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from Shamanic Website
So very often I hear people speak of
Spirit and Soul interchangeably; at other times I find that when
discussing Spirit and Soul we are using fully different references,
resulting in confusion.
The essence of Spirit is frequency. In manifest form it is expressed as light and resonance. As the frequency of Spirit interpenetrates a field of life force (Soul) it sets that field resonating in a range of vibratory patterns that are made manifest as matter.
Awareness in manifest form is expressed as Consciousness.
This imprint is carried from lifetime to lifetime, though not always in conscious memory. Soul-force is mutable, that is it can be affected upon to be either life-positive or life-negative.
This alteration occurs as a consequence of life experiences that may bring forth either joy or pain. Joy is the direct felt-experience of Spirit's activation of our life force moving and pulsing through our body.
When we act, choose or are influenced in a manner that is contradictory to our Spirit's purpose we experience pain.
The function of the Soul is to guide and direct the Body/Mind consciousness, the ego, into a path of life that allows for the Spirit to best express itself. Spirit impels the Soul as to the direction it needs to take.
The natural impelling drive of the Soul is towards change, movement and growth in attunement with the Spirit's desire. This drive is experienced by every one of us as Death. That is, to the invested ego-consciousness any movement towards change, a relinquishment of the status quo of our attitudes and cherished beliefs, is perceived by the Body/Mind consciousness as an impending death.
When the impelling drive of the Soul towards change is thwarted by our entrenched attitudes and attachments the force of that drive rebounds upon itself, now coming forth as a compulsion to suicide.
By suicide I do not necessarily mean an overt and conscious attempt to kill one's self, but rather a panoply of self-destructive behaviors and conditions arise, for the Soul will have its way, even if it means removing the current Body/Mind out of the picture in order to provide the Spirit with another chance, through incarnation in a new life, in order to proceed with the Spirit's desire to bring it's purpose forth in manifest expression.
An example of this drive of the Soul to affect change, and what happens when that change is denied by our Body/Mind, may help to elucidate this information:
Imagine the three Souls as being one side of a hinge, the Body and Mind comprising the matching other side of that hinge.
When the Souls and Body/Mind are in alignment with each other the hinge pin of the Spirit can fit through, allowing the hinge to serve its intended purpose. If something is out of alignment, whether it be the Body, the Mind or one of the Souls, the hinge pin may still fit through, but the hinge squeaks and creaks.
In these situations there will be dysfunction in the corresponding arena of the person's life.
If a hinge piece is missing or bent way out of center, the pin of Spirit is unable to fit through. When this occurs there will be the resultant disability of the individual's life and experience and incapability of function in that area of life.
This is not a black and white situation.
The affected person may function quite fine intellectually, for
example, but be fully dysfunctional emotionally.
Poor choices and unfortunate situations of violation and the disrespect of our sanctity, the manipulations allowed by us in our state of not knowing better, divert us from harmonious congruence with our Spirit's calling. To the degree that we diverge from our path we create a separation between our life and spiritual calling.
It is in the gap between our life and Spirit that dysfunction, disease and despair find fertile ground.
Soul seeks to draw us back into alignment with that path. When we experience those difficulties and impediments in our life, when we are plagued with misfortune, ill health and dysfunction, these are often indicators that we are out of alignment with our Souls' Calling.
The appropriate resolve is to bring our life, through our choices, into a greater alignment with our Spirit's purpose.
When we can recognize the course that our life would follow were we to surrender into the Soul's movement to bring about change, we are in a greater awareness of what the purpose of our Spirit might be.
The Earth Soul is the one that we communicate with on a day-to-day basis and is the residing place of our short-term memory.
With this Soul we make connections in a logical manner, recognizing patterns and associations and grounding these perceptions into the Body/Mind as conscious awareness.
The Underworld Soul, or Dream Soul, is the Soul from which we dream. As our senses shut down at night our attentions shifts into the Dream Soul. Our remembered experiences of this Soul and its activities are what are translated to us in the waking state as dreams.
