, to me, the most important thing is now and what’s relevant to now. Does it matter a damn that I did or did not let go my I’ness in my last life? Not really no. What’s important to now is whether or not I’m doing what takes me to my soul’s purpose and that’s writing out Morning Pages in this particular moment…and with that, I am sure that I am done with this part of my writing meditation. Blessings.