Minor Edits – 10-15-24
THE DYNAMICS OF THE LIVING SOUL
“Be ye perfect like your Father in Heaven is perfect.” Matthew 5:48
Each time a soul enters into life, we lose the memory of our spiritual origin; so we forget we are living souls. If we retained the memory of our divine nature, it would negate the purpose of entering into a physical body to have a human existence. Four hundred years before Christ, Plato recognized this when he wrote about souls reincarnating into the material realm, stating that “souls must cross over Lethe, the River of Forgetfulness, whose waters produce a loss of memory from our true nature.” Just as fish cannot fly as long as they are in the water, neither can souls evolve and grow to their full potential as long as they remain in the spiritual realm.
Why are living souls willing to leave the bliss and serenity of the spiritual realm to face the challenges of life on Earth? The simple answer is personal growth through life experiences on Earth. Personal growth can only come from the realizations gained from being in a body and through interactions with other embodied souls; these exchanges take place in physical, emotional, mental and spiritual encounters. Such encounters awaken the body’s consciousness to life and people, through: stimulation, confusion, enlightenment, disappointment, pleasure, sorrow, joy, pain, hope, etc. Only through multiple lives can this array of experiences sufficiently awaken our soul so we remember our divine origin and to realize: our capabilities, our likes and dislikes, our personal weaknesses, our unique talents, our empathy for others, and our unique mission in this creation.
The more complex answer is we souls were created, in the beginning of time, to be involved in this Eternity System, referred to as the 7-Days of Creation, and each one of us has a role to play in order for this creation to reach its fulfillment. In order for souls to discover their true purpose they must endure the pleasure, the pain and the challenges of life on Earth. While in the spiritual realms, we have assistance from advanced souls who help us find a suitable life that will maximize the development of our unique talents; and there are guides to help us enter this life and angels to watch over us.
The Tapestry of Life
There are an infinite number of eternal souls who are all working to fulfill the Creator’s divine plan. The story of humanity is being immortalized and preserved in the Tapestry of Life the Creator is weaving. Each one of us, as a living soul, is a thread in this divine tapestry; each of our lives will live forever as a precious thread in the remarkable story of humanity. There are numerous spiritual truths present in this tapestry analogy; research and insights reveal this analogy is close to reality. The first insight to consider is that the “macro-matrix” of the 7-Days of Creation is already complete. We are midway through the fourth day, but the unfinished part of the tapestry is like a “paint by the numbers image.” In other words, the Creator, in Its Omnipotent Creative Consciousness has already completed the details of the 7-Days, so now the tapestry is being woven as each present moment ticks by.
The next insight is the threads or life-lines which comprise the Tapestry of Life and bring it to fulfillment, are found in the unique life-experiences of the individual human bodies assigned to the various life-lines; this is where free will and destiny meet. The Creator created the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, all modeled on the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ Jesus, and with a clear fulfillment for the Seventh Day. However, to make this happen, it is up to each of us souls to choose the life-line of a physical body and enter into the life-experiences it represents and one we feel most suited for. God has given all souls the opportunity and free will to participate in the coming Kingdom hoping we will follow the Way of Life of Jesus Christ rather than following the illusions, temptations and suffering of the material world.
It is common for those of us who are on the spiritual path to be reminded that we are not our bodies; we are eternal souls. However, all bodies are one with the archetypal matrix of the Adamic body created by the Creator through the Elohim Elders. Jesus Christ is often referred to as the second Adam or the resurrected Adam. As we move forward on the path of life, we will continue to improve the bodies we inhabit until they begin to exhibit the qualities of Christ Jesus, i.e., the body, soul and spirit harmoniously co-existing. The most important thing regarding our purpose as living-souls is to remember we are emulating Jesus Christ by modeling our life, behaviors and character as selfless souls who follow the will of God. Jesus said, “These things I do so shall you do also and greater than these.” (John14:12)
Consciousness & Soul
The soul’s life is the breath of God which breathes us every moment of our life; breathing is the active aspect of the soul, whereas the passive aspect of the soul bears the record of our past and present life experiences. Within each soul is a Divine Eternal Atom, unique to it, as the Light, Life and Love of the Creator as God-Consciousness which expresses through each human as the triune intelligence of knowing, thinking, and doing. At the highest level within our soul/being is the consciousness of our true, eternal Self-Identity and Self-Knowledge. This divine perfection is our Spiritual-I. The reason we don’t fully experience our Spiritual-I is because we obscure it by the imperfect way we think, live, and behave in life.
