Groups > Spirituality and Consciousness

John,

I both know and enjoy love, but the heart is an organ that pumps blood. it is also about the size of a jar of peanut butter, so I don't know where you get this "infinite in size" reference from.

Besides, what "connected, expansive love"? Sure, I've felt this emotion, the feelnig of connectedness to the world (agape, in a way), to my family, to friends, and to people I really shouldn't be feeling this way towards. Sometimes it's really great! Other times, it really sucks.

And I'm not consulting my heart first. Even assuming, for the moment, that it does anything more than just pump blood (which, as I mentioned earlier, it doesn't), the last time I listened to my heart before my head (and don't be a wise guy--I don't mean "the little head"), it almost cost me my marriage.

You're using some very "romantic" notions of what the heart is, but it's all romantic "analogies." I understand what you are saying, and what you mean, but there's still no "soul" there. Not to me, at least.

I would be careful to consider John's comment lightly.I have thought on this, and though do not speak for him, I see the reason in his statement.

The mind, our mind is capable of much. While this may be expressed clinically in logic and emotion one cannot deny how the two are intermingled for the greater experience...if not always for the greater good.

The mind in it's ultimate is capable of great love, an expansive love (think Mother Theresa) and is capable of great evil, an expansive evil (think Hitler, Dahmer) and it is in relation to the cognitive logic of the brain to control the two.

Where does this leave the "soul" ?

Perhaps as a recording of our journey.

While animals have cognitive thoughts and reasoning, is it really more than programming for survival even to a high degree ?

We humans have the ability to move above that programmed thought and even consider "do I have a soul" or more to the point "am I tied to a greater entity than myself"?

Let's face it, that is the basis of the whole question.."Do I have a soul?".

I believe I do and I believe you do.

Perhaps it is in the traditional Judeo-Christian thought or the Jungian version but there it is.. and it might be me but the fact that we are discussing the question in some way validates my point.

That you see the issue and question of your soul validates it's existence.

(helmet on, in the bomb shelter ready for the responses).

Damian,

I'm not going to lob any unholy hand grenades at you...

If you look to some of my earlier responses, what you may call soul, I call self-awareness.

Here on earth, from a pragmatic point of view, they are probably pretty much the same.

But some people (I'm not sure where you stand on this) hope that and believe that their soul will survive their bodily death.

I do not. Well, I hope that it will (after all, it's a comforting idea, isn't it?), but I do not believe that it will. Or, to be consistent, I believe that it won't.

Something as loosely defined as soul and as elusive by definition is just that: loose. In reality there is no such thing as a soul in my opinion unless soul could be defined as the person: part and parcel. What was the native meaning of the word soul again??? Spirit is breath or wind.