All Matters Of The Heart - Our Ancient

Soul IS

First published on Squidoo in 2009 – a compilation of ‘bite-sized’

meandering thoughts

Our ancient soul IS! I, who never ever used to spare a thought for my soul, have come to accept that we do not merely *get* a soul in a random way. Instead, it can be said that our soul has volunteered to accept us as the new vehicle through which she hopes to process - through our spiritual responses to life - some of the karmic baggage accumulated by her previous incarnations. Souls pick us to be their upgraded vehicle to karmic enlightenment - go figure! - which is why it is tacitly accepted that we ARE able to overcome all and any of the karmic challenges that come our way - if and only if we can tackle them in a spiritual manner which, of course, is not the way our western culture has ever taught anyone to overcome anything. Who is in charge? I recently watched, 'Invictus', the 2010 film based on Nelson Mandela's bid, soon after his election in 1994, to unify South Africa. 'Invictus' is also the title original title of a poem written by William Ernest Henley - the unwitting poet whose words have briefly shaped a new chapter in the history in South Africa. Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. According to the movie script, it is from these lines that Mandela found the strength to not let his spirit be broken as well as the strength to resist a hatred of the race that had created apartheid. Instead, it appears that this poem has helped Mandela develop a deep-seated sense of compassion and forgiveness - from inside a cell that was but a couple of meters wide - the cell in which he was kept during a 27 year of incarceration. I think 'Invictus' is a great poem. It's short and yet it's powerful. Its message is clear: Let no one break us to the point where we hate them. So that's all about ACTIVELY accepting What Is and about being present in the moment. It's about coming out at the other side of an ordeal with a heart that is mostly heart filled with compassion and forgiveness. BUT the line "I am the captain of my soul" - the leitmotiv on the movie script - isn't quite right for me. Not if it suggests that we somehow need to take charge of our soul and tame her into submission. However, if *Captain* does refer to the one who takes orders from his/her King or Queen and *obeys* these orders then, yes, that would work for me - for we are at the service of Soul from Above Below. We are Soul's Captain. Any other thoughts? Here another one: It can be said that, like a net, our energy field hardens around us, a little bit more with each passing incarnation, making it each time more difficult for us to amend *the way we are*. Which is probably why, by now, unless we get a very strong wake-up call - a sometime metaphoric, a sometime literal, blow to the head - it is that much easier to go with the flow and keep on *being ourselves*. Mahabharata on Soul Survival Total Soulful Insight  Here is an *extract of sorts* form Mahabharata, of which Wikipedia explains that it is "one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, [ ... ]The epic is part of the Hindu itihasa (or "history"), and forms an important part of Hindu mythology. It is of immense importance to culture in the Indian subcontinent, and is a major text of Hinduism. Its discussion of human goals (dharma or duty, artha or purpose, karma, pleasure or desire and moksha or liberation) takes place in a long-standing tradition, attempting to explain the relationship of the individual to society and the world (the nature of the 'Self') and the workings of karma." What follows is a very cool dialogue between Arjun and Krishna about the death of the body and the survival of the soul, as well as soul's intention to remove all doubt and fear - What-Ifs - to cleanse her channel to the persona. Arjun said he cannot fight because on the other side there are brothers and relatives and he cannot kill them. Keep in mind that this is the inner struggle when soul want to remove all the negative thoughts/emotions and cleanse the channel: Krishna: O Arjun! Those who are dead are dead. The wise do not grieve for those who die or live. They grieve for neither birth nor death. You talk like a wise man but your words are foolish. Before you grieve find out if they are worthy of your grief. Arjun: Are not Grandsire and the Sages worthy of grief? Krishna: Would I deny it if they were? Remember simple truth. It is the Soul which is of essence, not the body. Death is not its end because it is eternal. Death is a momentary respite. The wind does not end with the breath. Man is first a child, a youth and then an old man. Then Death. This is the journey of the body. The Soul goes beyond that. It moves from one body to another. The journey which ends with death is that of the body. The Soul's journey is eternal. The body is left behind and the