We living souls are one with God, but we are only beginning to be conscious of God-Consciousness. God-Consciousness, without changing Its Essence, can become more conscious of Consciousness, i.e., It can become infinitely and diversely more conscious AS Its creative ideas, AS Its potentialities, and AS Its infinite manifestations. God-Consciousness does this by integrating the soul into the elemental matter of the body, thus giving it the appearance of being alive. All life forms in the universe are created in this image and likeness of life and matter intermingling in physical bodies. When a life ends, the physical matter returns to the dust of the ground, but the living soul never dies; it is unique among all life forms because it is one with God and the “breath of life.”
What differentiates humans from all other living bodies on Earth is that we are individual self-conscious beings, whereas, animals are conscious as a species, but not self-conscious individually. Self-consciousness, as opposed to only being conscious, is an example of being more conscious of consciousness. The most unique quality of self-consciousness is that it has within it the potential to be super-conscious or God-conscious. When self-conscious light and life live in elemental matter, the spirit and living soul become the means by which consciousness can become more conscious of consciousness as well as the means by which we evolve our physical form into higher states of being as Jesus Christ did.
The soul is altered in each life we live; thus our beingness distinctly manifests the incremental changes in growth and self-awareness we have gained from our previous life experiences. Though we part with the body and physical plane at the end of life, we are still present in our eternal Triune Self. Human beings will continue to re-exist until they regenerate the imperfect mortal body into a perfect and immortal Adamic body from which we were created. The regeneration, restoration, and resurrection of the perfect body and soul in conscious union with God is our spiritual destiny.
SpiritualChristian.com
Essential Matter
The dynamics of the living soul are found in its multidimensional presence. The human soul traverses these dimensions with ease as a result of its refined nature, thus, the soul fulfills its duty in the bodies which comprise our beingness, i.e., in the: physical, psychic, mental and spiritual dimensions. The soul circulates through these bodily dimensions with each breath the human takes because the soul is the breath of our body. The breath-form of a person is unique to that person and is ever-present throughout life. The breath of a person has “a formless form” that is beyond space/time and is unique to the individual; this breath-form is active as breathing and passive as the soul of the human. The passive state of the soul is imprinted with every action we perform, every word we speak and every thought we think in life.
The experiences we have in life are retained upon the “super-refined” matter comprising the soul called essential-matter. Essential-matter is omnipresent, invisible, super-refined matter which is in the process of transitioning into spirit; its delicate nature makes it extremely susceptible to being imprinted by thoughts, words and actions of human beings. This is how, over many lifetimes, the physical body is incrementally resurrected to higher states of consciousness.
We humans are both matter and spirit, and our soul, as essential-matter, resides in the unseen realm between matter and spirit. As long as we reside in a physical body, our soul resides with us. On the one hand, the soul is comprised of the sum total of our many life experiences and is a “composite” influence on each new life we live. On the other hand, in each new life, the soul is the divine matrix, a fixed configuration which is expressed through the new physical body giving it its intelligence, temperament, character and the condensed guidance from its many past live experiences.
The soul is altered in each life, for better or worse, by our thinking, words, and deeds. This is what Christ referred to as “we reap what we sow.” These words and deeds are the karma of our individual destiny which follows us from lifetime to lifetime. It is karmic destiny which determines what kind of life experiences we will have this time around and our reactions to these experiences creates the new karmic destiny that will define our next life experience.
The souls in this universe are the living expression of God-consciousness; we are the living cells in the mind of God. As John 4:24 says, “God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” In other words, since God, the Father is a spirit, collectively, we humans represent: God’s experience in the physical realm; God’s experience of creativity and imagination in the human mind; God’s experience of love, compassion and inspiration in our hearts and souls; and we experience God’s Divine Love, Divine Wisdom and Divine Truth when we “let go” and surrender ourselves to God. Through humanity, God experiences life on Earth.
The 4-Fold Human Body
What is referred to as “4-States of Being” in the diagram below is the composite, passive expression of these accumulated life experiences which are gathered from the activity of spiritual intelligence in our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual lives. Our soul resides in the intermediate state between the physical body and the eternal spirit; the soul penetrates our being imprinting and preserving our life history upon its etheric substance. It is important to point out that the soul is only imprinted with the lived experiences one has in life; if one never awakens spiritually, the soul will lack the feelings for and the attraction to the knowledge of the higher spiritual realities.
The diagram below helps to establish an understanding of how and why the soul differentiates itself according to the four natures of our subtle bodies. The soul is more refined spiritually than any of our inner states so it can easily and naturally blend and adapt itself to the subtle bodies regardless of their refined nature. Since the soul adapts and fuses with the four states of our being, this synthesis reveals that the soul is imprinted with the unique beingness of each state whether it is physical, psychic, mental or spiritual. Thus, there is a natural adaptation of soul and being, making these two sides of the same coin.
The diagram below shows the soul listed with the area of the body it is associated with, but this list is static or fixed and fails to reveal the dynamics of the soul which plays an important role in our evolutionary progress. In meditation, the passive, static state of the soul/being is focused on to reveal, examine, illuminate and experience its true reality in the four stages of meditation. The meditation process reveals the spiritual health, clarity and well-being or the imbalance and obstructions in the various states.
Meditation & the Soul
In reality, we bring our karmic destiny with us into each new life. What this means is our past life karma is configured into our new life so all our previous weaknesses as well as new opportunities for growth are tallied up and configured into the process of finding a human body/life-line that aligns with these past deeds. The veil of destiny we bring into each new life determines our: geographical location; the circumstances regarding poverty or plenty / peace or violence in one’s environment; parents, race, gender, bodily health and wholeness; temperament, psychological stability, intelligence and motivation; as well as spiritual potential. This is one’s destiny and this is what we have to work on and awaken to through self-awareness.
Along with the life circumstances described above, there will also be the propensities of one’s character as to whether one is susceptible to addiction, anger, violence, selfishness, etc., or whether one has a strong moral foundation, good will towards others, thoughtfulness, a peaceful disposition, and a pleasant personality. As the soul’s beingness unfolds through the four stages of development into adulthood, these various character traits will begin to manifest especially during adolescence. (See: Recapitulation)
Typically, young adults grow up guided by the parental, religious and cultural influences of their historical time period and geographical location. The expression of “ordinary or unawakened” consciousness in human beings in a region or nation is referred to as the “mass-mind” of that population. There is also a “mass-mind” of those on different platforms of social media; a “mass-mind” in different high schools and universities, a “mass-mind” of the drug culture, of different immigrant groups, of different political groups, of different religions, etc. People think, believe and are guided by the mass-mind of their group; they do not see the reality of life or of their true Self. However, when people awaken spiritually they break free of the mass-minded illusions of the world in order to experience their true Self.
Generally, in western civilization, this procession of the human through life happens on auto-pilot with the young adult finishing their education, looking for a job and perhaps, a mate. This unremarkable description is meant to indicate that many people move through life never asking themselves the questions of, “Who am I and Where am I going?” Consequently, they move forward in life, half-asleep, living in the circumstances and challenges of their past karma while creating new karma relative to whatever circumstances they are presently encountering. The problem here is this is a vicious circle for the soul that keeps repeating itself lifetime after lifetime without making significant forward progress.
If we make no effort in this life to awaken and advance ourselves spiritually, we will carry all our mistakes into the spiritual afterlife, and these mistakes, as karma, will adversely affect the choice of a new body and the conditions of our new life. There comes a time when we, as living souls, must make the effort to awaken from the illusion of the material world with all its enticements, temptations, technological traps and infinite distractions. Take some time to sit quietly and be still – just breathe and BE – and try to answer these two questions. For those souls who have awakened and are hungry for Self-knowledge, it begins within. This website explains how to awaken conscious awareness and this paper explains how to connect with one’s soul to purify the soul as well as to keep from creating new karma.
