Matthew Krajewski's Blog: Magical Heritage Musings - Posts Tagged "soul"

So I’m a sitcom addict. I love sitcoms, and have watched the complete series of Golden Girls and Will & Grace many time over. But one that I’ve been watching recently, and found to be even more relevant to the spiritual work I’m doing now, surprisingly, is Roseanne.

In my new book, The Golden Sherpa, I briefly talk about Roseanne the character as a pop culture Goddess figure representing the Hearth Goddess as empowered yet down-to-earth role model. In the 9th and final season of Roseanne, her character dabbles in Eastern thought, meditation, crystals, and exploring the true nature of the universe. In a particularly touching scene when her daughter Darlene gives birth to a premature baby, she talks through how she believes the baby can survive because, to paraphrase, “All those spiritual books say the same thing. Our bodies do not have souls. Our souls have bodies. We are 1% physical and 99% spiritual.” This pop culture realization, while it does repeat much of spiritual thought that many people are well versed in, stresses a crucial lesson that we fail to internalize in our lives. We are not physical. We are spiritual beings having a physical experience. Too often, we forget that we even have a soul. To put it another way, that we are a soul.

Finding wholeness in your life can be hard when the soul is not the centerpiece. There is nothing bad, nothing negative, nothing dark in the nature of our souls. When we encounter negativity, in ourselves or in our environments, we need to remind ourselves that it is not truth. It is a challenge. A path for us to grow, learn, and evolve. The eternal parts of ourselves that cannot be damaged are our souls. Like going to wedding reception, the beautiful floral centerpieces are reminders of the beauty and love being celebrated that day. The table we set in our own lives is comparable. Our souls are the centerpiece, the gorgeous display of flowers and art that can set the tone, be the reminder, and show us how beautiful our true nature truly is.

Make your soul the centerpiece. It never dies. It is a thing of beauty. Nothing can damage it. Let it be the light to keep returning to, again and again, especially when darkness challenges you on the spiritual path. Light up your soul and let it illuminate your life. The centerpiece of your life: your soul.

Something I have said for years regarding specifically sexuality and spirituality is, “Do you really think your soul has genitalia?” Seriously. Consider it. Why would your soul, your energy body, need genitalia? Why would it need any type of sex organ? It is something we have as part of this physical incarnation and seem to require when occupying physical bodies. But since we are actually energy, are actually light beings, why would we have any use for genitalia in our true state?

It is a dangerous idea. And it should be. For too long all types of individuals; gays, lesbians, queer people, bisexuals, and transgendered individuals; have been ostracized from mainstream religions and spiritual pursuits because they do not conform to gendered or sexual “norms.” But when we begin to look at all life as energy, it is these exact same people that expand everyone’s minds just a bit, open people up to the possibility that these physical bodies are not our true substance, nor do they come with any universal laws of the “right” ways to express gender, sexuality, or love. I believe this is part of what has fueled the success of the wildly popular RuPaul’s Drag Race. It has shown the mainstream, as RuPaul would put it, “the new shamans,” those that show that nothing need be taken so seriously, especially how we view our physical body.

I have trouble identifying with a physical body. I always have. My weight fluctuates, as does my tendencies toward masculine or feminine behavior. I always complain about bodies, and physical incarnation, “being too dense,” and there is something in me that longs to just be light again. But therein lies the clue as to why people like myself are here. There is too much misunderstanding between people’s bodies and their energy. Most people see things in reverse. That their gender or sexuality somehow defines them. That somehow it is the true part of themselves. When in fact it is just one quality of many they just happen to feature in this particular physical incarnation.

Your physical body is not your true self. Your energy is. How much more empowered would we all be to know that our physical bodies are just a shell. We are not man. Or woman. Or straight. Or gay. We are much more than that. We are energy. And we have infinite possibilities.