Last Thoughts on Souling (for this year)

These are my last thoughts on souling for 2010. No, really.

I am now adjusting my thoughts to include a new image using the number four as borrowed from alchemy. Imagine four color circles all overlapping in the center. As stated in an earlier post, the center created by overlapping circles is the occurrence of souling. However, in adjustment of my earlier thoughts, I would add another "petal." To mind, body, spirit, I now add emotions (heart). Where these four overlap, the space of souling is created. Therefore, by definition, if one of these aspects of souling is missing, no souling takes place although the "trappings" of spiritual behavior may appear to be soul-based. Indeed, modern Christianity (in my view, the religion I know best) is a good example of such a deflowered faith, taking off in one direction or another rather than struggling with the balance of all four characteristics.

For those of the Jungian persuasion, I place the four petals as the feeling, thinking, intuitive, sensing functions. The central overlapping is souling both within an individual as well as within any human organization. Whenever one of these aspects of souling is absent, souling is not possible. This is the reason why religious institutions, non-profit charitable organizations, and other human gatherings, especially those with "higher" purposes, crash and burn. Either one or more of these petals has died or been picked. Each petal needs the nurture of attention and exercise. No petal can be discarded for in doing so, souling ceases.

This sacred season, I especially encourage those who are living disquiet or worse - soulless - lives to reflect on their lives to see if one or more of these petals needs attention and reach out to the many ways any of these petals can be reclaimed and energized.

Souling Revised

After the October entry, more thought. Heart, Mind, and Spirit with the overlapping center as the space of Souling. We can all be pulled into one sphere being dominant but if we go too far, our balance - our center is lost. Only in the moment of Heart, Mind, and Spirit coming together and being incarnate (Body) can Souling take place.

Souling

In our description, we use the word soul. We then went on to claim that a soul emerges, takes many forms, and can be nurtured, manipulated, or thwarted.

So, what do we mean by soul? Sometimes soul and spirit are used to mean the same thing. We hold that these terms are distinctly different. Intuitively, we feel that if we asked a person to join us at a spiritual event or a soulful event, two different “feels” would be expressed. There is something of the sky in spirit and something earthy about soul. This is our working definition (meaning up for discussion and modification) of soul. Soul is when spirit and earth comingle. In fact, we prefer “souling.” Souling implies a verbal, an action, whereas soul implies a static, definable “thing.”

Psyche seeks soma for souling.

With this understanding we join the conversation related to whether a person defines themselves as religious or spiritual. When I first encountered the debate I was lead to believe that religious meant that a person followed a certain spiritually focused discipline. Spiritual people lacking discipline were merely finding a way to not commit to any disciplines of practicing their faith. Spirituality became “airy-fairy” while religious people were focused, deep, and determined.

Then I looked around at the religious people I know. Were they focused, deep, and determined in their spiritual disciplines? Frankly, the answer was no. Religiosity had degraded into habitual behaviors and defensive positions. Slowly as our culture polarized, the religion/spirituality debate spun out with centrifugal force. Now the “truly” religious became literalist-conservatives and those in the spiritual camp devolved into synchronous mush.

So, ta-da, we bring you souling. It is more of an experience than a definition. You know it when you experience it and it changes your life in a small to a big way. Curiously, you may experience souling in the midst of a religious tradition or spiritual event, but not always. It is the moment when something is both bigger and deeper than its parts would indicate, an experiential gestalt,transcendence with both feet on the ground.

So there you have it in a nut shell (no amplification of my use of the word “nut” please). We invite anyone to respond if they are also intrigued and experienced in souling. Actually, if you have had such an experience, we would love to hear of it.

Reading

Sons and daughters of the earth, steep yourself in the sea of matter,
bathe in its fiery waters, for it is the source of your life and your youthfulness.

You thought you could do without it because the power of thought has been kindled in you? You hoped that the more thoroughly you rejected the tangible, the closer you would be to spirit: that you would be more divine if you lived in the world of pure thought, or at least more angelic if you fled the corporeal?
Well, you were like to have perished of hunger.

You must have oil for your limbs, blood for your veins, water for your soul, the world of reality for your intellect: do you not see that the very law of your own nature makes these a necessity for you?

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin