I've been thinking about this lately and I have a question to the theists out there. What is a soul? Are souls perfect? Your thoughts please.
A soul is the aspect of our beings that makes the conscious decision to incarnate in human form and seek out experiences that will allow consciousness to merge with it. Some souls incarnate here with relatively mundane intentions: to experience a loving family, to have a successful career etc. These intentions accompany the remedial period of the soul's development, but can be perfectly relevant for souls that haven't spent as much time hanging around the "mortal coil". Just as you wouldn't make a value judgement about one child being in 1st grade when there are other children in 5th grade, so to can there be souls experiencing varying levels of development. Understanding this concept fully produces an important realization, because it becomes apparent that on a soul level, the most important thing is alignment with soul intentions. How this alignment manifests will be dramatically different depending on the degree of development of the soul in question. There can be young souls that are developing expediently and old souls that are stagnating, and vice versa. One must strive to align themselves with the soul's intentions irregardless of one's degree of advancement. The ultimate goal of the soul is to realize it's own nature, which is unbounded awareness, transcendence of separative identity, interconnectedness with all life, and an infinitude of love. This realization is what some refer to as enlightenment, and is the natural state of all beings in the universe. Travis
You can think of souls as individual cells in God's brain, the Godhead. Not much to them as individual sparks of conscious energy, but collectively, represent great power. As long as you maintain a human identity, unaware of what is outside of you, you can't tap into the divine mind and "know" God. You are confined to your human mind. As individuals, we can swim away from the source of all things and go off on our own path. But there is a natural attraction back to the source. The mind fights against this gentle pull that comes from somewhere it can't see. When the mind begins to get exhausted from the effort, you are once again drifting back to where you came from in the beginning. Once the mind is made to understand your true nature, it becomes the captain of your ship to get you back home. It no longer plays the role of a drunken sensory addict. It's now a navigator. Souls come here for the experience of doing so. No God or Devil. No good or evil. Just the ride of your soul's life. And the single best day of all your lifetimes... is the day you realize none of it has been real. Your soul will exit the gate with a smile on it's face. x
hey nice.... the soul to me captains the journey of the divine in matter. The link which joins the cosmos!, I'm in the harbour having forty million winks while i get a re-wired!!
The soul is an imaginary answer spread by religious minds to describe a biological condition that occurs when billions of brain cells work in harmony to create a state more significant than their sum total. A fragile state called self-consciousness to which the vast majority of the population does not have the capacity to understand or come to terms with. A state that slowly builds intensity within the developing youth and fades away with the decay of old age. To believe the "soul" is anything more requires faith which is a conviction of ignorance.
Ironically, your post exhibits more dependency on faith than does an evolved belief in soul. In your case, your faith involves a rigid adherence to theoretical scientific knowledge that has no basis in direct perception. The soul's existence is quite diametrically opposed to your description. It can be verified with experiential knowledge derived from practices designed to reveal the aspects of our beings that transcend physiology. So, really, you're the only one on this thread guilty of relying solely on blind faith. Perhaps one day you'll be able to overcome your conviction in ignorance, as you put it. Travis
Ah, the arrogance of dogmatism -- it never ceases to amaze. Enjoy your laugh -- demeaning others may represent the pinnacle of your ability to experience gratification, at least for the forseeable future. If I may ask, what's it like to live a life devoid of substance and depth of feeling? I don't think I've ever met anyone in person that had your qualifications. Travis
Since soul transcends mind and mental constructions and ideas, you will only know what it is when you experience it.
Yeah I'm an emotionless robot because I have no soul!!! LOL!!! And where do you get your verification and gratification? By living in denial and believing in fraudulent lying attention whores like Silvia Brown?
No, you're an "emotionless robot" because you're a sadist. Who's Silvia Brown? Where do I get my verification and gratification? The only place anyone legitimately gets it: The objectivity of conscious awareness. Travis
So the soul is imperfect ? It can not experience anything without a body ? Why ? So the soul can't reason ? The soul can't experience ? The soul can't communicate with other souls ? How can the soul have intentions if it can't experience anything without a body ? Again, how does a soul have intention, without having the experience to contrast and form the idea first ? Which makes no sense if the soul can't experience anything without a body. Oh, and btw, none of the above tells me what a soul IS, only what you believe a soul DOES. I look forward to your repsonse(s).
The soul is only perfected when it fully merges with universal consciousness. I never said anything about the soul being dependent on the existence of a body. Nor did I ever say or imply anything remotely resembling what you've managed to infer here. It's difficult to converse with someone who responds to the projections of their own mind rather than the statements made by the other participant in the conversation. Perhaps my answer was inadequate. However, based on your responses, it seems much more likely that your capacity for understanding is insufficient. Perhaps you should read my initial post more carefully before replying again. Travis
Souls are like seeds. Imagine a nut right, human life as a nut. When you break open and discard the shell, the nut can grow into a tree and become part of a forest. We are the shell, our soul is the nut. Im real deep as you can see :H and eating nuts
You said ... "A soul is the aspect of our beings that makes the conscious decision to incarnate in human form and seek out experiences that will allow consciousness to merge with it. " My question is, how does it make a conscious decision to seek out experience without being allowed to have consciousness merged with it ? You're answer was very inadequate. As for my capacity to understand ? Yes, indeed I am a slow learner. Maybe you can help ? Here, let me make this simpler.... What it the soul made of ? How does the soul exist ? What is the function of the soul ? Can a soul reason ? Can a soul experience ? Can a soul communicate ? Can a soul interact with other souls ? Try to stay away from the new age mumbo jumbo words. Otherwise, I'm just going to end up asking more questions, showing my foolishness.
We don't know what the soul is made of, if 'it' existed before our birth or will still be after we die and we don't know if it has a main purpose. We should give our souls our own purpose. Anyway, I think the soul is the part of us that is really us. Of course my body is also part of me, but our soul is our essence. No soul, I think, is perfect or good or evil, it's just.. neutral. Sometimes I can see why people think it's a pity we don't know what is out there for our soul in the universe or even beyond, but when I feel I live my life the way I think it's 'good' and realize the world is so overwhelming huge and deep I can just accept my part in it here in my body. Trying to find answers is good, but I see people finding their perceptions to be the absolute truth too often.
Seeking out experiences that allow consciousness to merge with soul doesn't mean that the soul was devoid of consciousness in the first place. What you call "new age mumbo jumbo words" are just words that naturally accompany discussion of a topic like this. It would sort of be like asking a Quantum Physicist to explain the nature of the unified field theory without using terminology that reflects the subject matter. If you want a more "remedial" answer, why not read Xexon's post? He's much more proficient than I am when it comes to using straight-forward language and concrete analogies that bypass the pretension of "new age mumbo jumbo". I tend to be much more verbose and esoteric, so if you really want my answers to your questions, you'll just have to take my posts for what they are. The soul exists in essence on another plane of reality. As a result, it's not "made" of anything. It transcends all manifestations of physicality. That I don't know. How does anything exist? It's one of those universal questions that ceases to be important when approaching a topic like the nature of the soul on a more practical level. To compel an evolutionary process that eventually culminates in realization of one's true nature. Reasoning is a function of the mind. The soul has no need of such primitive means of processing information. When it needs information, it accesses it in the most direct way possible -- by connecting with Source. That's what it's here to do. Yes. The soul primarily communicates through experience, as in the day-to-day experiences of the individual. But a competent clairvoyant or shaman can speak with individual souls in a fashion at least vaguely resembling how you and I might communicate. Unless you're a hermit, then yes. Travis