ABUNDANCE

No matter how much I try to express myself in my writings, I am yet to be comfortable talking about myself as an illustration, but to be honest, this concept of unity of body, spirit and soul remains mysterious to me.

I often sit in a quiet place, listen to my mind, my heart beating, lungs inhalation and exhalation, blood pumping in my feet, external factors coming close to my body. The five sensory guide me on receiving information required. However, it is never enough. I don’t know about you, still this body, spirit and soul remains a complicated puzzle.

Science illustrates the evolution of human kind, factors that affect life – internal: body functions and external: environment – matters and energies, nature and technology. Any of these fundamentals can be expounded step by step, but I don’t want to go into that today.

I want to look inside myself (not with an endoscope) – the inner me, there’s a full life inside my body.  Talk about Spirit & Soul. These two serve a bigger purpose than the functioning of human organs. But, do we understand what it is? I don’t understand it either. Nevertheless, one lady in her late age told me, the best way to understand something, is by asking questions. Now, I am bringing the ball to your yard. 

Gary Zukav, Author of The Seat of the Soul says that, “Your soul is that part of you that is immortal. Every person has a soul, but a personality that is limited in its perception to the five senses is not aware of its soul, and therefore, cannot recognize the influences of its soul.”

Two things caught my attention: the soul is immortal and its perception is beyond the five senses. First of all, where is it located? It is not seen, not touched, not smelled nor tasted. How do we keep the ensemble (body, spirit & soul) to fulfill our purpose?

Can we compare it to the operating system of the body? Perhaps. I am not vast in the topic and I would love to get more enlightenment from you reading this. 

I have seen human beings leaving this world at juvenescence but make enormous impact to the world, their presence last forever just from hearing their stories; others grow old sometimes leave a legacy or not. It doesn’t depend on the time you spend here on earth. They say his/her soul was radiant. 

Are souls ductile? Can one choose to amend their soul? When we say this person has a beautiful soul, has charisma, or is a ray of light; is it a perception, a feeling, a belief according to one’s thoughts? Do we refer to one’s behavior or passion to identify it? Are there people with dark souls, like opaque?

Are there types of souls? I mean like versions of operating systems that help us to interact with computer hardware. Then comes the spirit.

It’s said every human is born with a void in life longing to be filled. I hear material things and intellectual achievements don’t fill the void. Religious scribes say this void is only filled by one’s devotion to the spiritual world. The way to this world, is faith, prayer, and Holy Spirit. Prayer as fuel that leads us to that world, Faith as an engine that brings to reality our promises, and Holy Spirit as a cable that connects us to the Almighty God. How do these function together inside our body?  

How about atheists, and people with little knowledge about spirituality? How do they revive their spirit? Because at one point, we all fall down for a number of reasons.  

What stimulates our mind to think the way it does? What about the inner voice, the instincts, or intuition that we all have at a particular time? Where do they come from? Is it the soul or spirit that breathes the little voice into the body?

Often, when you think of what drives our choices and desires, psychologists believe it stems from our past that was to be fixed at a tender age. Though we did not know, it became the ploy of how we look at our entire life. I have seen kids suffering from trauma and other mental health conditions due to what the mother fed herself – her body and mind while pregnant. A child comes and exposes the inner person of her mother. Does the soul transcends in genes?

Once grown up, you look back and realize how some memories, shape who we are, what we choose, at a certain point we all become the memory we keep. That unfinished life goes on in our mind, and we walk into it, be it the overwhelming joy, pride, gratitude, grief, remorse, rage, etc. More so, some people become victims of their past for the rest of their lives, and others flee.

Fortunately, unlike the everlasting soul, the mind has many parts. It constantly changes; we get a chance to evolve and expand and let go of the past.

Yuval Noah Harari, in his book “Homo Deus”, describes the mind as a flow of subjective experiences, such as pain, pleasure, anger and love. These mental experiences are made of interlinked sensations, emotions and thoughts, which flash for a brief moment, and immediately disappear.’ This frenzied collection of experiences constitutes the stream of consciousness. 

Consciousness! Do I get conscious only when I’m experiencing these sensations and thoughts?

Biologists say, good or bad thing happens, our electric signals stimulate certain neurons, which react by sending off more signals. These stimulate other neurons down the line, commanding the adrenal glands to flood the body with epinephrine, which is like an awakening. The body – the complex envelop where all this happens regularly.

Going back to our subject; our feelings and our intellect are a part of the mind. 

A lot of those feelings are not even said in words; they are felt, sometimes shown, other times ignored until they show up in health conditions.

I can tell when I’m experiencing fear of losing somebody substantial in my life. My chest feels tight, empty, like I’ve lost my sense of safety, and the worst part is that I can’t put those feelings into words, at least to let the other person know how crashed I am. 

There’s also a feeling of anxiety. Some people have anxiety meeting with new people, they get churning feeling in stomach, heart racing, hands shaking, having hot flushes and weak knees. You somehow feel small, not confident about yourself, like you are not sure if what you give is enough. All these without a single word coming out. What’s the soul trying to communicate in this situation?

Love! The greatest of all. Why is it associated with an organ – the heart? When the emotion is sweet, the heart feels like it’s going to bust from joy, and when the emotion is hurt, the heart feels heavy, like bleeding. How does the soul and spirit express themselves through these feelings?

There’re different ways we bring these three together in harmony, and it’s all relative. Body, soul and spirit can merge through having an intellectual conversation, sharing passion, adventure, meditation, making love, and so on. What’s yours? Have you find it yet?

What I have realized is that every part of our being has food which is separate and independent. The spirit’s food is dedicated to reading scriptures and prayers. Whereas for the soul to keep that flame, we educate ourselves to enforce our intellect and share love for our emotional satisfaction. As the food of the body is agricultural produce and nutrients from animals.