Inner Thorns
It’s amazing how long along this path called life that it takes for us to begin to understand how and why we are what we are. Having spent over 18 formative years in organised evangelical religion I have to say that it didn’t help that much. It told me about a forgiving God, a sin cleansing Saviour and very little about me, the real me that is.
So here is my little effort to make things simpler for us all.
I believe that we comprise body, soul and spirit.
1) The Body
Bodies are truly amazing things! A living organism of compressed energy in which we appear to dwell. So closely are ‘we’ identified with it that it appears to some to be all there is. Yet I reckon that it’s only a home of sorts, albeit a highly complex and important one for our experience of soul and spirit during our space-time travels.
2) The Soul or Psyche
This mysterious ‘part’ of us is a psychic membrane of sorts, one that stores and absorbs all of our life-time experiences. It’s closely linked to the body’s central nervous system but isn’t identical to it. It is here that we feel the joys and pains of both our conscious and unconscious bumps with the energy of others. The collective memories and interpretations of our past mimetic encounters are packed away, determining our present position on the happiness spectrum of our present consciousness. Embedded here is our personal crown of thorns, the piercing wounds of word and action launched by other hurting souls
I reckon that if we were not in the body the soul would be obsolete. Perhaps our soul tapes are replayed at death for a final time before being wiped or stored away safely for future use! Who knows. Anyway it is here in this all singing dancing psyche-soul that our suffering does its thing. Here we feel the pain of rejection and non being, the results of the withdrawal of unconditional love. It is here that we have been stabbed in the back, it is here that we have hit back in reflex anger.
The soul is an extremely sensitive member of our triune-self. Indeed it is all about sensation and the interpretation of external data coming at us through the medium of the body and its myriad of sensors. The look of rejection, the furrowed brow, the smiling face; all are interpreted and stored away to enhance or destroy our inner sense of well-being.
Shockingly, most of us live here most of the time; this is to be ‘soulish’, to be a performing tight rope walker on the wire of human authentication; one who’s always up or down on the ever changing league table of Self acceptance.
3) The spirit.
This little Divine spark lies buried under the smothering canopy of psyche-soul. It’s always there, pulsating with the energy of Divine Love, the Source of Being from which we sprang pre-conception. It is our guide here in this sensory world of misinterpretation and illusion. The human spirit doesn’t have up or down days. It’s always constant in its ‘I Am’ nature, one filled with a non circumstantial joy.
The spirit waits patiently for Wisdom to lead us to our moment of enlightenment or awareness; the born from above experience of getting it for the first time in our earthly sojourn. The realisation that we’re more than our psyche-soul with all its inner recordings of outer experiences is a liberation indeed. To discover that we are more than this data-base of stored feeling is a life changer.
When we finally get a hold of this tripartite model of ourselves, it helps explain our inner and outer struggles.
It also explains the spirituality of Yeshua, the Nazarene, one sent to free us from the dominance of our wounded psyche-soul, the seared nerve centre of our daily life among the sons and daughters of Adam. The Galilean prophet-teacher taught about losing our psyche-soul’s dominance and finding it again under the liberating, healing flow of Spirit Breath.
“Whoever chooses to save his psyche shall lose it, and whoever will lose his psyche shall find it.”
Yeshua bar Yosef
Lots to talk about in future posts!
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