Soul and personality

People often speak about their soul as if it were something other than their self. Of course though, if one is philosophizing or trying to intellectually understand the soul, one does speak about the soul in a distant kind of way. As well, at the beginning stages of the spiritual path the soul seems to be a goal to reach, as one journeys from the conditioned personality to their true soul. Moreover, there are differences in opinion about where the soul is actually located, either above the head or in the heart. This difference really depends on perspective. So let us consider what the soul is and where it originates from.

Each soul is like an individuated Ray from the Divine Light Source. It is a ray or spark of the Divine Light and Love, which incarnates into this manifest world. So when the soul incarnates here it encounters the existential reality of the physical world and specifically the place of its birth and maturation. It also encounters and involves itself in an emotional reality and a mental world. And these three existential worlds (the physical, emotional and mental) create a three-fold personality-self, which is conditioned by the overall existential reality in which it originates. For example, the physical body is made of the genes and problems of its heritage, as well as conditioned by its physical environment. The emotional part of oneself is conditioned by the emotional atmosphere and colorings of that local social world in which one grows up. And the mental part of oneself is conditioned by the thoughts, beliefs and ideas of that family network and culture.

Thus, from the Source each soul incarnates into this world, or these three worlds as it were, and surrounding each soul is the developed personality, which cannot be avoided. The soul is the essential Light consciousness and motivating Love within this personality, but it becomes sub-conscious and hidden from the personality awareness, as this personality-self is totally involved in its uniquely conditioned reality. Personality is certainly wrapped up in itself and is in a kind of self-concern about the world – this is its nature. Yet, so too is the soul wrapped up in all this. The soul got caught in this personality nature and all its problems and concerns as well. In effect, the soul has become wrapped up in the conditioned personality. Yet the soul always has the potential within itself to be free of all this and to realize its own Divinity. So the soul can, at some time, awaken from this personality entanglement, or identification, to become free and realize itself as transcendental from the conditioned personality. This becomes the first awakening, and from here there will be many levels of awakening.

The reality of the soul, though, is a direct experience, and not a mere intellectual understanding. For the true reality of soul is experienced as I am. I am this soul. This soul is who I am. I, the soul, became wrapped up in the personality conditioning and entanglement. I got lost in all that. I first identified with the physical body, then with emotional phenomena, and then with mental stuff, such as beliefs and thoughts. I, the soul, keep getting lost everyday. But now I remember and realize myself, once again, and it could be possible that I remain in this freedom and in this self-realization. The true nature of I, the soul, is freedom – meaning free unidentified consciousness. Yet, I must continually work at freeing myself from habitual identifications and engrossment with the physical, emotional, and mental realms. This is quite a difficult work, because those realms hold powerful energies and, often, there is so much in those realms to deal with.

In each of those three realms we can distinguish two dimensions, the exterior and the interior. For example, our exterior physical reality is the physical world all around us and which we must live, while our interior physical reality is our individual body and all its needs. We also have an emotional and a mental interior reality, which comprise our own personal emotional and mental reality. Yet, we also live around and relate with other people’s emotional and mental realities; so in this sense, we live in a larger emotional and mental world of other people, as well as living in the obvious physical world. Furthermore, there is much interaction and even blending between the exterior and interior sides of reality. Our personal physical body obviously interacts with other physical bodies and things exterior to it, and it is obviously affected by such. So our physical body is obviously not an isolated entity; for instance, each physical body has to breathe in and out a common shared air. But neither is the emotional part of our personal self is isolated from others. For this part too is continually interacting with and being affected by the larger emotional world around. And the same is true with the mental part of our self, in relation with the larger mental world of our culture and humanity.

Fortunately, though, each personality self has its own degree of autonomy – that is, its capacity to resist or tune out much of the possible influences from the exterior world. Yet, no personality self has complete autonomy, and by the time a personality develops more psychic autonomy in its later childhood, it has already been very influenced and conditioned by its social world. So by the time a personality self even wakes up to its developing autonomy, it must now already deal with the conditioning and introjected patterns from its exterior social world. At any rate, there is a lot of blending going on between individuals and the world around them, such that we are each products of our social environmental context, at least to some extent.

Thus, the soul incarnates into all this, into these worlds, and it invariably becomes lost in it all. Though the inner soul can have some subtle influence, the major influences on personality development are the bigger powers of the social world. The soul is like a constant inner voice in this ongoing drama of life with all its swirling forces and influences, and in itself the soul retains its spiritual purity, but the soul’s actual influence on the personal reality can be quite weak since the other forces are so strong. This is why the spiritual path is a lot about returning consciousness to the inner soul, realizing this inner soul reality as truly oneself, and building the soul’s strength and continuity of consciousness throughout the whole personality and in regular life.

For, along the spiritual path I, the soul, must develop the strength of transcendence (freedom from personality drama) and then, with mastery, work with and through the three-fold personality -- the physical, emotional and mental parts of oneself. The soul, then, becomes the true leader and guide of oneself. I, the soul, guide and lead the vehicles of this personal self; as I, the soul, consciously live and work in this manifest world. For I, the inner soul, am now in charge of my life. And I can relate with the exterior world from this inner realization of who I am – a ray of Light of the Divine Self. A-men.

Our true self is our deepest truth, and this is the same as our soul. The terms soul and true self and deepest truth and true heart and true being all mean the same. We can also call this our divine self, because our true self is a divine self. Once again remember that we are divine beings. Our everyday actions and personality patterns may not be a first-rate representative of the greater Divine; nonetheless, who we are most truly and deeply is a divine being, or divine soul, which is like a greater potential of love and goodness within. This divine soul of love and goodness is seeking to come out of its shell to be known and expressive in the world through the particular medium of our body-mind-heart. The soul is seeking expression and maturation through this vehicle of self. In other words, the inner divine potential within, like a seed, is seeking to break out of its shell and grow outward. Thus, the innerness of self is meant to mature outward into the outerness of self.

This inner self, or soul, remains in a shell if the physical body-mind remains unconscious of it. In many cases of life, the inner soul is never felt or realized, and thus it remains in a shell as mere potential, and never known by the outward oriented person. In order to free the soul and allow it to grow, some awareness and love needs to be given to it. Awareness or attention or contemplation needs to go inward, rather than remain stuck in an outward habit. The soul needs to be felt or recognized, to at least some degree.

Our soul, our divine inner self, also needs some love; our soul needs to be loved. In other words, we need to love our self, not in a narcissist way of being absorbed by self anamoration, but in a compassionate and caring way. It is healthy and needed to be caring and loving towards oneself. But if one is worried about becoming narcissist or egotistical in this love, then focus this love on the divine soul within, one’s inner divinity of self-goodness and good-will, the true self. For this inner divine self needs love, caring and recognition, in order to grow out of its protective shell, from potential to expression, from being hidden to being revealed, from being neglected to being loved.^¹

The natural response of the divine soul to any situation is love, caring, and compassion. This is our true and deepest response to situations involving suffering. Love is also our natural response to situations of beauty and harmony. If we can respond to every situation and every person with love and goodness, then we are bring forth our true self and expressing the Divine. This is one of the greatest spiritual practices – to respond with love and goodness to any situation or person we encounter. This is being at our highest self, in our highest truth, and expressing the Divine in life. If we can keep this aim in mind and practice this, then we are growing spiritually and the Divine is expressing more completely.

The spiritual search is so often explained in relation to God. Mystics are searching for God, or for an experience of God or oneness with God. Another topic of discussion is about finding the Truth, the Real, and again this can be explained in relation to God or the Reality of Universal Being. We also speak about how the little ego-self, or individual self-consciousness, can lose itself or dissolve itself in the Universal Being, which we are calling God. All of these related themes can be explained with greater elaboration, but let us consider a different way of understanding the spiritual quest – which is just as important as the above.

Let us consider that we are in search of Truth, or on a path of discovering Truth, and that this is extremely important to us. But understanding this Truth as yourself. You are looking for the truth of yourself. It would seem that this quest would be common to every person, if they considered it honestly. That is, we all want to know the real truth of our-self. We ask, who am I really and truly?

We shouldn’t be merely trusting someone else to answer this, because each of us must finally discover by ourself the truth of ourself. A spiritual teacher or book might give some suggestions or help one look at certain possibilities, but the real discovery and verification of the truth of oneself can only be from the person inquiring. We are each in this unique situation. Yet because we are each in this situation, we can help each other in this quest and share our insights, though whatever is heard from others can never be a substitute for the most important experience which is to know directly the truth of oneself by oneself.

So our quest is for the truth of ourself. This is what we want to know. We want to know this truth and live this truth. Now one might argue that this is too easy a quest. Well, it probably ought to be easy, but so often it isn’t. This is because our ordinary self-identity and thoughts about ourself is often riddled with false ideas and delusions. Much of our self understanding is fixed and limited, sometimes even distorted or false. Many times we are not even honest about our own feelings. So the real truth of ourself is often hidden or veiled by false and limited self understanding. With meditation or self-contemplation, upon the truth of oneself, we may actually come to know our true self. This is a self-discovery process which can go deeper and deeper, as well as expand in true self knowledge. It is a continuing process of self-discovery, learning the truth of oneself.

Then, as we learn better the truth of ourself, we learn more about God – the Only Real Being there is anyways. This because the truth of ourself IS God. The true qualities of ourself are the qualities of the Universal God-Being. Our true qualities are universal qualities. Our true self is the Universal Self. God is the deepest reality and truth of our being. This is who we really are, but we each have to discovery this truth in our way and in our own process. Thus, the process of self-discovery, the quest for the truth of ourself is actually the same as the spiritual quest for God. For in finding our true self, we are finding God. For the Universal Self is at the heart and essence of each person; it is the deeper Truth of each person. Then we realize that God always wanted to be known.

The usual personality is not our real truth of self. Truth is deeper. The personality part of self is what we and others are mostly aware of. This is like the clothing of self, the outerness of self. But the inner is often hidden or submerged under ordinary awareness. This inner self is our real truth; which can also be called our soul. We could say that this true self is created by God or is a divine emanation; or that it is the divine and natural self. In contrast, the personality is created (or patterned) by a social environment, by culture, by parents and by certain unique accidents. It is also created by reactive decisions and strategies in response to one’s environment over the course of growing up. The personality is very much like a composition of strategies for dealing with life, a composition developed over the course of early life, and these strategies become our personality patterns. Some of these are useful and good; but some are immature and no longer useful in our life. Thus, part of any spiritual path must include some self-observation and re-constructive self-critique; in other words, a willingness to honestly look at oneself and change personality patterns if needed. This does not need to be a somber and tedious task, rather it can be thought of as an exciting re-creative process, like being artistic about recreating oneself. One can also train the personality to develop more beautiful and loving patterns.

Be true to the will of the soul and the intelligence of the soul. We know this will and intelligence by coming into the serene, quiet centre of the heart. Go there and wait for this knowing. Then we know what to be true to.

Soul is beingness, but not just a facade or pretension of beingness as is personality. Soul is the true I, true being, true heart, true intelligence. Soul is an inner realness, inner truthfulness, sincerity. It is the innermost truth of ourself. So when you reach this place, or this self-realization, you are in soul, you are soul. The three main aspects of soul are will, love and intelligence. To make five aspects we could add the qualities of peace and truth, or serenity and sincerity. The soul is peacefully serene, and yet it passionately strives for truth. The soul is intelligent and guiding. The soul is loving and love-filled. It is connected to Divine Love and serves Divine Love. So you know you are in soul, or soul-conscious, when such qualities are meaningful in your experience. The soul is also will. But this is not the same as personality willfulness. Instead, the soul-will is an aspiration to greater truths and virtues. If you feel such aspirations, then you are experiencing soul consciousness – you are soul experiencing. The soul-will is a will-to-truth, will-to-love, and a will-to-serve. It is also a will-to-sacrifice for higher purposes and a will-to-create beauty and harmony. Another important point that each soul is a reflective microcosm of the Macrocosmic God-Being. Each soul has full God-potential within it, yet it is in a gradual realization of these potentials, and each realization of its inherent God-Qualities is like a lifting of veils which had previously obscured such realization. We will discuss soul more, in time.

Our inner soul is the same as our true I, our true self. Our soul is the Spiritual-Light reflection in us. It is the Divine Self reflecting through this particular centre – the centre of our being. The Divine Light, Love, Good-will and Creativity is within each person. This is our divinity within, our divine nature at the very core of our being. This is the meaning of soul.

Now, it is possible for our divine soul to guide and direct our life, which will mean that divine love, wisdom and goodwill will be guiding our life. This would be good. It is better than our life being directed by social conditioning and habits, or by personality ego desires and reactions. Our life would be better if we were guided by love, wisdom and goodwill, and everyone around us would benefit as well. So we must first see how this is a beneficial ideal to work towards, and then we can agree to this within our self. Self agreement is important, because we are often lacking in self-unity due to the variety of divergent desires and conditionings within us, in the psyche.

Then, as well, we need to understand the structure of our self and what is usually going on. If the divine soul was consciously active at this moment, then this soul would be the conscious I, or the I am, of this moment, and it would also be the directing mind and will of the moment. This is the ideal, which is quite possible, but also difficult to maintain in daily life. Initially, it is more possible in times of meditation. But the more usual circumstance of our self is when the conscious I, or I am, is not the true soul. Instead, the I, who is at the forefront of consciousness and also at the helm as captain, is the personality ego rather than the divine soul. And there is a false (I)identification with personality-ego, instead of the inner divine soul.

