The Seat of the Soul: 25th Anniversary Edition with a Study Guide

by Gary Zukav

Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage one cannot practice any virtue consistently. We can be kind, generous, just, courteous, and merciful

Our deeper understanding leads us to another kind of power, a power that loves life in every form that it appears, a power that does not judge what it encounters, a power that perceives meaningfulness and purpose in the smallest details upon the Earth. This is authentic power. When we align our thoughts, emotions, and actions with the highest part of ourselves, we are filled with enthusiasm, purpose, and meaning. Life is rich and full. We have no thoughts of bitterness. We have no memory of fear. We are joyously and intimately engaged with our world. This is the experience of authentic power.

Authentic power has its roots in the deepest source of our being. Authentic power cannot be bought, inherited, or hoarded. An authentically empowered person is incapable of making anyone or anything a victim. An authentically empowered person is one who is so strong, so empowered,

The personality can also be loving, compassionate, and wise in its relations with others, but love, compassion, and wisdom do not come from the personality. They are experiences of the soul. Your soul is that part of you that is immortal. Every person has a soul, but a personality that is limited in its perception to the five senses is not aware of its soul, and, therefore, cannot recognize the influences of its soul.

Every action, thought, and feeling is motivated by an intention, and that intention is a cause that exists as one with an effect. If we participate in the cause, it is not possible for us not to participate in the effect. In this most profound way, we are held responsible for our every action, thought, and feeling, which is to say, for our every intention.

Karma is not a moral dynamic. Morality is a human creation. The Universe does not judge. The law of karma governs the balancing of energy within our system of morality and within those of our neighbors. It serves humanity as an impersonal and Universal teacher of responsibility.

When we judge, we create negative karma. Judgment is a function of the personality. When we say of another soul, “She is worthy,” or, “He is not worthy,” we create negative karma. When we say of an action, “This is right,” or, “That is wrong,” we create negative karma. This does not mean that we should not act appropriately to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. If our car is hit by another car, for example, and the driver of the other car is drunk, it is appropriate that the other driver be held responsible, through the courts, for the repair of our car. It is appropriate that he or she be prohibited from driving while intoxicated. It is not appropriate that we allow our actions to be motivated by feelings of indignation, righteousness, or victimization. These feelings are the result of judgments that we make about ourselves and the other person, assessments through which we see ourselves as superior to another being.

What is non-judgmental justice? Non-judgmental justice is a perception that allows you to see everything in life, but does not engage your negative emotions. Non-judgmental justice relieves you of the self-appointed job of judge and jury because you know that everything is being seen—nothing escapes the law of karma—and this brings forth understanding and compassion. Non-judgmental justice is the freedom of seeing what you see and experiencing what you experience without responding negatively. It allows you to experience directly the unobstructed flow of the intelligence, radiance, and love of the Universe of which our physical reality is a part. Non-judgmental justice flows naturally from understanding the soul and how it evolves.

Business, politics, education, sex, raising families, and personal interactions without reverence all produce the same result: human beings using other human beings.

Reverence is engaging in a form and a depth of contact with Life that is well beyond the shell of form and into essence. Reverence is contact with the essence of each thing

Process is honored in reverence. The unfolding of Life, the maturation process, the process of growing through and coming into your own empowerment, is a process that needs to be approached with reverence.

other words, the archetypical structure of “marriage” can be thought of as a planet. When two souls marry, they fall into the orbit, or gravitational field, of this planet and, therefore, despite their own individual intentions, they take on the characteristics of this planet called “marriage.” They become part of the evolution of the structure itself through their own participation in a marriage. An archetype is a collective human idea. The archetype of marriage was designed to assist physical survival. When two people marry, they participate in an energy dynamic in which they merge their lives in order to help each other survive physically. The archetype of marriage is no longer functional. It is being replaced with a new archetype that is designed to assist spiritual growth. This is the archetype of spiritual, or sacred, partnership.

The underlying premise of a spiritual partnership is a sacred commitment between the partners to assist each other’s spiritual growth. Spiritual partners recognize their equality. Spiritual partners are able to distinguish personality from soul, and, therefore, they are able to discuss the dynamics between them, their interactions, on a less emotionally bound ground than husbands and wives. That ground does not exist within the consciousness of marriage. It exists only within the consciousness of spiritual partnership because spiritual partners are able to see clearly that there is indeed a deeper reason why they are together, and that that reason has a great deal to do with the evolution of their souls.

Spiritual partners bond with an understanding that they are together because it is appropriate for their souls to grow together. They recognize that their growth may take them to the end of their days in this incarnation and beyond, or it may take them to six months. They cannot say that they will be together forever. The duration of their partnership is determined by how long it is appropriate for their evolution to be together. All of the vows that a human being can take cannot prevent the spiritual path from exploding through and breaking those vows if the spirit must move on. It is appropriate for spiritual partners to remain together only as long as they grow together.

Spiritual partnership is a much freer and more spiritually accurate dynamic than marriage because spiritual partners come together from a position of spirit and consciousness. How spiritual partners merge and move their concept of partnership is a matter of free will. So long as they recognize that they bring the consequences of their choices into their partnership, and know the full extent of their choices, that is what influences the manner and direction that the partnership goes.

If you attend to the negative aspects of life, if you choose to focus your attention on the weaknesses of others, on their faults and shortcomings, you draw to yourself the lower-frequency energy currents of disdain, anger, and hatred. You put distance between yourself and others. You create obstacles to your loving. Your energy and influence move slowly through the realm of the personality, the arena of time and space and matter. If you direct your energy into criticism of others with the intention to disempower them, you create negative karma.