7 QUOTES THAT CAN GIVE YOUR SOUL A WORKOUT
Article by LiveReal Agents Kevin and Thomas
What makes a soul “stronger”?
Are there “workouts” for the “soul”?
The idea might seem a bit strange. Is that really a thing – to get ripped, on the inside?
Luckily, we can get a helpful tip on this front from Aristotle.
“It is the mark of an educated mind
to be able to entertain a thought
without accepting it.”
A mind is “educated,” then, if it’s capable of “entertaining a thought without accepting it.”
This raises another question.
What would be the opposite?
In other words, what would be the mark of an “uneducated” mind?
By this definition, an uneducated mind would be unable to entertain a thought without accepting it.
This would mean either:
1) a “closed mind” – one that accepts nothing and refuses everything (that can’t “entertain a thought”), or
2) a mind that’s “stuck open” – one that refuses nothing and accepts everything, indiscriminately, medicines and poisons alike (that automatically agrees with any thought it entertains)
More simply: the other options are “hard-headedness” or “gullibility.”
If this is roughly on target – and assuming an “educated mind” is a key ingredient of a “strong soul” – then we’re a step closer to the initial step of at least being able to spot the difference between a stronger soul and one that’s weaker.
But could we take this further?
Could we change this advice to a verb?
After all, maybe a soul works like a muscle.
Physical muscles get stronger by “lifting weights.”
But what is a spiritual “weight”? And how would we “lift” it?
Could “entertaining a thought without accepting it” make for a good “workout”?
There are clearly some good ideas floating around. And hoards of bad ones.
How do we know the difference between the two?
If we don’t entertain the bad ones, we’ll never even know enough even to decide whether they’re good or bad. But if we entertain them, we risk believing them, and risk getting seduced by (what we’ll eventually discover to be) bad ones.
So, we have to entertain them.
We have to learn to be open to new thoughts on the one hand, and on the other, to be closed when needed, and to avoid swallowing, whole-hog, every idea we encounter.
We can spend time mulling them over.
The “weights,” along these lines, could be ideas.
And the mere act of wrestling with them could become a kind of “workout.”
An idea can work like a grain of sand in an oyster.
When a single grain of sand gets into the shell of an oyster, that sand becomes an irritant.
The annoyed oyster struggles to push the grain of sand out of its shell.
To help with the effort, the oyster secretes a certain substance (called “nacre”).
This substance, composed of composite materials (such as calcium carbonate and other elements), usually lies dormant, in a state of “unused potential.” They live “on standby” unless they’re activated.
It requires a struggle that brings them to the surface.
The struggle transforms them into something entirely different.
So,
1) the oyster
2) an irritant
3) some often-ignored and unused ingredients within the oyster, and
4) a struggle involving all of them
results in
5) the valuable treasure: a pearl.
This leads to a simple question.
Can the same thing happen with a human being?
Do humans have “nacre of the soul”?
Maybe this itself is “an idea we can wrestle with.”
Here are a few potential grains of sand.
1. Where is paradise?
“The kingdom of heaven
is spread about the earth,
but men do not see it.”
- the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas
We often refer to “heaven” as a place we (hopefully) go after we die. Or we might imagine it as a “place” that’s “here” in theory – but really and practically, is very distant, and therefore virtually impossible for us to reach or directly experience (except maybe in brief and rare glimpses, “through a glass darkly”). Or, we might imagine it as very tangibly here and now, but in some reduced form that’s been whittled down to something small, concrete, and manageable – a good piece of chocolate pie, for example – or via a wide variety of substitutes.
Our view on this topic largely depends on our “game of life” or our “life philosophy” or worldview.
But the quote above offers a stark alternative.
If this quote is roughly accurate, then there’s something fully real, profound, immense, and fundamental all around us – but that we usually aren’t seeing.
Jacob Boehme also made a claim that was just as dramatic:
“Every man
carries heaven and hell with him
in this world.”
Is it true?
2. How do we see it?
If the above is even partially correct – that there’s something critical all around us that we usually aren’t seeing – then the next question falls into place naturally: why don’t we see it?
For things to be this way, there would have to be some sort of fundamental blindness or obstacle that prevents us from seeing it.
And if that’s the case, then it seems others would have discovered this, and mentioned it.
And that’s been the case.
There’s Albert Einstein, for example.