So, psychologically speaking, we need to understand a distinction between our divine soul and the personality ego (which is not actually anything stable but instead is not-unified and often confused as well, and there are often multiple inner egos competing for power). The divine soul is our inner resource of spiritual light, love, good-will, and other spiritual qualities. But this is dormant and unconscious, until it is conscious or brought into our wakeful life. More often, or at least in the beginning of a spiritual path, the personality ego is in the forefront of consciousness and at the helm directing what we do, where our energies go, and affecting the world around. Personality ego is like the captain of a ship full of desires and reactions. As well, the personality ego is often our experience of I, or I am; as in I am conscious, I am thinking, I am feeling, and I am doing. Thus, the content of this ego-I is the myself-content of our usual thoughts, emotions and behavioral actions. In summary, the ego-I self is more often in the forefront of our experience and at the helm; while our inner divine soul of love-wisdom is dormant and hidden in the unconscious – that is, it is not conscious in us. It has not come out of dormancy and out from the unconscious into conscious experience. The main reason for this is that the personality complex and the false I of ego is clouding out and vibrationally drowning out the inner soul – which is a much quieter and subtler vibration, and therefore easily drowned out.

The soul is not an abstract, far-away reality. Rather, the soul is simply at the very centre of our being. It is the very centre of who we are, but we might not know it because we have yet to realize our own centre of being and who we really are. Also, understand that the soul is in the heart. So in order to listen to one’s soul, one could listen to one’s heart. We could even speak of the heart as our spiritual nature, as distinct from the ego as our conditioned nature. Though this higher-deeper meaning of heart is not about the erratic emotions and desires often found in the heart. In this deeper experience of the heart are the higher spiritual qualities, which are the composite qualities of our soul.

Once we are within the heart, then this is the new seat of I. In other words, once consciousness moves into the heart and is deep in there, then I is now in the heart. I am is now in the heart. This already diffuses the ego-I, which is usually coming from the lower intellect or else the lower gut. So now, conscious-ness and I-ness is in the right place, the heart. And only now it is true that the Divine Plentitude is within I. Yes it is true that the Divine Treasure is always within oneself, always within myself, even when I am lost in the personality ego; however, the Divine is not within the personality ego. The Divine is within myself, but not within the personality ego – because this ego-I is just a temporary delusion. The personality and its ego-captain may have divine qualities haphazardly through it, but it is not a pathway to the realization of Divine Essence. The only pathway to Divine Realization is the soul, the true I. It is only from this true-I that one can reach the Essence and Plentitude of Divine Being; because the Divine Being is at the very centre core of I am (of the soul). So, when one has arrived at the centre of true self, in the heart, then one can consciously go into the I – in order to reach levels of Divine Realization.

So first of all, we must not mistakenly think that the personality-ego I is our true I. The ego I is like counterfeit money; it seems to look genuine, but on closer inspection it isn’t. Here are three important clues to reaching the true I. One is meditation, the practice of consciously just being, without desires or thoughts leading the way, and simply allowing true self understanding to unfold. Next advice is the practice of entering the heart, because this is where the divine soul resides, and this is where we know our true sincerity. Thirdly, practice sacrifice of personality identification. This is the most challenging of all tasks, because the personality-ego tends to firmly believe in its own reality, its own importance, and its own dramas. So our self-ego is usually not ready to make any sacrifice of itself. Yet, to reach our true self (soul) the ego has to sacrifice itself. The soul might occasionally break through the personality clouds and reveal itself, but this will not last long without the ego backing off.

Thus, the Divine is discovered and made conscious by meditation, bringing forth the true I from within. This most fully occurs when there is sacrifice and surrender from the personality ego – which needs to sacrifice its control and its corresponding cloud of energies. This is sacrificed to our true self, the soul within. Then, the soul arises from unconscious dormancy to take its rightful seat as our true conscious I. We can also understand this as the divine soul infusing the ego and eventually transforming the personality with its reflected divine light.

The key is to make a self-sacrifice. We usually think of self-sacrifice in relation to others or to society, or in relation to sacrificing for a larger purpose. But there is also a self-sacrifice into the soul. Each moment our soul is already here, even if not in our conscious experience. It is here, but we are unconscious of it, so it lives in a dormant and hidden state. Yet if only the ego captain and personality concerns were not so controlling and preoccupying; our divine soul would emerge in our meditation. Our soul and true I would emerge in the quietude and repose. For when ego disappears, or when surrendered, then all that is left is soul, our true being.

Also might consider true will vs. conditioned will and how the personality has multiple wills.

Living as an individual with other individuals, we develop a separative ego. The basic tone of this ego is ‘I want’, ‘it’s mine’, or ‘do it my way.’ The ego comes from kama-manas, desire-mind, which gives it the ‘I want’ tone. Egos are based on desires but also involve intelligent strategies for achieving these desires. Thus, the ego is more than just a desire, for it is also a strategist. And we can see that for many people their intelligence is primarily used for their own desire purposes. The most successful egos also work with intention as well as strategy. Yet, the ego does not necessarily have to be intentionally minded, for it could function in the world more subconsciously than consciously. Most of the ego workings are, in fact, subconscious. We can study our ego, but it takes special observational effort and also detachment, because ego is probably already running the game, though subconsciously (below waking consciousness). So it is difficult to gain consciousness of the ego’s undercover plans, strategies, and intentions. What we can more easily notice are the ego reactions to undesirable circumstances. The ego reacts negatively when it does not get what it wants, or when there is threat of a possession loss, or when others do not do things the way that ego-I wants it done. Ego reacts when the actions of others do not fit in with one’s own ego plans or wishes.

The ego is really based on insecurity. This insecurity might be at the very base level of physical survival, or it might be an insecurity about being accepted or loved, or it might be an insecurity about self-esteem or self-worth. The more insecure an ego is, the more neurotic a person is. Though of course, these physical and emotional needs are quite important, and for some people their circumstances are actually deficient, so a perception of lack might well be real for some people. We cannot generalize that all insecurities are mere paranoia, but we can note that insecurity breeds ego desperation, and desperate strategies are often dysfunctional.

Now, let us make a distinction between this desire-mind strategist ego and the spiritually awakened heart. Note that we qualified this heart as spiritual awakened, because at first the heart is simply part of the desire-ego matrix; in other words, the heart can be part of the ‘I want’ ego. Our true heart is different from an unawakened ego-heart. So we are going to speak now about some differences between the ego attitude and the true heart attitude; though this already presupposes that our true heart has been liberated from mere ego impulses.

The attitude of a true heart includes everyone in it. The heart is inclusive, and the heart experiences relationship. The heart feels empathy and compassion for others. It feels some degree of resonance with the feelings of others and it feels an understanding of others. It feels caring about others as well, caring about their well-being and truest happiness. It also feels a wish to help others move beyond suffering and unhappiness, and come into a satisfaction of true needs. Fundamentally, the heart experiences relationship, inclusive and empathetic relationship.

Ego, on the other hand, is often competitive and sometimes combative. It might form relationships, and of course be in relationships, but it is competitive and self-serving in these relationships. It is always thinking of itself first, and trying to figure out how it can get what it wants, which often means that it’s strategy is to manipulate others for its own gain and to react negatively whenever its own plans and wishes are thwarted. So an ego will be competitive and self-serving. While a truly awakened heart will be inclusively empathetic and wishing that everyone’s needs are met, not just one’s own.

True conscience is soul-guidance, or guidance from the soul. Yet this needs to be distinguished from a false-conscience, which is guidance from one’s culture or parents. Of course, guidance from culture or from parents may well be good guidance, but that’s not the point here. True conscience comes from the soul, while false-conscience comes from others who hold a position of moral authority. False-conscience formulates in the psyche during early childhood, as parents and culture give moral direction and precepts to children. This may be a needed phase in life, but later on in adulthood we need to distinguish this parental and cultural (and often religious) moral guidance from our true inner conscience of the soul. I only call the former a false conscience because it often poses as coming from within, yet it really came from the moral beliefs of others.

[Freud named this the super-ego, because it appears [in the psyche] as being morally superior in relation to the ego. It could actually be morally superior, of course, but not necessarily because it comes from cultural or religious perspectives, and different cultural/religious perspectives often have different moral beliefs.]

So everyone seems to acquire a culturally imbued moral conscience from early childhood. This is usually what we hear inside as ‘should’ and ‘ought to’. It is often the voice of a parent or religious authority or text, and it comes with an implication of being morally good or bad, depending on one’s dutiful following, or not, of the given moral rule. Again, these moral rules and guidances might well be from the Divine Itself, but not always. So what we need to do is to first self-observe these shoulds arising in us and posing as our own inner conscience. Then we need to sincerely consider whether or not this guidance is true according to our own deep moral wisdom [of the soul], or if instead this is a false moral guidance that was simply based on a narrow moral perspective of our parents or culture or religion.

Soul conscience enters into the higher levels of our mental and emotional bodies, or in more general terms it develops into a higher level of our psyche. [footnote: psyche is the complex of mental and emotional contents, or those ‘bodies’ interacting.]

In the higher levels of the emotional body, soul conscience develops into moral feelings, moral sensitivity, and moral desires. These higher feelings are ways to experience what is morally good – in relation to the well-being of others and the planet. Moral feelings help distinguish between good and bad, in relation to well-being. What is morally good is whatever helps improve the physical and spiritual well-being of others, our environment and the overall planet. What is morally bad is whatever harms or degrades such well-being. Moral sensitivity feels injustices and unfair pain inflicted on others, and also it is a sensitivity to the needs of others. Moral desires are desires to love and care for others and the planet, and to help improve the physical and spiritual well-being of others, our environment and the overall planet.

In the higher levels of the mental body, soul conscience develops into true moral understanding and moral guidance. These higher levels of thought help us know and choose morally what to do. Moral understanding is intelligently knowing what is good and the principles of good as well. Moral guidance is the divine intelligence guiding us toward the better moral action in any situation, as guided by love and caring.

This all comes from our inner soul, which is a conscious holographic portion of the Universal Being, God. Each soul has two main purposes. One purpose is to express and manifest its realized divine qualities through the three manifesting planes - mental, emotional, and physical. The other purpose of each soul-being is to realize more and more of the Universal Being, and thus continually progress into the whole Unity of Being.

If we envision two triangles, one pointing up and the other pointing down, yet intersecting; then the individual soul is in the very middle, while the lower planes (mental, emotional, and physical) are below, and the higher planes above (these pertaining to Love, Wisdom, and Power).

Divine Power influences our will-to-good. Divine Love influences our caring qualities and moral feelings. Divine Wisdom influences our higher understanding and moral guidance. The love-wisdom qualities of our soul will influence our mind and emotions. It influences the higher levels of mind with metaphysical intuitions, moral ideas, and wise decisions. It influences the higher levels of our emotions with love, moral and aesthetic sensitivity, caring, and gratitude.

Personality needs to align with its soul, by having attitudes of humility, submission, and a will to be useful. Then, soul aligns with the Spiritual Triad of Love, Wisdom and Divine Will. A simple term for this whole triad would be Divine Presence or God-Being. The Spiritual Triad are the primary Qualities of Divine Presence, God-Being. It is possible to make attunement directly with the essence of Divine Presence, but as a practice it is good to make an alignment with each of the Primary Qualities of Divine Being; otherwise one might unintentionally develop a tendency to neglect one of the Spiritual Triad Qualities. Some systems recognize particular colors for each Quality; such as Love being pink-red, Wisdom being a deep blue, and Will being a luminous yellow. But in any system of color designations, the right color sometimes varies depending on the person or culture. Some systems, as well, use particular symbols for each Quality of the Triad, but this varies even more among different groups and cultures, so it is best to not give any specific examples.

Each human soul is latent with spiritual qualities, so we often look to our soul as our inner spiritual potential. In many systems of thought, the soul is primarily regarded as a reservoir of spiritual qualities and latent divine perfection, or similar by analogy to a microcosmic light reflecting the Infinite Macrocosmic Light. Yet in a different way of understanding, each soul is the overall subjective state of an individual self-being, or the state of an individual human psyche. This state of the soul/self could range from infantile to great maturity. It could be very young in its actualization of its latent potentials, or it could be more mature in its actualization of spiritual potential. It could also range from stages of fragmentation to greater unity and synthesis. So in this sense, each soul is in a process of development, and we can then speak of younger souls and older souls. The younger souls have the same great spiritual potentials as the older souls, that is latent within each, but younger souls have yet to realize and actualize most of these spiritual potentials, and as well they have not yet unified the emerging potentials into synthesis.

Now for the soul, this earthly world is like a cooking pot, because it is a place of transformation. This is where the soul develops. It develops in this cooking pot of struggles, challenges, conflicts and difficulties. Of course our world does not need to be in continuous conflict, and a soul does not need to be in continuous struggle, but at least we might see a relative value in struggles, challenges, conflicts and difficulties. For often, development and growth require some degrees of struggle, which builds character strength and other qualities. Often as well, the latent-potential spiritual qualities within us do not emerge unless there is a need or an invocation of them. Challenges help invoke those hidden qualities from within us. Challenges bring forth those qualities that would not usually emerge in normal situations. So needs and challenges are what help bring out those spiritual qualities latent within us; just as when we find someone in need, it brings forth our compassion, our caring, and our talents to help. In a like manner, when confronted with a challenge or a puzzle, a child’s inner potentials will come forth and develop in order to meet that challenge. This is why the soul needs to live and experience in this world; because this world is a learning ground and a place of challenges that bring forth our latent spiritual qualities, such as love, compassion, perseverance, patience, intelligence, and the will-to-good.

