Embodying Soul: A Return to Wholeness
Part 1: Chapters 7 & 8
Dear reader: The next two chapters, alternating from the Soul Realm to the Earth Realm—tell my journey with religion from the perspective of my soul, Sëri, in the Soul Realm, and my ego in the Earth Realm. Reading them together helps flush out the wholeness.
In the previous chapter, you met Fear. In these chapters, I will introduce you to Guilt.
Enjoy!
Chapter 7: The Museum of Universal Truth and Cosmic Knowledge
Now that I have had ample time and space to review my scrapbook, my soul body feels warm, porous, and nearly human. I carefully put my scrapbook, Care Bear side up, into a corner of my suitcase. Given that I have officially begun packing, my decision to travel is final, and I am no longer so apprehensive as I am excited and curious about my next adventures.
“Sëri, my friend,” Rasa says as she pulls my hands to help me stand. “I have a place to show you where I have been researching my new project.”
We walk down a cobblestone path, alongside the field, in which golden stalks of wheat have already grown to the height of our knees.
“What is this new project of yours?” I ask as we walk.
“Soon I will tell you,” she answers, mysteriously. “But first there is more for you to remember.”
We climb up a grassy knoll, atop which sits an L-shaped, two-story, white brick building with black molding around its many windows. “This looks like an Earth Realm library,” I say, stumbling upon a memory.
She nods. “Depending on the soul, this building can also appear as a laboratory, an office, or even a sports stadium. Your vision of it seems to be traditional,” she remarks, laughing, “but it is much more than a library. Allow me to present to you the Museum of Universal Truth and Cosmic Knowledge — the oldest, grandest, and most comprehensive library in the universe.” She curtsies dramatically.
I can only stare in awe at the immense amount of knowledge contained within a single building. Is knowledge endless or finite? What can be known, and what cannot be known? Is all this knowledge available to humans or only to disembodied souls? I wonder.
Rasa makes a sweeping gesture toward the open door, and we walk through a brightly lit entrance into a foyer beneath a domed glass ceiling. The foyer is shaped like a clock, and at the location of every minute is a different pathway. Every pathway is lined with walls on either side that extend to the ceiling. Each wall is lined with shelves; each shelf filled with books; and each book packed with stories, wisdom, and lessons.
Overcome with desire to access knowledge, I tour the museum slowly, shelf by shelf, book by book. My ability to read and digest the information I find is greatly enhanced in my soul form, and I take advantage of it. I start with concrete topics such as history, architecture, sports, and math. It satisfies me, the way a main course satisfies. Then I move on to the less tangible subjects of imagination, love, poetry, and art — subjects that cannot be measured but are manifestations of the creative human heart. This is the sugar to the starch and protein of my diet. I am most taken by the stories of how egos, together with their souls, relate to Source in its various names — God, the Sacred, Allah, Krishna. I watch ancient yogis, shamans, native and medicine people of all traditions engage in their practices. I observe people in forests, mountains, ashrams, and even bedrooms and offices meditate in silence for hours, reaching states of consciousness that mimic what all souls experience in the Soul Realm. I observe human beings travel on light alone through time and space. From dance to prayer to ritual to silence, there are seemingly endless ways in which Source can be revered and honored.
I come across a book that sits out a little further than the rest, as if encouraging me to select it — entitled Christianity: An Exploration of the History, Beliefs, and People of Earth Realm’s Largest Religion. It has a soft burgundy cover and pages ornately decorated with thin gold leaf. When I open it, a small object falls out, a triangular piece of colored glass, with shards of orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet fanning out from its ruby red center. I hold the glass up to the Overlap light coming in through a window, and immediately colored light spills onto the floors and walls of the museum.
“Rasa, you have to see this!” I shout.
“I’ll be right there,” she yells from around the corner. In a blink, she is back by my side, a book of her own in her hands, the title of which she keeps hidden from my view. I know I will learn more about her new project when she is ready to tell me or, perhaps more to the point, when I am ready to hear about it.
“Look at the glass that fell out of this book. Is it not brilliant?” I say.
She glances at the book and then at the glass and replies, “That is an Earth Realm artifact, likely from the window of a place of worship. It is stunning, but is certainly an outsider’s, not an insider’s, item. It is yours to pack, but that will mean encountering Christianity during your human journey, always from the outside.”
