What is my soul, a question I explored in depth following my failed suicide attempt.
"Modern Day Man In Search Of A Soul" was written by Carl Jung, a genius at understanding human behaviour and the psyche, over 80 years ago, to help people understand how we work and why we become broken and miserable with life. His research and insight coupled with his commitment and passion to save people from self-destructing, gives us clear rational explanations why our subconscious behaviour, the stuff we do without thinking about it, is so embedded in our daily existence, we become clogged and stuck. In his book he maps out the route to your soul. It takes a lot of working on yourself but with his help I can guarantee to you I found mine.
Carl Jung's writing is complex for a non academic but here's the footnotes in laymans terms.
If you think about God, not being connected to any religion because that’s about conflict and war or a big man in the sky with a beard, that’s Father Christmas but something like a powerful energy, not human, not English and not external to your own being. If you then accept that if God, this energy, is omnipresent, this means everywhere, then God has to also be inside us, which makes sense because we work perfectly like everything else in nature. This energy, God, our spirit, our soul, is housed in our psyche and it is this that gets clogged with the lives we create, looking outward in order to find love, happiness and material wealth, often leaving us dissatisfied, miserable and in chaos, what happened to me.
If you think now about your psyche being that little nagging voice you hear when you consciously tell a lie or do something wrong, a feeling that makes you feel bad, guilty and not good, well this is your natural instinct stopping you going too far, your conscience. If we get drunk or take cocaine, pills, our psyche, the little voice of reason, becomes clogged, leaving us disconnected to our truth because we are not listening to ourselves anymore, we are listening to others instead. Knocking yourself out or anesthetising yourself from your reality with booze and hard drugs because you hate your life, is why you are unhappy. If you were not clogged up and listening to your psyche, the little voice, you would never have given up because when you listen to your truth, your instincts, you find your real spirit and don’t need to rely on the fake spirit in a bottle anymore.
We lie to ourselves because we are not satisfied with our choices and behaviour so we blame others in order to make ourselves look and feel better when those choices or behaviours no longer suit our own agenda. We only hear what we want to hear.
If you overeat and have become so fat your health is at risk and your doctor has told you if you don’t change your lifestyle you will die, continuing to indulge in the same lifestyle means you have not heard the experts warning because in reality to carry on obliviously, means you are choosing to slowly kill yourself. So how can this be possible that a human being would dismiss expert advice, prefer to see themselves as the expert and make the choice to kill themselves?
It’s hard to imagine why because we only know what we know but once we know something else, like the advice the doctor has told us, we should, if we are operating properly, be listening to our truth, our psyche then take action immediately because we would want to live more than we would want to die. People who are not operating properly, not listening to their truth or psyche don’t take action because all they know is what they know, how to operate in the misery of their comfort, the only place they feel safe. These people are so clogged up inside, lost and battered without confidence, the little voice of reason, the psyche, no longer works properly and is not heard.
Once we take control over our reality and think we are invincible, our psyche has become so clogged, we have completely lost control of that energy, our soul, our spirit, God, the essential connection needed to stop us self-destructing. It is essential to be happy, free and work perfectly like any other living thing in nature, if you want to truly benefit from the magnificent powers and possibilities given to us in order to flourish and grow in our life.
To step outside the comfort place, the misery, the place you feel safe, in order to face your truth and unclog your psyche, takes confidence and self-belief but sadly people who hide behind what they think they want, food, alcohol pills, have no self-belief, never discovering the confidence within to face what they need. We don’t always get what we want, we get what we need when we listen to our truth by doing the right thing, when the wrong thing appears to be more pleasurable. This is how we begin to develop our inner confidence, discover self-discipline and slowly begin to unclog our psyche, allowing us to take back control, face some pain before taking a massive leap of faith.
So how do we get the confidence to take the leap of faith? We have to know what confidence is. People who are naturally confident believe in themselves and their purpose in order to shine and get on with creating the life they desire, never looking back, always moving forward until they reach their goal.
People who are naturally unconfident don’t believe in themselves, have no purpose so prefer to hide away, forever looking back for answers, leaving them hopelessly stuck, unable to move forward towards creating any life worth living. If you are stuck and don’t believe in yourself because when you look back over your past, you feel unloved, betrayed, alone, not good enough, miserable, scared, angry, suicidal, depressed, you have to recognise it is not your fault.
When you came into the world, you arrived like everyone else with natural spirit and all the hope in the world but life on earth has a distorted, damaging appetite for destroying free spirit and dreams, so the environment you grow up in, dictates your destiny later in your life. If your natural spirit is bashed to death by an unhappy, controlling, cruel parent who persistently tells you, your nothing, useless, a mistake, you will not feel loved and hate yourself, always believing it’s your fault.
Well it’s not and the key to overcoming such powerful, suffocating, scary, feelings, that are completely consuming your whole existence, is to let go of them and learn to love yourself because you deserve it. Learning to love yourself is simple once you have unclogged the past, faced it, untangled it and forgiven those who contaminated or tampered with you because when you walk away, unscathed from your car crash past, you feel enormous gratitude to yourself for finally being free with hope again.
Being grateful and feeling gratitude naturally leads you to take care of your mind, body and soul, always looking inward for approval, the voice of reason, the right thing, the psyche, the soul, the truth and never outward, the lies, the rubbish, the past, the fake comfort.
When you take care of your mind, body and soul, just like you take care of your car, by giving it only what it needs to keep it working perfectly, you race forward towards personal success, happiness and peace, and all the things you thought you needed become all the things, you never dreamed possible.
Always remember you were given a spirit, like you were given your eyesight, a gift that without it your life becomes unthinkable, so begin to be grateful for it, because if you were blind, it would be all you would have to rely on to survive. Our spirit is energy we cannot see, smell, taste or touch but as energy can never be created or destroyed, just transferred, it lives on after our human body dies, not in human form, that is dead and rotting but something free, powerful and the only thing, the electricity, driving force, soul energy, that kept your body alive and kicking.
Learn to live in harmony with your spirit or soul, recognising it shares your body and needs you to keep it in perfect working order, in order for it to keep your body working in perfect harmony, which in turn keeps your mind alert and senses heightened, leaving it unclogged and free to guide you to your purpose whilst you are here.
Your body is on loan to your soul, the life force that never ages, in order to keep the planet and its amazing miracles happening without question, so learn to recognise, acknowledge and value its existence as part of who you are, particularly if you want to feel happy and at peace all the time.
Photo by: Trevor Gerzen