The more difficult aspects of life are not needed all of the time, but they do have value for the sake of soul development. Realizing this helps us accept, rather than spitefully resist or curse, the more challenging situations in which we sometimes find ourselves. Struggle and challenge are useful in building character. Yet it is true that sometimes the challenges and difficulties that some people are forced to face are more destructive or character than being positive; in other words, some overly intense difficulties can tear people up and are thus best to be avoided. So we should be careful of sweeping generalizations, regarding the positive value of challenges and difficulties, because sometimes people get completely destroyed by difficulties forced upon them. Thus, it is not true that all difficulties have positive value; rather the point here is that many difficult or challenging situations can be positive to our soul development, or to our character development, if we can learn from the challenge or learn better how to meet it.

It is possible to be conscious in the hierarchy of souls. This is in another dimension than our own. You see, our souls exist in a dimension of space that is underneath, as it were, from our normal dimension of sensory experience. Souls are not above the head, nor are they hiding in one of our organs; instead, souls exist in a dimension interpenetrating our bodies, though souls are centered in the heart space. Mind is a deeper dimension from the physical, and the soul dimension is deeper than mind. Yet we reach the soul dimension from the mind. One has to go through the mind to reach the soul. The key is to not be content with mere mind, but through mind go deep into beingness. Finally, by way of a balance between relaxation and perseverance, one may enter into the realm of soul being, or it might be better said that soul is able to come into awareness. This is a heart-mind space, of conscious being. Now once here, we are able to listen to and communicate with other souls. These won’t look like people. Souls do not really have appearances, though imagination will often put an appearance on a soul and then one has a vision of a person-looking soul. But in essence, souls are formless intelligence, will, love. Of course though, many souls do have physical bodies and each of us are those. Yet there are also souls not in incarnation at this time, such as masters and saints. These higher beings are the ones we need to communicate with in the soul realm, and from them we can receive blessings and guidance. Once inside the hierarchy of souls, consciously, one can take on responsibilities of an esoteric initiate. Initiates are conscious souls, who realize their purpose as being emissaries of Light and Love, who realize the Love and Light coming through them, and thus emit this out to others below and around them. Each conscious soul is like reflecting sunlight; each is like a lantern radiating light in all directions, empowered by the Greater Source.

It takes extra energy and work to free oneself of one’s engrossment in the emotional and mental realms. We need this extra energy work to raise ourselves into a higher level of consciousness. This becomes a practice in itself, and it is certainly work.

In spiritual psychology we can use a seven stage model to understand the complete developmental process of the human soul, or self. This model is only described roughly and generally, so there is plenty of room for greater elaboration and distinctions within the categories laid forth. The first beginning stage of the soul/self (called ‘ego’ in modern psychology) is self engrossment and compulsiveness, which are the two general attributes of this stage. The ego/self is engrossed and infatuated with its own desires and self-importance. It is primarily focused on itself, concerned with itself, and habitually making reference to itself in thoughts and emotions. It is focused on itself, like someone continually looking in a mirror. It is always concerned with itself. Its highest value-concern is itself, its own desires and hopes, and everyone else is of course secondary in importance. This stage of self keeps focusing on and is concerned with its own self-importance, which gives birth to pride and vanity. It is always me first, and everyone else should be serving me. Thought and desire is always referring back to me, me. And as well, this is a stage of compulsive desires and sometimes a ruthless or devious strategy for getting what one wants. This stage of self has also been called the demanding self.

The common ailment of most people is egomania, where life is mostly about me, me, and then me again. Thoughts are mostly about me, desires are mostly about me, and even conversation is mostly about me. So we can call this ego-centrism, egotism, or when worse it could be called egomania. Its about me being number one, the main interest, the main focus, the main concern, and one’s interest is mostly about what I get, what I achieve, and the praise or status I get. One could go on and on about this, but the point is that we get a feel for the kind of character this egomaniac is, and then recognize ourselves so often playing this out, even if it is more subtle and not quite so manic.

The next stage is waking up to the reality of the first stage. So the second stage is developing an ability to self-reflect on and impartially observe the ego’s me-me patterns of self engrossment and compulsiveness. At this stage, there is also a will to improve one’s spiritual or moral state of being; that is, one is trying to be a better person or a more enlightened person. So this stage becomes a struggle with the lower ego habits of oneself. The will-to-better could be an apt name for this stage of self. At this stage also, self-disciple and ego-restraint become important.

The third stage is stability and a sense of harmony in oneself. This is the stage of self harmony, self peace, self acceptance. It is the stage of personality integration, whereby our personal desires, ideals and beliefs are relatively integrated and consistent. It is also the stage where one has successfully integrated with a group or community. So at this stage, there is a sense of harmony and peace in oneself, as well as a sense of cooperatively belonging either in a distinct group or in society generally. Here, one has successfully developed good character and an integrated personality, through the previous stage of struggle and self-work, and beyond the first stage of mere self-engrossment and undisciplined ego-manic behavior.

The fourth stage when the heart truly awakens, to include all humanity and all life. This stage is the experience of love and empathy, in relation to all beings and all life. One feels a transpersonal unity with everyone. So we could call this the stage of human compassion and care for everyone. The Fifth stage is a longing and search for the Ultimate Being of life, for God, or however one names the One Source and Being, in which we exist. This is the stage of true spiritual longing and search. It is often experienced as a search for Divine Purpose, or sometimes as a search for realization of God or mystical union with God.

The sixth stage, then, is spiritual gnosis, the direct experience of God or of Divine Purpose. It is the stage of Spiritual Knowing and realization of unity with God or One Being. Here, one clearly sees the spiritual degree in any person or phenomena. One sees all life the way it truly is, including perception of the many levels of reality. One is able to clearly see Truth and also able to manifest any of the spiritual qualities. At this stage, one might be considered a spiritual master, or enlightened being, or one of the truly wise. The final seventh stage is a complete disappearance of individual selfness, or being completely annihilated in God/Being. At this stage, there is still a vehicle instrumental for the Divine, but the vehicle has lost all consciousness of individual selfness. So this stage is when there is absolute selflessness, and whatever emerges through this vehicle is nothing less than the Divine Will of Love itself. Very often the sixth and seventh stages vacillate back and forth.

Lastly important to mention is that a soul/self may vacillate between multiple stages. In other words, the soul progression from one stage to the next is not absolute, as if jumping to the next stage and never going back to previous stages. The stages are like energy levels in which we jump back and forth, until gradually there is a stabilization at one level more than the others. There are leaps to higher levels, but it takes a while to maintain that level more consistently, so usually there is some vacillation between levels new to us and the previous levels we were at. We begin the journey being very self-engrossed, demanding for ourself, and also compulsive; then we gradually expand our love and concern to include more of Reality, and we gradually come closer to God.

Let us reflect upon true self vs. false self. True self is who we know we are in complete sincerity; while false self is a composite delusion about who we are. False self is composed of many thoughts and beliefs about oneself which would not be substantiated if sincerely scrutinized by the heart. In fact, if our knowing heart gets involved, the false self begins to disappear like strange shadows on the wall disappearing upon the entrance of light. The false self is composed of self-distortions and conditioned beliefs. Often, these conditioned self-beliefs were introduced into us from other people in early childhood, and then accepted or believed at that time. Yet, on the other hand, the true self is sincerely from the heart. It is also self-inquisitive and seeking after truth; while the false self is not.

Personality knowledge is accumulated from parents, culture, academic studies, and from out life.

Soul knowledge is from within; it is the wisdom already inherent naturally and in the spiritual planes.

We have a natural capacity to discern truth from the false, reality from illusion, and good from bad. Yet this capacity needs cultivation and development. Still, discernment and good choice between right and wrong action, or between good and not as good, is not an easy matter. It’s not necessarily easy, nor does it always work, because our individual self-desires often get in the way and distort the truth that we might otherwise intuitively know. So, wise and true discernment is like clear perception, and we have the capacity for this. But our natural, innate, spiritual-intuitive discernment often gets clouded or distorted by our individual self-desires – such as the ego’s desire for pleasure, comfort, security, self-praise and importance, social acceptance and attention, and rightness of belief. This lower-ego, or small-self, will distort or cloud our spiritual perceptive window. It also can distort our higher reasoning and invent bogus rationalizations for our comforting beliefs.

True spiritual perception and right discernment, pure from lower-ego distortions, is the capacity of our spiritual self, our soul. So if our spiritual self is forefront and at the helm of this chariot, then our decisions and actions will be based on True perception and discernment. Yet if the lower-ego self is at the helm, then our spiritual-intuitive discernment is blurred. Thus, if we can tell the difference between our spiritual-self and ego-self, we might then have a way to know when to really believe and trust. In other words, if we could recognize when we are in the lower ego-state, then we might be wary of its choices since its discernment is often clouded. But if we are in the spiritual state, our discernments and choices can be trusted.

So let us define the qualities of being in the spiritual state vs the ego-state ??

Am I making a choice to do something that is primarily or just for my own benefit, or is there a different choice that has more benefit to others (than the other choice) or is more desired by others?

The ethical choice would be the one that considers the desires and benefits of others over one’s own personal desire; in other words, the ethical choice is the less selfish choice. But there could be a win-win if the choice benefits both oneself and others.

Emotion is sometimes a derogatory state in spiritual teachings. But this is a false teaching. Emotion is part of who we are, though of course these emotions can take us away from spiritual attunement. Desires and reactions can cause the greatest troubles. But we cannot simply dismiss emotions as debase, just because they are often cause to our problems. Rather, we need to understand how to integrate emotions into our whole life. Fundamentally, we need to understand our emotions and the very nature of emotions.

First of all, we are emotional beings as well as mental beings and physical beings. But rather than choose one of these as more important, let us come into a balance with them all. Second, develop acceptance of these emotions; though this acceptance may not always include mental agreement. Acceptance is like an offering of listening and consideration. This is how the mind should treat the emotions – with love, listening and consideration. But mind might have its own interaction that might not be in agreement.

Thirdly, realize that some emotions are of very high spiritual quality, which is another reason to always listen to and consider the value of emotions. Emotions are about who we are. They are our truth, but only if these emotions emerge from deep within. Our deepest emotions are our highest emotions. What is needed is to be fully aware of our deepest emerging emotions, without trying to filter them according to some predetermined ideal (conditioned). Then allow this emotional experience to be. Emotional experience is real experience.

Know the difference between a deep self-emerging emotion vs. surface reactive emotion.

The emotional body and the mental body are topics of esoteric science. This is in recognition of emotional and mental energies which are phenomenally different from physical energies, even though they may have physical correlations. A better way to teach this, though, is to speak about emotional and mental fields. For the average person their emotional field is not really a body – since an emotional body would imply that this field of energies is integrated, organized, and acting as a unity. The physical body is integrated, organized, and acts as a functional unity, at least mostly. But this only came about after millions of evolutionary years. Man in general is now still working on integrating and organizing their emotional energies. And when this emotional field becomes an integrated and organized unity, then it can rightly be called an emotional body or astral body. Until this time, the emotional/astral energies are unorganized and often in conflict. Funny coincidence that the world is also. The mental field, for most people, is even less organized, integrated and unified.

So this is one our tasks. But how do we become more self-integrated emotionally and mentally? The key is to allow each emotion and each idea to be heard and considered. Another key is to allow variety and differences to be present at the same time. Real unity will never be achieved by a self-dictatorship, or by a dominance from one part over another. If dramatic conflicts show up, either emotionally or mentally, this is a creative opportunity for resolution and a new synthesis. But most people so want to avoid emotional and mental conflicts in themselves that they regularly and even subconsciously suppress the less dominant emption or idea that is in conflict with the more dominant one. These conflicting emotions or ideas (those which conflict or contrast with the more dominating one) tend to become labeled as bad (emotionally) or wrong (mentally).

Of course though, it may be too idealistic to assume that resolution and synthesis will easily occur when we allow the differences and conflicts to be present in our self. If we can stay present with the struggle, it may resolve, but the conflict may be too difficult to resolve right away. It may require more time, more patience, and more working through. In this case then, we need a temporary solution to our inner conflict, whether it be emotional or mental. This solution is simply relax. Let us all relax. The differences and disagreements are not resolvable at this time – no solution at hand. So the only alternative now is to simply relax. Accept the differences and the unresolved feelings or ideas; then just relax. Before going to sleep each night, practice a relaxing yoga of the emotions and mind. Accept all differences within and all unresolved feelings, and let yourself relax. The self attitude is this: let’s relax and let it all go for now. And one might also make a prayer or a wish before sleeping for an inner resolution. But it doesn’t help to lose sleep over stuff or struggle too hard for resolutions. The best resolution will suddenly appear without any extreme effort.

Levels does not mean separation between them. The idea conjures up separate layers in some kind of space, as if one level were literally above or beyond another one. No. these levels pervade one another. They are sharing the same space of existence. So the physical, emotional and mental levels are simultaneously interpenetrating. In our experience, all three levels ought to exist simultaneously. This is the basic triad of our experience. It might also be explained that the emotional and mental levels are responses to the physical world, or ways of experiencing this physical ground of reality. The physical body experiences through the five senses. Emotionally we experience the world through emotional feelings, moods, and also reactions. Mentally we experience through the world through thoughts, ideas, or beliefs. Mentally we describe and explain reality with concepts and maps of understanding, and this reality we try to mentally know about is the physical and emotional reality of life. Emotionally we feel the physical world and how our own relationship is in this world. We are feeling the energies of places and of relationships.