The first two stages of meditation explore, awaken, realize and transform the lower psychic nature (diagram below in red) which is the repository for everyone’s bad karma in this life. The three lower chakras in the circles are wired to the physical body making them very susceptible to temptation, self-indulgence and anger, etc. Stage 1 & 2 Meditation explains in detail how to negotiate this territory; this takes discipline and commitment to accomplish; however, it is the path to spiritual freedom. Before beginning, one needs to learn how to focus the mind by shutting down the “chattering-mind” we are all familiar with. (See: Chattering-Mind) Follow the steps of this meditation system to awaken the higher spiritual consciousness which makes one sensitive enough to distinguish between consciousness and soul.
There is a process in which one can cleanse the soul by bringing the past mistakes of this life into the light and recognize them in order to correct and absolve these errors. Past mistakes can only be forgiven in life, but never after one’s death; we don’t evolve while in the spiritual world. This paper is presented so those in pursuit of an enlightened spirit can erase the karma from the soul before passing out of this life. This means one can enter their next life with minimum karma which enables us to better focus on and achieve our spiritual goals. This is explained below in the 3 Emanations of the Soul.
Becoming aware of and connecting with the soul for the purpose of purifying it is an advanced stage beyond the 4-stages of meditation. However, it is necessary to begin at the beginning with meditation which means we have to - through a focused mind - gain minimum control of the primal urges of our animal instinctual body (Stage 1) so these energies do not disturb our attempt to awaken and connect with the lower psychic. In this stage, it is a matter of becoming familiar with the urges, impulses, instincts and cravings of the animal nature and subduing the persistent pull for attention these forces exert on the physical body. When this is accomplished, the lower psychic gradually appears and reveals itself.
The difficulty of the next step in awakening the lower psychic depends on the purity of one’s soul, mind, conscience and moral foundation. The diagram above is loaded with the 7+ deadly sins; it is likely that most of those who are reading this will have very few of these sins. According to Carl Jung, the Shadow-self is just another name for one’s personal unconscious. The personal unconscious is the reservoir that holds all the unresolved issues of our current life which one has not dealt with. Stage 2 explains how these unconscious issues simply disappear as soon as one becomes conscious of the particular unresolved issue. In most cases, completing Stage 2 Meditation is the equivalent of unraveling and realizing this life’s karma; it removes psychological obstacles which can hinder personal growth.
The diagrams on this page are important in forming perceptions for understanding the relationship of the soul to our nature-body and to our spiritual advancement. The individual experiences of one’s physical, psychological, mental and spiritual life imprint the soul and this condensed content helps in understanding oneself. There is a long series of steps that lie ahead on the path of light for everyone; everything in the universe is in an eternal process of life, death and rebirth. This cycle applies each time we awaken spiritually and make progress, which means we will eventually die to one level of understanding in order to be reborn on the next higher level of perception.
In reality, in the eternal-view of creation, humans, who have awakened spiritually and chosen the path of light, love and goodness, are in a constant process of improving and perfecting their spiritual bodies, their souls and their character; Christians do this by following the example Christ Jesus demonstrated which awakens the true Self within. The key to this is learning how to work with the soul and our invisible bodies so we can, eventually, transform the physical nature-body into spirit.
The 3 Emanations of the Soul
The diagram below was created around 2015 and recently updated when I recognized how much it corresponds to the latest diagram I was working on titled: The 3 Emanations of the Soul. The spiritual and etheric emanations of the soul can only be realized when one is spiritually awakened as illustrated in the diagram below; that is, when consciousness is free of darkness and delusion and one is sensitive enough to perceive the subtle nature of the soul. It is not possible to perceive, cleanse and raise the subtle energies of the soul into higher states if one has not negotiated one’s conscious attention through the psychic, mental and spiritual states within.