Soul moves on assuming a new body just like we discard old clothes for new. Why grieve when the Soul cannot be destroyed? Why grieve the destruction of the body? The body is not eternal. It is to be discarded. It is the Soul which is eternal. Arjun: Will those before us be there after the war? Krishna: What is Being and Not Being? There never was a Time when all of us did not exist. Nor a Time when all of us will not exist. Why do you feel that this life is the complete life? This life is not a complete life. We were, we are and we will be. As for happiness and sorrow, what of it? Like seasons, they come and go. Those who are unmoved by happiness and sorrow, those who remain uninfluenced by them… are worthy of salvation. Be free from the doubts of killing and being killed. Only those who are born can die. The Soul is beyond Time. The body is born, not the Soul. If the Soul is not born how can it die? The Soul exists. That's all. It spans Time from end to end. It is unborn, eternal and holy. It is indestructible and without flow. So, do not worry about killing and being killed. Only the body dies and even after its death the Soul does not die. Weapons cannot kill it. Fire cannot burn it. Water cannot dissolve it. Neither can the wind dry it. Soul at the bottom of the Pond Some time ago, while trying to clarify a point on a forum I moderate, I came up with a little analogy that has helped me understand better the relationship between the soul - pure, clean energy - and the ego-persona/energy field. It goes like this: imagine there is a pond and, lying at the bottom, there is a quartz crystal. This crystal has been there for quite some time and, looking at it from the edge, it appears dingy green, perhaps from pond slime. In my mind, our ego-persona/our energy field is symbolized by the pond water while the crystal symbolizes the soul that is unable to shine through our emotional clutter, turmoil and the resulting relative negativity of our energy field. While I was working this out, I initially thought that the crystal WAS green because it had become contaminated by pond slime. Thus, I thought what needed to be done was scrub that crystal clean to allow it to shine freely, as crystals do - but I was wrong. The crystal, our soul, NEVER becomes impure or contaminated. It always remains pure energy. It is just that its energy cannot shine through the stagnant water of the pond. So what needs to be done is simply purify that water till it is all clear and then the crystal's energy and brilliance can radiate through the water, all the way to the surface, even as it remains at the bottom of the pond. Dear Reader, does that make sense to you? Deceptively Simple Stuff It is true that, to some degree, ignorance is bliss. At the moment, I do not feel ignorant and I do not feel blissful. Now that I know what I know, I also know what I don't know and I feel my practical work on the ground still sucks big time. And if I let this perception turn into frustration then, it will be the sure sign that I have dropped out of the present-moment, that I have let old thoughts intrude, that I am no longer flowing. Grumble, grumble. Soul Watches - helplessly Here is another little story for you: Imagine a maze of labyrinthine proportions. Imagine it white. Imagine darkness all around it. Now, half a meter into the maze, imagine a tiny white mouse. This little mouse, nose a-twitchin', scuttles through and around a few sections until she hits a dead-end. The little white mouse scoots back to the nearest opening and trots off, seemingly unperturbed, in another direction altogether. This mouse is actually quite a clever little mouse. There are some, you see, that would keep trying to get through the same passage way, again and again, so sure that the piece of cheese is right there, on the other side, but they get zapped again and again. Back to our clever little mouse. Luck is on her side. With a clean run ahead, she puts a wriggle in her wiggle - she has things to do, places to see and she senses that the piece of yummy cheese is within her reach. Woohoo! Oh, ouch! Just as she thought she had this nailed - ZAP!!! A little shock on the tip of her pink nose makes her whiskers twitch. She sits on her haunches, shakes her head a couple of times, scratches behind an ear and off she goes again, but in another direction altogether. Like the ball in a pinball machine, totally random, bouncing off from stimuli to deterrents, the little mouse keeps going - the blind little mouse that she is. She cannot guess which section of her labyrinth will take her on the long and happy run to the nice bit of cheese nor can she anticipate which turn will lead her to yet another dead-end or, worse, to the electric shock that zaps the tip of her nose. After all, our clever little mouse is no more enlightened than all the others. Souls are losing the Battle The way I see it, these days, the cause of our miseries is not so much the sequence of dead-ends inherent to the karmic maze we have been dropped into pre-birth, little mice that we are.  I accept that the cause resides in our ego-persona that has learned, from the dawn of time, to follow her nose, her conditioned *lust* for life and her creature comforts which include, unlike all other creatures, her need to crave and hoard more than she needs, yet seldom feel she has enough - as well as a damning compulsion to sift the present through the tight mesh of her memory. Every time we have an itch, you see, our first impulse is to scratch it, to indulge it. This works well for our pets and for all other animals but, we, humans, need to know that emotional itches should not be scratched any more than physical ones, otherwise the bites never cease to itch; they get puffy, infected, creating the extra side- effects that keep us in our blind-mouse ways, disconnected from our soul, and oblivious to the added dots of unhelpful karma that connect in our energy field. Souls Suffocate Sure! My soul is looking down the barrel of an ongoing cycle of incarnations, along with most of the souls currently incarnated which, for our souls, amounts to nothing less than an endless string of life spans spent in captivity, bag-over-head, with a disorientated sort of *feeling*, even though in the eternal spiritual realm, lifetimes are over and done with in the blink of an eye. Our soul can suffocate over time. When she does, we become terminally ill, psychotic, or chronically depressed because she has given up hope of any karmic amendment from us, and she is sinking. It has to be understood that matters of the soul can only manifest themselves to us at the mental/physical levels - how else would we take notice? As long as we react from an automated response system, what we put out comes back to bite us on the tail, and we complain about our bad luck and the futility of life. Our souls cannot exist independently from our thoughts and our deeds. What we sow, they reap. Souls are Loaded - loaded down by the Persona Karma is our personalized balance sheet. Unlike our bank statement, keyed in by a human, the spiritual tabulator of our consequences is infallible. Here is a quick checklist that recaps essential soul-facts, as I currently understand them. 1.Every soul is ancient. As such, she is loaded down by the karma   accumulated by all her previous incarnations. Just as a mother is responsible for her child, or a scientist for her creation, a soul is responsible for all her incarnations' actions. However, like Sonny, the blue-eyed robot in I, Robot, we have become misguided. For over two thousand years, our ego-persona [our energy field], has been our body's  built-in *party-girl*, one who seeks happiness through sensory gratification and impulsive behaviours, while our soul seeks to secure for us the highest source of happiness - nothing less than paradisiac happiness - through good old-fashioned spiritual enlightenment. Which explains why, by now, our karmic tail is probably as long as the tail on comet Hyakutake's. Back in 1996, its tail, as recorded by the Ulysses craft, spanned some 571 million kilometres. Compounded by our karmic inheritance, the compulsive nature of our struggle to hold on to what is impermanent and illusory - like the child who tries to trap water in her fist only to watch it drip away - maintains our soul permanently captive of our ego- personas. 2.Because of our karmic baggage, we, as incarnations, have an ego-persona [energy field] made up of energy that is known as *gross energy*. Point to remember:  the more evolved we become - the thinner, the more sensitive our energy field becomes.  The more powerful, too, because it is cleansed of [gross] low-frequency vibrations. Imagine how much better our old car would run if we treated it to more than the humdrum grease and oil change and kitted it out with a new carburettor complete with its assortment of pumps, valves and tubes? Moriya might well be right when she says, "It would fly!" It is important to remember that our soul is our higher self - it is pure energy - it cannot be made impure. Never. No matter what we get up to. Since our ancient soul is the only real *I* and the only real *me* we have, it is our responsibility to amend some of the cumulative karma created by all her previous incarnations, as well as the karma we create every minute we are not *in the moment* in this, her current incarnation. But wait! There's more! Après Moi, le Deluge – in simple words: who gives a F---- when I’m gone Après moi, le deluge [After me, let the deluge come i.e. come what may] the French phrase usually attributed to Louis XV (but that might actually have been spoken by Madame de Pompadour) represents the antithesis of how we need to concern ourselves with what will come to pass after we are