Soulful tale

A Soulful tale

   

     When I read about a publication asking for tales for ‘Chicken Soup for the Indian soul’ I was intrigued. Do souls have narrow nationalities? Is the soul non-vegetarian? What about people who are pure vegetarians will the soul not flinch at the chicken soup? So I set about finding out what is a soul and what nourishes it.

   I had heard of a fat soul? A misguided soul? Soul-mates. Kindred Souls. Souls appear in all shapes and sizes. Can a soul be slim and attractive all by itself, through all its journeys? A soul is supposed to be eternal. A simple soul as against a complex one? How is one to know in what stage of development it has reached?

   One had heard of a Soul satisfying as opposed to soul destroying. Often some people are referred to as a miserable soul or as a soul crying for mercy and justice. When we talk of a poor soul – how poor monetarily or emotionally? What abut a mysterious soul? How mysterious like Voldemort’s? Can one cut up the soul and hide it in various living and non-living things? (As Voldemort did in Harry Potter books). Can a soul decide to fasten on another living body? As in the case of ,‘possessed’.

Often a feminine soul is described as wild, willful, chaotic, earthy, sensual, sweet, emotional, passionate and compassionate? Then how would a masculine soul be like? I guess, brave, gentle, sensible, bitter, scheming and rational? But couldn’t the masculine soul also be passionate, compassionate and earthy? I always thought that the soul was gender neutral.  The soul was supposed to be colour, race, and religion neutral too.

Mark T Cicero had observed that “A home without books is a body without soul.”

So books are the souls of homes? But by that logic if bodies are homes to a soul what is the soul like? A book? Or many books rolled into one? A life time of learning?

 A Soul, I discovered was in general, in many religions and philosophies, is conceived as the animating and vital spiritual principle in human beings; an inner, immaterial element that, together with the material body, constitutes the human individual.

According to Robert Sardello, ‘The soul requires duration of time- rich, deep, thick, velvety time. And it thrives on rhythm. Soul can’t be hurried or harried. We may go through many events in the day and experience nothing because the soul has not had the opportunity to feel them from any different point of view.’

H.G.Wells  states that, ‘Soul cannot exist when our connection in life remains superficial. An experience in soul requires that we take time to be fully present to the details of our lives. Explore what happens when you take the time and pay attention. When we choose to slow down and really experience the qualities of our lives, we get a whole new perspective on what living’s all about.’

The source of all knowledge was called, Soul of the world by Jung. When instincts become sharper, emotions more radical, interpretation of signs becomes more important than logic, and perceptions of reality grow less rigid. We discover that if we can channel that continuous flow of energy we can organize it around a very solid center. What Jung calls the wise old man for men and the great mother for women?

    The soul receives foreign matter through the body. Heaps of atoms enter the soul through mental action, speech and breathing. All this infiltration will stop if the body is immobilized. A state of total inactivity of the body is the state of meditation. It is not exclusively a mental state. Meditation is a state of mental and physical equilibrium. It is a state of equipoise.

    Silence is the spiritual knife that lays open our souls. If we are never silent, we never have to examine the truth about ourselves.

Stillness is your essential nature. What is stillness? The inner space or awareness in which the words on this page are perceived and become thoughts. When you lose touch with your inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself.

                              “Some say the world is a vale of tears,
                      I say it is a place of soul-making” John Keats

Modern day scientists and doctors are discovering that our soul can enter into realms that are teeming with life and experiences that we never dreamed existed. As long as we remain unaware of them, we are asleep. Our soul is awakened when it experiences these inner realms.
       How can we wake up?
There are easier methods like meditation, contemplation and prayer. Meditation is concentration. It can be practiced by anyone of any age. We withdraw our attention from the outer world and focus it within.
Saints and mystics describe the soul as a drop of God. By bringing the soul to the point of the body called the seat of the soul, it contacts the streams of light and sound, the creative vibration that emanated from the Creator, and brought Creation into being.

‘Dead Souls’ do souls die? According to Gogol who wrote about them they were the souls of serfs that the landowners could sell in a ‘get rich quick scheme’…

One has heard of ‘selling your soul to the Devil’.  Ever wondered what does the Devil do with such souls? I await answers from more learned souls…

                  

 

Fishy Tales

Watching fishes lazily swim by...

Not one fish but many delight my heart every morning. I had bought a pair of small goldfish and two pairs of black fish. The shop owner had told me not to expect the gold fish to breed as they needed more space and my tiny rock garden wasn’t enough to encourage them to reproduce. Well, just watching my black beauties float past was enough for me. The gold fish appeared to be shy and hid under the leaves of the lotus.

Then one fine day I found Bahadur, R.Singh and R.swaroop deep in discussion over the pond. What happened, we have been calling out for a long time? There were tiny insect like creatures wriggling in the pond. The debate was ‘are they mosquitoes or tadpoles?’ There were hundreds of these tiny things. After a few days it became clear that they were fishes! Now I have mud coloured, peach with black spots and even loads of gold fishes! There were some with peacock colored fins or tails!

The black ones remain the dominant ones. I kept count till the fifth generation, and then I gave up. Lots of snails also arrived. So my rock garden is teeming with life.

There is a sense of loss when they go during winter or extreme summer. Yet hope springs again as I bring some more new ones and watch with awe and wonder….