Over the lengthening span of my life I’ve held a number of beliefs which I was ultimately forced to surrender as I pursued objective “TRUTH.” I learned about God in the Roman Catholic Church’s educational system. In my youth I saw God as a strict and harsh disciplinarian. If I failed to follow “His” commandments I was surely damned to spend eternity in Hell (whatever and wherever it might be). Upon entering my teenage years my view of God changed dramatically. My education at the hands of well-educated priests and nuns saw to that. I no longer viewed God as a bitter, vengeful, obstinate rule maker but rather as a being interested in my genuine and lasting happiness and joy. When I was going through high school and college, my youthful image of God morphed into a loving, caring being that was Himself the ultimate source of love. I even decided to make Religious Studies one of my undergraduate majors (along with Philosophy, of course).
Over the years since then, my view of God has changed even more. I no longer think of God as a “Him” but rather as a humanly incomprehensible being WHO can be found in every iota that exists as well as in ALL that exists. In effect, a self-aware soup of everything that exists to which we contribute by adding our own apparently walled in experiences at the appropriate time. Since I first came to this view I’ve spent countless hours attempting to ascertain a process via which I could somehow transcend my “self” and objectively touch that which my “senses” tell me exists beyond my being. Unfortunately, viewing our physical senses as an interface with the “outside” world doesn’t quite fit the bill and so, like so many, I have struggled.
What then are we seemingly finite beings to do if we wish to be included in the Universe in a truly experiential way? A way in which we somehow reach beyond our “self” and objectively connect with anything or everything that is outside of our self seems to be the goal. The path however, remains incredibly elusive. The human experience is incredibly tied to our physical senses. We see, touch, taste, smell and hear things beyond our selves however those senses are necessarily tainted by the perspectives we can never break from or step beyond. Our senses were largely the result of evolution and became an essential component for the survival of our species. Even so, no two individuals can ever see the same external thing EXACTLY the same way because it is impossible for them to do so. Add in the ever present clouds of emotions and desires that rack our hearts and minds and the task is rendered even more difficult. How then do we move beyond our “self” and directly experience all that is? The answer is, ultimately, we do NOT, at least not via our physical and finite being.
What our human condition tells us over and over is that “I” am not “Us” and there is no apparent process or path we can follow to change that truth. Despite this reality however there remains something we very much can do - we can look inward. We can come to somewhat understand what it is to possess a “Soul.” In English, per Webster’s, a “soul” is “1: the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life.” I added the emphasis by the way and for good reason, because the Soul is “the immaterial essence…of an individual life.”
If we begin with this basic truth then the question becomes HOW do I interact with and access this immaterial essence of my self? First, we must surrender the notion that our “soul” is somehow bound up in a biological package and instead consider that, in the truest sense, the soul is an immaterial portal and not a thing in a box. Since we’re human, we naturally try to categorize, pigeonhole, define, circumscribe and otherwise limit a thing to “understand” it. The problem is that our “immaterial ESSENCE” is beyond comprehension, it is the infinite within us that ties us not only to one another but to every literal thing that exists including the smallest particle AND the energy that connects them as well as to all things about which we will never “know.”
Over the years I’ve considered a number of paths to, effectively, sidestep the “self.” I have always failed however I have not always failed completely. I have sat surrounded by beauty observing, but not measuring, all around me. The wind, the Sun, the leaves whispering in a breeze are all things I’ve touched in some way without any effort to box them up. My memories of such moments persist however the experiences I had within myself during such moments are not remembered if only because I was not cataloguing them. The road ahead beckons but I know much of it lies inward. Whether I can effectively avoid my “self” and so step through the portal within me to connect to ALL that is remains to be seen. I know if I can do so I will no longer be only me but, in the most essential way, infinitely more.