Souls - Part 2: The Soul, the Mind and the Heart

This is the second post in my series about the soul. I posted the first “What is a soul,” in mid-January with the intention to follow up with this post a few weeks later. But events got the better of me, and here we are in early May. I hope I will do better with part three of the series.

What to do?

Part of you wants desperately to do a particular thing:

·         Perhaps there is something tasty that you really want to eat.

·         Maybe you really need a stapler at home and you figure that your office has plenty of them and won’t miss just one.

·         All you want to do is sit on the sofa and watch television.

·         A cashier gives you way more change than you had coming to you, and since the store makes lots of money, it seems fair that you keep it.

·         Or maybe you’re at a party engaging in some mutual flirting with a very attractive person after a few drinks, and you’re confident that this could escalate to an enjoyable sexual encounter before the evening is done.

But another part of you tries to hold you back from doing what that other part desperately wants:

·         You’re on a diet, and you know that tasty morsel is bad for you. 

·         You know that it’s wrong to steal from the company.

·         You know that you should get off your butt, go to the gym, ride your bike or at least go out for a walk.

·         You should tell the cashier about the mistake and give back the money.

·         Either you or the other person (or both) is married or in a relationship, and you know it would be wrong to take the alcohol-influenced flirting any further.

We all find ourselves facing such internal conflicts many, many times throughout our lives. Choosing between “right” and “wrong” has been one of humanity’s most profound questions since we became capable of thought. It’s the stuff that probably gave birth to the science and art of philosophy, and in all of this deep philosophical pondering we have ascribed various causes and characters to the aspects of the struggle. 

We envision it as reasoned control vs. wanton desire, good vs. evil, light vs. dark, our better angels vs. our inner demons. We talk about “giving in” to our base impulses, as opposed to “doing the right thing.”

The Angel vs. the Devil

This struggle is often depicted in stories (and cartoons) as an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, both trying to convince a confused person to take a particular action. The devil in these caricatures lobbies for immediate, usually physical, gratification. If it feels good, do it! Don’t worry about what other people think or feel, or how it might affect them. Don’t worry about the future. Don’t worry about anything, except fulfilling your desire… now!

The devil represents our lower, more animalistic instincts. Generally, the depictions suggest that these are negative qualities and that to follow the devil and do what we want is wrong.

The angel, on the other hand, tries to convince you to follow a higher road, to not do something only because it might feel good at the moment. The angel tries to get you to consider the ramifications of your actions, for yourself and for others. If it feels good, okay, do it, maybe – but only if it won’t hurt anyone else or cause you problems in the future. 

The angel represents more evolved ideals, associated either with a spiritual morality or a kind of morality derived from intellectual consideration of the best course of action in the big picture. These are understood to be positive qualities and to follow the angel is to do what is right.

If a person consistently follows the devil’s advice and gives in to the base desires, he or she is considered bad, weak, lacking good morals, unenlightened and deserving of scorn. The person who consistently spurns the devil’s advice and follows the angel is seen as good, disciplined, strong-willed, having a positive character and worthy of praise and admiration.

And it seems that only a few people are able to always follow the higher road with that angel. A greater number of people, it seems, are more likely to follow the low road, at least most of the time. Many of us aspire to follow the higher path and perhaps do so most of the time, but we all have moments when we fail and let the devil have its way with us. We praise the person who almost always makes the “right” choice and vilify those who consistently follow the low road.

If it’s just an occasional slip, we usually are forgiven and not thought of too badly. After all, to always follow that “angel’s” advice can seem boring and deprive a person of some of the fun of life.

Real, External Forces?

These caricatures can be funny and thought-provoking, and most of us can relate to the notions they represent. And they help us to take a concept that is vexing and difficult to understand and present it in a simple way. But most of us understand that there is not really a pair of cartoon characters sitting on our shoulders and whispering into our ears.

Still, the idea of the angel and devil can be symbolic of what many people believe: that we are influenced directly by external, spiritual forces that try to coax each of us toward their directions. A force of “evil,” represented by the devil, that plants negative, evil thoughts into our minds and tries to draw us that way. Many people believe that this is not just symbolic, but a real evil spirit doing its worst to us.

Meanwhile, the “good” force – again, external – tries to convince us to follow a better path and, in this way, to save us from some terrible judgment and eternal punishment. The only thing for us to do is decide which external force to align with.  That’s our choice. But the “goodness” and “badness” are essentially external.  We are like pawns in their continual struggle for control.

Nothing Spiritual about It?

Still some other people – mainly those who do not believe in any higher power – would tell you that this is just the thinking process of a more highly evolved animal; it’s simply the mind vs. the body.  They see it as the differing points of view conjured up in the mind.  The mind considers what the body wants on one hand and, on the other hand, whether there are any consequences of doing what the body signals that it wants. 

If there are no serious consequences, or if the mind determines that the pleasure justifies the consequences, then it allows the body to go for it.  For such people, this is all there is to it. We are just animals, albeit a little more intellectually advanced than your typical aardvark.

The Soul Mind vs. the Physical Mind

I hold a somewhat different view, one for which I found an interesting correlation in Michael Newton’s Journey of Souls, the book that inspired me to write these posts about the subject of souls. Newton wrote that there is a difference between the “soul mind” and the “physical mind.” The soul mind is the cognizant energy of your soul, while the physical mind is the sentient, controlling power of your human brain.

