Today we talked about the soul, what is it meant to be, what does it do and where is it situated. For example I asked one student, pointing to his hand, what is that? He answered “My hand.” This illustrates that our identity is not placed in our body. We own our body, it is our possession and we use our body to express ourselves. Talking about the soul and the body is very relevant. All the students today believed that we had a soul but as to the specifics they were not sure. So we began by drawing a diagram that represents what we believe about human beings.

The easiest thing to establish (unless you are talking to a post modernist) is that we are a physical being. We also agreed that we have a soul.

The first diagram weights the importance of the soul and body. Clearly this student is saying that the soul is the driving force, the boss of the body. The soul uses the body for its own purpose.

The second diagram weights things much more towards the body and other stuff. Other stuff might be emotions like fear, guilt, anger, love, and depression. I interpret this diagram as saying that the soul has very little to do with practical life issues. It’s something that is eternal but that’s about all.

The third diagram is the most sophisticated. It puts the soul in the driving seat of the body and the mind while giving the mind its own place. In essence this divides the person in three parts, Body, Soul and mind. Perhaps this diagram seeks to say something about the will; this being the part of us that decides things.

The last diagram is the same as the first but with a different emphasis. It is saying that we are an embodied soul. So the spirit, the soul, the mind and the heart are all different ways of describing the same thing.

What the body and soul does 

The body looks after things like intelligence, personality and can also make us feel emotions. For example when you get a cold you can feel depressed. The heart or soul is the “me” part. This is the place that makes us feel things like, guilt, fear, anger. At the moment I am spending some time working on this issue in more detail. So if you are interested click here.

Oh I nearly forgot, I promised I would say that Alex is a good guy (“and me to”).