On the Soul
From earliest childhood, I’ve heard about the “soul,” a unique spirit embedded in our deepest layers of consciousness like a seed of human essence encased by the flesh of our earthly being. In later decades, it was often referred to as the “true” or “authentic” self. I never heard the nature or source of the soul identified or defined, but it was referenced in ways that assumed that, whatever it was, it was the purest part of what we are. I didn’t question its existence for years.
The concept as I gathered it is this: although there is no consensus on the timing, the soul inspirits flesh from our earliest beginnings, while still in utero. Many people speak of the soul as a gift from God. The agnostic or atheistic corollary, the true or authentic self, is as pure and sacrosanct as if it were a shard of divinity. This true self or soul is static; unlike the person it inhabits, it doesn’t change. It simply is what it is. It is, however, violable. Once we are mature enough to exercise free will, our life choices may corrupt our thinking and behavior, but never our souls. No matter how besmirched we may have become, there remains at our center an unsullied soul, a true self, an authentic self. If we tunnel through the refuse of sin or destructive thinking and habits that we have created through our free wills, and then connect to and live in accordance with our true self, we can recover our natural purity. We need only find, recognize, and reclaim our soul, that sacrosanct knot of wholeness and wholesomeness. Expressing the authentic self should be our life’s work. By renouncing and eliminating all that runs contrary to our true self, we transform into the most perfect self we are capable of becoming.
I myself don’t believe in a true self, an authentic self, a soul. I do believe in selfhood. But I believe that our self is, at any given moment, an aggregation of our genetic makeup, our experiences—not only what happens to us, but also the thoughts we give credence to and the choices we make—and our memories. No two people have exactly the same DNA, resulting in individual mixes of physical (including brain) configuration, function, and chemistry. Nor do they have identical experiences in the same order at the same phases of life at the same moments in place and time, and so their memories are vastly different too. And those elements, accumulated and intermixed as we move through our lives, I believe, are the source of our unique selves. The self is the exoskeleton that is continuously shaped by the self we have been each previous moment.
This is not a new idea, but it doesn’t seem to be a popular one. Most people apparently prefer belief in a soul. And no wonder. The idea of a soul connects them to a constant essence as enduring as eternity. With awareness, self-discipline, and effort, they can wade through whatever muck they may have been swimming in, polish their souls until they gleam, and restore the original purity that is their deepest inheritance. The Christians corollary (or maybe the method) is being “washed clean in the blood of Jesus.” It is the soul that the savior’s blood has cleaned; it is the soul that has been saved. But even for many non-theists, there seems to be appeal in the idea that an “authentic” essence can be located, honored, and followed. If we attend to it with enough diligence, it will lead us to a purer expression of our own uniqueness and our best possible life.
There are reasons I don’t buy into this idea. First of all, I am not in control of what I find believable. Pretending I believe something I don’t (I tried that in my late teens and early twenties) is doomed to miserable, frustrating, and ultimately confusing failure. I can profess a belief even if I don’t accept it, but I can’t make myself believe it. Belief is not a matter of profession, and lying to myself and others won’t make more convincing what I find unbelievable.
Second, I don’t assert that my view on selfhood is The Truth. The model of accretive selfhood that I favor may be wrong. It is certainly incomplete. But given my own experiences and what I’ve been able to understand about them, the model resonates with me, and I connect with it.
Third, I’m not afraid of the implications of not possessing a soul, of being instead a sort of ongoing, mutable work of art. (Even if I feared implications, however, I’d believe what I believe. Again, belief is not a choice.) To some people, the idea of an aggregate self, one that has no enduring essential core, one that shifts from moment to moment as we move through our lives, may feel tenuous or unstable, like walking on quicksand. But if this is indeed the nature of selfhood, it carries great potential. We are not slogging through sins (forgiven or not) in defiance of our holy souls; rather, we are making choices, some good, some bad. We (hopefully) learn from the consequences, so that we make better future choices and thereby create a better self. We are not fouled by any past behavior that requires divine forgiveness. The source of forgiveness, and the capacity for change, is our own self. We carry regrets in memories, of course, but choosing different behaviors fashions a different self. A wiser self. There’s power in this model, in which our self isn’t a given but what we choose to be.
A soulless self is not a squalid oxymoron. It’s cause for hope and wonder.