I gently place the glass down on a windowsill as I consider this option. “It feels like it has value for me, but I am not sure how much.” I return to the book, rubbing my thumb along the gold edges of its pages, and say, “I also found this emotion inside the book.” I try to keep my voice light, but my old friend knows me so well she hears my worry and wraps an arm around me as I stare at a short, boxy, beet-red snake whose body tapers and ends with a barbed hook for a tail, watching us suspiciously from the pages of the book. “I recognized him from the pictures in my scrapbook, always tagging along behind me, tripping over his endless to-do lists.”
“One does not easily forget Guilt,” offers Rasa.
“Still, he is not entirely bad,” I reply, already feeling like the advocate for my emotions I hope to be in the next life. “He merely wants to stay safe, follow the rules, and choose right over wrong, and his cautious voice could prevent some disastrous mistakes.”
“Certainly there is a role for him to play in human life,” my soul friend concedes, “especially when the need arises to restore integrity and balance. But to make critical decisions about your life, I suggest that you follow the instincts you have attained over the ages and the magical knowing of the human body over the manipulative words of Guilt.”
“The human body . . . magical?” I ask, absorbing this idea as a contrast to other ideas about the body being fragile and weak. And then I remember books I have read explaining how the body’s communication devices — grunts, winks, crossed arms, long pauses, turned shoulders, tone of voice — all express emotions that may or may not match the words spoken by a person. The human body never lies and communicates its truth to anyone who pays attention.
Rasa adds to my knowledge with some of her own, saying, “Since the human body is comprised of the same core materials as the universe — earth, water, fire, air, and ether — it is as mysterious and magical as the universe. In the body, each element corresponds to a different sense — earth for smell, water for taste, fire for sight, air for touch, and ether for sound. Let these senses guide you toward truth. They are some of the best truth-detectors the universe has ever created.”
As she speaks, I feel the initial development of the human organs necessary for me to use each of these senses — a nose to smell, a tongue to taste, eyes to see, hands to touch, and finally, ears to hear.
“And then there is the gut,” Rasa adds, indicating a spot three finger widths below and two finger widths behind the navel. “This is referred to as the Dantian, the hara, the Svadhishthana or the second chakra, in various Earth Realm traditions, though it matters not what you name it as long as you call upon it for the knowledge you seek.”
I rub my belly, and it responds to my touch the way a baby responds to its mother. This place beneath my navel is where all my inner knowing can be accessed. Knowledge is both knowable and infinite, I decide. It is all there to discover when we seek, and yet we will never be finished seeking it. Like a soul, knowledge is a paradox: resolved but still evolving, whole but never complete.
“How does the knowledge transfer to the human body?” I ask.
Rasa explains, “The energetic imprints — one could use the term ‘karmic residue’ — of all your previous lives have left an indelible mark. This impression is what humans might call intuition, inner voice, or gut instinct. To humans, it is a knowing without a direct reason. It can help you navigate darker times. But,” she pokes Guilt until he grunts his displeasure, “if Guilt gets his hook in you — and he will surely aim right for this place in your body — he will attempt to distort your intuition. He will lecture you about original sin, remorse, blasphemy, and hell. He will invade the most private places inside your mind. He offers deference only to one side of God, the masculine, and he deeply respects the power and hierarchy of the church over the subtle and innate knowledge of the human body or intuition.”
Watching Guilt smack his scarlet lips and stare at me sends an icy chill through my soul body. I give him a tentative wave and close the book, considering its rich color, its authority. I think about what I stand to gain, and what I might lose, in my relationship with Christianity and with Guilt if I pack the stained glass. But then, I suddenly know what I need to do and explain, “I understand the challenges taking this glass could pose, but I feel I need the experience it might offer, even if it is only from an outsider’s perspective.”
Rasa laughs and replies, “See! You are already remembering how to tap your intuition.”
Chapter 8: Invasion of the Sanctuary of the Mind
Ever since I can remember, I’ve been a vivid, in-color, action-packed dreamer. Give me a quiet, darkened bedroom, a solitary hermitage, or just a backseat during a long car ride and I’ll drop into a world of pure imagination where roles, identities, and labels can’t catch me. As a child, I had a wildly imaginative inner life in which I pondered whatever showed up without judgment or fear.