One of the foundational goals of spiritual effort is to have all three levels coordinated, integrated, and simultaneously experienced. All three are consciously present, rather than just one dominating our experience. Yet also part of spiritual effort is to purify or refine these levels of oneself. This eventually creates a conscious transparency between them all.

Purified mind is a clear mind, where no particular thoughts dominate our mind, and mind becomes a clear space for consciousness. Thoughts can still appear but just significant thoughts, involving clearer descriptions and explanations of reality. Consciousness can shine through this clearer mind, rather than get lost in habitual long patterns of thought.

A purified emotional level (or “emotional body”) is also clearer and more transparent. When the usual lower part of our emotional body is cleared and unobstructive, the deeper core essence of our emotional level is revealed, and we would call this heart. The more reactive emotions are not actually from the heart, but rather from the solar plexus, the seat of our ego of self-interest. Heart emotions are also called higher emotions; which is certainly apt since most other emotions come from either the solar plexus or from the sacral centre. Anyways, true feelings from the heart shine forth when our emotional body is clear and without obstructive reactions from ego self-interests.

Now, when there is sufficient clarity and balance with the triad of physical, emotional and mental, the next level of our self can then come into experience. This we will call the Intuitional level. Intuition means direct knowing or immediately evident. It is the pure knowing of consciousness, without being clouded by mental thoughts, emotional feelings or physical senses. This intuitional consciousness perceives right through the other levels of physical, emotional and mental. It can still appreciate these levels, but it is not trapped in any. Though very often in average man, the intuitional level is not ever experienced as it is, because the energy of consciousness is so usually obscured by and absorbed by either thoughts, emotions or senses. Yet when our lower triad is clear and unified, the intuitional consciousness knows directly what is here in this moment, because it can see through the transparency of mind and heart.

[ Not a “higher mind” (lets not use this) except as meaning a mind knowing principles.

Rather, better to realize that mind and heart are modes of experience , so the “higher” is created when these modes are cleared and transparent, for then their essence is known. So the “higher” is simply the deeper and essential. ]]

A useful meaning of “higher mind” is simply a mind with higher ideas and wisdom.

There is a better distinction though between “practical mind” and “principles mind” (or “theory/belief building mind”.

From a clear mind and heart, we can enter into this level. Or it could be said that consciousness (who I am, or who “we” are) is freed from preoccupation and entrapment in just the lower triad (P,E,M); so that consciousness can now see clearly.

Our personality is a triad of physical, emotional and mental aspects. Through these aspects (or “personality bodies”) we experience (and know) our self and the world. Through these we also express ourselves – physically, emotionally and with ideas by way of speech.

Yet also within this personality is our soul, which is the seed-fire of our divinity, the carrier of divine light, love and will. Every physical living body has a soul as its core-essence, carrying the seed of its potentials, its possible capacities and abilities, and the design for its possible destiny, its completed actualization. As our emotional and mental fields develop out from the physical, these too have the same soul in their core. So the soul is this core-essence and potential within our personality, and the soul is composed of divine light, love and will. It is the individualized Divinity in us, which holds our possibility for completed actualized spiritual being. The personality can seek guidance from the soul and be inspired by the soul. It can also discover and realize its soul.

When soul is discovered or realized, it is known in itself. The soul in itself is an individualized capacity to know and actualize Divinity. This soul aspect of our self can realize Godness directly and actualize the divine qualities. Of course, though, the actualization of divine qualities must occur through the personality – through physical, emotional and/or mental expression.

The human soul is the light, love and spiritual will in the personality. In other words, whatever of these Primary Qualities are found in a personality, a person, this is the divine soul expressing through. All higher qualities found in any human being, those qualities without self-interest and self-vanity at the core, are in fact soul qualities inspiring and expressing through that person. So in addition, the human soul is the container or seed or source for these Primary Qualities of light, love and spiritual will. The soul contains these Qualities awaiting dormant in our Unconscious, until there is an opening/opportunity to reveal itself and express through the mental or emotional body, and then into physical manifestation.

For many persons their soul is ‘hiding’, like a seed is hiding in the ground. It is unconscious to the person; that is, the person is unconscious of their inner soul; or we could say that the soul is in the person’s Unconscious. Next, when we nurture and feed ourselves with higher quality thoughts and maintain higher quality emotions and also live in a quality environment and also maintain an open spiritual attitude or self-inquisitive attitude; then the inner soul will emerge from the depths of soil into the light of day, into conscious experience. The soul becomes conscious in us; that is, we become soul-conscious. And then, soul is who we are; while personality is now seen as our vehicle for soul expression and practical work.

Soul expresses thru personality as consciousness . love/heart and harmony/peace in body.

Explain ; -- simple way the argument -- of potential and actualization – the divine is here everywhere as presence and available.. and also as a subtle influence power. But not always actualized.

Awaken to the soul within. Soul is the intelligence-love at the essence of oneself, at work attempting to guide the personality mind and influence the deep feelings of the heart. The soul’s aims are always for the better good, for love and beauty. Everyone is born with a good soul, but the ego-personality and along with society can squelch the soul’s intelligent loving power. Thus, we have to learn how to listen to our soul and follow this inner truth of oneself.

A soul’s existence begins at the bottom of a great hierarchy of potential. Each soul begins at the bottom, then rises up level by level, towards the one final peak which is Oneness with all, God. The goal or purpose of the soul is actually two-fold. One is to rise up, which is its evolution. The other purpose is to guide and manifest in the realms of mind, emotion and physical reality. Not all souls are equal in the hierarchy, in terms of intelligence and expansiveness. Some souls are young, still learning and expanding, though each soul has a spiritual vibrancy. Some souls are more mature - with greater overall intelligence, love, and mastery. The highest souls are often called masters or saints.

Also, souls do not have any particular gender, because sexual gender is only a physical trait having to do with the kind of emotional and physical body a soul incarnates as. Gender manifests in our physical world, but it is immaterial in the soul dimension. Therefore, a particular soul may manifest at different times as either male or female. For example, we think of Jesus as male, but the soul of Jesus, which we could name as Christ, is neither male nor female. It might help to understand that each soul carries all of the potentials for both gender traits, and thus we can develop balanced gender traits with greater receptivity to our soul. Some people ask why so many masters are male and so few female. As explained above, the real master-being is a genderless soul, yet this soul manifested as a male, probably because the social circumstances for it were better. And also remember that many great souls were female, but historians tended to neglect them in favor of male masters.

Each soul is on an upward evolutionary ascent in the hierarchy. Yet this depends on choices, work and experiences in earthly life. Soul expansion requires life experience and working with life energies. Therefore, this life is truly significant for the soul’s evolution, though usually a soul has to incarnate again and again until there are nurturing circumstances and a personal vehicle develops sufficient receptivity.

When higher souls incarnate there is a greater chance for spiritual work and evolution, because higher souls have greater spiritual power. But when newer souls incarnate they often do not have enough inner power to influence the personality vehicle. So most personalities, most people, necessarily need outside help along the spiritual path because their own souls lack sufficient power as yet to reconcile with the often negative influences of society and ego development. However, even higher souls reach difficult challenges within themselves, which are like giant steps or hurdles to overcome. Every person will have something, as it were, to work on.

Souls learn from and receive higher influences from souls above them in the hierarchy. In this way each soul ascends higher in the hierarchy. Souls-above emanate higher energies and higher spiritual influences to those below. They emanate greater love and wisdom. So each soul, at whatever level it is, receives from those above and emanates to those below. The highest master-souls in this planetary sphere emanate to all humanity higher love, wisdom, enlightenment, and spiritual will. They help guide humanity and set into motion spiritual plans for a more loving, cooperative, and beautiful world. Yet such higher guidance and plans cannot be forced upon the free will of people, so this all depends on people becoming receptive and willing to make choices and action based on their inner love-intuition and higher guidance – which is how the master-souls help influence us towards greater wisdom and good.

The quality and expansiveness of any consciousness is the quality and expansiveness of that soul. Every soul has the potential to eventually expand to include all of the Universal Being and everyone in it, and each is somewhere along that journey. Each consciousness is limited as to how much of the Whole Being it includes. A fairly new consciousness, or soul, will be small in its inclusiveness, since it is new in the journey of expansiveness. A more developed soul will have a more expanded consciousness, which also means that its self-knowing and self-experience will include more of the Whole Being (of Reality). The greater is one’s inclusiveness of consciousness, the greater wisdom of spiritual decision and action.

So an underdeveloped soul consciousness is another cause for errors and less virtuous action. But now let us examine this in more detail.

Each soul enters into incarnation from a past life incarnation. The soul incarnates through three interconnected, interpenetrating ‘bodies’ – mental, emotional and physical – which we are calling the ‘personality’.^² This personality has to go through developmental stages; that is, our physical, emotional and mental parts have to develop and mature. Babies cannot do what adults can do. The soul gives life essence to these bodies and to their development. It also gives instructions to the bodies, in order to organize and somewhat direct their process of development. Specifically, the soul produces and emits a subtle electromagnetic pattern that acts as a blueprint for the physical, emotional and mental development and also their health.

However, these personality bodies are also susceptible to energies, patterns and direct manipulations and assaults from the outer world, physically, emotionally and mentally. So the soul is not fully in charge, nor fully directing, because the inner soul cannot control the outer world and how the world affects the personality bodies. The outer world, including physical circumstances and social influences, can be quite helpful to the health and quality development of the personality bodies or, conversely, it can be quite cruel and harmful. One’s outer social world can be quite repressive to one’s inner soul direction and potential qualities^³.

The main idea here is that the physical and social world can be very powerful and influential in the development of our personality. The soul has influence, but it can be overpowered by a dominating outer world. The soul has goodness and wisdom in it, but this may not incarnate fully into the personality, due to outer influences. The outer can cause all sorts of problems in the personality, which is elaborated on by psychology. Yet the idea to understand here is that people developing are susceptible to outer influences – meaning that problems or sicknesses in a group, family or culture can be passed into the children and they linger on as influences on adults as well. This makes for a continuation of psychological problems through the medium of social influence. In fact, cultural imbalances and unhealthy patterns can be passed down generation upon generation, by way of the outer world and interactions between personalities.

While acting from within the person, a soul can be more influential in a particular personality, and it might even have a greater power than the outer forces. But this depends on the power of the particular soul. Younger souls have less power, as compared with outer social forces, while more evolved souls have greater power^⁴ -- so can more easily resist and overcome any contrary forces from the outer social world. This power of the soul is one of the soul’s more important attributes. We will call this “spiritual power” or “soul power”, which is the power to realize and express spiritual goodness, an to unfold the spiritual qualities inherent in it. Evolved souls will have more of this power, and thus, they will more easily be able to infuse through the personality bodies so to bring more spiritual quality and spiritual intelligence into them. Soul’s with greater power will be able to influence and develop the whole personality – which will become the soul’s expression in this life. And soul’s with greater power will be able to detach from and overcome the outer social forces. But if the power of a soul is weak, then the outer social forces dominate the personality development and expression.

This helps explain why people do stupid and harmful bad actions, …if everyone has a spiritual soul. Essentially, younger souls do not yet have enough inner power to overcome social forces that are otherwise influencing and training the personality. The personality does not have any power on its own to resist or overcome social forces, since it is essentially reactive, though it can develop its own integral power with help from its inner soul. Yet, these younger souls and personalities can develop more spiritual power, if they have special help and influence from greater souls, spiritual teachers or guides. In some respect, everyone is susceptible to outer influences, to some degree, so it is hoped that one is lucky enough to receive higher spiritual influences rather than lower influences. Later on, at a more advances stage, one has developed the ability to actually discern higher from lower. More common, the average personality does not even have a clue; unless they are in contact with and receiving from their soul (for the soul does have spiritual discernment).

Also… a weaker soul has less power in relation to the outer world; while a stronger soul has…

Idea of the developing person, from the soul seeds. But when young or underdeveloped 2 problems will naturally arise:

Finally though, one might question -- why any negative or bad influences ever came about in the first place? This is sort of like the question about original sin – like what went wrong in humanity? How did bad ever enter into the picture? We could say that it is because of the need for experimentation, and experimentation produces mistakes. This helps explain some, but then why is people’s discernment for goodness so underdeveloped? There seems to be more going on than just experimental mistakes.

We already explained how sensitivity (to the feelings and hurts of others) and also the quality of caring (about others) may be lacking in some people – as a kind of sickness – and then these people spread their decease into the world by social influence.

Now, here is a metaphysical explanation, based on the limitations of consciousness.

Self-consciousness is in a process of expansion. On the way, as it is progressively expanding, there will be inevitable stages and each of these stages of expansion could also be called a stage of limitation. Each stage can also be understood as a level of self-identification; such that when consciousness is very expanded its self-identification is also expanded, but if consciousness is more contracted then its self-identification is also contracted. In other words, the limited sphere of consciousness is also the limited sphere of self-identification. Consequentially from this, the interests and concerns will be somewhere along a scale from very limited (and not very inclusive) to very expanded and inclusive. So when the consciousness (which we already equated with soul) is more expanded, the interests and concerns are also expanded, and more of the others are included in this concern as well as more of nature. The consciousness has expanded to include more of all that is here, all who is here; thus one’s concern and care and sensitivity is expanded. Whereas, a small limited consciousness will focus its interests, concerns and sensitivity on a smaller sphere, and thus not be sensitive and caring for what is outside of its limited sphere.

