The Soul of the Matter

What is a Soul? The Psyche, Spirit, Awareness, Consciousness? I think all of these are the same, different words for the same experience, with each word having it’s own connotation and context. Soul and Spirit are most at home in the religious and spiritual, while Psyche, Awareness, and Consciousness are mostly used in the secular sciences. Surly it doesn’t surprise you that scientists the deal with the mind would want to have words that have as little religious and metaphysical baggage as possible? And philosophers sit somewhere in the middle, not wanting to be too objectively scientific, nor too dogmatically religious, use words from both sides.

But, what is this thing we are talking about? I was re-reading Carlos Castaneda’s first book, The Teachings of Don Juan, and there was a passage near the end that talked about Diableros who could steal your soul and keep it imprisoned. For some reason, that gave me pause. Not because I hadn’t heard stuff like that before, but because I’ve learned and experienced a lot in the past few years and that whole idea just didn’t seem right to me.

There are a lot of Christian, and Christian-derived, traditions that share the idea that the “soul” is something indefinable that everyone gets, but can be given away, lost, sold or stolen without the person even noticing. How can a soul be so important, if you can’t even tell when you’ve lost it? (Some traditions get around that by saying that when “sell you soul” bill doesn’t come due until you die.) For this, and other reasons, I’m convinced that the soul, spirit, psyche, whatever you call it, is such a fundamental and necessary part of who you are, that it cannot be lost, stolen or given away. And that separation of the soul from the body results in sleep, coma or death, depending on how deep and long the separation is.

The concept that there is something of us that continues after death has been around, probably, as long as there have been humans who could think about it. But what that “something” is have varied a lot throughout history. You can browse through Wikipedia, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and EgyptianMyths.net to see some of these ideas, but the takeaway here is that the Western concept of the soul, the one through which we view all others around the world and throughout history, is a relatively new invention, and it differs so dramatically from what came before that we have no words to understand them. Hence the confusion of words.

Our modern version of the soul, heaven, hell, and the devil, are pretty much an inventions of medieval Christians, and survives today most strongly in Evangelicals: Your soul is the eternal part of you that is subject to eternal torment in Hell, by the Devil and his minions, unless you are 'saved' by by absolute faith in Jesus Christ. If you followed that link, you won't find that wording there, for they tend to downplay obedience/punishment aspects of their faith when dealing with "outsiders." But it's so fundamental to them that the idea of doing away with hell is sparing a religious war.

The reason for this is fairly obvious, without a single, fixed, eternal “soul” that can be “sent to Hell,” there is no need for a “savior,” and Christianity itself serves no purpose. This will probably offend some people, and it’s true that other sects are much less strident about this, but the fact is that judgment and punishment is the underlying message of every Western religion, regardless of whatever other messages are put in top of it. The only way out of this “obedience or punishment” mindset is to drop the very idea of a judgmental god altogether. 

That was a long digression. I put that in to demonstrate how deeply religious and historical contexts shape our ideas, and how often those ideas can be heavily influenced by politics, and cultural, and religious, necessity and biases. Given all that, is it possible to step away from what we’ve always taken for granted and view our inner lives with fresh eyes? I think so.

What is a soul? In terms of experience, the soul is that thing that makes you, you. It’s that fundamental thing that you refer to when you say “I.” The thing that has the personality, the memories, and the feelings that are uniquely yours. It’s that awareness that is aware that it is aware. In terms of structure, the soul part of a multilayered thing that we currently have no name for, but encompasses consciousness and self-awareness, on one end, and our Higher Selves, or our connection to All That Is, on the other.

The soul is not consciousness or personalty, consciousness and personality are a result of the soul interacting with the physical world. Consciousness is like the surf upon a beach, it is the result of Awareness, (the ocean), coming into contact with physical reality, (the shore), creating the personality, (as anything from small ripples to crashing surf). Once created, this personality can exist without a physical body, though it tends to lose a lot of it’s ability to function in this reality, making it difficult to communicate with. Like trying to participate in a video game without having your own character, you can kibitz, whisper in people’s ears, and send messages, but the players will usually be too busy to pay you much mind, if they notice you at all.

Though I’ve just scratched the surface, I think that’s enough for now! These are just my ideas, and, in my mind, ideas are only as good as how useful they are in everyday life. I fully intend to explore these ideas and how they can make your life happier, more peaceful, and productive.

Take care.

Supernatural?

Next in my series of educating myself in my new field, plus other thoughts.

I’m almost finished with “Supernatural, Writings on an Unknown History” by Richard Smoley. No, it’s not what you think, but s series of essays on the history of the paranormal as it impacts our culture. I find the book a little dry, but it has a lot of interesting information about significant, and often little known, historical figures and the origins if things like the New Age movement. Which actually goes back a lot further than I expected:

“For any reader, at any level of experience, who has ever been curious about an arcane subject—from psychical powers to secret societies—here is a collection that delivers a complete yet precise, critical yet serious, and always respectful account of topics from the unseen world. Supernatural is a brilliant primer to the occult and magical history of the West.” — from the back cover of Supernatural.

I am beginning to realize how philosophy is a big part of my studies. Philosophers have been asking the same questions for millennia and coming up with various answers, though, the ones that have endured seem to have converged on answers similar to those of Buddhist monks and eastern traditions. I keep being amazed at how much that is now considered really out-there, arcane thinking, was written about by the likes of Carl Jung, and many probably pre-date him. Not to take away from any of his accomplishments. He built on the work of those who came before, like all great people.

Smoley is not a wholehearted new-age type, though I suspect he leans that way. He has no problem poking holes in many of our cultural myths, like Atlantis, the ideas behind The Da Vinci Code, and the Masons, but he has no problem saying “I don’t know” when he reaches the end of what can be truly proved. He is a skeptic in the true sense of the word: “One who questions,” rather then the current view of the term that appears to imply that you must “debunk” and deny all evidence that doesn’t fit your pre-conceived ideas. It’s refreshing to have someone refuse to say that all prophecy must be wrong, fully acknowledging that that would be making their own prophecy about whether or not the predicted event will occur.

I find that studying books like this helps me to understand and interpret the events and ideas that I encounter. People ask me questions and I have to struggle to come up with words to express what I intuitively know. That often means revising and re-revising conceptions that I have already created when new data doesn’t fit. In doing so, I find, in the old masters, that there is truly nothing new under the sun.

Take the story of the warrior Er, related by Socrates and Plato, who dies and battle and then awakens at his own funeral, and recounts tails of the afterlife. Long regarded as a myth, some now say that his tail contains all the signs of a classic Near Death Experience. How much of what we now call metaphysics or paranormal, was well known to the ancients, and now we must turn to them for insights into these human conditions that we have ignored for so long.

Someone asked the question “What would you do if you realized that the end was near and you had not accomplished anything?” There were lots of answers to this, but most of them assumed that, somehow, “accomplishing something” would have value to you after you were dead. That made me notice that our culture spends a lot of time and energy on “planning for the future,” and no time considering how to know when “the future” has arrived, and what you do when it does, other than vague ideas about having fun. My first thought was “Yay! I no longer have to worry about the future! I can do whatever I want with no consequences!”

This has special meaning for me because I have recently transitioned out of the 8-5 career lifestyle. All my “obligations” are now gone, and I only have responsibility for myself. What do I do? Do I still plan for another 30 years, or just do what I want and let the chips fall where them may? The stone cold reality is that I could die at any time, so is it time to stop planning and time to start living? I put no stock in “leaving a legacy:” Your name may live on, but people will quickly forget who you were and what you really stood for, using your memory as a pawn in their own games.

As for accomplishing something, I feel that I should live my life satisfied with every day. Goals are fine, as long as I am not putting off living until I get there. I no longer have time for that. When the time comes, I am more than ready to walk through that door with no regrets. I want to help people, as much as I can, while I am here, but when the time comes, I’m outta here. The biggest problem now is getting past of the groundless fear that something really bad is going to happen. I can see the antidote to that, but it’s taking me time to get there. Meanwhile, I’m comfortable with the thought that once I’m gone, all that happened here will have no more significance than a Monopoly game: Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, then you roll the dice and start over.

Druidry, My Introduction

I went to a Druid Grove meeting. It was part lecture, part ceremony. Mostly it was information about begin a druid as a philosophy and a life style. As pointed out by the presenter, some people treat Druidry as a religion, but she doesn't. In my mind, exactly what makes a religion a religion is a bit fuzzy. Time to Google.

Ok, I’m back. According to Merriam-Webster, religion is:

: the belief in a god or in a group of gods.

: an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods.

: an interest, a belief, or an activity that is very important to a person or group.

Hmm, these definitions kind of imply that almost anything you consider important could be considered a religion. On the other hand, the first two definitions require gods, and the lecturer completely skipped over the mention of any specific deities. Which would make sense when you understand that she considered it more of a philosophy. The main tenant of Druidry seems to be balance, balance in all things.

You can Google Druidry and learn get as much detail as you want, so I’m not going to give a full definition here, I’m just going to talk about the parts that interested me and gave me insights.

