Our body and soul, our being, is who we are. Our soul is our own personal corner of Godliness. The body is mortal and is made up of a multiplicity of parts, being such it breaks down into its parts when we return to our soul. It is the soul that fires the body and sustains life. It is the case, therefore, that our soul is immortal as, by definition, the giver of life cannot die and must be eternal. The body cannot exist without the soul whilst the soul exits before, during and after the body fragments.
Now God is all that is, all that has been and ever shall be and the creator of all souls. Souls can be seen to exist in God’s embrace. There is nothing, or any part of anything, that is external to the divine, the good and the bad, all of it. We should bear in mind that any attempt at describing or defining God is at best a gross simplification. This should not, however, inhibit, or discourage us, from talking or thinking about it, as by so doing, we orient our attention in the direction of that which is the highest truth. The highest truth, the highest good, heaven, ultimate reality are all fingers pointing at the same mystic origin of humanity and the cosmos that surrounds us.
There is an array of human attributes that are non-physical and that we closely associate with being alive. These are our thoughts, emotions, our words, intentions, intuitions, our appreciation of majesty, beauty, truth and more. The source of all this is our soul. This view had also been posited by Greek philosophers (Plato and Socrates) as long as two thousand five hundred years ago. These invisible experiences are not created by our physical body, as secular thinking would have us believe.
Christ, also had a human soul. His soul experienced anguish at Gethsemane while He prayed before His crucifixion. He said “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (Matthew 26:36-46). This is a clear indication in the New Testament scriptures that what we would call our human anguish is one and the same thing as our soul’s anguish. Our experience of life is our soul’s experience of life.
I believe that our soul is much closer to us than we have ever imagined. We are one with our soul. Becoming more fully aware of our entire being is, if you like, the journey that is our life.
Life and everything in life has a meaning and purpose. This reflects the meaning and purpose of our Creator. We are free to err and learn from our mistakes, this is how we progress. Life is like the board game from my younger days called ‘snakes and ladders’. If we throw the dice in a certain way, we may get a number that causes us to slide down a snake. Wherever we land, however, there is a ladder, not too far off, that takes us up again.
We know that our origin and our future transcend our physical human life. We know this from the experience of life itself. Life is miraculous. We appear, as if from the aether, inside a woman’s womb. All science can do is observe and document the process. Again, we disappear from human sight in the same apparently miraculous way. The purpose of creation is to become more, not less and so it is for us.
We may be anxious about life being a sequence of beginnings and endings. This concern would be justified if it were not for the reality that that which gives life, our soul, may change and transform, however, it is by its very nature, eternal.
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Also published on Substack.com
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