What is the Soul?

[outlandish]

Pretty straightforward question. What is meant when people talk about the soul? How do you characterize or define the soul?

 

[Loving Radiance]

Intuition. Source's seed.

[Forestluv]

Usually I see people use the term “soul” in the context of a transcendent spiritual “me”. There is often a past-lives component as well. Examples include “I am an old soul”, “That song touches my soul”, “We are lost souls re-united”.

[justfortoday]

The soul is a virtual partition within consciousness, which gives rise to the window of awareness that serves as the container for all of your senses, “aka” being alive. 

The soul is like a division inside of a hard drive. It’s IN the hard drive, and IS the hard drive.

Your bubble of perception is your “soul”, or instance of awareness.

There is nothing but souls = subjective experience. 

There is no universe without soul. Subjective experience is ALL there is.

Edited June 15, 2020 by justfortoday

[Visionary]

Do a mirror exercise. Look into your eyes with an unfiltered view (so as pure awareness). Thats until the point when the see-er, see-ing and whats been seen are one and the same thing (or perhaps no-thing).

The Soul is where form and formlesness kiss. Its the formless you that lives through these forms (forms = awareness as content). 

Loving your Soul is what is truly healing. Its the You that does not identify with the forms but certainly lives through them. So how can you love something that is formless?

Do the mirror excerise. Thats where you slowly will understand what love is (loving beyond form).

 

[fridjonk]

I see it as consciousness that is self-aware.

[Osaid]

I believe it is your higher self, AKA pure awareness

[Ananta]

3 hours ago, outlandish said:

Pretty straightforward question. What is meant when people talk about the soul? How do you characterize or define the soul?

 

To me, it would not be the Atman, because the Atman is just that portion of Brahman (pure awareness)permeating/illuminating the gross and subtle bodies.

So, in a Vedantic sense, I would say it's the subtle body, as it is the vital energies, prana, senses, mind/intellect, etc..it's what transmigrates upon the death of the gross body. 

[ivankiss]

An individualized stream of consciousness.

⬆️First thought to pop up.

Edited June 16, 2020 by ivankiss

[gswva]

I see it as the highest Proof of Love. The greatest perfected chaos. How much this Love can't be faked and how much I want you to understand I understand you. Giving away positive feelings isn't enough, nothing makes me more happy than being loved and loving you.

There is no such thing as soulless, but this meaning appropriately fits the deep strength of the word and the energy behind awareness.

[Corpus]

I think the term "soul" is a little like the term "mind"- a distinction made which lacks intrinsic substance but which can be conceptually utilised to produce further distinctions.

[Waken]

From Conversations with God: "Every feeling you've ever had resides in your soul. Your soul is the sum total of all your feelings. It is the repository." 

[Dazgwny]

The conclusion I’m coming to, or have come to, is that there is no soul. Not in the typical way people like to see anyway. As in like a spiritual energy body or what have ya that sits within the physical body, and exits the physical body upon death and enters a new realm or dimension or whatever other places people like to associate with. The soul to me is just another story of the ego mind, to give it some sort of relief type thing because it knows it’s going to die, it creates a soul scenario where it can feel like it continues as the individual after death. Clinging onto survival to some degree, therefore creating such nonsense as the soul in this manner. It’s a nice story for the ego mind. I used to believe in such things as I used to regularly astral project, infact I did last night accidentally. This gives rise to the belief as you feel as though your an energy body leaving the physical and ghosting around in a less physical more ghostly like plane. I can see why people get stuck with this idea. But I’m not having it anymore. The deeper and deeper I go with this work the more I can see this is just more projection, no different to how you project this physical world, but with different limitations. For me it’s just God/you/I tricking itself that it’s a soul, in the exact same way it tricks itself it a human being. There are no individual souls in the same way there really are no individual beings. Although it certainly seems like there is. It’s a good way to reference though when talking about deep within you, as in when you say the likes of deep within your soul, or something touched your soul or whatever phrases people use. It’s just God. I’m happy to be corrected by anyone. But for me the notion of a soul is nothing other than pure bullshit in its typical individualised form

[allislove]

Another illusory construct, like ego ?

[abrakamowse]

I think a lot about it, I agree with a lot of commenters here that in reality there's no soul. It's just a partition of consciousness that the mind creates but it depends on consciousness, it can't exist by itself. But if we want to explain it in a more "worldly" way I say that the soul is (as it was said here before) is the fragmented part of consciousness that thinks it lives inside a body.

 

And the Spirit, that's the whole thing, consciousness, awareness... so Spirit would be God or your true self and soul is an identification that thinks it is a body and that it will die and go to heaven.

I got confused when people use Spirit and Soul like they are the same thing, I think they are not... of course is just a matter of language. They are both concepts, but sometimes does concept can help to understand or to get more insights that can help to assimilate our experiences.

:-)

Edited June 16, 2020 by abrakamowse