"A human being …experiences himself,
his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest
- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
The striving to free oneself from this delusion
is the one issue of true religion…”
According to Al, a “delusion” is baked into our everyday experience.
This would mean our minds, from the start, don’t typically “see correctly.”
3. What would it look like to “see correctly”?
William Blake offers a suggestion here:
“If the doors of perception were cleansed
every thing would appear to man as it is,
Infinite…”
So, according to Blake, “every thing” is “infinite.”
But of course, we don’t typically see things that way.
Why is that?
According to Blake’s quote, it’s because our “doors of perception” aren’t cleansed. They’re dirty.
But what is the “dirt”?
Broadly speaking, all major religions seem to describe something roughly along these lines.
Buddhism, for example, describes all of our suffering as being due to a certain form of “desire.” Buddha described himself by saying “I am awake” – which implies that, prior to his awakening, he had been “asleep” – implying that the rest of us are also “asleep.” Hinduism describes maya or illusion as a kind of veil covering Reality. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam describe human life as existing in a state “after The Fall” where we’ve been cast out of Paradise and live in a condition where our thinking can become “futile” and our hearts “darkened.” Taoism starts with a premise of the Tao that we’re generally “out of harmony with” or misaligned with, and offers some advice to correct this situation. And so on.
But what exactly are the “doors of perception” in this situation?
Does the phrase refer to a quality of the mind?
4. How important is “the mind”?
“The mind is its own place, and in itself,
can make a hell of heaven,
a heaven of hell.”
- John Donne
Broadly speaking, we perceive the universe with our minds.
But what if we perceive through our minds?
What if our “mind” is like a lens? What if our mind functions as if we’re looking through glasses, binoculars, or a telescope (often without realizing it, as if we’ve put glasses on and then forgotten about it)?
If a lens is warped, misshapen, or cracked, it can distort our view. It can become so distorted that we see things completely backwards or upside-down.
Could the same thing happen intellectually?
Could the same sort of dynamic take place with our general attitude?
Small-scale versions of this happen often. A wet blanket Debbie Downer pessimist can make a festive event miserable, or a stout-hearted optimist can brighten the mood even in a bleak misery-fest.
But we could also imagine this effect on a much larger scale.
An idea from Meister Eckhart as described in the movie Jacob’s Ladder says it well:
"If you're frightened of dying and you're holding on,
you'll see devils tearing your life away.
If you've made your peace,
then the devils are really angels
freeing you from the earth.
It's just a matter of how you look at it, that's all."
But the quotes so far emphasize seeing correctly.
What about feeling?
5. What about our “restless hearts”?
“Our hearts are restless, Lord,
until we find rest in you.”
- Augustine of Hippo
There’s a question at the core of human nature:
What do human beings want?
There’s no shortage of answers here, or “things we want.” Our desires seem both endless and able to take an infinite number of forms. As soon as we get one thing, we start wanting another.
Changing the question slightly might bring things into focus:
What ultimately satisfies us?
It’s relatively easy to know what doesn’t satisfy us.
According to the game of life they’re playing, scores of individuals have sought (and some have achieved) wealth, fame, status, power, glory, luxuries, historical significance, upgraded smartphones, safer cars, bigger televisions, and so on – yet have still been miserable.
A scientific approach could clarify this through a process of elimination. There are scores of things we want that don’t satisfy us, even in the rare instances we get them. Many things prove to be substitutes, counterfeits, consolation prizes. We can empirically test this dynamic by observing that people often get them, yet remain unfulfilled.
And so, we can ask again: what does ultimately satisfy us?
Augustine’s quote claims that
1) we’re naturally restless, and
2) we always will be, until
3) we find The Ultimate, the Absolute, the Ground of Being, or “God.”
Our unease or suffering, in other words, isn’t necessarily due to a bad childhood, unbalanced brain chemistry, an imperfect society, a few bad politicians, a lack of status symbols, a small bank account, a negative attitude, and so on.
While some situations can dramatically worsen the situation and others improve it, ultimately, the core restlessness will remain fixed in place until we “find rest in Thee.”
Blaise Pascal rediscovered the same insight centuries later (around the mid-1600s):
"There is a God-shaped vacuum
in the heart of every man
which cannot be filled by any created thing."
But is this really a practical approach?
