Death is the end of things right? Wrong. Death is just a point in the wheel of evolution, a point that will eventually rotate back around to a point where it once was. So, when we look at death in any other way, than as just a “snapshot” of time, we are looking at it in the wrong way.

The music is good; it flows into my consciousness so easy, so pure, I feel as one with it. The paragraph above looks like a good place to end the section I will call “The Soul”. What I write now will be the last section and I will have to come up with a name for it, maybe “Consciousness” might work, or “Focus”, since focus is what I’ve had to do to arrive at where I am now. Which is totally enclosed in this cocoon, just me, my music, and my mind, or might one call the mind – the soul? If so, then why couldn’t I ask my mind just what it knows about the soul?

Sounds like a good idea to me, “hey”, “hey you, are you my mind”? Of course it is my mind, and of course it doesn’t have to answer me, nor will it, at least in the normal way. It will converse with me through telepathy, which is the way your mind communicates with you, you know?

“Need to ask you a question”, I say out loud, thus the need for the quotation marks, for if I’d just thought it, I wouldn’t need them, you with me? Well good, cause I just lost myself; hold on a minute while I realign. Ok, I’ve got it aligned now; we are going to have to use quotation marks - I have been informed - otherwise this whole conversation will be convoluted out the ass. Said another way, we are going to use quotation marks for my thoughts and the thoughts of my mind, in order to avoid confusion, are you still with me?

“Ask away” comes “from” and “into” my mind at the same time, “answering the “Need to ask you a question query”, which I find a little discomforting, but nothing I can’t handle, as I focus harder, narrowing my world even more. I seem to be at the end of a tunnel looking down at a large white screen, my words prancing across it, left to right, just as they should, as I wait for my mind to continue it’s internal dialog.

“From where do you come”? I stare at the words, wondering what I should do now? Is that question “to” or “from” my mind? Neither of course, for it’s both at the same time; so, should I stop typing in order for my mind to answer, or should I keep typing, and wait for the mind to take over?

This mini dilemma is ended by “a place without a name”, quickly followed by “but of course”, to which “there is no need” follows, and is followed by “I know”. This exchange between my mind is somewhat weird I think during the short intermission, but what the heck, it seems interesting so far, and maybe I will find something out.

“The soul comes from a place that has no name, but yet in this place exists all there is”. “From where everybody both enters and exits, right”?

“Yes of course, and if you think about it, it has to exist, for if it doesn’t, then you would not exist”.

“So which came first, the chicken or the egg”, I interject. “Been wondering about that one for a long time”, I continue, hoping I haven’t ruined the mood or anything.

“The egg, because without the egg there would never be a chicken, and the natural progression is from embryo to adult, which is so obvious, I’ve often wondered why it was such a titillating question for the human race”. “And, before you ask the other question; the egg originally did not come from the chicken, it came from there, the place with no name, from which all things come from”.

“And go back to”, I finished.

“Everything alive comes from there”.

“So, is - there – heaven”?

“No there is no heaven, as heaven is thought of anyway”.

I am now content to just sit back and watch the exchange, for after all, I now know the answer to that damn riddle - which came first the chicken or the egg – which pleases me greatly, because if nothing else, I will dazzle all my drinking buddies down at - Bill’s Bar and Grill - since I will now be able to tell them which came first.

“So, we’ve all been there - before - then”?

Followed by “Many times”, and before you inquire; the reason you don’t remember is because your body is still alive, but once it dies you will remember all, as you return there, and thus to the heaven you speak of”. “Until once again your soul is ‘actuated’ which will cause yet another individual life”.

“Damn” I think, as I remember the 2nd part of the definition of soul”; “the actuating cause of an individual life”.


“So…. have we learned something of the soul”?

ice

That we have a soul is so self-evident - that no thinking person can say we don’t (have one). As to what that soul is, is of course a different question, and one that I am seeking to answer.

I realize that my physical body will follow a path of “rise and fall”, and that death will eventually come to it, but what I cannot believe is that my soul will also die. This is really not the fantastic statement that it seems to be, because since it is not a physical thing, how can the soul die? If I know my physical body to be one thing, and my soul to be another thing, both radically different, then how can I ascribe to both of them something that only one is known to do?

In my reality I have never known a soul to die, have you? No. For just because we know that the physical body dies, does not mean we know that the soul dies.

Nobody can prove to me that when the human body dies, the soul dies with it. It cannot be proven, in fact, it is impossible to pull a soul out of the hat; and so the magician must just stand there, while everyone else arrives at the inescapable conclusion that the chance of the soul living past the death of the body, is at least 50-50 before the debate even gets started.

