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Soulful vs spiritual living, part 2
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In part 1, I began talking about the difference between living spiritually and living soulfully, in response to a reader’s question about the distinction. To recap, there are three basic points of departure. The first two are: the difference between ascent (spirit) and descent (soul), and the difference between embodiment (soul) and disembodiment (spirit). To finish the discussion:
3. Spirit key word: transcend. Soul key word: excavate. While this may sound similar to the point made in #1, that distinction is about vector, or direction, while this one is really about method. In spiritual living, we strive – to become better people, to purify our energy, to communicate more cleanly, to unite with God. In other words, we work toward transcending our current state into a higher state of being.
Living soulfully involves excavation. It is messy and dirty; there is a great deal of sorting out that has to be done before spiritual transcendence can really begin in earnest. Excavation involves discovery, and so in soulful living, we are occupied with uncovering all the bits and pieces that make us whole, including the bits that we buried because we just don’t want to look at them. Transcendence often happens with this kind of work, but it happens as a byproduct of soulful endeavors – as we discover and integrate all of the various parts of ourselves, we transcend our current state of being and become a new person.
Remember that in ancient Greek religion, the images for spiritual transcendence are Zeus and Mount Olympus, but the images for soulful discovery are Hades and the Underworld (which, incidentally, have very different nuances than Heaven/Hell). Neither has precedence over the other, and both are needed in every individual’s life, or else things get out of balance rather quickly. Depth psychologists tell us that the work of the Underworld is required so that we don’t develop a Shadow element to our psyches which would create havoc in our lives.
Thank you for such a wonderful question, Max!
Please feel free to email me with any questions you might have about any of my articles or if you have a question you’d like me to address in an article.
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