Encounters with the Soul - Part 1

                This series of posts on the soul is in response to "Lindsay's Lobes" postings about the soul, a subject about which I feel I never fully, or satisfactorily, developed my thoughts in the past. I feel, as I said in comment to Lindsay's posts, that I have nothing to say, yet must say something.(1) 

               In describing an encounter with the soul, or to put it another way, reporting a conversation with the soul, one has to start somewhere and describe the event in a particular manner. To do this I must struggle to overcome my instinctive, intellectual approach, born out of years of scientific reporting, and tell it as it was. The past tense is important here because I cannot re-live and express the actual experience; only report on a memory of that experience. Furthermore, conversations rarely seem to start, develop and end in a strictly linear fashion. There always seem to be diversions, incongruencies, and even questions that occur as part of an overall communication. So where shall I begin? I will begin with a nightmare, one which has a recurring theme but which expresses itself in a variety of settings.

               In this dream, not really a bad dream but one which always arouses deep discomfort and maybe terror, I am carrying the husk of the decomposed but re-animated corpse of my long-dead father. A person enters the dream who attempts to rob me of the corpse. This attempt I fight off with much vigour, and succeed. (The other figure is a man who I know about; one that I respect but who is flawed. He will remain unidentified.) How may this dream be interpreted? I say 'may' because any interpretation will be mine. Others may disagree with that interpretation. 

               The re-animated corpse represents a powerful authority figure in my life. After a great deal of meditation on the matter, I conclude that the image is one which represents my ego. Only that now has the power to govern me as once my father did. The robber who attempts to remove that corpse from me is my soul, flawed though it may be. Regretfully, my ego is still winning, apparently.

               Now the questions begin. Although the title of this post implies the existence of a soul, yet there remain many questions about its existence, and its relationship(s) with the rest of me. These questions I hope to address, realistically, in future descriptions of encounters with the soul.

(1)          This sounds like something St. Paul might have said, but I can find no such reference.