It is within the Underworld Soul that we store our life force that we generate each and every day. This charge of life force, or Power, as we refer to it Shamanically, resonates with our thoughts, feelings, impressions, experiences and perceptions; that is, memories. The Underworld Soul is the place where our long-term memories are stored.
Our Celestial Soul is the High Self through which we receive spiritual guidance and direction in our lives.
When our attention is moved into the Celestial Soul we experience flying dreams, dreams of the transcendental and visions which alter our perceptions of, and approaches to, life forevermore.
When we exist in life with an aspect of our Soul disconnected or missing we suffer the consequential disruptions and difficulties that arise from being only partially 'here'.
The nature of the specific dysfunction
is determined by which Soul has departed.
Short-term memory is hazardous; the individual chronically forgetful, unable to remember the name of a person just met, where the keys to the car are placed, unable to recall the message of the last paragraph just read.
When the Earth Soul is gone the Underworld Soul moves from its native position in the Dream Realm and takes up residence in the place of the Earth Soul. As a consequence the individual often finds that life's daily events take on a dream-like quality, as if one were moving through a theatre production.
Walking into a social situation the person whose Earth Soul has been replaced by the Dream Soul has an overwhelming intuitive understanding of the mythic dynamics of the interactions they are greeted with.
Minor events take on connotations of high significance.
While we all have moments of this type
of perceptual capability, the person whose Earth Soul is missing
must live in the non-ordinary world each and every moment and
usually finds it very disconcerting.
This difficulty may be an inability to recall dreams, or having no dreams at all.
Dreams may be disturbing, dreams of being chased, imprisoned, tortured, lost and adrift, unable to find one's way back home. As the Underworld Soul is the storehouse of our Power, when that Soul is out of sync we no longer have easy access to the life force stored there. (This is rather like having money in your bank account, but you have lost your ATM card and can no longer readily withdraw what you need to survive.)
As a result we are lacking in energy to accomplish life's daily tasks, can't seem to get the passion fired up, living in a state of malaise. Neither do we have the life force charge to maintain our health; we become susceptible to colds, the flu, infections and the like.
It is this life force field that resonates with emotive thoughts, feelings, experiences and impressions: the stuff of memories. When the Underworld Soul is in a state of disconnect we suffer from long-term memory loss.
Specific chunks of our past may be blank
or hazy when we consider them.
The Celestial Soul can also be called upon to act in our favor, recreating the circumstances and events of our lives in accordance with our intent. However, it can only do so when given a clear directive, as in a vow.
An example of this is,
With this statement of intent-full desire the High Self can then engage the forces of Creation to bring them into alignment with that desire.
The Celestial Soul awaits such direction. Its fulfillment comes in responding to our desire. In order for the High Soul to be able to respond, though, requires that we state clearly and unequivocally our intent.
If we state:
...the Celestial Soul cannot act, for all we have done is engage in wishful thinking.
What we may want is not the same always as that which we choose. And, in addition, when we use the phrase 'to be', we are putting our desire out there some other time in the future.
"I want to be happy," begs the question of "When?"
We must make our communication with our High Self in a positively phrased statement free of ambiguity, grounded in the present moment.
Conversely, to say "I am happy!" as if
by stating our desire like it is already true, well, that is just
plain lying. The response of the Soul to our lies is to withdraw,
leaving us worse off than before.
The original intent and purpose of the gift of Language is for intimate commune with our own Soul, a means of bridging the chasm that exists between Body/Mind consciousness and Awareness.
Next then is Language a vehicle for communing between your Soul and mine and another's.
Only somewhere way down the line is Language intended as a way of transmitting data and information. Unfortunately the tables have been turned so that the emphasis, nay, the only use of language, is to convey mere data.
To reclaim this knowledge, and put it into practice, is to reclaim our rightful heritage as spiritual beings!