So… a smaller, more limited consciousness will have a more limited awareness of the whole, as well as a more limited concern, sensitivity, and empathy. In addition, its ecological intelligence of the whole will be less, and also its psychic connectiveness. All of this combined has the result of one being less understanding and concerned about the whole. This is a limitation of younger souls; while as a soul evolves it expands into greater sensitivity, concern, empathy, psychic connectiveness, and ecological intelligence.

However, no soul is ever bad, nor intentionally harmful to others, nor intentionally selfish. We are only saying here that a younger soul has less expansiveness of its consciousness.

The soul influences, or we can say teaches, the personality mind; yet its effectiveness depends on how the outer world effects the person. As we already said, the outer world can have a powerful conditioning effect on the person that is contrary to the soul’s influence – thus rendering the soul influence ineffective, if the soul’s influential power is too weak (as in the younger souls). Also realize that each soul’s influence or teaching is limited by its consciousness expansion. So, a soul’s influence on the personality might be also limited by its sphere of knowing, concern, empathy, and holistic intelligence. This itself results in a limitation on what the soul can actually infuse into the personality. Yet, however limited a particular soul might be, it is never evil or willfully bad in any way.

What creates a badness in a given personality is in how that personality develops. A young and limited soul does not create any badness in the person, but it does lack in the spiritual power and holistic intelligence that can be passed into the person. In other words, a younger soul is like a weak and less effective teacher; which means that the personality is then more susceptibly influenced by the outer forces – which gives possibility for outer social forces to pass on negative patterns or to actually harm the positive development of this person.

In addition, unless there is a strong positive force from the soul, the personality can develop its own rigid boundaries of sensitivity, concern, empathy, and understanding; whereby this personality mind can develop into a rigidly insensitive, unconcerned, and extremely self-centered and selfish person, who then is able to harm others or unconcernly harm the natural environment.

At each stage of progressive development, the personal level of identification will enforce its own interests (which will could be quite limited , even childish) – thus selfishness in the world and the behavior actions from this. This selfishness along with that level of ignorance (not understanding greater spiritual ecology) will produce ignorant and selfish activities – thus the way things are… and when added to this is mental or emotional sickness (produced by aberrant child environment ) will produce the worse. So all these as combination..

Yet these then develop on their own.. until the consciousness aspect of the soul is activated and will aspect.

Personalities act from their particular level of consciousness and identification.. until the soul gains more strength.

The personality (including emotional, mental and ego) progressively develops. If we study a very young child, we see that this child is very pure in heart and naturally innocent. However, this child’s consciousness is quite limited, which means the child is not aware of much beyond a rather small sphere that is, to them, ‘the world’. This somewhat small ‘world’ is also the greatest influence on their development and each has a tendency to identify with that world, to some degree. In addition, we can envisage that the child’s interest and also concern is limited to this sphere, and whatever is outside of this sphere is simply not even available to their awareness. Even world media connections, such as TV or internet, are being interpreted or understood in relation to their sphere of local reality. For example, a small child cannot truly comprehend planetary events, even if they might see news on TV about something, because any meaning is only in relation to their very small sphere of local experience.

The significance of all this is that as a child develops into adulthood, their sphere of world knowing, world interest and world concern does not necessarily expand all too much. We can envisage how children might grow up but without really coming into a full expansion of world-knowing. For example, as an extreme case, a tribal person in an underdeveloped country will probably not have much of a global consciousness, with global interests and concerns; rather, their consciousness, interests and concerns will be limited to their small tribal sphere – their ‘world’. It is not too hard to imagine this.

But now, see how even the average person in an educationally developed country is not far off from that limitation, because this average person is not really interested in understanding the reality of others around the globe and not really concerned about them, and also not too concerned about the world ecology. In other words, their consciousness is not yet expanded to include the whole world, with all humanity and all of nature. Their consciousness has not expanded enough to include the whole world and the whole of nature as an interest and concern. Their consciousness, interests and concerns are still predominately limited to a small sphere of reality that is ‘their world’.

Even ‘world players’, such as global business people, do not necessarily have a truly global consciousness. They might be aware of certain aspects of the larger world, but their interests and concerns are actually limited to just themselves or to just the interests and needs of their business, so their ‘global awareness’ is only in relation to their very limited, selfish interests and concerns. They might appear to be intelligent and tuned in to world affairs, but in reality they have no interest other than what is needed to benefit their very limited selfish concern.

So, the point here is that .. the consciousness of most adults is limited to a rather small sphere of interest and concern, which is their “world’ and [consequentially] their self-interest. We are identified with and wrapped in a limited sphere, our ‘world of importance’, .. with its limited interest -- that does not always include the interests and needs of others who are outside of this sphere.

One is wrapped up in quite a limited interest and concern. .. which is quite similar to the reality of a child…

Children have an innocence in them and pureness of heart, yet children can also be cruel. They can be mean or cruel to other children and also insensitive to others. One could theorize, then, that there is a potential evil in children, which sometimes makes them this way. Yet this bad-children phenomena can be explained as an effect of self-centeredness – or as their very limited, unexpanded ‘focus of importance’. It is not that there is a spiritually-contrary force of evil at work in children; but rather that children can be extremely self-centered and self-focused on their own immediate desires, so much that they are oblivious and insensitive to the feelings and needs of others. Part of this phenomena is due to their self-centered focus (that small sphere of importance to them) and part is due to their individual selfishness (their me-first!). Both of these aspects can be attributed to a limitation of consciousness and emotional sensitivity – their sphere of being is under-expanded, as it were. We might also explain this as an un-development of the child’s inherent human capacities for an expanded awareness and sensitivity. The selfish aspect could also be explained as an underdevelopment of an inherent human generosity.

The explanation of evil seems to remove most people from the root problem; they think there is a weird supernatural force working in the world which has no connection to themselves. Instead, the root problem should be understood as natural to most human being. And we ought to see this problem in children, for this is our own root, and most adults are actually children in grown bodies with adult-like practical necessities. The root problem is not an abstract anti-God power or entity, called evil; rather, the problem is something that we all know well in our own selves, which is our self-centeredness and selfishness. If we watch children carefully, we will see this root problem in them. Then, if we are honest, we might realize that we are basically the same; … though somewhat more expanded in our mental focus and interest, in our emotional sensitivity and love, and in the complexity of our self-indulgent habits.

So, most adults have the fundamental personality traits of self-centeredness and selfishness. Self-centeredness is a combination of limited consciousness (on oneself) and an attitude of self-importance over others. Selfishness is a me-first attitude combined with an exaggerated importance placed on one’s own wants. This all begins to show up in childhood, except for children who are incarnations of higher souls, then it continues into adulthood except that adults usually have less self-centeredness and less selfishness than when they were children, assuming they have made at least some progress emotionally and spiritually.

Habits of desire are another problem related to selfishness, and this problem actually gets worse in adulthood. Children may have an underdeveloped restraint and self-discipline, compared to adults; yet adults have more problems with habits (which children have not yet developed).

false selves and ego desires invoke distortions in the Divine Generosity. Divine Energies are responsive to our thoughts and emotions, so what is given from the Divine Dimension can be a distortion based on our distorted thoughts or upset emotions.

Soul = consciousness/mind that dwells in the heart. It is the consciousness/mid of the heart.

The soul gives the its incarnation powers, qualities, and intelligence. The first power of soul that is transmitted into manifestation is the life power. Soul gives the physical, emotional and mental bodies their life-power to develop. Life-power is first given to physical development, then to emotional, and then to the mental body of a person.

The next power it gives is intelligence, and again this progressively enters the physical, then emotion, then mental body. This intelligence is not the same as basic instructions. The physical genes, as passed on by parents and generations before them, have the needed instructions for building and development. The intelligence given by the soul to a new life is a special capacity for learning and evolving. Strict Darwinian theory in human development would hold that evolving or improving depends a lot on accident, since it does not recognize any influencing underlying intelligence towards this.

Soul theory, in contrast, posits that being influencing and nudging a person towards self-improvement and a higher evolution. This influence is from the soul within that person. There is also an underlying soul intelligence in all of life/nature. This intelligence, though, is not simply a set of instructions. An intelligence of basic instructions is provided by physical seeds. What a soul provides is a capacity for learning and improving, along with an influential nudging for this. This is what we call soul intelligence. The more evolved a soul is, the greater is this transmitted capacity and greater is the soul influence.

Intelligence is not the same as having a data bank of knowledge, nor a fixed set of instructions. Many religions and teachers merely offer a data bank of information (they call it ‘knowledge’) and a fixed set of instructions. But this is different than developing a real intelligence that can discern what is true or useful in any batch of information. The real intelligence is a capacity to discern the essential and important from the unessential and unimportant. And although instructions are useful, just as information is as well, instructions simply supply a fixed pattern to follow, but they fail when life presents the unexpected or something new. Fixed instructions, or strictly followed rules, will eventually fail in the face of the new and unexpected. But this is when real intelligence is needed; for it is real intelligence that can figure out a solution to a new problem, see what is really important, and actually make an evolutionary improvement. Fixed instructions and mere information (called knowledge) is not enough to solve new problems and evolve oneself.

In addition to the life power and intelligence power, given by the inner soul, is the love power and all of the spiritual qualities available to us.

Finally, the soul gives us our spiritual will. This is our will to improve, our will to be a better person, and our will to manifest spiritual qualities. It is also our will to serve the larger Life in which we live. In addition, it is our will to sacrifice our personal desires and habits, in order to serve a larger need and purpose. All of these are aspects of spiritual will, as given by our inner soul, and these are powers in us that need to be nurtured to develop and mature.

Will is essentially the power to make decisions and fulfill them by persistent effort.

At first, this power of will is used for personally selfish ends, since it is not yet balanced with soul love and intelligence. This is not necessarily bad, though, unless these selfish ends are harmful to others. For example, a person with strongly developed will might use this to achieve personal success in business or in sport, and that might not be harming anyone, so nothing wrong with it. Spirituality is not in conflict with personal achievement; unless this personal achievement is contrary to the needs or welfare of many others. So, there are many examples of people who have a strong will and achieve great success from it. They are not necessarily spiritual, and they might even be oblivious to higher purposes, but at least they have developed this soul-given will and are applying it effectively, but hopefully not in opposition to the needs of other people or the natural environment.

Will, like many other potential powers of the human being, are spiritual in their origin and given by the soul; however, our will is not always applied for spiritual purposes and it might even be applied for purely selfish purposes. It might even be bullishly applied for manipulative or cruel deeds. So it is possible to use a spiritual power, such as will, in non-spiritual ways. Metaphysical freedom allows this, and it just tends to happen because spirituality is a maturity requiring a process of learning and some trial and error. People do not automatically become spiritual initiates or masters. Soul-powers are given to everyone, but these have to be developed which takes time, and along the way of development are stages whereby the incompletely developed powers work in not the best way. Will is an example of this; because will usually is first used in a selfish manner and can often be manipulative in relation to others. Picture a person with some power to make things happen, but who does not have a developed quality of love, or maybe not much intelligence. There will be problems produced by such a person. Yet this is an inevitable problem in overall humanity, because there is always the possibility that some people might develop a strong will power before they develop a balancing love and intelligence. This is the overall inevitable predicament within humanity, since true spiritual balance – of will, love and intelligence – requires time and an uncertain process. So along the way (of this process) many possible imbalances can occur – of too much of this and too little of that developed so far. Therefore, this problem of imbalance in people, along their process of complete development, is cause to many people-caused problems and harms. And the imbalance with will is a prime example. The problem with will is especially frustrating; because an overdeveloped will, in relation to love and intelligence, can be cause to overly selfish manipulation of others or deceptive, cheatful actions. Yet the consequences of an underdeveloped will is lack of progress in self-discipline and in achieving anything.

Or until the mental body accumulates enough mental-emotional energy (without simply using it) to make a transformational leap into the next potential energy level. Thereby connecting the mental-emotional with soul level.

this is of the law that higher states of consciousness, such as soul consciousness, (higher levels of consciousness/being) require energy – and this energy has to come from a surplus of energy unused by the lower levels. Somewhere I already wrote about this.

Realizing that one could travel to the absorption, but can turn around and serve those in the dark.

We are involved with the building of God’s body, Divine embodiment, on many levels.

Our house is where we live, which are our bodies. We have responsibility to build or shape our bodies. Our three “lower” bodies are physical, emotional, and mental. The building of these have already been going on before we were consciously aware; in other words, before our conscious-will awakened our physical and personality bodies have been developing according to physical, social, and educational influences. But now that we are conscious and self-responsible, we can work on the building with conscious-will. We can build a healthier physical body with good food and exercise. But also important to work on are our emotional and mental bodies. Our emotional body is built or shaped by the emotions we consistently remain in, either positive or negative, so our work is to live in higher positive emotions. Our mental body is built of the thoughts we dwell in. So with conscious intention we can choose thoughts with truth and goodness to build, or rebuild, our mental house. In all these levels of oneself it is best to use the energies and components of love, truth, goodness and beauty. Also to help with this building process is knowing the Spiritual Purpose for doing so, having a sense of need and desire to work on this, having intent, and developing a plan.

