What is a Soul?

[Verbe]

Sometimes I get caught up on the difference between your mind and your soul. It feels like one of life's greatest challenges, to reconcile all the different things your mind, body, and soul want to do.

For example, my mind hates exercise. Super boring. Difficult sometimes. Makes you look kinda stupid. But my body LOVES exercise. And you know how sometimes, you're in a place and doing a thing, but it just doesn't feel right and you don't know why? I feel like that's the mind/soul conflict.

So... what IS a soul?

[Jessica]

I think of the mind being the tool of the ego. Temporary, of this life.
And soul is the part of us that is eternal, part of you that is divinity, connected to everything else.

[Jessica]

but i guess that doesn't really answer what it IS. It's just what I call "God", I guess. It is what it is. Divinity.

[neonspectraltoast]

I like to muse that this whole reality we're born into is actually as spiritual as anything we can conceive, and that we literally are our souls. (And it's helpful to me to identify "people" as "souls" rather.)

But according to me, there is a difference between soul and spirit. The spirit is the proverbial waves emanating from the stone/soul. We have little idea the effect we have on the world, but I imagine it's more profound than we realize.

The essence of each living thing also becomes genetic through memory. And yadda yadda, everything is essential to the existence of the whole.

The spirit casts its effect on eternity, both the past and present, in tiny, unnoticeable ways, but also in immediate ways, like dreaming of a deceased love one.

I always say, I did not invent my mother or father. My dreams are literally rooted in the reality of their being. It's the spirit of themselves living on through the mysterious heart of the psyche.

Rambling on...I think of film less as media and more as the microscope by which we can analyze a real and existent past.

[neonspectraltoast]

Good question, I love these convos.

[Meliai]

I think of this in three different ways. I think of my soul as the purest part of me, this eternal burning love inside of me. And I also think of it as the higher self, the guiding voice that resides on a higher plane than my ego/mind. And I also think there's an aspect of me that doesn't quite belong to me; it belongs to the interconnected web of life and to the universe.

Various planes of existence for the same spiritual force, I guess? The soul is multifaceted

I'm still trying to work a lot of this out lol

[Jessica]

I like to muse that this whole reality we're born into is actually as spiritual as anything we can conceive, and that we literally are our souls. (And it's helpful to me to identify "people" as "souls" rather.)

Yes. don't know where this quote originates but I like it and I've seen a few times:

We're not humans having a spiritual experience; we're souls having a human experience

[Jessica]

i got it wrong.. *spiritual beings having a human experience

[Jessica]

Meliai that is adorable

[Coldwater]

Delenn : Then I will tell you a great secret, Captain. Perhaps the greatest of all time. The molecules of your body are the same molecules that make up this station, and the nebula outside, that burn inside the stars themselves. We are star stuff. We are the universe made conscious, trying to figure itself out.

Babylon-5

[Tropical Breeze]

I don't know. There are some who have said to found their soulmate. Then there are also some who have won the Soul Train Music Awards. Perhaps they eat a lot of soul food.

Then of course there is Soul Glo;

"You know, you could be all the things you've always wanted to be. Beautiful, sexy, easy as one, two, three."

(1 min vid)

[WritersPanic]

Souls probably have no gender. What use would they have for it?

[Verbe]

Gendered souls??? Perish the thought

[Verbe]

I think your soul is the thing that goes back into the universe after you die, your body is this archaic piece of junk that's borderline useless but also amazing, and your mind has to reconcile the two. Your soul is always going to be "you" whatever that is. But you could shed your body and mind and still be that intrinsic essence of you, which I personally think is the soul.

I'm not gonna lie this is like the ultimate question that I struggle with. Why do so many components of my being want such vastly different things. Cause your mind says one thing and you feel something else deep in your soul, and then your body is like "should we run? I'm gonna do some jumping jacks" it's like mmm great

[neonspectraltoast]

I could be wrong. Ultimately I see things more abstractly, though. I think we just grow accustomed to what is fundamentally strange.

We try to figure it all out...all we can do is wait for another Einstein.

But who knows the mysteries of this life, really. I just think the door is wide open for minds to one day experience a basic truth that makes everything ok, live or die.

Still I have panic attacks. I just hope life teaches me to go out peacefully and not frantically. I don't want to die crying, unless they're tears of joy. I'm afraid I'll be begging the nurses, "Please don't let me die!"

It's strange how, despite what I believe, I'm still probably enjoying this roller coaster the least. Maybe why God goes out of Its way to comfort me.

[Vanilla Gorilla]

[Din Djarin]

The soul is the spiritual aspect of our being. Since our being is an intertwining mix of mental, spiritual and physical/material aspects it's far from always possible to pinpoint which aspect is fully responsible of, or in conflict with, a particular act, thought or other aspect imo.
I'm also skeptical wether there is a purest part of our being, perhaps the soul/spiritual aspect is the only part that lasts, but also the only part that does not define our being at all in this reality. I mean the parts that determine who we really are there are our mental and physical aspects, aren't they?

[Verbe]

Sorry only people with souls can comment on this thread

[Din Djarin]