A Home for Your Soul.
The last few posts have been a discussion of our duality - the belief that we each possess both our animal tendencies as well as our divine nature.
Without doing a full recap (you can check them here) just a few quick points to set-up the conversation in this post:
Much of our behavior is driven by our genetic hardwiring - particularly towards survival and reproduction. Thought of another way, most human action can be linked to either our need to feel safe or our desire to secure a mate.
Evidence of this hardwiring in day to day life is not difficult to find - our obsessive accumulation of wealth, our proclivity for calorically dense food, our preoccupation with physical appearance, etc etc etc. There are countless.
The exercise of really seeing our animality is important - it helps us better understand our own desires and tendencies, the desires and tendencies of others, but most importantly, it allows us to channel these aspects for the goal of divine expression.
Channeling our animality is predicated on the belief that how we live impacts the degree to which our divinity is expressed.
More specifically, when we consistently make “good” choices regarding our physical health, emotional and mental well-being, relationships with our family and community, etc we become a more effective vessel for divine expression.
(I unpacked the concept of divine expression in the last post (check it here), but for the purpose of this conversation, we can think of our divinity as our Soul, or who we really are - our eternal essence, our spiritual center, our ability to reach beyond the self in order to serve others. Divine expression then, is our capacity to show it and share it.)
In terms of how to become a more effective vessel for divine expression, humans have been providing “prescriptions'' to do so for thousands of years, the majority of which come from religious and philosophical frameworks.
Many of these “prescriptions” address the deep connection between our physicality and spirituality - that our physical experience here on Earth is a function of our spiritual testimony, and likewise, that the depth of our spiritual experience is impacted by the investment we make in our physical health.
For many traditions, the purpose of the body represents this connection between our spirituality and physicality - more specifically, as a residence for the Soul.
Whether it’s the body as a “temple of the Holy Spirit” in Christianity, a “vehicle for Awakening” in Buddhism, or a “receptacle for the Rūh (Spirit)” in Islam, the belief that the role of the body is to function as a vessel for something greater spans a multitude of religious and philosophical traditions.
Given this role, for many spiritual traditions the way we treat our physical frame is believed to directly impact the quality of the “residence” we provide our Soul.
Meaning, nourishing our body through helpful decision making around food, movement, sex, breath, service, prayer, contemplation, etc. is believed to give our Soul a “good home” filled with light and love, while poor decisions in these same areas provides our Soul with a home filled with darkness, sickness, and despair.
Like a child lucky enough to be raised in a home filled with love and light, a Soul in residence of a healthy and vibrant physical body is believed to grow strong, compassionate, and be a beacon of light for others.
Exactly how to make the most “beautiful home” for your Soul is where differences between traditions arise.
Whether it’s fasting, spending time in solitude, the avoidance of certain foods, prohibition of intoxicants, etc, the exact methods believed to optimize our bodies for divine connectedness/expression vary between traditions.
That being said, we can still find a number of “agreed upon” methods in virtually every religious and philosophical framework.
The methods go by different names depending on the tradition they are associated with, but many fall under the category of something called a Spiritual Discipline.
Spiritual Disciplines are essentially “training tools” for divine expression - methods to “exercise” the metaphorical muscles of our Soul.
The premise is simple - just as physical training increases our body’s work capacity, durability, and strength, adequate “spiritual training” increases our ability to delay gratification, conquer temptation/weakness, and deny lower impulses in favor of higher ones.
And the converse is also true - just as failure to exercise our physical body results in stiff joints, layers of fat, frailty, injuries, etc. lack of “training” for our Soul has consequences - we give into temptation more easily, we fold in the face of adversity, and we weaken the connection to our moral compass.
Unsurprisingly, many of these spiritual disciplines are actually physical in practice - meant to “strengthen” our Soul while improving the quality of the vessel it occupies.
In the next few posts I’ll be exploring a few of these “training tools” - methods for “discovering” and strengthening the Soul while giving it a “happy home”.
I hope you enjoy them.
“Become strong to be useful.” - Georges Hebert