This is Part 9 of a 12-Part Series
Excerpted from Chapter One of The Seven Gates of Soul
The entire Introduction can be read
as a prelude to this series here.
Previous posts in this series include:
Toward a Working Definition of Soul
Distinguishing the Embodied Soul from the Postmortem Soul
Distinguishing the Embodied Soul From Disembodied Spirits
Distinguishing Between the Embodied Soul and the Subtle Body
The Roots of the Embodied Soul in Spiritual Tradition
The Association of the Embodied Soul With Breath
Embracing the Earth as the Larger Body of the Soul
Embracing the Mystical Worldview
Any true language of soul must recognize the connection between human beings and the larger body of the Earth, which sustains and nourishes human activity. The embodied soul is in relationship to everything that exists within the embodied world. How consciously we are able to maintain and nurture this relationship will determine the quality of our experience here on earth. When the relationship is conscious and vital, we will experience joy, abundance, and well-being. When it becomes weakened or strained, or goes unconscious, we will experience pain, impoverishment, and disease. An awareness of our place as souls, within the web of life on this planet, must become central to our understanding of who we are, before we can speak in a meaningful way about the spiritual nature of the soul’s journey. The pathway to this awareness is a stronger sense of connection to our own bodies, and a conceptual framework that facilitates an understanding of the soul’s experience within the context of the body – both literal and figurative – that we inhabit.
Instead of seeking a religious form of spiritual transcendence that takes the soul beyond the body and the physical realm, the soul must be empowered to enter more deeply and more consciously into the life it is living. The will to live in the body, with intention, with passion for, and commitment to the life that one has chosen, knowing full well that the body is a temporary home for Spirit, is to follow what Yaqui brujo, Don Juan called “a path of heart” (Carlos Castenada, A Separate Reality: Further Conversations With Don Juan, pp. 105-107), and what I would call a life conducive to the cultivation of soul. A language of soul is one that makes it possible to articulate a path of heart, through a conscious embrace of the physical body, the embodied world, and the experience of embodiment.
Astrology provides a foundation for a language of the embodied soul by systematically observing a correlation between heaven (the realm of Spirit) and earth (the realm of the body). The guiding principle behind most astro-logical thinking is the Hermetic axiom “As above, so below; as without, so within.” This catch phrase is a pithy expression of a rather elaborate system of symbolic correspondences between the cosmos and all things terrestrial. In exploring these correspondences, one cannot help but recognize that the process of liberation from earthly existence pursued by religion is paradoxically a matter of entering into the embodied life with greater clarity of intention, and availing oneself of the opportunity for deepening of soul that it – and only it – provides. From this perspective, the life of the body is not separate or antithetical to the life of Spirit. Quite the contrary. It is the sacred vehicle through which Spirit evolves to more consciously recognize and express itself in space and time.
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