After all, it seems safe to say that everyone has already heard about God and understands the basic idea.
Yet few seem to have genuinely found the “solution to restlessness” Augustine refers to.
This means he must be referring to something deeper.
Curing a condition that lies deep in our heart wouldn’t be a matter of merely hearing about a sort of abstract, intellectual concept, or even being willing to admit that the God being spoken of is real. For what Augustine is describing, hearing, reading, understanding, being familiar with, praying to, or even believing in isn’t enough.
To cure a “restless heart” must require stronger medicine.
A deeper experience – something more like a transformation or awakening – must occur, and it must be powerful enough to “solve our restlessness.”
But if the above quotes describe seeing correctly (our “minds” and “doors of perception”) and feeling correctly (through our “restless hearts”) – what about the “soul”?
6. What about “the soul”?
“Man must find his own soul.”
– The Chandogya Upanishad
The quote above describes a mission: to “find our own soul.”
The idea that “I” haven’t yet “found” my own soul might sound strange.
After all, isn’t my “soul” what I am already? Isn’t my soul my deepest self? How can I not find my own self? If it’s my own self, don’t I already have it? But if I already have (or am) it, why would I need to find it? If I’m the one seeking, who or what am I finding? If I’m the one being found, who or what has been seeking?
This parallels the advice to “Know Thyself.”
But is it possible to not “know myself”? How can “I” not know “myself”? Aren’t I the one right here – the one doing the “knowing”? Aren’t I both the “knower” and the “known”? If I am already “it,” how can I search for “it”?
Words and slippery definitions can create unnecessary confusion here.
To clarify somewhat: there’s the “self,” and then the “Self.” There’s the “ego,” and then there are layers of self, or ever-deepening levels of the “Real Self,” or what Hinduism (home of the Upanishads and the quote above) refers to as the atman, or the innermost essence of the individual which is eternal, divine, and not subject to birth or death. (Even the word “ego” is confusing, in that 1) psychology defines it as the organizing principle of the healthy personality (and therefore good), while 2) spiritual perspectives often define it as the obstacle to enlightenment (and therefore bad)).
Some describe the difference between the “self” (lowercase “s”) and the “Self” (Uppercase “S”) as the difference between the “lower self” (or “ego”) and the “higher self,” which is the “Self” referred to in “Self-Realization” or theosis, moksha, salvation, etc.
Yet, according to this quote, the soul is something we must find.
To say “man must find his own soul” is an effort to describe this potentially complex situation much more simply and in fewer words.
According to this perspective, the real identity of each of us exists as a potential that we haven’t yet realized. It’s a self or “Self” buried somewhere within us, but is dormant or asleep or in an un-activated state, and exists (like the chemicals that form the nacre of an oyster) as something with the potential to be activated or awakened.
And that’s our challenge: to find, activate, or awaken it.
This echoes a quote from Zen teacher D. T. Suzuki, in the first few words of his Essays On Zen Buddhism (First Series) which also describes a “mysterious power” or potential that exists in our body.
"This body of ours is something like an electric battery
in which a mysterious power latently lies.
When this power is not properly brought into operation,
it either grows moldy and withers away
or is warped and expresses itself abnormally.
It is the object of Zen, therefore,
to save us from going crazy or being crippled."
Those are the five quotes.
That’s a workout.
We don’t necessarily need to agree or disagree with all or any of the quotes above.
But just mulling them over might make us stronger.
Are these ideas basically correct? Did those who first spoke these ideas see something I don’t? If so, what did they see? And what can I do to see it? If this isn’t the case, how are they off, exactly – and why? And how do I know, either way?
Wrestling with these ideas won’t necessarily lead to a large-scale spiritual renaissance in itself.
It won’t necessarily lead immediately to a buff soul.
Even physical six-packs don’t magically appear after a single workout. They take some time and effort.
But encounters like these can sharpen our thinking, freshen some stale ideas, loosen some rigid fixtures, and reinvigorate lagging inspirations for each of us, one person at a time.
We can keep “working out” on a regular basis.
We can run “spiritual experiments.”
When we engage in these sessions, even as sparring partners, they can make us stronger, faster, clearer, more inspired, more attuned, more grounded.
This brings us to #7.
“Thus men will lie on their backs,
talking about the fall of man,
and never make an effort to get up.”
- Henry David Thoreau
Let’s get up.