The teachings of soul transformation presented below are for those who have first transformed the composite, passive expressions of accumulated life experiences in the 4-states of the body (2nd diagram above) through the 4 Stages of Meditation. The transformational experiences in the four stages of meditation liberate the individual soul from the primal drives of the body, the darkness of the personal unconscious or shadow-self, the delusions of ego and the dark deceit, and the lies and illusions of the material world. The awakening of the soul is very different than the work done in meditation. Meditation is consciousness becoming conscious of consciousness on the four levels of our being: physical, psychic, mental and spiritual. Work on the soul is subjectively connecting to the soul to consciously and passively realize it and purify it.
Experience in the physical nature-body is the reason we are in the material realm because it is only in the elemental world that such experience for the soul is available. We would not progress intellectually or spiritually and we would not develop our soul and conscious awareness if it were not for the experiential interaction we have with the nature-body through our many lifetimes. The phenomenon of intelligent-light integrating into a nature-body and a nature-body gradually transitioning into intelligent-light is why the soul cycles in and out of life. The completion and fulfillment of this cycle was revealed to humanity in the life, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. This is the same path spiritually evolved souls are on.
The regeneration and transitioning of a physical body into spiritual light is what the resurrection of Jesus Christ is about. As this was a singular and significant event in His life, Jesus Christ intended for the regeneration and resurrection of the body into light to be a part of the spiritual experience of the Way of Life. With the resurrection and ascension, Jesus Christ revealed the heavenly realm as our true home and taught that we are capable of living in higher dimensions. For us to make such a transition as He did, takes more than one lifetime to accomplish.
The primary purpose of the soul is to track and preserve the history of our life experiences in each life we live. We are presently half way through the fourth day of creation and have a long journey to go before we get to the seventh day. The ultimate purpose of human life is about spiritual development so we can “be perfect like our Father in heaven is perfect.” Jesus said, “These things I do so shall you do also and greater than these” (John 14:12). As the offspring of the Creator, we have the potential and power within ourselves to be like Jesus Christ and expel the darkness of the world from our heart and soul and to overcome the challenges we face in life. This experience is possible when we awaken our spiritual consciousness and purify our soul.
The Dynamics of Living Souls
The teachings of the soul become clear when we realize the soul is bound to the micro and macro cycles involving sleep and death. When we live a day in our life, at night the body lays down to rest and it dies to the day just lived and we are reborn in the morning. As the physical body sleeps, our etheric body by means of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) maintains the vital-life systems of the body: respiration, circulation, digestion, heart rate, etc. As the body falls into deeper states of sleep, the astral body which is the Eternal Radiant Matrix of the Adamic form slips from the body along with the Spiritual-I and begins its night journey.
This is the micro cycle of life and death which is identical to the macro cycle, with a few exceptions. In the macro cycle, the physical body dies, and in the blink of an eye, we are alive and well in the etheric body. However, our time in the etheric body is limited to meeting our guardian angelic guide, reviewing the life experiences we just lived and preparing to transition to the spiritual or heavenly realms. The length of the transition period depends on how one has lived in life. If one has loved God and done no intentional harm to others, the process is quick and easy, which means at this point, we leave the etheric body behind, and just like dreaming at night, we transition into the higher realms in our astral body, Higher Self and soul. Note: the physical body and the etheric body are both mortal and do not follow us into the afterlife.
In the sleep cycle as well as the life/death cycle the soul divides itself in a variety of ways. When entering into a new life the soul will assign a portion or percentage of itself to the new body and the remaining portion remains in the heavenly realm; this percentage of soul is fixed once the being connects with the new body.* There is always some portion, large or small depending on the challenge of the life experience, which remains behind in the spiritual afterlife. Both portions of the soul function normally whether in Heaven or on Earth. This means our loved ones are always present to greet us whenever we return from our current life; even though they may have begun another life on Earth.
We humans are like snowflakes, all the same, but different. The makeup and configuration of our physical, etheric, astral and spiritual bodies are all the same. What is different is how these subtle bodies integrate with the physical body in the new life – meaning is it whole, healthy and fully capable? Our souls are all made from the same substance – the breath of God, our Creator. The soul is made specifically to integrate with the physical body to gain knowledge and experience for the Higher Self. The birth of souls established a special relationship between the Creator and our souls.
