HONORING SOUL

 

 

 

Bless Your Soul

“Follow your soul.  It knows the way home.”

Long ago, I had to reject having a ‘go-between’ between my soul and Creator.  I understand my soul to be spiritual energy that came into being with first creation.  From teachings of Elders, I came to understand that Creation was created with so much energy and that that energy level, on Mother Earth, never changes.  When energy dies it is replaced by other original energy so that the creation energy remains the same.  It made sense to me and my soul, so I have taken it in as a personal truth. Soul is energy that is wise because it has been recycled and recycled and recycled.  It is why we may sense Déjà vu.  Is it that that moment was lived once before by soul/energy?  The explanation still makes sense to me.

Perhaps it is why there are life after death memories.  I have experienced that as well.  I believe our soul has had many lives I believe that we all carry our own amount of wise wise energy that has learned lessons, served purposes, and remembers those lessons and purposes like a computer remembers what it is trained to know.  I know, this is deep, but I work hard to connect to my soul energy and careful not to mistake it for Ego. 

It is said that every woman carries, and passes on, some ancient bits of DNA that is connected to First Woman.  When we think of that ancient DNA, I have a sense that it is ancient wisdom that we all inherit, that wise wise soul.  Caring for our soul is, in fact, caring for a connection that is infinite.  It is way beyond the “I” of Ego.  It is beyond what we (Ego) thinks we need.  It is soul that is deeply embedded in our psyche that we must honor, must connect to (honoring and listening to, our intuition) and asks for nothing.  It is that wise soul that needs no praise but needs nurturing.  Soul is that ‘goodness’/that connection to godliness that rises beyond any miracle or muster that we think we control.  It is that sensation of awe that rises without our bidding.  It is that flash of great love that comes, suddenly, and without agenda.  It is that that comes as hope in desperate times.  It is that which drives us to take that one more step, that one more day, that one more time and is there no matter how much our Ego would say to give up.  It is that sense of purpose and why we seek it. 

Nurturing our soul and being nurtured by soul, reminds me of Adrienne Rich’s Diving into the Wreck where she suggests that we are being nurtured by something above us, beyond us, like a deep sea diver who is fed by a Mother Ship.

Diving into the Wreck

Adrienne Rich - 1929-2012

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

Soul is ‘The Source’. Soul is that which is untouched, or should be untouched, by anything earthly.  It is living an ancient life with ancient truths, joys, inspiration, and a ‘knowing’ that we cannot know in its entirety.  It is why we are the answer to some ancient prayer, our being here and Present, is to stand as a moment of ancient being with reason to be here, a purpose for being here, that we do not consciously know of, but live it every moment we breath.  It is the reason when we cannot figure out the why.  It is why we need to love and accept ourselves, as long as we are trying to do, to be, better than we were a moment ago.  It is why we need to forgive ourselves for things we may have done, without knowing how it stirred the ether (the energy) in ways needing stirred.   Souls is the Reason for all things.   Soul is our power that we often forget to harness, yet, waits for us to do so and is available when we ask for it.  Soul is that which we cannot begin to understand, yet we may allow to be limited by go-betweens.  Soul is that wisdom we can draw on, and may call inspiration, that appears, as almost magic, when an answer comes.  Our soul knows things we cannot figure out how we know.

Being careful of our soul means that we honor that ‘goodness’/’godness’ within.  Loving ourselves means that we are loving The Ancient Within.  Soul is that which exists, has always existed, and exists without our trying.  Activating soul is like exercising a muscle.  The more we use it, the more evident it becomes.  Your soul wants nothing more than your love, your nurturing, and, of course, your gratitude.  Exercising your soul is practicing something more sacred, more important than anything else in this world, or the next.  Care of one’s soul should be our main focus in this hard life down here on earth.  When someone says, “Bless your soul/heart”, like my mother often said, means that we recognize soul in each other.  How beautifully ancient a sentence, a thought, a prayer.

Bless your soul, sister friends.  Care for that ‘ancientness’ within self and others.

©Carol Desjarlais 9.20.20