I CONNECTING: THE SOUL'S QUEST

KRISTINA KAINE

If we are to understand ourselves - to truly become mates with our soul - we need a more detailed picture of the inner activity of our soul life. Whenever we consider our soul we must remember that it is the “I”, the self, which experiences life through our soul which is expressed through our body. The “I” is the artist, the soul his work of art and the body is the canvas. Similarly, the “I” is the gardener, the garden is our soul, the soil is our body.

Our soul is coloured by all the different influences in our lives; from environment, to family, to friends, to work, to experiences, to country and culture, and even by the climate. This author is Australian and views life from an Australian perspective. The Asian or Spanish person, for instance, will view things differently. Hopefully the following detail will assist people from all cultures to understand how they express themselves through the different tones of their soul. There can be no question of racism in the study of soul, but simply the recognition of different soul influences and different soul moods. It is easy to discover that some people feel more comfortable with those of the same soul mood, others relate more easily to a variety of soul moods.

We have explored how the three soul regions relate specifically to the three soul activities; feeling, thinking and intent. The way we feel is related to the way we receive impulses, they way we think is found in our ability to reason and our intentions reveal the level of our awareness. These are characteristic regions in our soul which, in this book, we call impulse, reasoning and awareness regions. Some people work out of a balance of all three characteristics; others express themselves predominately from one area. We can certainly move from one to the other at lightening speed throughout the day depending on the prevailing circumstances. Our observations will confirm that some people are feeling people, others are thinkers and some others are more aware, more conscious, more knowing. The optimum is to work in a balanced way in the upper regions of our soul so that our intentions are guided by the right degree of thought and emotion.

In our brief look at these areas we saw how these regions develop as we mature. In the young person feeling dominates. As we mature thinking is added to feeling. Hopefully by the time we reach our fifties all three regions work harmoniously and with agility and wisdom prevails.

Until we are conscious of the way our soul works much of what our soul does is automatic.

While we examine these three different regions of our soul it is important to realize that they continually interact and interweave. Until we become more aware of these regions, the interaction is unconscious. When our awareness increases we can influence these soul processes. The first step to experiencing our soul is to place ourselves inside the weaving activity. This is easier to do with stronger feelings like anger. We can participate in anger as it rises up and become conscious of how it is apprehended by thinking. If a friend offends us there is always a moment when we choose to be outraged or to be forgiving. The quicker we are able to think, and the more objective we can be, the more rational our response. If we allow the feeling to take on a life of its own we can have a tantrum and ruin a good friendship. If we act out of love forgiveness comes quickly.

We can also become more aware of how feeling is added to dry and abstract thinking which then can motivate our intentions to act or not. If we think we should weed the garden, it isn’t until we feel the enjoyment that would come from that, that we are actually motivated to do the work. Unless we actually experience these processes our understanding is simply theoretical and less meaningful.

Try to build active imaginations or images of the way the different soul activities work together; the more vivid the pictures the better. One picture that can be helpful is to visualise a pressure gauge which moves up and down as the different soul regions are accessed. Choose colours for these soul activities, eg. red for feelings / impulse region, yellow for thoughts / reasoning region, and blue for intentions / awareness region. Then imagine how much yellow is in the red when we moderate a feeling with a thought.