According to the accounts of the many subjects Newton interviewed in a hypnotic state of (alleged) past-life regression, the soul enters the body sometime before birth. Usually it enters during an early stage of the person’s physical development, but sometimes the soul waits until just before birth to join with the body and physical mind. At least one subject stated that it is “boring” for the soul to spend a long time in the womb.

Before birth, the soul mind loses its recollection of previous lives, past experiences and lessons learned, at least on the surface. But those memories and lessons are there with the soul, under the surface or existing in the soul’s nonphysical dimension. From this spirit-world level of understanding, the soul attempts to influence the person toward the goals the soul had set out for itself before entering the body.

The physical mind, on the other hand, has its reality based purely in the physical world in which it exists and can sense.  Its perspective of life is based on what it can see, hear, touch and feel… what it is able to identify as “reality.”  Human needs, desires and dramas are what move this mind.

The soul’s mission is to tame this physical mind, to get the “wild child” to work with it jointly toward the soul’s goals.  And in this struggle, the soul has successes and failures that add to its experiences and development, and carry it along the life path it has chosen.

Now, this does not mean that the physical mind is always “weak” in its character, forever opting for wrong choices, but this does seem to be the usual case. And the soul is not always a perfectly correct being, a paragon of moral and spiritual good. Souls spend many lives over thousands of years learning and growing, so it stands to reason that many souls lack the strength and knowledge to subdue their physical partners and act on a higher level, especially in the earlier stages of their journeys.

So-called “young souls” have a lot to learn and probably find it very difficult to get the better of the physical side. But even a more veteran soul can find itself facing real challenges to overcome the mind and body it occupies. This is the point of having many human incarnations: the soul can’t grow if living in the physical dimension becomes too easy. So even quite advanced souls have battles with their physical minds; they choose situations in which they face increasingly higher levels of difficulty and increasingly more subtle challenges.  Sometimes the soul loses the battle, but it gains experience and strength for the next go-around.

Souls are not Infallible

Souls, throughout their development, are not perfect beings. They can make mistakes during their incarnations, which allows the physical mind to assume more control.  In Journey of Souls, Newton also wrote about situations where a strong physical mind can overwhelm the soul mind, especially if is a younger soul and not prepared for the challenge. In most cases, the soul mind recovers from the experience during the purely spiritual existence between physical lives. And that recovery helps the soul to become stronger from the experience.

But in some cases, the soul itself becomes what Newton described as “bent” by the strength of the physical mind. Such bent souls require a much greater amount of help and teaching between lives to recover and continue. Some souls, Newton’s subjects reported, become too bent for correction. It was not clear what happens to such souls, but the suggestion was that they wind up being sort of “uncreated.”

Perhaps this explains why we often get such evil persons in our midst. Serial killers, mass murderers, child predators and other sick puppies may be the result of bent souls. And maybe this explains how we can wind up with such dastardly and evil individuals like Attila, Mao, Pol Pot, Che Guevara, Hitler, Stalin or Putin.

It’s Not Black and White

Another aspect of this competition between the soul mind and the physical mind is that the notions of what is right or wrong are rarely clear and absolute. More often there are multiple shades of gray, and whether some action is right or wrong depends on many factors. What seems wrong in one situation might be right – or at least acceptable – in another.

Doing things that might not seem completely “right” by the standards of society is part of growing up, experimenting, gaining new experiences and insights, and getting the full sense of life in this physical dimension. Plus, society’s rules are not always the right way, at least not for everyone.

So the soul mind has to strike a balance, not only in its interaction with the physical mind, but even with itself as, together, the soul, mind and body navigate the physical realm and accumulate experiences, knowledge and insight. This combined team learns the thrill and joy of unbridled passion and adventure (even if it’s not universally accepted as right), the stability and comfort of conforming to what has been accepted as the right way, and where to draw the line between the two.

The Heart

Most human societies throughout time have associated the physical organ, the heart, with the most positive human emotions and behaviors: love, compassion, kindness, selflessness, etc. Of course, we know that the heart – while an essential organ – is really nothing more than a muscular blood pump. The “heart” associated with those positive traits lies somewhere else.

It seems to me that the heart, in this context, is that part of the soul mind that concerns itself with the well being of others. To the extent that the soul is able to get the physical mind to agree that putting others ahead of the self is the better way, a person can be said to have a good heart. Those for whom the soul cannot sway from more selfish path are said to be cold or even heartless.

Often too, it happens that we see advantages for ourselves in showing more heart and being less selfish. It may not be a “sneaky strategy,” and few people are truly altruistic, but often we learn that we get more out of life when we give more to others.

One thing I have noticed about myself is that while my physical mind may win out too often in the struggle over smaller, more personal things, like health choices, eating habits, dedication to work, etc., my soul seems to have won the physical mind over pretty well with regard to “having a heart.”

I have had moments in my life when I took a selfish path and hurt others, but it was never with hurt as an intention or without thinking very long and hard about it. And it’s been more often the case, especially in the past few decades, when I’ve given what I could, even without being asked.

This doesn’t make me anything special, in my opinion, just someone whose soul and mind have agreed that a heart is a good thing to have. Some years ago I received one of the best compliments I ever got when a girl I knew simply turned to me on a bus ride back from a baseball game and said, “you know, you’ve really got a good heart.”

What could be better than that?

There is a lot more that I could write on this subject, but it has to stop someplace or it will never get posted.  Part 3 of this series will be about “soul mates” and “soul friends.”  I hope I’ll get it done more quickly than I did this one.