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.

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

What associations does it bring up?

Unfortunately, when I read this, I immediately thought of word associations and came up with "sister" from that "Moulin Rouge" song. ;-)

Since I was eight or so I have been strongly agnostic or atheistic, so have no particular belief in an immortal soul. That said, I have no explanation for consciousness or for why I feel like a sentient being with choice. So my initial lame answer is that I have no idea.

I have problems with the idea that you are alive for a finite amount of time and then (depending on what you did) you spend an infinite amount of time revelling or doing penance or suffering. That's a dumb reward system. Reincarnation or going around the wheel of life works a bit better for me, except for the obvious population growth -- one would assume a soul could not be split.

And I disagree that one cannot have meaningful conversations within online journals. Heathen! Your soul shall.. erm, something. ;-)

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Mostly I have it tagged as that-word-that-means-something(s)-to-other-people. I think if I used it, it would be a synonym for "self," by which I mean the illusionary impression that I am a single person in a single body, despite all the changes over moments and years to both.

In The Margaret Ghost, Horace Greeley, attempting to lure Margaret Fuller to write for his paper says: "Five columns a week and you're never to use the word soul. Except in case of accident, as in "sole survivor".

[dpolicar]

For me, the primary associations are as per "soulful" -- that is, associated with deeply felt and ineffable sensations. To say that someone has no soul is not to accuse them of being undead or anything like that, merely to assert that they lack depth, lack empathy, that sort of thing.

That said, while it's not quite correct to say that I believe in the existence of souls in the metaphysical sense you're invoking here -- if I get into a headspace where what I'm doing is primarily believing in some propositions and being skeptical of others, evaluating them on the basis of evidence, then I lose all grounds for believing in the existence of souls -- it is true that I resonate with the idea of an aspect of my identity that exists independent of my corporeal self.

Primarily, what that means to me is connection to things whose connection to me is not readily apparent.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

If I think of "the soul" at all it is as that part of us that makes us more than machines; the thing that gives us the ability to go beyond reason and linearity. And yes, reading Plato did much to help me conceptualise "soul" in that way.

[sqrt-joy.livejournal.com]

Even as some one who does not subscribe to a faith, I think the soul exists. The soul is that part of a person, of a project, that exists outside of the physicality of the world. It is what is greater than the sum of our parts. To me, the soul is innately good, innately loving, innately integrous. This means that the soul isn't what would be considered thoughts and desires, because people do innately bad, uncaring, and unprincipled acts. To me, the soul is quiet and peaceful. The lyrics : "inside ourselves / A hidden sun that burns and burns But never does any harm to anyone" is close to what I'm trying to get at.

That was very hand-wavy, sorry.

[dawn-guy.livejournal.com]

"Soul" brings to mind a style of music related to R&B and funk, with some jazz and disco influences. There are those who hold James Brown and Aretha Franklin as the male and female embodiment of soul, and there is merit in their belief.

In the sense I think you mean it, in my view of existence, the soul is the part of a being that may survive the death of its physical form, the only thing that is carried from one life to another (whether that life is on the same or a different plane, even if it is unrecognizable as life to us). It is the soul which is nurtured by conscientious seeking of deep truths and the development of compassion, so it is difficult for a soul to grow and improve without a human being to contain it. But it is also humanity which is the greatest danger to a soul, since harmful and self-seeking choices and actions can diminish it to the point where it is destroyed along with the body.

Some people say that everything that exists has a soul. Some claim that all living things have souls. Some believe animals have souls. Some are convinced only humans -- and possibly only some types of humans as designated by physical or spiritual characteristics -- have a soul. I don't know the truth of that any more than I know the relationship of a soul to gender, so I try to see everything as precious and worthy of respectful compassion. I do better in some circumstances than others and I keep working on improving.

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

Soul, as a noun, is the core of being of a living thing, and in my belief system is transcendent of the physical being, though bound with it for a time on this plane. Had the Xian indoctrination grew up around taken, the word would be fraught with baggage -- happily, i escaped that.

As an adjective, it means heart-felt, fulfilling, satisfying, and comforting. I also have it associated with a style of Appalachian/Southern cooking, and a Appalachian/Southern/Urban style of music.

Unsurprisingly technical and lengthy

[ng-nighthawk.livejournal.com]

The soul is the spiritual part of a person. It allows people to interact with the spiritual part of the world just as the body allows people to interact with the physical part of the world and the mind allows people to interact with the world of ideas.

The soul is immortal, unlike the body, but it is not a complete person in itself. Although angels are by nature beings of pure spirit, humans are by nature both physical and spiritual. During the time between physical death and final, general resurrection people are in an odd state of existence--they are not perfected by the absence of a body, but rather crippled. Angels are beings of pure spirit, and calling a human soul without a body an "angel" is a reasonable analogy but technically incorrect.

It would probably be incorrect to say that anything but a human has a soul. To say something has a soul means it is capable of conscious interaction with other spiritual things. It's possible that other things besides humans have a soul, but that their intentional use of it is limited. However, likely the spiritual aspects of non-human physical objects and animals are dim and unorganized enough that we would not call them souls, but something else.

