Today is Thursday August 21st. My life is quite good. Others are not as fortunate. At Starbucks, the space is safe, I can search for, investigate anything of my choosing on the internet without fear of being fined. This is not Russia, not here, and not now, not yet. I enjoy reasonable good health for a 76 year old diabetic.

Today perhaps I will plant another white pine tree in our yard. The garden is winding down as the summer growing season wanes. For the afternoon I consider becoming more familiar with the poetry of Walt Whitman. I am also curious to explore the eighteenth century English poet and artist William Blake.

As a recovering Christian fundamentalist, I gravitate toward those who help me to “unmake” my mind. Dogma makes-up-the-mind about many things. I’ve been on this journey for many years, and I know I am likely to keep to the path until my last day. It is my fate, or a more congenial term would be my destiny and privilege.

I will return to responding to the Tao Te Ching verses tomorrow.

For today I’d like to share some ideas rehabilitating the concept of “soul,” a prominent feature of Christian discourse. There’s the story swallowed whole, the Apostle Paul’s notion of a personal essence or soul that ghost-like leaves one’s body at death, rising like a hot air balloon to “heaven”. In a future, (which never comes) the soul will be installed in a new and improved body, much as a body materializes from the transporter in a Star Trek scene. My point is to show the tale grows more outlandish as the story develops…

I have resisted using soul language as a recovering Christian literalist. However I understand that the concept of a “soul” might be a functional term that I simply cannot but use. I cannot do without it!

Here is what Tom Robbins the novelist had to say. I like it.

“If you need to visualize the soul,” wrote novelist Tom Robbins, “think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information.

Robbins concludes: “By waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe.”

This rings true to my experience. A soul, your soul resonates to the force that animates everything, absolutely everything around, from the microscopic molecule, to the wheel of the galaxy. The soul is a receptor for what we refer to as the divine dimension of our lives. That is, – if we choose to pay attention. There is a divine echo. The soul is part of us that hears the music, and sometimes feels the terror. My soul “knows” the beauty of a bee working a late summer blossom and the distinctive sharp pitched idle note  of an alcohol racing engine.

Here are a few soulful secrets about reality which I culled from a recent newsletter published by Rob Brezsny. I know that Rob would love to have you as a free subscriber. CLICK HERE

• Every conscious act is an act of magick.
• You will find beauty in everything when you look for it. Conversely, you have the power and the right to ignore beauty if you want to. But who wants to?
• In the long run, it’s healthiest to side with those who tell the most truth.
• Confucius said, “All wisdom is rooted in learning to call things by their right names.”
• Ssshhhh! Communication doesn’t solve everything. Do your best to communicate, anyway.
• William James said, “I will act as if what I do makes a difference.”
• No one is ever able to tell the whole truth. That is a package of a trillion trillion trillion facts known only to the Eternal Intelligence formerly known as “God.”
• Be kind to yourself. That is not the same as indulging yourself or spoiling yourself. It means conducting your inner monologue as though you were counseling a friend whom you dearly love.
• Look for an oracle who asks you the right questions.
• As Richard P. Feynman advised us, the first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
• Thoughts are inevitable but believing them is optional.

*The header image is a William Blake painting.