Living with Paradox
“The soul has its own sets of rules which are not the same as those of life. Unlike the steady forward movement of progress, reaching goals, achieving dreams, the events of the soul have little concern for outcomes, even achievement.
The soul events are cyclic & repetitive. Familiar themes come round and round. The past is more important than the future. The living and the dead have equal roles. Emotions and the sense of meaning are paramount. Pleasures are deep and pain can reach the very foundation of our existence.
The soul is more concerned with the dynamics of the heart and imagination. Moods, attitudes, influences, aspirations, and fears also ask for a degree of sophistication in our response.
The soul doesn’t evolve or grow. It cycles and twist, repeats and reprises, echoing ancient themes common to all human beings. The soul cares little for outward success, but rather looks at places deep within, both at the individual level and the archetypal world.
The soul is always circling home and calls us to a foreign and strange world. The soul is constantly homesick and yearns for its own milieu. The odyssey of the soul is not a straight line of progress. Rather it is a drifting at sea, a floating towards home, not an evolution towards perfection.
Live as though nothing exists except momentarily in its present form. We should remain attached to nothing, not even to our philosophy of life or our spiritual pat. Better to be present to what is happening than to be lost in our ideas and beliefs.
If we were to embrace the past without excessive judgment and calmly step, not leap, into the future, we might feel the vitality of the all-embracing soul.
The secret of a soul-based life is to allow someone or something other than the usual self to be in charge.”
– Thomas Moore, Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality