True Soul

Susan Fiori

“Soul is everywhere, but hard to see. The soul is an indwelling, animating, and connecting force without which we cannot live. Yet it cannot be seen directly or be proven to exist. By its nature the soul is “there-not-there;” we can feel its subtle presence and we can languish in its absence, but we cannot pin it down or hold it firm….

The soul is a betwixt-and-between thing: neither simply physical nor strictly spiritual, but something that participates in both realms. The soul is there before life begins and it continues on after we lay our body down. The soul is another kind of body, a subtle body that partakes of both spirituality and physicality. As the third element in the trinity of existence, soul fills the subtle space between spirit and matter. It grounds the spirit even as it animates the body, and helps to refine the senses. Soul keeps spirit and matter related by sustaining an in-between realm of imagination, emotion, and deep reflection.

Soul is the essential intermediary and subtle go-between that connects unlike things; it holds the physical in touch with the divine…

When we lose our way in this world it is the soul’s way of being in touch with the pulse of life that has been lost. For we are most lost and truly abandoned when we have lost touch with our own soul, with our own inward style and way of being in the world. Soul is the missing ingredient when things fall apart, just as it was the animating force that first brought us to life.”

- Michael Meade, “Fate and Destiny”

It’s funny how totalitarian governments try to keep a tight rein on art. They don’t want personal whimsy; they don’t want a new vision of life. That’s considered corrupt. They try to promote “grand” art and the artists who produce it. They want the old wine in the old skins. They want to enroll everyone in the same pride of national identity so that they will willingly die for it.

For them art serves a very narrow view of life and they become angry and dismissive when confronted with something new or personal. They want to inspire a devotion to the Fatherland — or is it the Motherland? Good artists, who get appropriated by this machine, are very useful to the State and they can live well. It’s too bad that they lose their souls in the process. They become cogs in the machine.