What if before you were born you had to choose one or two values that you would orient your whole life around?These, one or two, values would be the motivating force for your incarnation. You would give your life to these "Soul Values" and even be willing to die for them.
What did your unique "soul" expression choose for this incarnation of a life called You? Do you know what your soul values are? How do they inform your thoughts, beliefs, speech, actions, relationship with yourself, family, nature, the world?
This question was posed by one of my teachers, Adyashanti. It is rather strange for a Zen Buddhist guy to be talking about the soul. That word is not used in Buddhism. Typically when someone refers to "soul" there is the reifying, the solidifying, of a part of some cosmic self that continues for eternity, never dies and never changes. It becomes solid and separate from the whole. Buddha didn't find anything separate or unchanging.
Adya uses the word Soul not as a permanent, unchanging, separate entity. He describes it more as a psycho-spiritual phenomenon, an interface as you will, between our personality self and our infinite being that informs and infuses the body mind complex.
This could be referred to as our Buddha Nature or Christ Consciousness. Even to use those words can create a sense of separation. Yet, what he is pointing to is the part of ourself that is not dependent upon our personality self, our ego structure, our likes, dislikes, our body or conceptual mind. It gives life to those constantly changing phenomenon, but it doesn't depend on them for its being.
So, it becomes a bit mysterious. It has values that can seem quiet different than our conventional values and at times the "Soul Values" can be unsettling to our conceptual minds and identity as a separate self. It often asks us to expand our heart and our mind beyond our comfort zone.
We see people who easily live life from a deeper place, they may not even be spiritual or religious, but they have an inner compass that they are attuned to and aligned with. I think of Jim in that regard not because he wasn't spiritual but because he always seemed to have been the way he was, it wasn't dependent upon religion or spirituality.
Multiple people have told me how he was always "true to himself", it didn't matter where he was or who he was with, he was the same. Not pretentious, always open, kind, wise, and humble. As a dear friend said "you could tell he loved humanity and wished to be a resting place for others".
Yet for others of us it may be a struggle to know what these one or two soul values are. And to align ourselves with them in our daily life. We can see this in ourselves, in our family, friends, community and our country. As a species we are pretty unaware, mis-aligned and out of balance.
If we look at our country we can see that we have yet to decide our soul values. Many think that we lost our values in the 2016 elections, I was one of them. But then with ongoing police killings of black men and women I started learning more about myself and my heritage. The legacy I've been handed personally and the legacy of a country I've been given as well.
What were the soul values of the Europeans that came upon these shores? Where were their soul values during the colonization and genocide of 13 million native peoples? Where were their soul values during the enslavement, rape, murder and oppression of black men, women, and children? Where were their soul values during the effort to seize and colonize more land leading to the Mexican War? This is the legacy we've been handed, the level of consciousness and values in our collective psyche.
As we see our countries soul values is directly dependent on our individual soul values. When we are aware of and aligned with our deeper values, the deepest part of our being, we are then able to create a life, relationships, communities, and a country that is living from and expressing a deeper state of being.
So, I'll end where I began. Imagine that before you were born you had to choose one or two values that you would orient your whole life around? These, one or two, values would be the motivating force for your incarnation. You would give your life to these "Soul Values" and even be willing to die for them. It might be values such as service, compassion, beauty, gentleness, kindness, enlightenment, love, equity.
What did your unique "soul" expression choose for this incarnation of a life called You? Do you know what your soul values are? How do they inform your thoughts, beliefs, speech, actions, relationship with yourself, family, nature, the world?
These and other topics will be explored in the upcoming 6-week Spiritual Support Group which will be offered starting in January 2021.