Almost always the Earth Soul will retreat to a place, an environs, in which the person had come to associate a feeling of safety, acceptance and security.
This might be a tree that as a child the individual would climb high into to 'get away from it all', a favorite creek-side 'special place' where no one would find freedom from being bothered.
Or the Earth Soul may find that place of security in Gramma's house, away from the turmoil and abuse of our parental home. For some, who come into utero and find violence and rage awaits them; they may even retreat back into the 'In-Between Place' between one incarnation and the next.
Wherever the person identifies as
'safe', the Earth Soul will go.
When rapprochement has been reached between the Soul Retriever and the Earth Soul itself, arrangements must then be made with the Spirits who have been taking care of the lost Soul.
Very frequently the caretaker Beings have adopted the Soul as one of their own. It is with both joy, in seeing that the Soul will finally get to return to its rightful place of being, and sadness, at the leaving from their midst a loved one, that these Earth Spirits find themselves. Offerings and vows, on behalf of the person who is experiencing the reintegration, to maintain a healthy continued contact with these loving Beings, are necessarily made.
With a full and complete reintegration
brought forth, the person, once disconnected and spacey, will
immediately begin to feel whole and present.
The Dream World's essence is that of symbol, myth and correlative significance.
When we are dreaming everything that transpires is quite real to us. It is only upon awakening that we, sometimes with a swipe of the brow and a sigh of relief, are able to declare that 'it was just a dream'.
Whilst in the dream, there is no such escapism. In the Dream World everything we have engendered in life is met in its symbolic manifestation. Fears show up as monsters, guilts as demons. The love we have brought into existence appears as angelic beings of protection and beauty.
Make no mistake about it, these beings are real. They cannot be brushed off as fantasy figures.
A 'demon' or 'advocate' is a personal symbolic construct and is fully responsive to, and created by, our own state of being. And there are fully autonomous Beings in the Dream World that are not of our personal symbolic construct. They exist as manifestations of the collective human consciousness.
A 'Demon' or 'Advocate' is an autonomous
Being of which we have very little or no control through the
restructuring of our personal psyche.
If this be the situation the Soul Retriever must present their credentials (as the one who's Soul is lost, as Shaman, or Psychopomp) as well as the authority to be there on behalf of the person, if it is other than one's self.
The authority I refer to is permission given directly by the party asking for help. When credentials and authority are presented the Advocates will release the care of the Soul to the Soul Retriever.
The Soul is then returned safely home to
its rightful place of relationship with the Body/Mind and other
Souls.
Those usurpers then feed upon the emotional turmoil that is generated by the torment of the person's Soul. They are the vampires, not of fang and claw, but of emotion and Soul Force.
When the Soul is found to be ensnared the Soul Retriever must then present credentials and authority. Most often the Demons will immediately release the Soul and back off.
Sometimes, however, a Demon who has fed upon the Soul Force of many, many unfortunate Souls and has become bloated with Power, and arrogant, refuses to release the captured Soul.
In that situation the Soul Retriever
must be able, capable and willing to be as a Warrior on behalf of
the ensnared Soul, doing whatever it takes to secure the freedom of
that Soul. What must be understood here is that what ever happens to
the Soul Retriever there, in the Dream World, happens to their own
body here in the earthly realm.
As the Celestial Soul begins its loosening, the individual goes into coma, drifting in and out of consciousness, speaking of visions and meetings with the dead that others around them are all too ready to ascribe to being hallucinations.
As long as the Earth and Underworld
Souls are present, or retrievable, a person's Celestial Soul can be
brought back and death averted.
These are activities for trained professionals who are well familiar with these practices, have the necessary spiritual back-up and lots of previous experience in traveling in the aforementioned realms in a state of full awareness.
As I have only given reference to the
basic structure of activities in performing an authentic Soul
Retrieval, to try and actually do a Soul Retrieval from the
information presented would be akin to trying to drive a car without
knowing about Stop Signs, Red lights from Green, brakes from the gas
pedal.
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