Another level of this work of “building a lighted house” is to build our light-body, which is a higher level of building. It is a higher story of the self, as it were. “…be conscious architects of….. future houses in which to dwell – houses to be built of light.[WOZ]”

This is a work of building our own house of light. The light-body is made of purified consciousness, the Buddhic Light, and this is on the Intuitional plane, the 4^th plane. Light and consciousness essentially mean the same; light is how consciousness is experienced. We build our Lighted body with consciousness, just pure consciousness. It is a dwelling in pure Light, which actually comes from an even higher plane. Higher Ideas and Insights, as well as divine archetypes and symbols, come from the Love-Wisdom inherent in this Light of the Intuitional-Buddhic plane; however, this is not to do with thought or thinking, for that is used to build the mental body.

This plane is also the dwelling place of the soul, in relation to the three lower bodies. So by building our lighted house, our light-body, we are building our soul body. Our soul has immediate knowingness of its Spiritual Being and spiritual qualities. We each already ‘have’ a soul, but every soul is in further progress towards greater realization or being a greater expansion of light. And thus, there is an opportunity here to build a more permanent and stronger soul-consciousness – with clearer connectivity to our mental, emotional and physical bodies – infusing greater Light into the lower bodies and then into the whole world.

One major work of the spiritual path, although this is only spoken about in esoteric teachings, is to build a spiritual body of light. This is related to building our own soul. So some teachings speak of building a soul-body. In the teachings presented here we regard the soul as something bigger than the light body, or easier to say that the light body is one aspect of our whole soul. We do build our soul, yet we already have a soul, so the work is actually to build it stronger and wider. We also already have a light body, before even working on it, but at first it’s rather small and weak.

So what is this light body? It is a sustainable consciousness, a sustainable self-consciousness. Meditation is the way to build this. Note also that one is building consciousness, a pure consciousness; and since consciousness is a mind energy, it only requires a releasing of thoughts and then the mind energy is just consciousness. Building the light body is not a kind of thinking; it is simply being conscious. Consciousness itself is a building energy; so it builds its own light body.

Another aspect of this esoteric work is to build in will to this spiritual body, and then build in love. Which is building our conscious soul.

Build the lighted house of a higher mental and emotional body, a new level or station of self. With consciousness. Wherein consciousness dwells – is where the building goes on.

We build these higher bodies with will, but also with consciousness dwelling therein.

build higher-intuitional mind and higher emotional body. Build the highest inside us. And building a group soul.

Practice: observe the personality, especially reactions. A new transformation will occur if there is non-attachment, non-identification, and non self-interest – dissolving the three main aspects of personality ego.

Need the psychology practice of sensing, feeling, experiencing the emotions of the solar plexus and sacral and heart, to experience suppressed pain and any emotions that were not fully experienced (but put away somewhere (in the body)) to move through this and have faith in the transformation as we move through the experience consciously and willingly.

There are different levels of mind with different rates of vibration, which also results in different kinds of energy

The way is to increase and expand light-consciousness, and to increase the vibration of light.

An individual soul, the true core of each person, is somewhat like a seed that provides each person with their basic potentials (or ‘essences’) for will, love, intelligence, creative-artistic abilities, and aesthetic-moral sensibilities. These soul potentials (essences) unfold and are actualized in each personal life, more or less, depending on circumstances and to some degree on accident or luck. It is possible that soul abilities and urges are present in a person, yet not be actualized. Reincarnation provides further opportunities. Each soul is also here in life to learn about self and relationships, through the experiences and challenges of a personal life. So, the soul provides basic divine potentials to a personal life, and it also receives learning from this personal life as well as new developments in essences.

The soul moves through two opposite cyclical phases. One is its incarnating or manifesting phase, and the other is its returning, distillation, renewal phase. One is outgoing and often termed as a descent; while the other is incoming and often termed as the ascent. The incarnating phase is into the world, and the returning phase is back towards the Divine One.

During the incarnating manifesting phase, the soul gives birth to a personality including a personal ego to manage self interactions with the world. The personality also includes a mental, emotional and physical apparatus, which we call the triad of personality. The purpose of this incarnation is to learn about oneself and world relationships and responsibilities, and also to actualize and test out one’s essences and self-potentials, and finally to serve life and the world. In a simple explanation, our soul-life purpose is self-understanding (or divine awakening) and the actualization of self-potentials (or divine essences) through the three-fold nature of mind, emotion and body-action, and to help humanity and the earth become evermore harmonious and beautiful. An additional purpose for incarnation is to resolve and transform negative emotions and attachments into positive, higher emotions. These are the basic purposes for all souls.^⁵

So after the physical life passes, the soul re-gathers its energies. It gradually takes back, withdraws, the energies it had given out to the personality life and to manifestation. It distills essences from the psyche body, from the personal ego and mind of this latest incarnation. This includes a digestion and distillation of the personality’s accumulated life experiences and learning, the useful stuff of life experience. As the personal self reviews and works through resolutions of their accumulated experiences, occurring in dream state during the ‘purgatory’ phase of afterlife, the soul distills essences of learning and developed abilities, and these essences are accumulated into the soul ‘seed’ (the seed of the lotus flower), to be then provided for the next incarnation. Thus, in a dream time of life review and working through resolutions, the essences of one’s life experiences and learning are distilled for the soul and accumulated into the essential seed of soul for use in the next incarnations.^⁶

The soul is the real journeyer through life and incarnations. It uses the personality triad of mind, emotion and body-activity to actualize its divine capacities and cooperatively serve life to improve the whole of manifestation. It also makes use of personal experiences to expand its wisdom. The soul is continually expanding its wisdom-body, via each new incarnation, by distilling wisdom essences from what is learned from personal life experiences. Wisdom learning can even be extracted from negative or failure kinds of experience. Thus, each soul is continually developing and expanding its innate qualities. Wisdom is accumulating, love is expanding, and the soul’s capacity for mastery in life keeps improving.

The soul is the one who is really reincarnating; though essences from the previous manifested personalities will also continue on into the next personal psyche. Also continuing into the next incarnation are unresolved emotions, self-identifications, stuck desires, and other mental-emotional patterns//attachments from the previous psyche. These can be called self karma (karma means cause-effect), that which of the self-psyche continues on. This self-karma of repeating patterns, attachments, emotions, desires and identifications is what ‘afflicts’ the person in a next life. They may not have all of these patterns and attachments right away in the next life, but these patterns will be inherent, much like genetically caused tendencies or susceptibilities. There is also a karma of merit results, which is the effect on a next life from the good or bad actions of the previous lives, following the natural law of cause and effect. Good and positive thoughts, emotions and actions produce good causes and thus good effects, and these effects may only arise later in future incarnations. The reverse is true for negative thoughts, emotions, and actions.^⁷

The faculty of honest self-reflection, the reflective mind-heart that is able to perceive the truth of oneself, can become disabled, suppressed or broken down by the surface personality ego fearful of this honest self-reflection or angry at it.

Sufis tell a story of the man who asked the spiritual teacher for a mirror in order that he might see his own face. The teacher told the man that he might not like what he saw, but since the man insisted the teacher brought forth a mirror. The man looked at his reflection and was shocked to see the terrible discord and inner conflicts in himself, the lying and contradictions, and the harboring emotions of prejudice and greed. What he saw was a mess. So he threw the mirror down in disgust. He hated that mirror and never wanted to see it again, because he blamed the mirror for what he saw about himself.

Had he accepted the mirror and its honest reflection, he could have forgiven himself and looked more deeply into the mirror to find a spiritual beauty underneath the personality stuff. But the man’s reaction to honestly seeing his self was to immediately suppress or destroy this perception, even to suppress the whole faculty of self-reflection. This is what can happen to us. But we will never see the hidden inner beauty of our essential self, if we are fearful or suppressing the very ability of self-knowing. The first perceptions of oneself may not be all so beautiful, for one will see negativity, discord and other problems. But if one accepts the reality of this, while also making a self-task to resolve these, one will gradually move through this layer of self to reach a deeper level of soul qualities. And finally one will discover the hidden beauty of goodness within. Finally one will know thy true self, the inner spiritual soul.

Yet on the journey to this discovery, to the temple of the soul, one will inevitably encounter all sorts of inner struggles, negative reactive emotions, and ego deceptions; in other words, one will have to work through and move past the more troubling ego patterns of the self, which are layered all down through the subconscious until one reaches the inner divine temple of the pure authentic soul. This is the real hero’s journey, the journey to one’s real authentic self. Then once here, the mirror of our self-reflective mind will show the beauty of our being.

We have to go through these inner struggles with negative parts of ourself, in order to finally reach what is underneath it all. Helpful to understanding is a layered model of the inner self, or psyche. At the core of our being is the spiritual soul, a pure ray of Divine Light and Love. This could be called our deep spiritual unconscious, composed of archetypes or qualities common to all human beings. The layer outside of this is our cultural unconscious, composed of assumptions and perspectives unique to our culture; like a coloration of a window. Next is the layer of our personal unconscious, and here lies all of the many peculiar patterns unique to us. Now mixed in all of these layers are various forms of negativity. What we mean by negativity here is any belief or emotion that contracts and limits our spiritual potentials, or which distorts the truth of who we really are at the innermost core of being. Using this general meaning as a guideline, one would have to admit of harboring all sorts of negativity. People can often become identified with forms of negativity and also create justifications for these; but it makes no sense to identify with or justify that which contracts and limits our spiritual potentials or distorts the truth of who we really are.

So we need to make a journey inward and move through the obstacles of negativity, in order to finally arrive at our inner spiritual centre. The question then is, how do we do this? A step by step manual is impossible, because each journey will have its own peculiar obstacles and successes. Though a few pointers are worth mentioning. First, one needs to practice openness of heart and mind. This openness is in two directions: outward and inward. One needs to practice openness of heart and mind to the nature and people around one, in order to recognize their unique love and spirituality. And one needs to practice openness of heart and mind to one’s own inner nature, to what is arising from the unconscious layers of oneself. This means being open to the unconscious emerging into consciousness. This is synonymous to the journey within; for the inner exploration is simultaneously an intentional journey into oneself and an openness to what is emerging from oneself. Ponder on this. One needs to be open minded and open hearted to the inner world, to the unconscious, because from here spiritual knowing arises. If one is closed to the unconsciousness or fearful of it, then one will never discover the treasure of being deep within. So one needs to be courageously open to whatever is hiding in the unconscious. Some of this will be negative or hiding patterns of the ego, but if we are unwilling to allow this level to emerge, then will be closed off to the deeper spiritual level underneath it. To consciously reach the deeper truth of self, or for it to emerge from unconscious to consciousness, we have to journey through the less spiritual levels, or we have to allow all levels to emerge. It is as if someone were traveling from Jupiter to Earth, they will have to go through the asteroid belt. We have to go through the rocky part of self, but we do not have to get hurt on the way.

The next suggestion is that when one encounters negativity, and surely this will happen, it is not useful to bash it down or attempt to tear it apart. It is not useful to trounce on it with hatred or resentment. It is not helpful to beat it up. Neither is it useful to deny it being there or pretend that it isn’t there. So we should not beat it up, nor deny its present existence. Rather, the method for transforming it is to simply not give it any agreement nor any energy, and also know that this is a passing temporal illusion or passing false identification.

Another key is simply letting it go. These negative emotions and remain and later return because we won’t fully let them go. We even create justifications for them. We need to surrender them, like saying to oneself ‘I am will to let this go, I am willing to surrender this.’

the lowest level could be called the desiring self, which is a kind of selfishness, but not necessarily compulsive. Nor would this be regarded as a level to annihilate. It can then be regarded as a value level of self, rather than as having no real merit. The ethical model, then, is for balance between the levels. Selfish desire would be alright, but only if balanced in life with self-critical and love-serving self.

Sufi tradition divides levels of selfness into either seven or three, depending on the intended use for teaching. We can gleam some important insights from the system of three. The lowest level of selfness can be called the demanding self. It’s when you are demanding this or that, whether it be explicit or implicit, outward or inward. It’s the I want it self, the selfish desiring self, the self-serving self. And when life does not meet those demands or desires, this lower ego-self tends to react with disappointment or sometimes even rage. You see this selfness in little kids, but it often continues into adulthood though more masked and subtle in its form. It is important for those on a spiritual path to admit that they might exhibit this level of self, rather than falsely believe that they must be beyond this level. The scariest people are those who assume that they are always doing good or always doing the right thing. Making assumptions about one’s own unquestionable goodness or rightness is a hazardous pattern of avoiding responsibility. And this leads us to the next level of self.

The second level of selfness can be called the critical self. It’s when you observe yourself critically. But let us explain the meaning of this term, because it might be misunderstood. We are not meaning that one has to be negatively down on oneself, or putting down oneself. The first step in spiritual progress is to love oneself, not be mean to oneself. But once we have a foundation of love and can love oneself, there is a needed step of being critical about oneself in the sense of being discerning. For example, in conversations about literature we might practice critical analysis. One practices critical analysis in science as well. The meaning here is to study something and discern what is useful or good quality, vs. not useful or poor quality. Basically, it is using the intellect to study something. In our case, we are studying ourselves and discerning how our behavior and thoughts are working in relation to significant goals and values. In other words, we begin to look at ourselves and see how well it is all going in relation to our finest goals, and also what we might change in order to make things better. The usual tendency is never really observe oneself with a critical eye, because one is afraid of what one might find, and so the usual tendency is to evade any kind of criticism and make ingenious excuses for ourselves.