I could so easily shift between reality and imagination that I once did a test to determine if what was in my mind was totally private. In the living room, with my mom sitting on the couch next to me stitching something and my dad in the recliner sipping his evening beer, one younger brother on his stomach on the floor, the other already in bed, all of us supposedly watching TV, I thought of some forbidden words then looked at my family to check for any reactions. Their unsuspecting faces told me they did not hear me and that I could continue living in the world of my imagination with secrecy and no fear of censorship.
Once I was assured of this, my mind became my sanctuary. During the daytime, while other kids played with buckets and shovels in sandboxes or built snow forts, I preferred to create word games in my mind, exploring the myriad ways I could shape and connect thoughts. One of the games I played at night, which began with the name of my great-grandmother, who died when I was seven, entailed quickly thinking a series of words and circling back around to the beginning: Grandma White, snow, sledding, fast, fly, birds, sing, school, hopscotch, friends, family, Grandma White. It was my own brand of hide-and-seek, with me hiding in the words while sleep tried to find me.
Though I was later labeled an introvert after taking personality tests, I didn’t label myself one then but simply saw my mind as my favorite play space, my blank canvas on which I could express my creativity endlessly.
Not only was I content inside my mind, sometimes I used it as a rocket ship to space travel. Lying in my darkened bedroom at night, I’d slip out of my human cocoon, fly off this planet, past this solar system, and beyond. An invisible tether kept me connected to my body, but for a time I would experience a sustained freedom similar to being at the apex of a roller coaster, a few breathless moments swelling with possibility, freed of limits and boundaries. Something deep inside me knew that such an experience of freedom, both enjoyable and terrifying, was truer to who I was than anything I could experience on earth in human form. At some point, the tether to my body would tug and I would drop back inside my body, my heart pounding, wondering if I had traveled to the realm of the soul. Soon, though, my mind became much more crowded, and I became permanently earthbound.
***
Though such experiences of being outside of physical limitations made me wonder about the existence of a soul realm, they did not prompt me initially to wonder about religion. Our family, official members of the local Presbyterian church, a simple two-story white building within walking distance of our house, usually attended only on Easter and Christmas Eve. We would slide into a middle pew, shoulder to shoulder with our next-door neighbors, another family who seldom attended, as if there was something redeeming in our complicity. I would sit swinging my legs to a rhythm determined by the light dancing through the stained-glass windows. My parents would toss a few dollars into the silver collection tin we received, which always made me feel proud. Throughout the service we would stand and sit as directed, and hum or mouth the words in the bulletin per tradition. Even my dad, who would often break out in a loud, embarrassing rendition of “Happy Birthday” at the pizza place where we often celebrated birthdays, would blend his voice with everyone else’s in a show of social unison. At the end of the service, we would line up to shake the hand of the pastor, whom I imagined deemed us hopeless. I would avert my eyes and glue my arms to my torso, hoping to get so small he wouldn’t see or judge me.
While my parents likely assumed it was their duty to provide us with a foundation of religious education at church, they neither sustained nor elaborated on it at home. Only at holiday meals when our grandparents were present would we fold hands together, bow heads, and recite memorized religious passages, all sighing with relief at the amen.
So for many years religion, like school, was nothing more to me than something I had to do. I assumed that God, his son, and the aloof Holy Ghost focused their attention on powerful people and grand events, not on me and my little life.
***
But one Sunday morning the pastor’s announcement from the pulpit shook me awake. “God is always with you! God knows the deepest thoughts and fears in your mind!” he said, invading my privacy. Fear, fretting over my mind’s unexpected visitor, placed a frantic call for help. Guilt promptly arrived at the doorstep of my mind, and Fear pushed open the door to invite Guilt in, saying, “God’s watching and listening to everything! You gotta help me clean this place up!”
“Listen, Fear,” Guilt said, frowning as he lumbered up and down the rows of my mind, “I’m an expert on God. And I can tell you that He expects a tidy, sin-free mind with only good, safe thoughts. This will not do.”
Fear ran about, picking up a few of my word games and puzzles and dropping them at Guilt’s feet. “Throw them out!” Guilt snapped. “Imagination leads to wondering, wondering leads to questioning, questioning leads to insolence, and,” he whispered, “you’ve heard of hell, yes?” At Fear’s slow, defeated nod he added, “Stick to the plan, Stan. That’s my motto.”
