WHAT IS THE SOUL?

The soul is the only aspect of ourselves that is true — not “true” in regard to objective ontological reality, but true in essence. It is the soul that longs for righteousness, wisdom, peace, and love. However, in modernity, the definitions of these good things are fractured into idealistic fantasy, often distorted by cultural imagination and reduced to emotional abstractions. Yet in their true sense, they are transcendentals grounded in God Himself, and the bearing they have upon our souls is a fingerprint of His divine handiwork. The soul desires them because it is ordered toward God as its final end. It is the living, metaphysical being that pilots our physical manifestation, seemingly fighting a lifelong war against its corrupted carnal faculties: the body and the mind. The soul is the imprint of Eden upon our tarnished, collective memory of eternity. Its needs are often reflected in our mental faculties through the operations of the intellect. The conscious mind is simultaneously unified with and separated from the truth of the soul. The battle is not between two separate entities, but within the unified human person as a whole. The spiritual and the carnal are both, after all, inherently good. However, the mind can attack the soul with desires of the flesh, and it is also susceptible to outside influence from other fallen beings — whether our human cohorts or the disembodied spirits said to roam the terrestrial plane. It is the responsibility of human beings to identify what nourishes the soul, to exercise the power of will, and to deny the flesh.