Pure of Heart, Mind, Body, and Soul A Life Force at Work By Paul Truttman A man surveys his spirit and the world |
Who, out there, amongst the God-loving and the not so God-loving, know what the “soul” is? I didn't, until in-depth research very recently, and I attended church in 1967. The soul is our human life force. Nothing more, nothing less. Before continuing with the evidence uncovered, I went in research of what the soul is because I have been waking up, lately, in the morning, feeling refreshed and with a sense of purpose for the day itself. I have an advantage of 17-plus years' sobriety, no drug use because of ill health, and do not have to work to pay bills or sustain a relationship. The body is pure. I would also like to qualify my method of inquiry. Of interest to me for many years now has been “critical thinking.” This is what I employ because it is out of the box, out of comfort zone awareness of what is actually going on around us. So few people partake of this very rewarding experience. Critical thinking is: asking questions, probing, and looking for underlying assumptions and ideas. It is an inquiry into motives, causes, and an explanation of how things came to be. A critical thinker embraces and cultivates imagination while valuing points of view different from his or her own. Then we seek to strengthen, refine, enlarge, or reshape our ideas and concepts in light of all perspectives. We are open yet skeptical, receptive to new ideas yet careful to test the theories involved. This testing is based upon previous experience and solid foundations of knowledge. Critical thinkers are active listeners and learners rather than passively accepting societal conformities. (Rereading America, 4th ed., 1998.)References for this inquiry were: THE NEW CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA, Vol. XIII, pages 449, 450 (1967), THE NEW ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA, Vol. 15, page 152 (1976), THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA, Vol. VI, page 564 (1910), STRONG'S CONCORDANCE, VINES BIBLE DICTIONARY, and THE GIDEONS' BIBLE. I threw away several newfangled versions of the Bible once discovering that in them “soul” is printed as “person” or “life” or “being” which would especially confuse a novice attempting to understand what or who God really is or is about. For those single-source, Bible-referencing, verse-quoting, traditionally narrow-minded thinkers, the Bible verses given acclaim are: Genesis 2:7, Exodus 1:5, Leviticus 26:11, Numbers 21:4, Deuteronomy 4:29, Job 12:10 and 33:22, Psalms 19:7 and 22:29, Isaiah 55:3, Ezekiel 18:4 and 18:27, Matthew 10:28, 1 Thessalonians 5:23, Hebrews 4:12, and James 5:20. A synopsis being that soul and body are one and the same, heart and soul are different, breath is not soul, souls that live in sin or outside the law of God can and do die, but that it is God's gift of soul (our life force) that returns to heaven once our time on Earth is up. I possess analogy today that will now stay with me always. Think of our brain as being a computer, but think of the mind as being the software, programming the brain. They are physical organ (the brain) complemented by neuro-transmitted impulses neuron to neuron. This analogy works also for soul and spirit. Soul being the host or life force, with spirit being the “Holy Spirit” to human spirit communing by, for our purposes of understanding, the use of connected universal energy—in its purest form. For people unable to reconcile the trilogy of God, I use yet another analogy, the one of H20, water being God, vapor the Holy Spirit, ice equating to Jesus Christ and, if taking this concept one step further, steam becomes Satan. Keep in mind that these analogies are to be used as symbolic understandings rather than literal, H20 being the trilogy life force. In summation, I was initially seeking an external, mystical, divine reason for waking up in the morning with new or revised ideas in my head. In fact, though, what I am most grateful for, having sought out an answer, is the experience today of sobriety, clean living, and the blessings of an open and receptive mind. Software in the hands of a knowledgeable Master—be it Universe or Earth bound.
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