TBM4: More Thoughts on the Soul
I’d like to be able to recommend some well-written books to you about the constitution, as it were, of your soul. But I can’t. Because there aren’t any.
I know this because, for my Master’s degree in theological studies, I recently wrote a long research paper (or short thesis, if you prefer) on the history of doctrines of the soul in ancient Greek, Judaic, and early Christian thought. You wouldn’t believe how kooky some of the ideas were back then — and how kooky they continue to be in major world religions today. These ideas are so kooky that fiction writers — the people who write horror and dark fantasy novels and screenplays — don’t need to invent any new ideas. All they have to do is recycle ancient ideas about the soul that have been scaring the crap out of people for thousands of years.
So ya got yer stories about lost souls. And stolen souls. And soul vampires. And souls detaching from bodies to go on nightly dream journeys. And souls corrupted by original sin. And souls wandering around as ghosts. And souls sent to Hell or Sheol or Gehenna or Hades or whatever. And souls enslaved by the devil. And souls that are demons in disguise. And souls that can be controlled with magic spells, potions, or rituals. And souls that are trapped in assorted jars, bowls, vials, statues, TV sets, cars, and the latest fad, of course — Facebook pages.
These ideas about the soul all have one thing in common: they reek of paranoia and terror. So I’m thinkin’ they have nothing to do with God, and everything to do with major mental illness (eg. psychosis).
In other words, these untrusting ideas about the soul belong in only one place, and that’s the garbage can.
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So today’s practical tip is this: when it comes to the constitution of your soul, keep it simple, keep it sane.
Start with the assumption that God is not stupid.
From there, go to the assumption that God only creates good souls that can’t be imprisoned and can’t be stolen.
Then remind yourself (as often as you can) that you are a good soul, too. (In other words, God didn’t turn all of Creation upside down and zero in on you — and only you — just so you can be the one and only soul in Heaven and Earth who’s truly defective. No pity parties allowed.)
After that, there’s only one logical place to go — total confusion! ‘Cause if God’s not stupid, and God only makes good souls, and you are a good soul, but your life is still a complete mess . . . then the problem is that you don’t have the necessary tools — the facts, the information, the knowledge, the insight you need — in order to make sense of who you are and why you’re here.
As I said yesterday, your problems as a human being aren’t caused by your soul. Your problems are caused by poor teaching — poor teaching that makes it almost impossible for you to live a balanced, holistic life with the information you currently have.
It’s not God who has created the confusion within you. It’s all the poor teaching you got when you were growing up. It’s all the black-and-white (dualistic) thinking that got rammed down your throat year after year. All the either-or ideas. All the pure rights and pure wrongs. The winners and the losers. The saved and the unsaved. The righteous and the unrighteous.
Creation isn’t made like that. And neither is your soul. It’s not healthy for your soul and it’s not healthy for your biological body to embrace black-and-white thinking. Black-and-white thinking leads to perfectionism. Perfectionism leads to extremism. Extremism leads to violence and terror.
Better to be confused for a while than to be caught in a nightmare of perfectionism and “Divine Law.”
Living a confused life is much simpler than living a perfect life.
On the Spiral Path, simpler is better.