So the critical or discerning self begins to cause a change in oneself, because the demanding self is not simply allowed to dominate every scene. The critical discerning self is willing to really look at one’s demanding or selfish patterns, rather than avoid or deny them, and it is willing to insist on change. It’s kind of a tough love, mixed with observational honesty, applied to oneself. Hopefully then, this better explains the meaning of practicing self-criticism, but without trampling on oneself. Like any good mental health, all we are talking about is being realistic and honest about faults, mistakes, and behaviors that are not working well, as well as honestly recognizing our patterns of selfishness, demanding and compulsion. Let us agree that it is good to be positive and loving about oneself, but at the same time we need to be honest, realistic and critically discerning, so that we are not avoiding or making excuses about our patterns of negativity and selfishness.

The third level of selfness is the spiritually infused self. It is beyond the selfish demanding self, and it is also beyond the critical self. The critical self has helped move our being-energies from the lower self to the spiritual self. To do this, the critical self had to become a commander or leader, as it were; hopefully one who balances compassion with critical discernment. Now we come to this spiritual self, this higher level of selfness. This self is at peace, with oneself and with God, and it is directly aligned with the Divine Will-Love-Wisdom. This is also called the true soul. To be here, in one’s soul, or to be the soul, is to be in peace, in love, and in harmony with the Divine Reality.

other levels might be love-serving, wisdom serving or teacher level of self, and union seeking or aspiring to God. see also the important metaphysical model change as hinted by underlined above.

the spiritual aim, and even in deed the essential spiritual practice, could be described as freeing oneself (from oneself). At any moment we are usually stuck in some kind of mental, emotional or physical preoccupation. Often it is a thought process which seems to be in a circular modality, going over the same stuff again and again. The stuck place might also be a repeating emotional state, or it might be a certain level of consciousness. The basic point here is that we are often stuck somewhere in a lower level of consciousness, thought, emotion, or vibration. So the first step in this existential prison is to free oneself. One might argue, now, that it would be possible to free oneself, as it also seems impossible to pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps. This assessment is partly true but partly false. We do need help. Yet we get help from God and from the angels and masters of love-wisdom. We can acknowledge this, and also realize that we could not ever get free without such help. Praise be and thanks to the Divine helpers and the Divine Mercy Itself. But now that we have acknowledged this need for the higher and our gratitude for such help, the next step is realizing our own responsibility and what we can do. It is either stupid or dishonest to rationalize that we can do nothing. Those who have tried to be responsible for their own spiritual evolution have all stated that there is much one can do, rather than just rely on God or whatever. You can free yourself (with God’s help of course). And know that God is always working, so the only missing element is you. You have to make the choice to be free in any moment. God is helping, but it is really up to you, not God. This is because you are the one who is accepting being in this present prison or in this present state. You are the one who is choosing this present level of consciousness, and that is why you are here. So until you decide and make some effort to move out of this present state (of bondage), it won’t happen in spite of God’s help.

Intro: For sake of descriptive distinction, let us distinguish emotion, feeling, and cognition; though also admitting that these are often co-related.

Let us consider the meaning of love. There is much to say about love, because this word refers to many kinds of experience and different levels of experience. First of all, let us remember related words, such as affection, adoration, caring, compassion, empathy, goodwill, and inclusiveness. These could be considered as facets of love or qualities of love.

Next, let us consider if love is actually an emotion. Most people would say that love is an emotion, but it may not always be. Of course though, this depends on how emotion is defined. The word emotion has in it the root of motion, so we might surmise that it means an energy in motion. The word motivation is derived from the same root, so an emotion is an energy that moves in us and also moves us. Psychology defines an emotion as a physiological state, yet also a subjective experience. Studies show that measurable physiological changes correspond with what people usually regard as emotions. So, in considering love, it is an emotion but only when it has definite motion in us or when there is a definite sense of physiological change such as blood pressure and movement. In other words, we will call it an emotion if we can feel it right in our body. Yet, love is not always experienced so intensely or so bodily. For love is sometimes more like a subtle radiance from the heart that does not have any tangible physical energy to it. Love might also be a knowing, such as a knowing that one is loved, or a realization that one does actually love. These can then be regarded as non-emotional kinds of love, which we will consider momentarily.

An emotion is more than just a feeling about something, because an emotion has a physical, kinetic energy component. An emotion is like energy stirred up or in motion; the blood is moving around a bit more than usual, as it were. An exception to this might be peacefulness, which could still be considered as an emotion, yet it is emotion at its furthest rest. Better examples of emotion are fear, worry, sorrow, anger, lust, and strong affectionate love. Love would be considered one of the emotions, yet this is the stronger, more kinetic kind of love, the kind of love one feels directly in the body.

But all kinds of love are not necessarily an emotional gushing out. For love can also be a non-emotional cognitive state. This might seem strange at first to understand, because we are so used to thinking of love as an emotion, and we are used to regarding cognition as a thinking kind of thing. Cognition, as understood in this discourse, is mental knowing.

So, love can be anywhere along a continuum between emotional love and cognitional love. Emotional love is bodily sensed and often felt as dramatic. It needs little explanation, for we know this kind of love from movies and from our own life experience. Sometimes we have a strong emotion of love, the kind that you feel in your blood, surging through the heart and affecting the whole body. Sometimes we experience a kind of love that needs to dramatically expressed with hugs and kisses.

Yet, there is another kind of love, along the other side of this love continuum, which can be called cognitive love, rather than emotional love. Cognitive love still involves the heart and comes from the heart, but it is not so bodily felt or energetically felt. The heart has its own cognition and thus knows this love.

Cognitive love is realizing the unity of people or unity in the world. It is a realization or a perception, rather than a gushing emotion or a strong need to hug. The emotional and expressive aspects of love are wonderful and do not need to be suppressed. Yet we also need to value cognitive love. Cognitive love might look at someone or consider a group or the world, and think “I love them.” It is a thought or, better, a realization. Having love as just a thought, rather than a strong emotion, may seem trite; but realistically, we do not always have strong emotions of love. Neither does anyone always have strong sexual energies on the move. So, cognitive love, or rational love, or love thoughts, or love realizations, are important forms of love, even if not so dramatic and intense as emotional love and sexual love. Cognitive love is realizing unity, interconnection, and profound relationship. It is also realizing, with a cognitive empathy, the feelings of others and the beauty of others and the living value of others. It is also realizing that these other people, and other lives as well, are similar to our own self, in that they all too want to live in good health, explore life and their own self-potentials, and also have loving relationships. So, cognitive love is based mostly on empathy realizations. It is also about caring. Caring is an emotion, but it is also a realization. I realize that I care. This is also love.

Another aspect of love is a love attitude. A cognition is a thought or a realization, or sometimes it’s synonymous with a perception about things. But an attitude is a way that we perceive; it’s like the stance we take, which then influences HOW we perceive and what we perceive. Our mental attitude is what we bring to a situation; like my way of looking at things or at this person in particular. The difference between an attitude and a perception is that an attitude opens up a possibility for certain kinds of perceptions. It is having a supportive perceptual orientation; like standing in a good place in order to perceive a beautiful scene. For example, an open and inquisitive attitude about certain people will support and prepare our perceptual-cognitive capacity for having a more complete and less biased perception of them, rather than having a closed-minded, ‘already decided’ attitude about them. In other words, our perceptual attitude is what we bring to this moment of perception; it is our pre-stance – which determines HOW we perceive or what we are open to and ready to perceive. If someone has a fixed and already-decided kind of attitude about life or about others, then they will usually perceive them in this limited way according to that attitude. A most loving attitude would be a most open attitude, that is, open to who this person really is; rather than entering into the perception with an already fixed idea about the person or, worse, having a hateful or dislikable attitude about them..

The attitudes of love are inclusiveness, openness, acceptance, compassion and caring. These are possible stances, or perspectives, that we bring to life and also ways that we interact with life. For example, with an attitude of compassion one is ready to feel what others need, and with an attitude of caring one is ready to help fill those needs. Yet these attitudes of love are not usually so emotional, though some emotion might become involved at any particular time.

So in summary, the mental-cognitive and perceptual-attitude aspects of love have been elaborated, and we realize that these kinds of love are not necessarily emotional – in that they do not necessarily involve noticeable physiological changes in the body as would occasions of actual emotion. Though this does depend on one’s definition or criteria of emotion. Yet, even if this is accepted, it seems strange to consider qualities such as love, compassion and caring as simply cognitions or perceptual-attitudes, though we are admitting that on some occasions these qualities are actual emotional responses. What might be missing, then, is heart. So, we need to add in heart to the love cognition and love attitude, even while still acknowledging that all occasions of love are not necessarily emotional. Thus, all occasions of real love experience require heart, even if they are not emotional. But instead of calling this heart, let’s suggest that it be called feeling. And here, feeling is not the same as emotion. One can have a feeling of love about someone, or a feeling of love about the world, without necessarily involving an actual emotion. In other words, a feeling [of love] is not necessarily emotional [in the physiological sense]. And yet, this feeling comes from the heart. It is like a stream from the heart, a stream of love energy. And it accompanies the love cognition and love attitude.

To bring this concept out further, universally, realize that any cognition or attitude can involve a related feeling-quality. In our current discussion this would be the feeling-quality of love; yet a feeling-quality might also be the opposite of love, hatred, or possibly envy or maybe resentment. So feelings can range all over the place, and they may also be concurrent and connected to a particular cognition. The difference between a feeling and an emotion is that a feeling is like the hue or tone of an experience, perception or thought; while an emotion is an occurrence with a definite physiological or bodily sense. A feeling might be subtle yet definitely recognizable. A feeling might pervade much of our daily experience. There might also be a feeling-quality to each situation or relationship, or even to each perception. Even in the perception of an artwork or in the listening to a story, there might be a recognizable feeling in it. A feeling is there; (though the feeling is really here). And this most often is accompanied by a cognition, a thought, a perception, or a realization. And thus, feeling and cognition go together; each feeling has its related cognition. Notice also that when one has an attitude about something, there is an accompanying feeling about this as well. Or, when one has a feeling about something, there is also an attitude about it as well. Thus, feelings are the hues and tones that pervade much of our perceptions, attitudes, thoughts, and experiences.

Furthermore, a feeling is a mode of knowing, much like the other senses except that it is an inner sense about things. Whereas, emotion is a response to things, or sometimes a reaction. I feel something is good or not good, or I feel a liking or preference for something vs. something else. We often make choices according to our feeling. So, feeling is like cognition, since it’s a mode of knowing, but it is different than a thought. Yet it is also similar to emotion. Thus, feeling can be understood as between and connecting emotion and cognition.

Yet back to our theme of love, all kinds of love are imbued with some feeling of love. This feeling of love, or the love-feeling, is the essential energy of love – which is foundational to both cognitive and emotional kinds of love.

We might have a feeling of interconnectiveness, relatedness, inclusiveness, empathy or compassion; which are aspects of love.

Will comes from the mind, but this is from higher mind rather than the lower conditioned mind.

The most powerful aspect of will is decision. When one makes a firm decision, this is will. Decision governs and directs our energies – all of our thought, emotional, and physical energies. Decision, or will, works first within our mental level but it is actually from a level above the mental. But this is not the same as ordinary choices. We are dealing with ordinary language here, so it may be difficult to understand the difference. Decision of the will comes from a higher level from the mental but it will usually seem mental because it first has to work in this level. In contrast, ordinary choices come from either emotional reaction or mental conditioning. That is to say, ordinary choices are from habit or conditioning. One feels that a free choice is being made, but really it is by habit or conditioning, either from the emotional level or the lower mental level. Whereas actual decision from the level of will is from a higher level than even the mental. This is the level we need to reach and maintain, and then work from. But we need extra-ordinary effort to get there. Or maybe we just need a wake-up call to realize this possibility. For without extra effort or without realization, we tend to fall back down to a level of least resistance, which is simply habit or conditioning. Real freedom, real free decision, requires an extra effort.

Even more effort is required of commitment, the commitment to persevere all the way to success. So if will is really decision, then will-power is commitment to fulfilling this decision.

My purpose in this essay is to first show the similarity of meaning between feeling and emotion, in how we commonly use these words in ordinary conversation, then second to show some significant differences in their respective meanings – specifically in the context of psychological and esoteric science.

We need to first understand that the meaning of words, such as emotion and feeling, are only determined by human beings and by how the words are used in conversation and descriptions of experience. There is no divinely given meaning, and any original esoteric teachings did not even use these English words. So, there is no definitive, authoritative definition of what these two words ‘really’ mean; rather, their meaning is in how people commonly use them and in how the words can be meaningful as descriptive terms of a science.

In common word usage the difference between emotions and feelings is quite ambiguous, as we often interchange these terms in conversation and description of experience. (Examples: I’m feeling sad. I have sad feelings. I’m experiencing a strong emotion of sadness. What is the emotion you feel?) So as seen in these examples the terms of emotion and feeling mean the same, and they refer to the same experience.

Emotions are of many kinds, and so are feelings. Some could be called low and some high, some ego-based and some spiritual-based. (Ex: emotions of hatred, or emotions of love. Both are emotions, just as anger is an emotion but also joy is an emotion.) The same can be said of feelings. (Ex: feelings of hatred, or feelings of love, feelings of anger, or feelings of joy.)

