Understanding the Soul

I think you don’t belong to a group of people anymore, who think that a soul is something that cannot be described or influenced, something that after the death of the physical body goes passively to a purgatory, hell, or heaven, depending on our good or bad behavior in life.

You also know, dear reader, that the human soul in not an organ whose existence you can confirm by a touch, be seen with the physical eye, or operated on with a scalpel. This is why many materialists can think it doesn’t exist. We know what a soul is not, but what is it?

A soul is a gate to the higher world. If a soul identifies itself with what is lower or the physical body and its little Self, it always feels unfulfilled within. It constantly feels a need, a great desire that consumes it. This is when a soul leaps from one desire to another, thinking the next desire will finally satisfy its unfulfilled and unconscious desire to become like God. This desire transforms in time into unfulfilled desires. A soul, constantly desirous of sensations of the external world, reminds me of a magpie that leaves one sparkler when it sees another.

When a soul identifies itself with the higher, or its Higher Self, its Self, it doesn’t hesitate anymore. It knows that it follows the right direction and this is when it feels satisfied because it becomes more like God. It is when its desire becomes permanent that there are no reasons to hesitate anymore and to constantly leap from one desire to another.

This is why some people become prisoners of their souls, since a man automatically becomes what his soul’s attention focuses on. In this case, he becomes a captive of his passing, external, bodily pleasures. When a soul focuses on God, a man becomes like Him. You can say then that his soul becomes freedom for him.

The problem arises when a soul loses its mindfulness and instead of remembering and savoring Who It Is, it loses itself in what it is not, like a diver in deep water or a parachute flying in space. They want to experience how to be a bird or a fish so they can play with their experience at will, though they have to remember always that they are humans with an extraordinary opportunity.

When I thought of the soul’s attributes, I associated it with a camera. Depending on what we direct the lens on, we get a certain picture. Dear reader, direct the lens of your soul towards the source of beauty and joy, not fear and aggression, and you will be prized forever with the beautiful picture imprinted in your heart. In time what you photograph will translate into your daily reality.

How to break free from the traps our soul fell into? First of all, you need to find judgment, anger, hatred, and uncertainty etc. within and let them evaporate in the light of understanding. This will limit our greed and the desire to have everything that comes from the outside. Then the soul will act for your higher good and it won’t identify itself with the body anymore. These difficulties appear quite often among the people walking the path of spiritual growth, because they don’t really understand their souls.