Attending the Soul
What is a soul? Meditating on this question, a novel image came to me: a ubiquitous fluid crystalline matrix as the fabric of reality, a divine wholeness, a field of infinite potential. And each soul, each being, is the projection of light moving through one facet of that crystal of limitless potential. We are both the whole liquid crystal and the dynamic projection of our bodies, our lives, through a perspective limited by an outdated understanding of time and space.
In the three-dimensional world of daily life, humans seem prone to over-identify with physical form. We learn how it should move, speak, work, interact. We teach it a set of pre-approved historic stories, ideas, beliefs and “scientific facts,” and call it education. And so we forget, and can lose touch with this co-creative divine ray of light, the source of which is an interconnected subtle matrix all possibilities. We make our decisions, rules, and policy based on a Newtonian worldview, all the while, on the quantum scale we have learned that every possibility is enfolded into the field of life, and what we need to do to unfold it, to make it manifest in our individual life, is to measure it, to pay attention to it. To measure our happiness (or peace, joy, compassion, purpose) we need to take measure of it. Not the lack of it, not what threatens it, not the reasons we can’t have it. We actually need to attend to, and take measure of, where our happiness lies, to see it, acknowledge it, and give it the life force, the attention, it needs to grow.
The frontiers of science are fascinating and illuminating, but they do not codify truth. Science is a process of investigation, experimentation, and documentation, it is not an end point of truth that defines the nature of life. Humanity is unfolding from its potential in the implicate order in an emergent, real-time, continuous process. There are likely fantastic possibilities that have yet to be conceived. The acorn holds the oak tree. What alchemy awaits humanity? How can we imagine and attend to what we don’t know? A good place to start might be to attend to this ray of emergent energy and information that is the soul; what is here, now, happening presently in real time? What growth and transformation is poised to take action and will we attend to that dynamic unfolding as it expands and informs? Will we take measure of it, and watch the magic emerge?
Otherwise, we stiffen our world and limit our own growth, we create cancerous need for resources that are limited by our own imagination. Life unfurls, and if we cannot move with it, if we cannot shed our acorn shell, behaviors and policies adopted based on limited imagination will lead to an entropic decay (the second law of thermodynamics: in a closed system things will tend toward disorder/decline.) But in an open system, where the acorn can be nurtured by soil, water, and other lifeforms, it transforms to a higher order instead of decays.
Our healthcare system has become stiffened by policy based on limited perspectives; from a pharmaceutical-first attitude, to care plan algorithms based on insurance reimbursement, to segmentation that ties the hands of good practitioners everywhere. It may well be immediately helpful (and supported by Newtonian chemical models,) that certain drugs will effect change across a cell membrane resulting in an alteration of biochemical function that relieves distressing symptoms. That, however, does not preclude the possibility that a natural compound that adds vitality to a system, or for that matter, an elevated mood, surrender to a higher power, or healing touch can have the same or better outcome from a vibrational impact on the same cell receptors.
The science behind these possibilities is decades old, and there has been much debate (and no small amount of name-calling) around the significance of epigenetic effects. My personal experience leads me to believe that learning to see life as a co-creative, emergent stream of possibility, and learning to apply this model to the practice of living, to the practice of attending to life may help usher us into a world we can live in harmony with. Remember, the world was flat, and everyone knew it, no one questioned it, except some scientists who were ridiculed for looking beyond what was already “known.” It took 300 years for a round Earth view to be adopted as implicit truth.
The bottom line: our attention matters. Attend to kindness and compassion. Attend to appreciation and gratitude. Attend to equality and justice. Take measure of your consciousness and growth. What might be changing for the better if you make room for it? Take measure of your love, how is it flowing through you? Attend to your body, the sacred vehicle given to you for this lifetime. Attend to an enchanted Earth where trees laugh and dance, where birds play and flirt, where the lake counsels and cleanses, where bees, dragonflies, and wildflowers offer their medicine. And watch it all come more and more alive. As Don Miguel Ruiz says,” You are living your own story and the only character you can change is yourself.” What is your story? Where is your attention?