Ah, but - “iceman”- you say - you’ve arrived to the eternal crossroad, since by your own summation it - “is not provable either way”. It might be that the soul dies with the body or it might be, as you say, the soul does not die with the body. Either way, you are where everyone else is, you have no idea if the soul lives past the body or not.

But, that is wrong, because in my zone, in my reality I can prove the answer. The proof is right in front of us, if only we look. Remember the original question, “what is the soul”? The answer to that question will answer the question of whether or not the soul dies with the body, or lives past the body. Think carefully now; if the soul is not a physical thing, if it is not of our body, it has to be a separate entity. Then, if this be true, how, could it be harmed by anything that harms the physical body, i.e. bodily death? Doesn’t make sense does it?

Death is the end of things right? Wrong. Death is just a point in the wheel of evolution, a point that will eventually rotate back around to a point where it once was. So, when we look at death in any other way, than as just a “snapshot” of time, we are looking at it in the wrong way.

I was struck the other day by something that Colo wrote on her blog. She said that she “wanted to write something profound”, which has stuck with me ever since reading it. Profound. What is profound in this world? What does “profound” mean anyway? There are different definitions of the word but the one that I think fits is; showing intellectual emotional depth; as in, from the depths of your being”.

So in staying with that theme, I am going to attempt to write something profound about the word “animalistic”. The definition of animalistic is: “the doctrine that human beings are purely animal in nature and lacking a spiritual nature”.
Therefore the question is - “are human beings purely animal in nature and do they lack a spiritual nature”?

A “spiritual nature” means possessing a soul, so we will need to know the definition of “soul”. The definition of soul is two-fold, the first part I will give to you now, but the second, I am going to hold back for later, but I will tell you that it was a “revelation” to me, and I hope that it will be for you also.

The first part of the definition is: “the immaterial part of a person”, which is pretty self explanatory and easily understood. For all of us know that the soul is not an “physical entity”, it is not something we can touch; our nose is a physical entity, but our soul is a spiritual entity, and obviously more difficult to “touch” than our nose.

Since we are all in agreement that we “possess a soul”, then our question changes from “are human beings purely animal in nature and do they lack a spiritual nature”, to “what is the soul”?

How do we answer such a question, and answer it in a profound way? First we have to be able to think about it in a way that will enable us to really understand the question. For that, we have to know how to focus.

When I was a young man in high school, I played baseball, and it forever since has shaped my life in many different ways. One of those ways was by teaching me the ability to “focus”. We hear the word focus all the time, but most of us do not think about what it really means. We just ascribe to it as meaning: “to think about something”.

“Focus” as I learned it from a wise old man, (of at least the age of 40), who was one of my early baseball coaches, is simply put: “the art of removing oneself from actual reality, and performing in his own concept of reality”.
For example; it is said that when Arnold Palmer the great golfer, played and won all those tournaments; that during the rounds, as he walked from shot to shot and hole to hole, he would often see his wife, and occasionally talk to her, but later after the round, he was unable to recall it, “so focused he was at the time on what he was doing”. That is focused, ladies and gents. That is the focus I talk of.

When I played baseball - I played the position of “pitcher”, which in retrospect, I now understand -the why of that. I am a person, who wants to be in on everything, and by “pitching” I would be in on every play, and in fact, would instigate the actual rhythm and play, of the game itself.

To be an effective pitcher one would not necessarily have to focus, he could be a person with so much physical ability that he would simply overwhelm the opposition, literally without thinking. However, this same person, possessing such great physical ability - along with the ability to focus would be nearly unbeatable, which in my opinion has always been the difference between the average athlete - and the truly great ones.

The way I was taught to focus was by blocking out all external stimuli, except for what I needed. As a pitcher you need a place to throw the ball, i.e., a catcher, so I pitched in a “zone” (which we didn’t even have a name for back then), which contained - the batter, the catcher, and me. Nobody else existed in this “zone” I’d created for myself, not the fans, the coaches or the other players. If you ever watch (or already have) the movie “For Love of the Game” with Kevin Costner, you will see some excellent examples of pitching in this type of zone. Also, it’s a great movie, about both love and baseball.

To focus like this worked well for me, and while I never came close to being a “professional” ballplayer, it did allow me to perform at a level that would have otherwise been impossible.

Remember our definition for “focus”? --- “the art of removing oneself from actual reality and performing in his own concept of reality”.

That is what I am doing today. I will completely step out of this present reality that I have. This desk, these pictures of my family, the glass patio doors that are displaying the scenery in my back yard, the couch, the love seat, the carpet beneath my feet, everything. And by doing so, I will step into my own concept of reality, which is nothing more than this white screen, the music playing on my computer, the keyboard, and my own intellect. It is my “zone”, and from which my concept of reality comes.

