What is your Soul?

I’ve got some SCOOP on the soul.
You have a soul
Everyone has a soul
Animals have a soul
What is your definition of your soul?
“Body in charge during life, soul takes over after body dies.”
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This is The Great Commandment:

“…You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind and all your strength and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

On the surface it is a simple statement but the biggest FAQ (or frequently asked question) from my perspective is “How do I love God with my soul if I don’t know what my soul is?” So that’s the topic for today…What is your soul?

You could find a few answers to that question in here in this book entitled The Inner Journey Home: Soul’s Realization of the Unity of Reality, (A.H. Almaas)* about 725 pages answering that question. But I’m prepared to tell you in the next 15 minutes before you partake of the soul food waiting for you on the communion table.

So let’s just go for it!

This is not a new topic but one seldom spoken about. The reason is there are so many exalted theories about the soul that go back to the early authors on the topic who didn’t agree on it enough to make a theory that sticks.

The ancient Greeks started writing about this a long time ago and Socrates is credited to be the Father of the Western conception of the soul about 2,500 years ago. People have been writing books like this 725 page tome about it ever since.

At first at the famous Council of Nicea in the year 325 the fathers decided that the soul had no spiritual essence and only the grace of God as mediated through the church could purify the soul which was wretched and tainted by original sin. In other words they taught that humans are as rotten as garbage and only God can save us and only if we go to church. They further controlled our redemption for one thousand five hundred years by decreeing that reading the Bible yourself was a crime punishable by death. Yes, only the priest could read the Bible and they burned you at the stake if you dared to hold one, own one or read one. They burned many men like this before they started burning women as witches.

This was very lucrative for the church because those found guilty and executed also forfeited all their land and possessions to the church. The punishment often extended to other family members so brothers and sons often also lost their property as part of the punishment.

Now lest you decide to hate the Church for the vile ways it manipulated and controlled humans for 1500 years I want to add a dash of perspective. We humans were primitive and tribal when all of this was started. We were still tribal in feudal and Medieval Europe 1,000 years ago. Think about the painful difficulties in tribal societies like Iraq and Afghanistan where it takes force and fear to organize tribal authorities. Many scholars say that it is because of the Church that Western Civilization has developed the way we have without tribal warfare limiting the advancements we have enjoyed.

So the rise of the Church was a power struggle. They worked together with reigning monarchs and they used the doctrine of original sin to teach our inherent wretchedness and keep us convinced we needed a middle man to have contact with God. Vestiges of our wretchedness are still around and we sing about it…”Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me”…and so forth. But for the most part, progressive Christianity at least has pulled away from the use of original sin and violence for control.

Then monasteries came into being and some devoted monastics (monks and nuns) who spent a great deal of time in prayer and contemplation of God began to have a direct experience of the love of God and they experienced their own divine nature or true nature as love. Slowly we have moved toward the image of a more loving God and a more concrete  understanding of the indwelling resurrected Christ.

But the soul has been a confusing topic and if you went to a minister and said, “What is my soul?” he/she might say, “It is the part of you that lives after your body dies.” “Well,’ you might say, “How do I connect with it now?” This is the point at which the topic gets very , how shall I say it?….woofty? Woo woo? Let’s just say it’s a topic that’s hard to wrap your head around. It’s been swept under the rug a lot because of 1) esoteric theories, 2) lack of agreement over time and the 3) soul’s very subtle nature.

I think it took an atheist Jewish psychologist in Chicago to discover an easy way to connect with the soul and he stumbled upon it in his therapy practice working with troubled young women about 30 years ago. You can’t imagine my joy when I discovered the work of this man! For 35 years I have been a searcher and have never found a satisfactory answer to the question, “What is the soul?”

Look at the cover of your bulletin.

Dick Schwartz was working with young women who were cutting themselves, binging and purging, suffering terribly. One day when his client came to her session with a huge fresh cut across her face, after promising at the previous session she would not hurt herself. She told him, “I wasn't going to cut but a part of me made me do it.”  In desperation Dick asked to speak to the part of her that did the cutting.

Immediately a part of the young woman came forward and explained that the cutting was essential protection and for her own good. The part explained it convinced her to cut herself because it was protecting her from the emotional pain she would feel about her childhood if she wasn’t in physical pain. The part believed that physical pain hurts less than emotional pain.

Over time Dick learned that all of us have inner parts that work to protect us and even the extreme parts that cut or are addicted to bad substances are all trying to protect and help the inner system to cope and thrive. In a concrete way he learned that all of our parts are good and if we build relationships with them and learn their highest intention for the inner system we can help them relax and take their preferred role which is always to help and do no harm. When an inner part learns they are hurting more than helping they stop. Dick teaches that we are all multiples with many parts and that all parts are good and all parts are welcome. (Not multiple personality syndrome but “I have a part that wants to eat the bacon and a part telling me not to eat the bacon.”)

What about our wretchedness? When the parts that might be called wretched are understood and loved by our soul they integrate into positive, resourceful parts that contribute and nourish the whole.

Every part of you is good and when welcomed to the feast at the inner table of the soul you become more and more able to live from the essential qualities of Being listed on the front of your bulletin.

Dick created these 8 “C” words to help us remember the qualities of the Soul (which he calls Self because he is in the world of psychology and not faith but he acknowledges his experience with people is that he is communicating with their soul). His therapy system identifies the parts and has them step aside until the targeted troubled part has direct contact with the client’s/your soul. When the troubled part feels the connection, calm, compassion, caring and clarity of the Soul it transforms, heals, relaxes, and often sobs with relief that it doesn't have to do its difficult job any more.

I’ve worked with people with this method for many years and I know it works. I believe I can have direct contact with my soul and you can have direct contact with yours. We can live directly from our soul and not with our parts being in charge.

I know that all of you is good and there is nothing inside you that is not good. At the essential level of your soul you are clear, connected, compassionate, caring, courageous, creative, calm, curious. The other parts of you that pop up like anger, jealousy, judgment, hatred, fear, are parts of you that can take over and convince you that there is no other choice but to be angry in this moment. Those parts are not bad and they aren’t your soul. Your soul is more like the 8 “C’s.”

Furthermore, I agree with the Christian thinkers and mystics who teach that our soul is the divinity within us …the living God, resurrected Christ, eternal, precious, permeable, impressionable, a pearl beyond price. Our soul works together with the intelligence of the heart and it is who you really are.

You are good
You are precious
You are clear
You are connected
You are calm
You are courageous
You are compassionate
You are caring
You are creative
You are curious
That is who you really are.

Your soul is your essential Being that longs for the spiritual food of the communion and the connection with the other people in this room and around the world. So let us sing a bit and share a meal for our souls!

Amen.

Sabbatical replacement pastor Reverend Gayle Madison
First Congregational United Church of Christ, Santa Rosa
July 6, 2014

Copyright © 2014 Gayle Madison