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

[dpolicar]

Well, I'll try to engage with that thought as a question, and see what happens.

This is perhaps as much a lexical question as an ontological or epistemological one. I mean, when I talk about arriving at a belief through the evaluation of evidence, that evokes a certain set of concepts, images, potentials, and other states of mind... and when I talk about spiritual awareness, that evokes a very different set of mental states... and when I talk about faith, that evokes yet a third set.

And those three mental frames are very different and to a large extent mutually inhibitory. In particular, I have a lot of difficulty with "faith" as distinct from "awareness."

But a division in my mind associated with three sets of words, however sharp, is not the same thing as a division in the world between the things those words refer to... supposing that they refer to anything at all in the first place.

Still, thinking of faith as a result of evidentiary reasoning is not something I can easily do.

I'm also not entirely sure what the difference signifies. That is: what is the significance to you of the difference between a belief arrived at through evaluating evidence understood through personal revelation, and a belief arrived at entirely through revelation, or through accepting the authority of others, without any evidence at all?