Soul Searching

Picture courtesy of Joy Shrader at Public Domain Pictures

I was sorting through some papers the other day and came across a piece that I wrote several years back. It was a paper that examined ideas regarding the existence, or non-existence, of the human soul and the juxtaposition of oppositional characteristics of human actions and emotions. In addition, it presented the prospect of a collective soul existing within humanity itself. As I read over it I felt a particular relevance that reminded me of my own advice. Recently I have written about my alcohol and drug addiction which relies on a higher power. This piece calls me on that and gives food for thought. But, there’s something more in it. I found a deeper meaning when I read it. It related to me here and now as if, years ago, when I wrote it I had some link into my future. Maybe I knew that I would need a boost maybe that is why I kept it. I’m referring to the loss of my daughter in 2011 and how that deep soul pain is a part of what makes us who we are now and that there may be hope yet. So, today’s post is that article and maybe it can be the boost you need, too.

What’s the Big About a Soul Anyway?

We make it seem like it’s everything, we search for it. It’s what makes us human isn’t it? The rapid pulsing of life itself, the understanding that draws us into a world that touches other beings. It keeps us going, it cleanses the blood that flows within us. This blood that courses like hot molten steel, forcing us to be more than instinctual.

It drives some people over the brink of sanity and into a world where reality will never be the same. It causes us to love and hate, to bestow charity and to steal, to build and to destroy. It leads us by the nose wherever it thinks we should go. We die for its preservation. We kill for its purification. We justify a hundred thousand reasons of madness just to keep it from burning us to death from the inside out. Our actions are all based on what the soul desires, what it believes to be true. Yet, it leaves so many with an empty bottomless pit feeling in their bellies that their hearts swell like starving African children. It screams out for its own annihilation then begs forgiveness and respite. It knows us all too well.

It gives the ability to move forward while stopping us dead in our tracks. It holds us immovable in space and time when it’s injured and then suddenly flings us into a distant solar system when we least expect it. You know what I’m saying...we have all felt it. You know exactly what I’m talking about, it’s as if we share it, like maybe there’s only one soul to go around; one, which every person on the face of the earth has some part of. How else could we feel, experience, and even know the joys and sorrows of others as we do? How else could we be so cold and hateful in its absence, as if sometimes there just isn’t enough of it to go around? Like a bombed out building that is still hanging on, parts are missing but the structure remains. Some of us struggle to rebuild the monument of humanity, while those that linger in the empty space cling to an invisible thread of hope and desperation that maybe, one day, they’ll again experience what it’s like to be in the remaining I-Beams.

Soul sickness, it comes with the territory. It breaks us down into compost material and leaves us waiting to be fed to those who would thrive on our molecules. The soul spreads like this, into each one of us. Sometimes we’re consumed; sometimes we’re the consumer. Each time we put our soul into something, no matter what it is, we leave ourselves open, vulnerable to the compost heap. Our flowers and fruit spent, then tilled up and thrown out to await our rebirth through the tender sprout of another obsession. We blanket the winter months of our absence with depression, or anger, sometimes hate or just plain empty longing.

Broken and battered we pick up its pieces and attempt to put them back into our work, our thoughts, our feelings, and our lives. We try and try to rebuild the ornament of beauty that links us to life. We fear its loss more than anything but we rarely ever think about it. It delivers us from evil and allows us to think of bigger and better places for it to be than right here where we are. The call of humanity is our own pleading for a sense of connection. The very connection which we dismiss, without a second thought, as soon as the crazy guy in the corner of the restaurant makes eye contact with us. It’s that spark which ignites either yearning or repulsion. It’s what the Gods themselves have longed for. What it means to be human only a human can understand.

So what’s the big? It’s only humanity, our humanity, both individual and communal. It brings a sensation of existence into our world, the link in the missing chain. Still, we can’t even agree that it exists, or if it does, how? In what form? Where is it going to lead us? Does it even know or are we just spinning in a continuum of non-linear existence? Do we expand the collective soul when we become “enlightened”? Can the circular effect grow without end and send humanity beyond the imagination? How can we ignore so blatantly the driving force of our being?

I think, and this thought is coming from my very soul, that a conscious effort to recognize, relate to, and feel one’s soul will send out a vibration that causes the remaining soul to hear music. It’s the song that will echo into the void spaces of the collective and create the necessary expansion into the vacancies of humanity. People can feed their empty swollen hearts. The soul can grow. Somehow, there can be enough to go around. I think the secret lies in the consciousness of each individual. I don’t know how many people it will take to achieve a collective humanity, but I am sure that the more people who are willing to make the effort, the more successful we’ll be. The soul is unique. It is a big deal. We need to acknowledge this or we will all end up in the void, just as it is capable of expansion it is also capable of collapse. The structure of human kind could fold under the weight of emptiness, and vanish into a cloud of dust. It is a big deal. It’s our deal. Nourish the soul, feel it, don’t forget about it. Let it hurt, let it love, let it grow. Deliver us.

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So there you have it. My wake up call to myself. I’m going to try to let it hurt, to let it love and hopefully to watch it grow. Thanks for being here. Our journey may be long but I have hope because you’re here....so yeah, thanks.