Discovery of the Soul

Imagine yourself marooned on a vast deserted island. You have been there for years, struggling just to survive, living within the most basic surroundings, gathering food, using only your hands and makeshift tools to scratch out an existence. Most of your days are fully taken up with satisfying the basic needs of life. You find some comfort in talking to some of the local creatures and birds that you have befriended. Having proved to yourself that you can survive with just the bare essentials you resign yourself to the fact that you will never be rescued. Anger turns to quiet desperation, then to acceptance as you carry on with your life.

Several years have passed and you have become accustomed to your lifestyle and feel comfortable enough to start expanding and exploring your island. You have settled in, and your attention lately has been directed towards the mountains and what is beyond.

As you begin to move further inland and away from your comfort zone, you develop a sense of strength and purpose for having survived the years on your own. Along the way you are making many discoveries that will enhance your life and make things easier. You are gathering an abundance of awareness and knowledge about the environment that you live in. By this time you have convinced yourself that there is nothing you can not do, and that there is nothing you really have to do to survive. Everything has been provided for you. You simply reach out and take it as you need it.

After 40 years of wandering the island, you finally reach the top of the mountain and turn away from the direction in which you came.

In the distance and time that separates you, you discover a huge modern city with all the amenities that such a place could hold. You discover that your island was not an island and that the city has always been there. As your mind races over the circumstances of the last 40 years, you fall to your knees weeping. You begin to ponder the ramifications of this discover and what could have been.

I should think that the discovery of your soul is very much the same overwhelming experience. It's not a religious experience unless you want it to be. It's natural and simply a discovery of another part of you, that was there all along, that you didn't know or thought little of. Think of the possibilities. Where there was one, now there are many. Where there was limited possibilities, now they are endless. And there is always that one question, "Why?" How could I have not known. How my life would have been different.

The human species is a three part being, mind, body and spirit. Because our focus is in the physical element; most of our attention is on the body. The mind is what drives us, the spirit is our personality or ego, and the body is loosely the vehicle that is used to experience the physical world.

To experience physicality, one needs to be physical, it's natural then to be focused on the body and its needs. Most all of our waking hours are centered on what the body wants to experience. The body and the physical world, are a buffet of endless experiences. There is nothing wrong with this arrangement, and it works flawlessly and on auto-pilot throughout our lifetimes with or without our awareness of what makes it tick.

So why am I bringing it up? If the system works perfectly, then leave it alone. Don't try to fix that which doesn't need fixing. Is ignorance not, bliss?

These notions of being alone and powerless, limit our experience of the physical world and our own personal growth. With a certain amount of awareness, our lives can be enhanced a thousand fold and more, with the discovery of our souls. Denial of the soul has far reaching ramifications. Awareness of it and communication with it, augments the quality of our lives. It is a vast warehouse of power and abilities that virtually go untapped as we struggle with the day to day elements of the physical world. It's like discovering that city that was always there, and you are given the key to access any part of it.

I am not talking about some abstract or far reaching, hypothetical element of our person, rather of something that actually exists. This soul that we are all part of, is only available to you on a conscious level when you recognize that it is there, when you discover it. You can not ever, avail yourselves of its wealth and power, if you deny it.

You will survive one way or the other in ignorance of your soul. With acceptance of the knowledge of your soul, brings with it all the benefits, amenities and power that it has to offer, that is rightfully yours.

The soul is self discovery. You do not need another's permission to find it. There are no rituals or symbols that you need to bring it into your awareness. You do not have to pay penance or get down on your knees to another, to bring it into your awakened life. There is no prayer or affirmation that will bring it to you. The city was always there, you just opened your eyes to discover it. Your soul is yours, it always was. There is nothing you need to do, or say to access the power of what you hold within yourself. It is freely given and must be freely taken. It is boundless and limitless as your thoughts are about it. The only thing that has ever or will ever deny your access is your own thoughts.

Walk on water, turn water into wine, do all kinds of miracles if that is your desire. Set out to prove this wrong and you will succeed if that is your wish. Set out to prove this correct, and that is what you shall achieve. Your thoughts are the key to the soul. As your thinketh, so shall your reap. The soul responds quickest to the purest of thought. Learn to control your thoughts at all levels and you will have the key to the vault.

That which you would call "God," or anything else, is who you are. You are an individualized piece of that power. You have the power of the whole at your disposal in any given second, through your thoughts. You work together with the other individualized parts to create singularity and en masse all that is your experience in this present lifetime.

You can take the long way or the short cut to the mountain. There is no race, you do it in your own time and your own way. You can do it in this lifetime or another. There is more than one way to the mountain. All the souls in the city came a different way, and from a different time. Your time is when you decide.

Discover your soul and you discover another natural piece of who you are. You are never lost, you just are not there yet. Open the door to discovery and double or more, what you think you are.

Roy E. Klienwachter is an ordained minister,light worker, writer and author of Spiritual New Age Wisdom books written in simple language with the eloguence of Zen wisdom. http://www.klienwachter.com