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Spirituality
Spirituality for Beginners 8: Soul and Spirit
Soul has an independent quality. Spirit holds things together.
Posted June 14, 2012
Connecting to the World Wide Web
‘Soul’ and ‘Spirit’: these words are very important for understanding human spirituality. To clarify what they are and how they relate to each other, I am going to repeat and expand on some ideas from an earlier post (April 12). Repetition is no bad thing. It can help us explore and appreciate layers of meaning that are not so obvious first time round.
Have you ever surprised yourself by suddenly saying or doing something inspired? For instance while painting, writing a poem or during some other kind of creative activity? Or perhaps it involved finding yourself ‘in the zone’ while playing a sport.
This type of experience occurs when body and mind are completely in harmony, acting as one. This unit is also in harmony with the spiritual dimension. World and spirit are united. The experience feels ‘ego-less’, like something both outside and deep within yourself has taken over. There is no great sense of personal effort. Because actions and their results take on the qualities of grace and perfection, these experiences may feel somehow sacred.
Some people enjoy a similar state even when engaged in mundane, repetitive activities such as washing the dishes, mowing the grass, painting a wall or knitting. There is no barrier to ordinary activities having a blessed or spiritual quality.
Likewise, have you ever had the equally surprising, but possibly more disconcerting, experience of behaving well, of saying or doing the right thing, even at some cost to yourself? You found a cash-laden wallet, say, and handed it in to the authorities, or you were under-charged in a restaurant and owned up to it, making a point of paying the full amount. There might have been a moment of struggle in your mind between self-interest and acting honourably. If you can remember such an occasion, what might have helped you decide to behave well at the time?
On a larger scale, affecting much of your life, you may have taken up an occupation involving a significant degree of risk or sacrifice, putting personal gain second to the ideal of helping others, particularly those who are weaker, less wealthy, or in other ways more vulnerable. Where does the impetus come from to do that, to follow a vocation like medicine, nursing or teaching, joining the military, or to commit yourself to sustained voluntary work?
Some people explain experiences and impulses like these in terms of having a ‘true’, ‘better’ or ‘higher’ self that takes over from time to time. The ‘Everyday Ego’ is a more worldly aspect of self that governs our habitual thoughts, feelings, speech and behaviour. Occasionally, it is over-ridden by a more mature aspect, by what we can call a ‘Spiritual Self’. Some people also call this the ‘soul’. The everyday ego and the spiritual self are distinguishable, but not really separate.
When self-interest driving the everyday ego quiets down, it reverts towards the spiritual self in the same way that a vibrating guitar string eventually falls quiet and becomes entirely still when no longer being plucked or strummed. It is the same string in two different states of being. This is why the regular practice of meditation (or ‘stilling’) can be so beneficial.
The spiritual self has a direct and continuous connection with the spiritual dimension. People of faith might put it that each person’s ‘soul’ communicates with a divine spirit, even with the Holy Spirit of God. Either way, the spiritual self (or soul) is to be thought of as personal, and the spiritual dimension (or Holy Spirit) is universal. Soul has an independent quality. Spirit is what holds things together.
A good analogy is to think of the two being connected like a personal computer to the internet. Everyone has a soul-setting on their computer, we could say, and everyone’s computer is linked through that setting to the world-wide (or universe-wide) spiritual web. We may have direct computer to computer links to some other people (family, friends, colleagues and so on), but we are also linked to everyone else—at a very deep level—via our individual connections to the spiritual internet super-computer.
Because this super-computer is linked directly to everything in the cosmos, as well as to everyone, each person is similarly and seamlessly linked to the dynamic whole, to nature as well as humanity. This, from the spiritual perspective, is the source of life’s sacred meaning. It connects each individual to a collective destiny.
Most of the time, we only use our computers on the ‘everyday-setting’, for habitual activities and relationships. We do not normally pay attention to the ‘soul-setting’. We may not even be aware it exists, until or unless we engage regularly in spiritual practices, or until ‘something happens’ to wake us up.
Even then, we may ignore, play it down or deny it. We may, as it were, get a message on our personal computer that comes directly, via the soul-setting, from the spiritual internet’s wisdom source– the source that knows everything about everything, because it’s plugged into everything. We can delete these messages, which may seem inconvenient, but they keep on returning in one form or another, often in different guises (as in a dream, or an unforeseen change of fortune) until we are forced to give them the attention they deserve.
We can think of these messages, these events, as corrective impulses that come our way when we are going off course. This implies that there is a proper or correct path for each of us to follow, which in turn implies true and false aims, an ideal direction, and some sort of eventual goal. I will say more about personal development and the spiritual journey from birth throughout life in later posts.
Copyright Larry Culliford
Larry’s books include ‘The Psychology of Spirituality’, ‘Love, Healing & Happiness’ and (as Patrick Whiteside) ‘The Little Book of Happiness’ and ‘Happiness: The 30 Day Guide’ (personally endorsed by HH The Dalai Lama).