The funny thing about balance is that it’s not static. If you stand something up on end, sooner or later it will fall down, due to some external influence. There’s the concept that I was introduced through robotics called Dynamic Balance, which is how people, or instance, remain upright while walking and running. This is opposed to Static Balance, which describes how things remain upright while standing still. Early robots all used static balance algorithms when they moved, and needed to remain completely centered at all times. The severely limited their speed and stability; they were pretty easy to knock over. The newest models now use dynamic balance, which allows them to be “out of balance” in one sense, while remaining upright.

For instance, when you are running, especially when you are accelerating, you are out of balance; your center of gravity is not directly above your feet. You stay upright and move forward by continually catching yourself on one foot, then the other, as you continue to fall forward. You stay upright through a balance between how fast you are falling forward and how fast you are pushing back with your feet. Lean further forward, and you speed up (or fall down), lean backwards and you slow down or stop. Dynamic balance means you are continuously adapting and compensating for the changes the world throws at you. I say all this because the speaker spoke a lot about balance, but seemed to imply that there was a single, static, point of balance, and the job of the druid was to find and maintain that state.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that in this context, there is no such thing as one balance point. Everything is in motion, all the time, and don't retain our balance as much as we create new balance every day. What may be a great solution and bring balance today, could be a disaster tomorrow, when circumstances change. And things always change. When we expect change and anticipate upsets, we are able to navigate through life with a certain amount of grace. Ever tried to stand on a surfboard or a skate board, while it’s not moving? It’s Hard! A bicycle is so easy to balance when you're moving, really difficult to balance when your standing still. It’s the same way with life; if you try and fix your life into a single routine and resist change, you will find yourself working really hard, constantly facing upsets as things happen and the world shifts and changes around you. On the other hand, if you are open and can accept change, then bumps and perturbations are easy to recover from. Not to mention that life is a whole lot easier.

I’m as guilty as anyone of finding a situation I like, and, once there, wanting to keep everything exactly the same. Or having an ideal of how things should be, aiming for it, and getting upset when anything in my life threatened that course. When you’re young, change is cool, when you get more set in your ways, change becomes annoying. When Steve Jobs died, I had a sinking feeling that Apple, the Apple I knew and hitched a lot of my identity to, was gone. Of course, Apple is still here, but he Apple that I believed in is not. In reality, it’s probably been gone for years; That scrappy, counter-culture startup with unique products that gave the computer world the finger, had been fading for a long time, but I could pretend it was still there as long as Steve was running things. Now Apple is different, for better or worse, it’s different. Get over it.

That’s dynamic balance. The fact that work, school, church or pretty much any group you belong to, is going to change. You know you’ve been with any group for a while when you catch yourself thinking about “the good old days.” People come in, people go, kids grow up, your interests change, and you find yourself having to make the choice: Do I resist change, ignore new opportunities and allow my world to contract, or do I embrace change and try new things?

When you try and keep everything the same, same job, same friend, same hobbies, same music, same movies, same interests, you risk focusing on the details and minutia of life, and being constantly upset by all the wrinkles that life throws at you. It’s like being on a ship in the middle of the ocean and being totally focused on running the ship, so much so that you pay no real attention on where the ship is going. And then you’re surprised when you look up one day and discover that you’re in a place you never expected, and probably never wanted. That’s a life of static balance.

On the other hand, if you're on that same ship, but you have a clear idea of where you're going, then the details of running the ship are only as important as they need to be, in order to get you there. You give them just as much attention as they require, and no more. If things change, you adapt, because you know your purpose is what's important. When your purpose is clear, you can always find your way back, no matter how many storms, crosscurrents, or other obstacles appear in your path.

Some of you may have noticed that this analogy works on two levels. First, it's a journey to a particular goal. But, if you zoom back a bit, you see that the journey is your life, and the ship is your day-to-day reality. The size of the ship, it's complexity and all the "stuff" on board represent your physical and emotional baggage. And there is no goal, but instead, a purpose, a guiding principle or principles, that inform your choice of direction and give you a context to interpret all the things you see and do along the way.

To be a modern-day, philosophic Druid, is to seek dynamic balance in all things. A balance that allows you continuously adapt to the obstacles life throws at you, and the missteps you make along the way. Even if you fall, you can roll with it and get back up. If the obstacles seem too great, you can find a detour or alternate route. Your guiding principles allow you to adapt to changing conditions while informing you of which changes and actions are compatible with your values, and they can only do that if you release your attachment to the details of daily life.