Soul

There are so many things going on around us constantly that we could not possibly assimilate all at once. We must pick and choose what is necessary for our survival. We choose what we see. We choose what we hear, what we feel, what we smell, what we taste. We select from this chaos around us what we need to know and we ignore the rest until and unless it becomes necessary to our survival. You may respond that there are many things you are aware of that do not contribute to your survival. I would suggest that in reality there is nothing you are aware of that does not contribute to your survival or does not make you feel more secure in your survival.

Let’s take the next step. You not only select what you perceive, you process that information to suit your particular needs and your particular expectations. As perception builds on previous perceptions and as that accumulation of perceptions is processed individually and collectively, a world view begins to emerge. That world view will henceforth influence what you perceive and how you process what you perceive. This world view becomes your truth.

No two people have exactly the same experiences, and if they did no two people would perceive exactly the same things as necessary to their survival. That is partly responsible for why some of us survive and others do not. Even if two people had exactly the same experiences from their moment of conception and even if they perceived exactly the same things as necessary to their survival, they would not process that information exactly the same way. We are far too complicated an organism to make the same decisions under the same circumstances again and again, and each decision we make opens up new possibilities and makes other possibilities more unlikely for us. We are in effect the sum total of all our decisions, not of our experiences or even the processing of those experiences, but of the choices we make. This is our soul. This is who we are.

If we are so different, then how can we communicate with one another? We can’t really, but we can approximate. We approximate by assuming we understand exactly what another person says and does and that that person understands exactly what we say and do. We approximate closely enough (since survival skills, though not identical, are similar if successful) to influence the behavior of each other if not the mutual understanding of one another. By assuming an understanding based on the response to our approximating, we coexist and interrelate adequately.

There are two basic perspectives. They are outside-inside and inside-outside. The outside-inside perspective sees reality as action-reaction. The inside-outside perspective sees reality as consumption-conversion. Viewing reality from the outside-inside, you see the world working through predictable phenomena. Viewing reality from the inside-outside, you see the world consuming and converting. Living in an outside-inside world demands that you separate yourself from who you are. You must view the world through God’s eyes so to speak. You soon learn that because phenomena are predictable you can control reality by understanding and manipulating these phenomena.

Living in an inside-outside world however forces you to view the world subjectively – as the consumer and the consumed. As you watch the world being changed, you perceive something you cannot control consuming and/or changing that world. You realize that as part of the world, you are also being consumed and/or changed. To protect yourself from being consumed and/or changed you must become involved in the process by somehow determining how you are going to avoid being consumed or changed and if that is not possible how to influence when and/or how you are consumed or changed.

Since we are rational animals subject to both objective and subjective evaluation of the world around us, these two conflicting perspectives are engaged in a constant struggle within us. Some of us resolve the struggle by forcing one of these perspectives into submission and assuming it has been either destroyed or rendered ineffective in our struggle for survival. This is a serious mistake; because we only suppress the perspective. We cannot destroy or render helpless that which is so much a part of us and consequently force what should be an ongoing conscious and healthy struggle, resulting in compromise as each situation develops, into a rebellious repressed unconscious that sabotages attempts to better understand and respond to difficult situations lest in times of stress we suddenly find ourselves controlled by the very perspective we had thought defeated.