Soul

[da]

What's the word "soul" mean to you? What associations does it bring up? Is the word fraught with baggage... smelling partly of brimstone? Does it have deep connection for you? Is it ineffable and abstract? Is it like a Platonic ideal of a thing, not to be pinned down? Is it boring? Is it a handy fiction?

I'd love to have a conversation about that, to the extent we can in an online journal. Anonymous comments are fine. My hope is to have common referents to continue in another post.

I invite you to make your first comment here, that is to say without reading the previous comments before-hand. Of course feel free to read other comments too, and discuss with others, but after your first comment. :) Thanks!

[Edit to add:

I can say: the breadth of peoples' responses is pretty darn cool.

So, I suggested a dialogue. What now?

It would be one thing if we were in the same room, and could look at each other and be clear that we're going to treat this with the respect it deserved. In that situation, I would say we could just ask each other open, honest questions; questions that don't try to convince the other of our own understanding; but help the other person to articulate their truth for us. And take it from there.

We could try something like that. I'd participate. Why don't we try that?

It might go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: you're welcome to not reply to someone's question, or to reply telling them you won't reply (and that's final; challenges are not OK).

]

Comments

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

To me, "soul" is the divine spark we all share; each human alive has "that of God" within, which might as well be called the soul. Those who teach that the soul is innately sinful have it prefectly backwards, I think- the divine spark is our living connection to the divine, and the only sin is whatever pushes us away from that connection. And we all have immense capacity to strengthen that connection, through deliberate seeking for it.

I am agnostic about what happens to the soul after death, except I'm quite certain it doesn't involve condemning anyone to hell.

The word "soul" has about as many fraught associations as the word "gay" does- and similarly, it has been a project of maybe half my life to claim the positive ones. "Saving souls" makes me wince. It's not like an all-powerful Creator misplaces anyone.

My favourite association for the word "soul" is an image: a tuning fork. (Which does go along with soul music, but that's not where I'm taking this right now.) Tuning forks have one job: to resonate at a particular frequency. My soul has one job, to resonate at the frequency of its Creator. You can take a pair of tuning forks, strike one and the other will resonate. If I am connected with my innermost soul, my interactions with the world are just as resonant. And that's a big "if."

I've been asked, what is my experience of Quaker Meeting at its best? Well, in some ways, it feels like a room of tuning forks, in silent resonance.

[dpolicar]

So, what are other positive associations to the word "soul" you've been claiming?

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

A few that come to mind are...

* gradually claiming the worth of my own soul; observing that some of my behaviour was based around denying my own inherent worth, in contrast with the (more obvious) worth of those around me. This denial might make sense if I believed I was inherently sinful, which I didn't, but somehow that value-judgement stuck. (One could articulate this in ways that are purely about innate self-worth, but for me, the most compelling counter to the "innate sinfulness" argument seems to involve innate connection to a Creator.)

* my soul singing. There is something in me that does sing, which I've felt since I was a kid (I particularly remember watching the stars on my parents' farm), and along with feeling in unity with creation, it feels compelled to sing as well.

* a really scary invitation for an introvert: to connect with any other person soul-to-soul. Acknowledging our common humanity and treating them decently is usually as close as I get. But there's the potential, which I have occasionally experienced, for one-on-one or one-to-many connection with people I don't already know, that feels like the "resonance" I talked about; and it has both felt scary and very appropriate.

* a challenge: against taking the easy way out and objectifying someone in order to justify my frustration with them. Denying their innate worth is ever the more difficult if I believe in a bit of Creator within them... no matter who they are.

Thanks for that delightful, wonderful question.

[dpolicar]

You're welcome. Thanks for the answer.

[ng-nighthawk.livejournal.com]

I think the main difference between your idea and mine is the moon vs. the finger that points to the moon. In other words, I'd say that our souls are the way we connect to divinity but not divinity itself, but in the end that's a technical distinction that really doesn't matter much except in discussions like these. :)

Have you read Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle? It describes the soul as a castle, at whose center lies God. She explains our spiritual task as that of moving toward the center of the castle, which is the center of ourselves, at which point we will find the entire universe inside ourselves. If you haven't read it, you might find it related to this stuff.

But for a question: I like your tuning fork analogy very much. But how does one cultivate resonance? Or are we always resonating, we just sometimes forget to pay attention?

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

A followup question: in your belief, does soul-as-conduit suggest that the soul is human and thus fallible?

I like the Interior Castle, and haven't heard of Theresa of Avila. She's now on my reading list!

I believe we cultivate resonance by doing what sqrt_joy suggests: quieting oneself and listening. In my case, I listen for the still, small voice of God, in a body of people who are also working on their own resonance; which has the effect of amplifying what resonances we pick up.

My practice also involves the necessity of following listening with doing. In Quaker Meeting, that action sometimes takes the form of standing and speaking what I've heard. Or it might be a message just for me, which might affect what I do outside of Meeting. (Or messages in meeting might have nothing to do with actions; I'm just saying that listening doesn't stand alone).

For me this becomes a non-abstract meaning of "faith:" stepping out and doing, not based on knowing the outcome, but knowing that I'm led to do just this part.

Doing, without listening, is based on my own ego, and leads to burnout.

Listening, without engagement/doing, is keeping oneself elevated from reality, disengaged and ungrounded.

... both are definitely not conducive to cultivating resonance.

And a final part is that even both listening and doing, without a faith community to hold me accountable, is likely problematic. Because we need the grounding of others, who have their own clarity and understanding with their own perspectives. (And actually I think this last paragraph was a message for me; something that I don't really have right now is an accountable Meeting). So I will leave this here, and think about it some more.

[ng-nighthawk.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I asked. I like what you had to say a great deal. It's one of those things I know but need to keep hearing.

To answer your question, for me yes the soul is fallible because it is part of me and I am fallible. I tackle below a bit the idea of spiritual evil, and I think my soul is capable of spiritual evil, and it is only through allow grace to bring me closer to the Divine that I avoid such things, to the extent I do.

Hmmm... this kind of becomes a response to your thoughts, actually, so let me spell that out: I would say that we can only imperfectly accomplish good in any facet of our lives: spiritually, emotionally, physically, intellectually, etc. It is the love of God which reaches out to us and draws us closer to perfection, and the name for that attractive force is Grace. Grace is acting on anything with a soul (see also questions below on animal or non-living objects having souls, which if forced I'll admit I just don't know for sure, but if they have souls then grace acts on those souls).

However, grace is not a compulsion. We can choose whether to allow ourselves to be drawn closer to what is good, or we can swim upstream from it. We couldn't really come that close to goodness without grace, but we also can completely ignore it. And the presence of the idea that we might fight against the current of grace is what I understand to be original sin, which I know many folks on this thread don't agree with. But I thought explaining that might be informative. The central concept is that God allows us to resist the force of grace, but never told us to do so. Somewhere along the line people figured out that it might be a thing to do, and now we can't stuff that idea back into Pandora's box.

Anyway, grace and original sin are not central to the idea of souls but they are central to my understanding of the work our souls must do, hence my sharing here.