Emotions can be generally classed into ego-based or spiritual-based. An ego-emotion is based on a self-centered and self-interest consciousness, while a spiritual emotion (‘higher emotion’) is based in an expanded and transpersonal consciousness. Furthermore, ego-emotions seem to be centered in the lower three chakra centres, while the [higher] spiritual emotions seem to come from the heart or the throat centres.

Emotions can also be classed into three kinds: Immediate emotions are energetically felt states of the moment, or in other words, how one feels in this moment, and each emotion has a duration. One could ask, “How am I feeling right now?” or “What is my present emotion.” And we can notice that each emotion has an energy in it, which might also be physical felt. (Ex: I feel irritated, or I feel upset, or I feel happy and joyful. In other words, an emotion of irritation, upsetness, happiness or joy is present in the person’s experience and also affecting behavior during its duration.)

A second kind of emotion could be called mood. Moods are not all too different than what has been previously described, except that moods linger on for a longer duration and often become unnoticed by the experiencer. They often pervade one’s speech and behavior, yet the person is unconscious of the mood, which tends to be like a background music in their personality activity. But again, moods can be higher or lower (such as a joyful mood, or oppositely a depressed mood).

The third kind of emotion is more different than the previous. We can call these dispositional qualities. An example is caring. Another example is generosity, and another could be loyalty. These are possible qualities of a person. They might also be called personality traits. Yet they are also kinds of emotion, or possible qualities of one’s emotional body. (Ex: One can feel caring, or feel generous, or feel loyal; but even when the immediate feeling is no longer present to awareness, one is nonetheless still caring, generous and loyal, because these emotional qualities are stable in the personality. When the mother goes to sleep her caring and generous emotions are still present in her disposition, in her emotional body.)

So far in this analysis there is no important difference between emotion and feeling; for we can easily replace one word with the other in our description of experience and still have the same meaning Though perhaps, we call emotions “feelings” when they are most immediately present in experience (Ex: “I feel loving” as the love emotion is present), and we call feelings “emotions” when we start to think about them (Ex: I feel joy, so [by cognitive thinking] I describe this as an emotion of joy). In other words, “feeling” is how we describe immediate stuff in the first person, while “emotion” is how we describe immediate feeling stuff from a self-observing or psychologizing stance.

But [finally] let us consider some differences between feeling and emotion. Like many words, these terms have multiple meanings in how we use them conversationally. So a is a different meaning of “feeling” is in regards to physical sensation. We use the word ‘feeling’ to describe physical sensations (Ex: I feel pain, or I feel sexual pleasure, or even “my physical body feels good and harmonious”). But the word ‘emotion’ is not used for physical sensations. Neither pain nor pleasure seem to be emotions; they are best described as physical sensations. (Ex: if I have a stomach pain, I don’t call this pain an emotion. If I have a warm bath, I might say that I feel warm but I don’t say that this is a warm emotion). Though certainly, emotions often arise from such sensations, such that the warm physical sensation might create a peaceful emotion, or the painful ache might produce emotional gloom. So emotions do not seem the same as mere physical sensations (ex: pain, pleasure, hot, cold), even though many emotions have a corresponding physical affect (Ex: joyousness seems to make the physical body feel good, while sadness can produce an actual physical weakness.

Yet a more significantly different meaning of feeling is a kind of sensing. Common education says we have just five senses. Yet feeling is also a sense, a way to know and understand other people and the world around us. Feeling is also a way to make value judgments or discern good from not good. (Ex: Often we can feel what is good from bad). Also we can use our feeling-sense to know and communicate with others. We can even feel energies from others or from places. We feel who this person is, or we feel their emotions or their emotional qualities. We also feel the emotional quality energies of places. Each place has uniquely emanating physical, emotional and mental energies; each kind sensed by its corresponding sensing tool in us. We sense emotional energies through feeling. We can also sense-feel cosmic and spiritual energies, such as higher spiritual love. So, we can feel the people, places and energies around us. We can open our feelings to the world, opening our feeling-sense, which is related to compassion and empathy. Thus, feeling is a unique kind of sensing of others, or of energies and qualities, or of life in general. (Ex: I feel you, I feel who you are or the qualities coming from you. I feel this sacred place, this forest or this desert, this beauty here or this peace or the spirituality here. Or, I feel an inner teacher or angel present, or divine love presence. I feel spiritual presence. I feel universal love.) Thus, feeling is a sense, or a sensitivity, in regards to either the outer world around us or the inner world within us, which could be called the objective or the subjective world, respectively. Feeling is a sensitivity and a way to know the cosmic reality around us and the spiritual reality within us. And we can work with this consciously and intentionally.

Related to this ‘sense’ meaning of feeling is a meaning of sensitivity. Our human sensitivity is in the apparatus of feeling. Or in other words, our feelings are the sensitivity of our emotional body. Feelings are like the strings of a guitar or piano, or perhaps, our feelings are more like a harp on a mountain top open to the effects of wind and other energies. Because so often it seems that outside energies, including the words and actions of others, so easily play upon our sensitive strings of feeling.

We are sensitive beings, and so easily our feelings are affected by the people and world around us. And our feelings can get hurt. Common to all of us are experiences of hurt feelings. Our feelings are very sensitive, which is useful for picking up on [sensing] the emotional qualities of what is around us; yet our sensitive feelings are also open to possible hurt. Conversely, our sensitive feelings are also open to positive impressions, which makes possible an upliftment of feeling by those around who emanate higher, positive emotions.

Thus, our feelings are the sensitive strings of our emotional body, so that energies coming to us from outside are “felt” in our emotional body. Or in other words, energies touching upon our sensitive emotional body have the result of feelings. Thus, feelings are sensitive reactions to the people and world around. Then, when these feelings stabilize more, they become more definitely distinguishable emotions, and with the help of mind/thought we then classify these into emotional words so that we can describe and talk about them.

Torkom gives a useful scientific explanation of feelings and emotions, which is consistent with the above explanation of feeling as a kind of sensing and sensitivity.

(From TS, Science of Meditation, p.279) “Feeling is the response of the astral body to the outer and inner impressions…. the world of energies do and thereby create feelings.”

“… Emotion is the amplification and the coloring of the feeling by the reaction of the human mind. When any event or impression is registered by the astral and mental bodies simultaneously, you have two impressions which act and react upon each other. This interaction produces the emotion.” TS goes on to write (p.280) “the astral body registers like a photographic plate,” and thus its passive registration of events and energies is more accurate than the mental body registration which tends to involve rationalization as well, yet the passive astral registration does not have the discrimination of the mental intelligence.

So, in relating this present analysis to what Torkom writes, feelings are more primary than emotions, and they are actually a primary sense, because our feelings are the most immediate (and non-conceptualized) sensitivity to impressions and energies. We immediately and directly feel things, including the energies, the emotions, and also spiritual qualities of life around us, and we also feel what is most deeply inside us. Torkom is saying that feelings are very basic, in that they are direct effects of impressions or energies, simply like the reaction of a photographic plate (or also like the effect of energies upon musical strings). Thus, our feelings are the sensitive apparatus of our emotional-astral body. Emotions then emerge when our mind finds meaning in what is happening – our mind has interpreted or come to some belief about, for example, what this person is saying or doing. This mental interpretation is mixed with the corresponding feeling, which then forms an emotion.

Another aspect of feelings, related to sense and sensitivity, are transpersonal and cosmic feelings. For example, cosmic or universal feelings of love, beauty, and oneness. Especially noteworthy is the possible feeling of universal-cosmic oneness – a feeling of oneness with all life, with nature, with God or with Universal Being. Our feeling-sense seems to merge into a much greater field of energy and experience, or perhaps the usual personal-boundaries our emotional body collapse such that our feeling merges with a greater sense of Being.

One final interesting aspect to feelings is if they can be sent out or radiated to others. Spiritual and esoteric teachings seem to suggest this is possible. By our own experience it does seem that our feelings radiate out to others. Though in this aspect the meaning of emotion and feeling are again indistinguishable; that is, one person might say they are radiating a feeling of joy while another person says they are emitting an emotion of joy, but they are both speaking about the same thing. But whether we call this an emotion or a feeling, or both, it is certainly significant to consider how we can radiate/emit or even “send” a particular feeling or an emotional quality to another person, a group, or even to all of humanity. Consider, for example, the sending out of love, or joy, or peace, or appreciation. To some extent this probably also involves mind and perhaps mental imagery as well, yet there is actual feeling involved (unless we choose to make this a purely mental exercise). There is an actual feeling (or emotional) kind of energy involved here, emanating out and having a real effect on others and in the world. And of course, if are doing this consciously and intentionally, with spiritual will, we will be sending forth the highest (most spiritual) emotions/feelings.

Sometimes our feelings get hurt, but wy? Probably because it is natural to seek harmonious emotions with others and to be in an emotional unity with others. If we come to a conviction that this is not possible with everyone, then we tend to seek a smaller group to achieve this sought for emotional harmony and unity. But when significant others reject us, or criticize us, or in anyway make us feel inharmonious with the group emotion, we then feel emotionally hurt – our feelings get hurt.

Also feelings sent out; ie radiating a feeling of love, or compassion or caring. Or even a feeling of openness (open heartedness)

Emotion is a state of experience (the emotion of this moment, which can be of a shorter to longer duration, or can also transform into a different emotion (similar to how a color might make subtly or dramatically change into a different hue), or an emotion might remain in a diffused state giving experience a kind of pervading quality which can be either a mood or disposition.

Consider the difference between Higher mind and lower mind. Both have useful functions. The functions of lower mind are most important for practical purposes in the world and in communication. Lower mind is the accumulation of knowledge, or information, then also thinking and reasoning about it. Lower mind would be a vast subject to delve into, because it is almost everything that psychology studies. Higher mind, in contrast, is a direct knowing, so it’s better name would be intuition. Real spiritual understanding has to involve higher mind; otherwise, all one has is an informational kind of knowledge. It would be quite possible to find a teacher who lectures profusely, writes many books, and knows many things; yet they might be only using the lower mind. They might have simply accumulated spiritual or metaphysical information, maybe some by reasoning but mostly by reading or hearing about it. They might be an encyclopedia of spiritual information (called knowledge). They can tell you about this or that, and they can quote from great scriptures. Yet inside, they may have no direct experience of any of this, no intuition, no real functioning of the higher mind. So the lower mind can disguise itself as being wise and it might even seem like a higher mind, but it’s only an accumulation of information. Higher mind is direct knowing in the moment. It requires meditation, rather than thinking or memorization.

Knowledge has content, yet the highest knowledge-wisdom is Knowingness, which is not about possessing a lot of knowledge, but instead is about liberation from an obsessive mind. The obsessive mind obsesses upon particular thoughts, or worries, or fascinations, or plans, or even upon gaining more knowledge. Sometimes the obsession is for gaining more spiritual knowledge. But the highest wisdom is all about liberation from mental obsessions. The real aspirant is not the avid reader of spiritual matters, nor one who regularly attends lectures; instead it’s the one who is watchful and restraining of their obsessively collecting mind, and working on the more difficult practice of liberation.

1 The soul begins as an inner divine child, in need of recognition and love. Then later, after allowed to grow, it can become the expressive divine, which we find in great people, saints and adepts. An adept is one who’s soul has become expressive; so for an adept the soul is all that one is, in full expression.

2 Remember that each soul is also three-fold – consciousness, love, and will. Additionally, souls carry on beyond any single lifetime. They ‘transmigrate’ through personality lives; that is, they reincarnate.

5 Some souls have a more specific goal, but in general the specific goals of life are determined while in the play of life. False teachings claim that a soul decides what it will specifically be doing in an incarnation, and some false teachings even claim that a soul knows and pre-determines every event of its incarnation. These same false teachings often say as well that each soul determines what it must learn in an incarnation. Yet the absurdity of this is that a soul would pre-determine what it should learn; but is this really a learning adventure if one already knows (and then decides) what one should learn? As well, it is absurd to think that each soul determines all of their incarnating experiences, since this would mean that each soul has direct power to determine the world events that are part of that learning. Is each soul determining how the world behaves? Pretty weird, pretty stupid belief. Also, the fact that many people have to work in poor jobs or live in poor situations is not a determination of their soul, but mostly a determination of economic circumstances. Some people want to think that everything is perfectly determined, because they cannot stand the tension of injustices or accidents.

7 A person’s circumstances are not just because of past karma; because karma cause-effects are also social. So, many circumstances and events derive from social karmas - not just what one has created for themselves (as though the person had once done something to deserve being punched). Also, each person is capable of creating brand new negative karma by their negative choices and actions; therefore, if someone is hurt by another or if someone is in an injust circumstance, this might well be caused by the negativity (newly created) of others, rather than being an effect of one’s own past negativity. False and simplistic teachings on karma want to show that everything in life is really just and deserving; but this is not so. Not all that happens to everyone is what they deserve or caused by their previous actions. Injustices are being newly created, and people do affect other people. We are not simply self-contained monads, each having complete power over our own fate; rather, we are interconnected beings and interdependent on each other. Thus all karma created has social and environment affects, beyond the little bubble of ourselves, so we are all affecting each other in both positive and negative ways. We have to understand karma in a more socially interactive way, rather than the usual simplistic self-contained way.