Tag Archives: soul

Soul question, lengthy out loud thinking

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Crisalonso asks interesting questions in his post “Can you see the future?” I was perusing blogs when I came across his post which I find very thought provoking. What is most interesting in his post is I too have pondered his questions throughout my lifetime. What I find surprising is my answers changed over time, and now have settled on a final answer.

Crisalonso muses, then states:

There has to be a soul, a coded form of energy which preserves identity during and after this life.

Wow, what a position! It is one of those ideas that mankind has struggled with for centuries and I have no doubt better minds than mine have attacked this statement with more determination and a better plan than mine. A few minutes of searching on the internet, for thoughts of the greatest thinkers of our time answers would be laid bare, or not depending on one’s interest in understanding what is really being said.

I find the best explanation is the proverb aphorism from the Gnostic gospels about it being harder for a rich man to get into heaven than a camel to pass through the eye of a needle fitting. How I think this applies to Crisalonso’s thought provoking statement is probably a little different than standard answers we would find.

As children growing into young adults we spend a lot of our time trying to find out who we are, and what we are about. We go through life trying to separate ourselves from everyone else, we want to be unique. I think this is where the eye of the needle comes into play.

If we truly believe we are separate from everyone, and everything else in the universe, then we are. We will never have moments of feeling we are one with the universe. If we happen to feel we are one with the universe, then we have never really been separate from everything, we only pretend we are separate.

If there is a universal something that keeps the universe as we know it, we are a part of it whether we like it or not. As we are a part of it, when we are done with our bodies, our souls must travel back to this all that is. I think the idea of standing in the middle of all that is, trumpet in my hand, proclaiming the glory of all that is while I am not a part of it, a flawed thought. Who would not wish to reclaim their part of all that is, was, and ever will be?

If we visualize a body of water large enough to jump in and imagine that body of water is all that is, what will we do standing next to it? Will we stand next to it, knowing that one step away we are a part of everything, and everything is a part of us, or would we walk away telling ourselves that we have no interest going back to being a part of all that is.

While a very few may decide, ‘I have no interest in rejoining all that is because I will lose myself as the water mixes in me and through me’, most people will be in the water as soon as they understand they can.

They will mix in with all the souls that are a part of all that is, sharing their lifetime experience, celebrating the feeling of completeness, mingling and rejoining all that is. All will truly be one with the universe as we know it, and we will know we have returned from our journey and experienced what we set out to experience in the manner we chose as we lived this lifetime.

As for Crisalonso’s question further into his post:

The question is, can we alter our past, present and future or is it all written beforehand?

I am of the belief we arrive with a specific plan, but we have the choice to follow it each step of the way, or not, as we decide. If this were not so, it would be a matter of randomness whether one turns into a saint or sinner to use common words for ideas.

Time has to be a human concept, there is no reason why we can not be born again in the same month of the same year in the same or different place holding the script we want to follow this time. To do any less would be a waste of our concept of time. Why would we want to wait who know how long for an exact set of circumstances to repeat themselves for something we want to experience when it occurred already exactly the way we wish it to?

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Reincarnation filtered through karma or the golden rule

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I have thought we are reincarnated since I was a kid. There is just too much evidence including the Christian bible to think it is not a fact that we lived before, and we will live again. Unless someone is a practicing atheist and not a Christian hater in drag, it is rare to find too many major religions that do not have some kind of after life programming in their faith.

Along with reincarnation comes karma, they kind of slide across the horizon as a matched pair. Some people may reject the idea of reincarnation, but they hold onto karma. I read an interesting thought on karma a few years back, I wish I had the source so I could cite it.

The person who wrote it, was thinking about Christianity, reincarnation, and karma. They arrived at the idea that karma was visited upon us over the next three incarnations where we would reap what we had previously sown. After I thought about this, it was a pretty sobering thought. What if I was reaping in this life those things I sown in a recent past life? Whoa, serious stuff. I had to think about those possibilities for a number of days.

Of course after slicing, dicing, and deciding it may be a possibility Then there was the small matter of where does it fit into my own belief system? I found a place for it, and I thought I was done with it.  In the middle of one night, I woke up and felt like I had enough sleep. The only problem was there were still over three hours until the alarm went off.

