Iyanla Vanzant

I’ve never really defined the soul on these pages.

Not to be confused with God. Or is it?…

The soul is God’s wingman (duh, everybody know that) but like God, Soul can be an emotionally charged word, and I get scared that you’ll get all “no you didn’t” on me, and slam the door on our friendship.

Soooo…I really like this interpretation by Iyanla Vanzant.
I find it insightful and clever.

“The soul I believe is the fingerprint of God that becomes a physical body.”

I know what I believe, (I’ll tell you later) but just for shits and giggles, I wanted to see what was out there in the popular landscape.

So here goes:
The top, number one definition in the Urban Dictionary is:

SOUL
Currency to trade with the devil.

WTF? Seriously? Yup.
“I just made a deal with the devil – I sold my soul for a brand new television.”

Let’s all take a moment…Hmmmmmm…Okay.

The second one is more comprehensive, I guess. Well except for number 9, number 9 is a cop-out.

SOUL
The existence of the soul is heavily debated in the first place, and its definition varies greatly from party to party, though everyone believes that everyone else’s definitions are wrong. It is generally agreed to be something possessed by every person, and that’s about all. Therefore, the soul may or may not be any of the following:
1. The human mind, that is, that thinking thing lodged behind your eyes;
2. The essence of humanity;
3. The essence of that which makes a person good and decent;
4. The quality of sentience or human intelligence;
5. All of someone’s personality or what makes them unique;
6. Some mystical version of a person that lives on after the body dies;
7. A spiritual concept, created by God (or the gods if you prefer) or a part of him;
8. The quality of being alive;
9. Anything else you can think of along these lines.

Note that it is also up for debate whether or not non-human animals, or for that matter, plants, have souls; feel free to adjust these answers accordingly.

Strangely, no one seems to suggest that animals have souls and humans lack them.

This third one is the gospel truth. Just kidding, but I love it.

SOUL
The Godson of James Brown and Princess of Aretha Franklin. James Brown, the Godfather of Soul / Aretha Franklin, Queen of Soul.

Number four is pretty deep. It appeals to all the angst-ridden artists, writers and philosophers among us – and contemplators of belly button lint.

SOUL
The only part of you that really matters. You can give it to anyone you want, but its hard to ever get back.

“Until you know that life is interesting – and find it so – you haven’t found your soul.”~ Geoffrey Fisher

“How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver.” ~ Oscar Wilde

“A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways – by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognize that the same thing happens to the soul.” ~ Plato

Finally, the one I believe, number five.

SOUL
The energy of life existing in all beings. Exists both inside and outside of the beings physical shell as both a fuel for the physical realm and a connection to the universal life force.
The force of mind/body/spirit that has always existed and will always exist.

“While life slipped from my body with each breath, my soul emerged, strong and vital and ready for the next part of the journey.”

But wait! There are more! I especially like number thirty-two.

SOUL
A place that exists for the single purpose of hosting a bird house for the blue canary in the outlet by the light switch to live in. Also, the part of your body that lives on after you die.

“Make a little bird house in your soul…”

I was wondering what that bird house for the blue canary in the outlet by the lights switch was!
(Palm slap to the forehead).

But seriously, the soul can be defined these days in whichever way makes you feel the best, which has become abundantly obvious.
Thank you Urban Dictionary. But I like that. I like that there’s no set-in-stone, my-way-or-the-highway definition.

So, are we still friends?

“A love so big it cannot be contained.” came to me while I was writing this. I probably read that somewhere and can’t remember who said it. But I kinda love that too.

Oh wait; maybe that’s a Soul Mate.
Jeez. Carry on.

You want to share your definition of Soul? Now that you’ve seen all these choices, which one resonates with you?

My soul loves your soul,
Xox

I talk an awful lot about forgiveness on this blog – please forgive me. (wink)
I do that because I love you, and I want you to be free of the toxicity of hate, hurt, anger and grudge holding.

Read on. Liz wrote an amazing essay about the ultimate in forgiveness.
It’s a good one, it’s gonna make you cry.
-you’re welcome.

XoxJ

Take it away Liz-

ULTIMATE FORGIVENESS

Dear Ones –

This weekend’s Oprah’s The Life You Want Tour in Houston was incredible. THANK YOU to all who were there, for your energy, your passion, your open hearts.

As usual, I was in the front seat during the all the talks and workshops, leaning in hard to catch all the wisdom I could.

And as usual, it was Iyanla Vanzant who got to me — as in: She made me weep.

This is a photo of me clutching a scarp of paper upon which I wrote something she said — something that, if I can put it into practice, could truly change my life.

Yesterday, Iyanla was telling the story about how her husband of 40 years recently left her for another woman — for a friend of hers actually. She was talking about the anger, the indignation, the grief, the shame, the humiliation of this event. All completely understandable, of course, for such a large-scale betrayal.

Then she spoke in detail about all the steps she took to try to work her way out of her anger and back into grace — because she knew that if she held onto her rage forever it would only burn a hole of bitterness through her soul.

In the end — after all the crying and fighting and suffering, and after working hard to arrive at some model of forgiveness for both her ex-husband and the other woman — she had a revelation of love. She decided to love them. She decided to actually BE IN LOVE WITH THEM. Not just to forgive them, but to LOVE THEM — for their humanity, for their weakness, for their own strange grace, for their intimate role in her destiny.

She said that at first she thought she was going crazy, with this idea of loving them. (“Are you out of your mind, Iyanla? You’re in love with the woman who took your husband?”) But she knew in her heart that love was the only way out of this emotional hell for herself. Huge, holy, magnificent love, And then she said this, about her husband and the other woman, which I wrote down (through tear-filled eyes) on this scrap of paper:

“My love of you — it’s got nothing to do with you. I’m trying to save myself. So I love them. I get to choose my relationship with them. Doesn’t mean I will invite them for Thanksgiving. But I can love them from my altar and from my prayer table IF IT MEANS MY FREEDOM.”

I wept when I heard this.

Your forgiveness of people who have harmed you has nothing to do with THEM.

Your forgiveness is about YOU trying to achieve liberty from the prison of your own suffering, your own anger, you own grief, your own darkness, your own obsessive thoughts, your own indignation.

Love is the only way out of that prison. Radical, outrageous, nearly impossible, superhuman LOVE.

Please understand that — even as I write these words — I do not entirely understand how to get there.

But I really want to get there.

Because I want and need this kind of love and forgiveness in my life so desperately, I can’t even tell you.

And I believe in it, even if I don’t always know how to do it.

I’m gong to cling to this scrap of paper for a long, long time.

(Actually, I’m going to more than cling to a scrap of paper. I should tell you that I just signed up already for an e-course that Iyanla Vanzant is teaching on forgiveness. Because I really need that shit — and there’s something about the way this woman speaks and teaches that goes right through the spine of me and really works for me. I don’t even know what an e-course is, actually, but I signed up for it, anyhow. Because all I know is that her e-course is called HOW TO FORGIVE EVERYONE FOR EVERYTHING, and that’s exactly what I need to learn how to do in this lifetime. What we all need, maybe. Here’s a link to the course, if anyone wants to do it with me: http://bit.ly/1wdp8mf)

I just want to be free.

If anyone out there has had this experience — working through your anger and into forgiveness…and then even further into LOVE — please share it here. I want to learn all I can about it.

ONWARD EVER…INTO GREATER AND GREATER LOVE,
LG