10 Minute Therapy . . . . . . . Experiencing the Soul
Before You Meditate . . . . P B R
Experiencing the Soul
By experiencing the soul, you can find out what the soul is NOW. It is not something waiting for you at your death, nor is it something you must save or redeem, and it is also something that you cannot lose. The term, to lose or save your soul, has been grossly misinterpreted and distorted, for it is the part of you that is indeed indestructible.
Your own personality as you know it, that portion of you that you consider most precious, most uniquely you, will also never be destroyed or lost. It is a portion of the soul. It will not be gobbled by the soul, nor erased by it, nor subjugated by it; nor on the other hand can it ever be separated. It is, nevertheless, only one aspect of your soul. Your individuality, in whatever way you want to think of it, continues to exist in your terms.
It continues to grow and develop, but its growth and development is highly dependent upon its realization that while it is distinct and individual, it is also but one manifestation of the soul. To the extent that it realizes this, it learns to unfold in creativity, and to use those abilities that lie inherent within it.
Unfortunately, it would be much easier simply to tell you that your individuality continues to exist, and let it go at that. While this would make a fairly reasonable parable, it has been told in that particular way before, and there are dangers in the very simplicity of the tale.
The truth is that the personality you are now and the personality that you have been and will be - in the terms in which you understand time - all of these personalities are manifestations of the soul, of your soul. Your soul therefore - the soul that you are - the soul that you are part of - that soul is a far more creative and miraculous phenomenon than you previously supposed.
And when this is not clearly understood, and when the concept is watered down for simplicity's sake, as mentioned earlier, then the intense vitality of the soul can never be understood. Your soul, therefore, possesses the wisdom, information, and knowledge that is part of the experience of all these other personalities; and you have within yourselves access to this information, but only if you realize the true nature of your reality.
Let me emphasize again that these personalities exist independently within and are a part of the soul, and each of them are free to create and develop.
There is however an inner communication, and the knowledge of one is available to any - not after physical death, but NOW in your present moment. The soul itself, as mentioned earlier, is not static. It grows and develops even through the experience of those personalities that compose it, and it is, to put it as simply as possible, more than the sum of its parts -- which is the basic idea behind Systems Theory.**
There are no closed systems in reality. In your physical system the nature of your perceptions limits your idea of reality to some extent, because you purposely decide to focus within a given locale. Basically speaking, consciousness can never be a closed system. All barriers of such a nature are illusion. Therefore the soul itself is not a closed system. When you consider the soul, however, you usually think of it in such a light - unchanging, a psychic or spiritual citadel. But citadels not only keep out invaders, they also prevent expansion and development.
There are many matters here very difficult to express in words, for you are so afraid for your sense of identity that you resist the idea that the soul, for example, is an open spiritual system, a powerhouse of creativity that shoots out in all directions - and yet this is indeed the case. I tell you this, and at the same time remind you that your present personality is never lost.
Another word for the soul is entity. You see it is not a simple matter of giving you a definition of a soul or entity, for even to have a glimpse in logical terms you would have to understand it in spiritual, psychic, and electromagnetic terms, and understand the basic nature of consciousness and action as well. But you can intuitively discover the nature of the soul or entity, and in many ways intuitive knowledge is superior to any other kind.
One prerequisite for such an intuitive understanding of the soul is the desire to achieve it. If the desire is strong enough, then you will be automatically led to experiences that will result in vivid, unmistakable subjective knowledge. There are methods that will enable you to do this.
There is one quite effective but simple exercise:
Close your eyes and try to sense within yourself the source of power from which your own breathing and life forces come. Some of you will do this successfully at your first try. Others may take longer. When you feel within yourself this source, then try to sense this power flow outward through your entire physical being, through the fingertips and toes, through the pores of your body, all directions, with yourself as center. Imagine the rays undiminished, reaching then through the foliage, and clouds above, through the center of the earth below, extending even to the farthest reaches of the universe.
This is not meant to be merely a symbolic exercise, for though it may begin with imagination, it is based upon fact. Emanations from your consciousness and the creativity of your soul do indeed reach outward in that manner. The exercise will give you some idea of the true nature, creativity and vitality of the soul from which you can draw your own energy and of which you are an individual and unique portion.
**The basic idea behind Systems Theory is, The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. An easy example of this is baking a cake. If you were to lay out all of the ingredients of a cake, you would not have a cake. Instead, you would have the ingredients of cake.