gone. Heads up: our thoughts and actions become consequences that go on rippling downstream well after we’re gone. In fact, the most important thing - the one over which we have the most control - is to not create any new karma for whoever will inherit our soul, once we shuffle off our mortal coil. The task of our ego-persona [our energy field] is to be a tool that is clear and pure, so as to enable our soul to gain realization, awareness and enlightenment through our own doing, through our actions - a step on the upward spiral of spiritual evolution. Our ultimate aim should be to surrender the controls to our soul, to let her see through our eyes and to let her guide the vehicle that we are. Karma *forces* souls to cycle through the incarnation spiral. The selection of souls operates according to Cosmic order and hierarchy. Guides - maybe angels - are a part of the selection process. Reality check: no soul can walk away from a karmic debt and, so, the magnetic force of karma will attract our soul back to earth until she has amended all that her incarnations have left unfinished. As I understand it, souls that have to re-incarnate too soon cause the incarnation to be emotionally unstable. I am going out on a limb, here, thinking that, if this were to be true, then, a mass murderer's actions might be prompted by an ego persona that is unusually powerful - but diagnosed as having a severe mental condition. Having said that, I do believe that a soul - which is constant, pure energy - cannot deliberately lead the ego-persona to commit a heinous crime. Any crime committed is executed under the influence of our ego- persona. I tend to think that the same reasoning applies to individuals who suicide. An overly powerful ego-persona creates a massive short-circuit that causes it to destroy the life it was intended to protect.  I suspect something similar happens with individuals who are overly charismatic. They enslave those of their followers who depend on them for a sense of personal worthwhile they, themselves, are often deeply miserable and misguided human beings.  However, drugs, alcohol, hardcore pornography, as well as mental disorders  - all blur the senses and clamor like a flock of parrots in a tree, over a soul's whisper. Extreme doses of this erratic clamoring lead some individuals to robotic, *dead-heart* behaviors that are humanely incomprehensible. What our civilization amounts to is some 6 billion worth of egos going about their business as usual, while some 6 billion souls are suffocating, only able to whisper or weep but, mostly, I suspect, they are asleep. Gaining realization through successful karmic *edits* made by the ego-persona is sublime. At its best, it is about uniting with the highest energy there is and becoming whole. For our soul, it is the final Homecoming - the end of her incarnation cycle. Free at last. Bottom line: time is upon us to free our soul. If not now, dear Reader, then when?   Justify Your Existence *Justify Your Existence* was the large decal message on the big black sooped-up SUV in front of me yesterday, as I was on my way to work. I briefly pondered the intention behind this message. Maybe it was the dark appeal of the vehicle itself that swayed my thinking, but I assumed the slogan stemmed from a racist, discriminatory ideology. Then I pondered the impossibility for anyone to truly justify their existence. I mean, we can't say I need to exist Because I'm a good person or Because it's my right or Because I'm a mother or Because my work is important .... because ... can we? And then, I realized that the way to answer *Justify Your Existence* was by saying: Sure, no problem. My purpose on this earth, in this lifetime, is to amend the karma that is mine to amend - the one that's encoded in my energy field, the one that's been passed on by all my soul's previous incarnations, as well as the karma that I have created for myself. Is there any other way to Justify Our Existence in *this* lifetime than by listening for our soul's whisper to fulfil less of our dreams and more of our Destiny? How about you get back to us on this, dear Reader out there? that would be brilliant :) On 2nd thought, in the last post, I asked: ‘Is there any other way to Justify Our Existence in *this* lifetime than by listening for our soul's whisper to fulfil less of our dreams and more of our Destiny?’ On 2nd thought, I'd like to add a little something. Here is how I'd now like it to read: Is there any other way to Justify Our Existence in *this* lifetime than by listening for our soul's whisper to fulfil less of our dreams and more of our Destiny by actively practicing an open-hearted unconditional acceptance of all - starting with the one closest to us who is seriously challenging our patience and understanding? Honest truth - There is at least one such person in our life., Dear Reader, there is, isn’t there?