So – grab a hold of something, and take a trip with me to the deepest part of my “psyche”, and as we explore the depths of “ice”, in search of “what the soul is”, and I at this time - take no blame for any permanent damage upon your own psyches; it is just a risk you will have to take. -------------ice

Screaming into the sky with all the effort I can muster, I yell at the top of my lungs – to the almighty gods in the sky – “what in the fuck is going on”? To which they reply

And I look up, straight into the blue sky and ask myself; what kind of gods are you anyway? We would love a little relief, a little concern, and in the end we get - nothing, although in the world we’ve created, at least we have a word for nothing. You don’t even have a word for it - it is simply nothing. At least we made up the word to describe your nothing response; you couldn’t even do that simple little task, but yet, you are all powerful. Yeah, sure you are, and I’m my monkey’s uncle.
.
I just wish you would come down here and talk to us. Stop in and say a few words. You know, rally the troops and all that. God only knows we need rallying after all these years; you do agree to that don’t you? After all, we hunger for it, we search for it, writing songs, and poems, we crave, and seek knowledge - all the while - as we are craning our necks to see around the cardboard cutouts.

You know what the cardboard cutouts are don’t you? The sun, the moon, the sky and the stars, are all cardboard cutouts that we’ve cutout and named. You didn’t name them. So we had to. We named all things, even the frigging rose is a rose whatever it is. Right? Sure we’re right. We’re the experts on this fucking place you’ve stuck us in without an instruction manual, not even one of those useless manuals that they stick in new cars.

You can’t even compete with Ford or General Motors cause at least they give a manual. You just throw us down here and its sink or swim, like throwing babies in the swimming pool, either we live down here under these sorry conditions or we die. What kind of a fucking choice that is.

I just wish you’d take a minute and come down here and talk to us, maybe answer a few questions we have. Like, what’s the meaning of this life? What do I get out of it, other than a cold death without any meaning. If I am lucky I might live till to the age of 100 thanks to modern science in spite of the way I’ve treated myself all my life, and what will it get me? A frail old geezer sitting in a chair, with dribble on the chin, and jello on the brain, till finally one morning I fail to wake and then what? How bout pointing it out on my road map, buddy. Let a guy know the score, is that too much to ask? Apparently so, cause you never respond and I usually - fall back into that easy habit of just accepting my fate, and trying to make the best of it.

We tell ourselves that god made us and we almost believe it before a child wonders aloud “who made god”, and then all of our beliefs come crashing down, our faith in shambles, our questions many, we amble off to make the best of it.

Cripes. Screw the best of it! I want to look behind the cutouts; I want to see what’s back there – behind the earth, sun, moon, and all those frigging stars in the night sky. I want a peek back there, and I want it now. I’m tired of looking for something that doesn’t seem to be there. All the time tip toeing around least I offend the gods, and incur their wrath. What bullshit, I’ve already incurred their wrath which is what we call silence. That is our reward for singing songs to the gods, to writing poems about them; our reward is nothing but silence and oh yeah, we get to make the best of it.

Some would have me to calm down, for you don’t want to offend the gods you know. Well I don’t think that’s likely, cause I don’t think they even listen to what we think, for if they did then maybe they might answer the ringing phone.

If I stand over here, to the side, I think I can see behind the cutout we named sky. I can see behind it a little, but its dark out, and I’m not sure as to what I am seeing, but I know what I’m thinking, and that is – I can’t even imagine talking to you. It is beyond my scope, and I wonder why I even think these thoughts. Perhaps it is better to be blissfully ignorant and not have any thoughts about anything, but as I live and breathe I can’t help but think what’s behind those cutouts. I wish I knew. I wish I could see. You’ve got to show me what’s behind those cardboard cutouts – someday. I think you will. I believe with all my soul that the key to this lock you’ll provide someday and it won’t be hard then. It will be easy. I just wish you would let us see now. Guess I will always wonder why you didn’t allow us to see the whole picture while we were here on the cardboard cutout we’ve named Earth.

the old man leaned back
and wiping his chin
began to talk
this is what we know

all nature is rhythmical
from the beat of our hearts
to the succession of the seasons
and the tides of the sea

the planets greet our sun
every morn
and the moon and stars
follow with the night

the alternation
of night and day
brings on the
succession of the seasons

the climate changes
while stars are born
and then die
these are laws of the knowable

what is real
and what isn’t
foretells the simple law
of the unknown

the cycle will begin again
and endless times again
from the unknown we appear
and to the unknown we disappear