Today I stood beneath the trees and watched yellow leaves descend as a strong breeze blew in from the bay below me. Each individual floated to the ground, finally striking the earth so gently. Fall, I thought, is almost upon us, and the great trees above are beginning to shed their summer ensemble.
Lately, I have been considering the nature of individuation, of identity, especially the way they relate to the soul. A friend recently asked me if I believed in an afterlife, which provided the perfect opportunity to develop these ideas in a way that made them understandable to another mind. "The issue I have with the afterlife", I said, "is the idea that the identity developed here on earth, will survive its own demise, and persist into some other region."
As I have grown older, I have become suspicious and even critical of identity in a general sort of way. It seems to simultaneously be the only means we have to interact with the world, and the most stubborn obstacle to understanding it fully. In order for there to be meaning, there must be a perspective, a reference point, and yet this vantage inevitably pollutes the observation. To think this is only one of many paradoxes we face as humans, makes me wonder how we manage to carry on at all.
Rather than imagining the soul to be an extension of this identity, I prefer to see the soul as the one remnant of us that can escape it, that can exist separate from it. In this way, the soul becomes the alternative to identity, and the means by which we understand the world without the limits of perspective. Perhaps this is the faculty with which we feel the world. I refuse to see the soul as something tangled and muddied by the boundaries of identity. I suppose this creates for me a different view of the afterlife than is generally accepted.
I also believe the soul can be more fully understood as not only distinct from identity and able to be liberated from it, but more radically, the soul is the very thing we all have in common. it is not simply that the soul represents some other iteration of who we are or consider ourselves to be, but that it is only on loan to us, a fragment of something far greater than could be contained in a single being. It burns in us like a flame burns in a lantern, until the fuel runs low, or the glass is shattered, or the wick can no longer hold the fire.
Our character is much like this lantern, carved with transparent places, where the light shines through, opaque in places, and dark. The view in on it and out of it unique to this one, unmatched by any other. Somehow concealing the light of the soul does as much to reveal one's character, as letting it shine through unobstructed.
It has occurred to me that integrity is the point at which the way we see ourselves, aligns with the way we are seen by others. We come into focus, as it were. No longer hiding anything, no longer misunderstood, finally our authentic selves, free to tell the absolute truth. This I think, is a great source of power, and a lovely way to get a good night's sleep.
Similarly, I see love to be the way in which our soul is able to touch the remnant bit of itself held captive in the identity of an other. I feel, when I look into the eyes of someone I love, that our interests are perfectly aligned, that our purposes are united, and that in essence, we are one. This is the moment at which it becomes clear to me that the fragment of the divine in us, the thing we call the soul, yearns to be reunited with itself, and struggles to overcome the bonds of identity, most effectively by being in love.
Forgiveness is an acknowledgment of all of this. It is an admission, that every minor infraction, every terrible sin, every act of malice, every error or mistake we commit is against ourselves, and that every one committed against us, comes at the expense of our antagonist. Identity divides our soul from itself, it prevents us from loving one another, it disables our ability to forgive completely and absolutely. What we do to defend our own interests, instead puts everything dear to us at risk, and what we do for others makes us safer. Yet another difficult paradox of the human condition.
If only we could fall in love with every incarcerated soul, and forgive the terrible misdeeds of every flagrant criminal. If only our gaze could penetrate another so deeply, that our own image would become visible. Truly, we are one soul divided into many bodies, doomed to conflict by the affliction of identities cage. Instead of love and forgiveness, we seek retribution and justice, the difference between the two often clouded.
Justice will never lead to peace, peace will be found on the far side of forgiveness. Suffering should never be forgotten, but it is foolish to expect justice, or anything like it, to be compensation for pain. The only hope for us is love and forgiveness, and to see across the boundary of identity into the common soul housed in each one of us.