I lay there, and my mind starting churning ideas like they tend to do when we can not sleep. What pops up except the recent thinking I did about reincarnation? One of the scariest or most exciting idea that came out of this late night thinking about this line of thinking about reincarnation is the later reaping of what you sow now portion.

I woke up with the alarm that morning thinking, as I did believing we are reincarnated or at the very least never die, I myself am reaping that which I planted was a pretty sobering thought. My mind was churning thinking about all those things which I have done with my life up until this moment, both good and bad. That brought me to an old Omni Magazine story I remembered where a man lived his life so neutrally that it was taking him hundreds of years to balance the good and the bad of his life.

What do I have to look forward to I wondered? Where was the list of the good verses the not so good I have done through out my lifetime? Of course our minds have a pretty skewed version of remembering things that comprise our life, so it really was a futile task to try. How could I wonder how my life would be weighed, when I saw it though colored glasses of my own making?

I started, over the next few days treating people differently than I had done up to that point. I payed attention to the idea that they were people and their life was no better nor worse than mine, but the were entitled to the same respect and care from me, that I give to myself. Once again that may not be saying much, because of the glasses we wear of our own making…

After some amount of time, the idea became second nature, as I had been living it most of my life, in my adaptation of the golden rule.  This was the golden rule with a twist though. A long reaching twist at that. Whether true or not, it has I suppose made me a more aware person, if not a better person. Once something is introduced as an idea, whether we accept it or reject it, it is always there, floating though our mind waiting to be recalled at the most inopportune time, like the middle of the night. I suppose on balance, a thought in the night is a lot better than the thief in the night.

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Dark Night of the Soul

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This happens to people of every culture, religion, and belief system. Some people believe everyone goes through this, others believe only a few go through it. People you know are spending their lives in static misery because they could not complete it, others died along the way. A very few people, come out the other end completely changed – in ways they never imagined possible.

I was told to call this process, the Dark Night Of The Soul. I have read some call this, the Long Night, but I have found this to be a description and not a title. If you have never entered it, you are blessed. If you know your world is very very wrong, and there is no medical reason, you have my heartfelt sympathy. One recent example is contained in the recently released letters of Mother Theresa, of her life long struggle with the Dark Night of the Soul.

I have read Wikipedia’s reference of the Dark Night as a struggle with letting go of egos hold on the psyche. Reality is a lot more personal and painful. Ego is a powerful part of our personality which takes charge of us. Ego is selfish and self centered, and the primary filter of our world view. Ego is responsible for how we act and react. If you are not in the throes of the Dark Night, you may be chuckling right now. I have a sobering thought for you. You are not chuckling, your Ego is telling you to laugh at what you are reading. When you are in the Dark Night, Ego would rather you die than give up its spot of running the person that is you. It will lie to you, deceive you, cut you off from everything that is important to you, and from those you love. If you continue to try to displace your ego, your ego will create a world of misery and despair you never imagined could exist on earth.

When you think everyone around you cannot become more detached and distant, ego will suggest you end your life to end the misery. At this point some going through the Dark Night of the Soul may turn to Alcohol, drugs, or other methods of trying to make their pain go away. Ego would rather be in charge of a suicidal addict than give up its position of authority within you.

The battle is almost over at this point. There are only a few choices available. Give in to ego and spend your life feeling trampled, defeated, and worthless. Turn to drugs, alcohol, or self abuse trying to deal with the emotional baggage of your life. The third choice is the correct choice to make. This third choice defeats ego by simply not fighting. You reach a point, where no matter what happens without ego being in charge, it can not be any worse than the private hell of the present. Getting to this point and letting ego go opens a bright new world no one would have guess exists.

It is a love based world of contentment, and everything is exactly as it should be. It is a world of gratitude, where an individual is aware that everything operates from a starting point of love. It is a world of unity, where nothing is separate or isolated from anything else. A world where you are everything and everything is you.

This change does not happen over night. It is not a process of being in a struggle for your very life, and the next moment is all warm and fuzzy. It takes time because it takes time to go through the cycle. At this point you will not care, but slowly your world will become perfect. Surviving your Dark Night of the Soul may sound like fluff, or fantasy, but it is true and it is waiting for you. If you see yourself in these words, know it is worth the battle! Don’t quit and don’t accept good enough – no matter how bad things appear to become. I promise you, it is worth every moment of feeling lost and alone once you get through your Dark Night of the Soul.

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