Spiritual interaction is the perception of and communication with other spiritual objects. This kind of communication is very different than that done through the body, and because of this spiritual experiences are often discounted as imaginary. It is true that spiritual interactions are very difficult to reproduce precisely, which means that coming to a collective, objective agreement on them often requires a large sample size, a common frame through which to view them, and generations of discussion. Imagine how much easier it would be to understand the soul if you had the same response to prayer or meditation every time, or could call up a vision or transcendental experience on demand. Instead the experience changes from day to day or even moment to moment with no obvious context for those changes.

This makes it easy for a charismatic individual or a group in authority to subvert the process to their own ends by claiming to give people an easier or quicker path to a collective understanding of their soul and its operation. But that doesn't mean these interactions are imaginary, nor does it mean that all bodies dedicated to the study of this question intend to manipulate people for their own agenda. Self-reflection, reading, and participation in communities dedicated to the honest investigation of this subject are imperative to avoid fooling yourself or being fooled by others.

[tocityguy.livejournal.com]

The soul means to me the inner most part of my being, that which is transferred from this lifetime to the next.

I tend to believe in reincarnation and that the ultimate goal is perfection of the self and thus reunification with the universe as a whole. (Hardly original but still quite cool)

It is often minimized, marginalized, or plain ignored by most and those that do consider it rarely seem to do so outside of a Christian perspective.

I think a soul exists outside of considerations like gender, a class, a nationality, a language, culture, or people, sexuality, and the like.

Hopefully that answers more questions than it raises.

[peaceofpie.livejournal.com]

When I was a little kid, probably about 7, I had a really powerful image come to me which I've always associated with "soul". The image was of a cave in a volcanic rock, everything around it burnt to a crisp, except one tiny little stream of flaming lava dripping down into the cave. That tiny little stream of flaming lava -- still active, still burning -- amidst all the deadness and ruin around it, is the image that goes with "soul" for me. It's the part of anything that would still exist if all the other parts got destroyed.

[songquake.livejournal.com]

Here from peaceofpie's LJ.

I'd say that when I'm speaking of "soul," it starts with the idea of "breath" -- which connects it to "spiritus" (breath) in Latin, and "atman" (breath or soul, or the universal spirit) in Hindi. (I'd also note how cool it was for me when I was learning to speak German to see that the word for breath there is "atmen"; very nifty to see how directly it's derived from earlier Indo-European stuff!)

The soul comes alive when one breathes, during meditative concentration on breath, during song or exercise, speech or laughter or sobs. I feel my own soul most alive when I'm singing. Or dancing. Or painting. Or throwing mud.

That the soul lives through breath means that we can use it to reach out to the Divine Mystery, as well as to other creatures. It's pretty damn cool. When I am good at doing that, I feel a certain unity of spirit with the divine and with those around me.

Unlike many who believe in souls, though, I don't think they are immortal. I think that when we die, we're dead. We're no longer pushing the breath in and out, although that explanation came after the thought that the soul dies when its host does. I just can't find it plausible that the "energy"/"activity" can exist without the biology sustaining it.

[derbiser.livejournal.com]

I would say that "soul" is the essence of a person. It is more than personality and intellect. It is that which cannot be reduced to constituent atoms. It is the eternal: that what remains after my physical self is reduced to dust. It is God within me and me within God.

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

I have begun to think that a soul is something we make. This is a not-completely-formed idea, but it has a lot of resonance for me. It goes something like this: we have sense experiences, which we organize into an understanding of the world. Part of that understanding is a set of models of other people's behaviour, and of our own behaviour; we call these models personalities, and pretty much everyone has one. Several, in fact, because each person who knows me will come up with a slightly different model. Some of us (most of us? all of us? I don't know), as we learn about our own personalities, yearn for something more or something different: we wish to be more compassionate, more aware of others, more connected to the world,… And since I believe that I am a set of beliefs about myself, it's kind of scary to cut away at those beliefs, to wish to make them different. Who am I, to make myself different? Could I make myself not want to be different? Etc. So we invent a thing that is deeper than the personality, an essence that is unchanging as we transform ourselves. Perhaps that unchanging thing is really a stable set of beliefs and behaviours; or perhaps that unchanging thing is an illusion we create for ourselves. But that's what I think the soul is: my soul is the unchanging part of myself from which I can reason about how i would like to change.

In this conception, a soul is strictly optional. You don't have to have one. And I don't suppose you have to want to change in order to build a soul, that's just a way I went about introducing the idea. I think just about everyone would like to have a soul, though, and I think most of us construct one.

Note that I'm not saying that souls aren't real. Far from it! Lots of things we construct out of ideas are vividly real. Personalities, for instance. Money is another: it's entirely make-believe, a mass hallucination, but you'd be a fool to pretend it wasn't real. It's hard to imagine that my soul, as a construction of my brain, could be eternal; I think that may be an illusion or a fond hope. But I'm willing to be surprised.