Together with Fear, Guilt combed through the contents of my mind, intent on finding something bad. They were successful. My mean thoughts about my brother? They found them. My clever-but-sassy replies to my parents that I thought but never dared say? They found them, too. With each new discovery — trying out a curse word, saying shut up to my brothers, being jealous of my friend’s bottomless baskets of Barbie Dolls — Guilt clucked while Fear tapped my nervous system’s shoulder to send warning signals: a somersaulting stomach, a quickened heart rate, a welling up of salty tears.
I suddenly wondered what else God knew. For instance, did he know about my cosmic travels?
Guilt answered on behalf of God, in a tone of disapproval, “God doesn’t approve of you running away from his Kingdom any more than your parents would approve of you running away from home.”
Guilt’s warning impacted me. After this, anytime I tried sneaking past God’s heavenly lair to travel the cosmos my heart jolted with Fear, cringed with Guilt, and I snuck back into my bedroom like a thief returning to the scene of the crime, slipping back inside a body that reminded me of my sinful nature and which I realized I needed to tame through Fear’s strict discipline and Guilt’s constant vigilance.
The next time I sat in church I paid attention to every word of the sermon, now aware that eternity is a long time to be punished for not learning the rules.
“You hear that, Guilt? We have to fit through the eye of a needle! How are we ever going to do that?” Fear asked.
“Keri, be small, unseen, and meek to fit through the eye of a needle,” Guilt commanded.
“Like this?” I asked, as I crossed my legs like all the other women and hugged my elbows close to my body.
“It’s a good start,” Guilt said, approvingly.
“I’m going to get more answers,” I replied frantically. “I’ve been invited to go to a real church, a Catholic church. Let’s all go, we’ll learn more. Maybe that’s where we belong.”
***
Wondering if Catholics might know better how to obtain my eternal safety than Protestants, I attended a Catholic church with a friend and her family. I entered its massive, ornate doors and gaped at the breathtaking stain-glassed windows, the high, domed ceilings, the rich atmosphere, and the sparkling yellow glow. The pictures and carvings of Jesus were familiar to me, but the myriad pictures of his mother Mary were new. All I knew about Mary was that, due to her virginity, she had been chosen to be mother of Jesus. I slid quietly into the hard-backed pew next to my friend. I brushed my fingers across the gold-rimmed Bibles and hymnals lining the pew. Organ music piped down from the balcony that extended directly to heaven. The outside world of budding trees and baby birds learning to fly in springtime air was shut out of our minds. This was authentic religion — the real Kraft macaroni and cheese — not some cheap imitation, I decided.
The smiling priest floated in wearing a crisp white robe, a purple sash, and a scarf with gold tassels. He shook the hands and patted the backs of those in the first rows. Once the service began I stood, sat, and knelt following the congregation’s cues. I discovered that as an outsider I was not invited to take Communion or receive the kind words and warm greetings that accompanied it. I accepted that while truth and knowledge might in fact live here, I was not granted access to them.
Years before at my grandparents’ I had walked my bare toes far underneath me to gain enough leverage on an old tire swing to reach up and touch the sun, chest lifted, head thrown back. But during my first time attending Catholic Mass I tucked my scuffed white flats underneath the pew while my stomach knotted into confusion.
“Keri, you know what to do,” said Guilt.
I did. I slipped on my “can-do, don’t complain” attitude and tidied up my mind. Now instead of playing mind games before bed I recited a desperate prayer: “Please God, forgive me for all my sins. For all those things I have said and done today that I shouldn’t have. Even when I knew they were wrong, I did them anyway. Please forgive me. And if there are any sins I forgot about, please forgive those too.” God-fearing? No, not me. I was God-petrified.
I know many people for whom the same message — God is always with you! — is a comfort, not an invasion of privacy. I have friends and family who embrace the sights, sounds, and smells of a church. I acknowledge that my imagination took great liberty to interpret the meaning of the Presbyterian pastor’s words as something sinister and the members-only Communion of the Catholic church as a personal rejection. But none of this can change the fact that to me church has never felt safe. Inside its doors, I have always felt exposed and claustrophobic. But, despite these uneasy feelings, I eventually did get confirmed in a church, married in a church, and had both my daughters baptized in a church. Perhaps this reflects my desire to belong or my tendency to respect the authority of religion. Most likely it was a combination that had me keeping one foot in the church, hoping someday my reluctant second foot would cross the threshold into the promised land.
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