YouTube: Your God Self
This week I was asked if I would address the subject of Spirit and soul and explain what we mean by these terms.
In the broadest sense of the word, Spirit is the universal and omnipresent life, love, power, and intelligence that permeates every nook and cranny of the universe. I refer to it as the Creative Life Force because it expresses as all the countless forms of creation that we see, including ourselves. John referred to the creative aspect of God as the Word: “…all things were made through him (the Word), and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” That which we think of as our soul, the light of men, is an individualized expression of this universal Spirit.
I think one of the best analogies for explaining this relationship is that of the sponge immersed in the ocean. The water that permeates the sponge, let’s call it the soul, is the same as the water of the entire ocean. The difference is that the water in the sponge is localized. This localization, however, does not affect the relationship of oneness between the localized water and the ocean.
The challenge we have is that we identify ourselves as the water-filled sponge rather than as the ocean water that is presently localized within the sponge. When we say I, are we referring to the water or the sponge? The popular saying that I am a spiritual being going through a human experience is equivalent to saying I am ocean water presently localized in the sponge.
When we pluck the sponge from the water and give it a squeeze, the water continues to be. Some fear that the loss of the body means our spiritual essence merges with the ocean, ending our existence as individuals. This is where our analogy breaks down. Those who momentarily step from the body (NDE) insist that they are the same person but without the confines of the body. Documented cases of reincarnation support this idea as well.
The bottom line is that our soul, our God self is eternal. The most productive spiritual endeavor is to bring this perspective from the realm of conjecture and make it our reality. This, I believe, is what Jesus was referring to when he spoke of the need to be born again.