The Creator gives each soul a unique Name and a Divine Eternal Atom as an identifier so each soul has a distinct presence and unique life-experiences imprinted upon it (See diagram below). The Creator is Spirit, the Essence of ALL THAT IS, a formless Essence. The Creator creates souls as something separate from the formless Essence giving us mind and individuality which serves as God’s reflection of the Creation. It could be said that without our unique individuality, we would be of little use to the Creator because we would just be the same formless Essence.
THE SOUL WORK
The Kabbalistic Tree of Life has always been shown as being upside down, that is, it represents the manifestation of life flowing into the material world, but all that changed with the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Since this extraordinary life-changing event, life now flows upward ascending from the physical through the etheric, astral and spiritual representing the transition of matter into Spirit. Therefore, the 4-Stages of Meditation were configured in a like manner, i.e., to conform to the same ascending pattern Christ revealed. Likewise, in examining the nature of the soul it makes sense to begin with the Human Soul first as the physical is the densest domain and it carries the heaviest load which is comprised of the deeds of the past life.
The breakdown of the soul into three portions is a natural occurrence since the physical and etheric bodies form a singular unit. In other words, the etheric body is a duplicate of the physical body, cell for cell and organ for organ; it is like a photographic negative of the body. The etheric body sustains the physical through the vital-life that flows into it through the meridians and through the auto immune system (ANS) which maintains the respiration, digestion, circulation, etc.
In this life, so much revolves around the human body that we grow up thinking we are the body; this identification becomes our ego-personality. In reality, the body is a lifeless lump of clay; when the body is injured, the pain we feel is actually felt in nerves and cells of the etheric body. At the same time, in meditation, the energy we feel moving through the body is felt in the etheric as well as in the vortices of energy (chakras) of the astral body. As stated above, the astral body is the eternal matrix of the physical which means when the body is injured, it heals and returns to - or close to - its original condition because of the eternal matrix of the astral body.
Experiencing the interconnectedness of these bodies is necessary, especially for progressing through the stages in meditation. Advances in meditation frequently require the sacrifice of rigidly held beliefs, mental concepts and perceptions in order to experience new realities in awakening consciousness; this is not the case with the soul. To experience the soul, one has to be still and quiet within and focused on the nature and characteristics of the particular level of soul allowing for it to reveal its qualities and presence.
In examining the soul, there are no set instructions as this experience is very subjective and very personal. The only guidance I can offer is from my own experience in the beginning engagement with the Human Soul. Initially, I gained a great deal of insight creating the diagram above; so much so that when I sat quietly and focused on this level of soul, my attention went to the soul’s components in the physical realm. In order to do this, I concentrated on the physical body and immediately realized the etheric body had to be included also as they are one. By doing this, the presence of the soul’s components became evident and could be easily contemplated.
As this progressed, I found myself connecting to the solar plexus chakra through the etheric energies and felt a wholeness with the solar plexus in the center of the physical body, enveloped in the etheric energies. It is from this “center of wholeness” that I contemplated the soul’s components of: Name, physical essence, past deeds of this life and latent creativity (lower right side of diagram). As a natural progression, the book of past deeds was opened and a stream of my past history, events and actions was gradually revealed. One should allow for these past deeds to flow freely and focus on the deed that is front and center in order to understand it. If the actions it reveals find fault in your actions, then see those actions from the correct perspective; ask God for forgiveness and then forgive yourself.
This process cleanses and purifies the soul by removing the past karma; wash, rinse and repeat until one feels clear. It is a divine blessing of the Creators that there is such a thing as karma, and through genuine repentance, we can free ourselves from our past mistakes without suffering retribution. Follow these steps into the next levels of the soul relative to the soul components and the guidance received from within.
One last point, on the left side of the diagram, bottom to top on each level of soul, see: imagination, inspiration, and intuition – these indicate the states of consciousness which open up that level of soul. These states correspond respectively to the Human, Heart, and Spiritual Souls. The content and life of each soul is unique and different so each person will have a unique and personal experience. FEEL the soul and TRUST the soul and LEARN from the soul for it is the very essence of who you are. Brothers and sisters, my prayers are with each one of you who embark upon this spiritual journey. I’ll see you on the other side! God Bless.
* Journey of Souls: Life Between Lives
By Michael Newton
