Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul Part 7 of 9: Reaching Higher
January 5, 2010 by dr. lam
Starting Part II of the book, Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul, Chopra begins his spiritual journey by asking what the soul really is. Obviously, for religiously inclined individuals, the soul is our spiritual self and what will journey forward after our mortal coil expires. Chopra looks at the soul as that connection between God (or if that word is not a good one, a higher source) and our body. For example, God is infinite love, creativity, and will; soul is a stepped down version of love, creativity, and will; and mind/body is a human level of love, creativity, and will.
In another way, Chopra talks about the soul as the part of ourselves that carries our potential, whereas our mind carries our intention, and our brain produces the result. It all begins with our soul as the motivating and originating source of our actions. Our soul motivates us to reach higher. As he says, our soul creates the vision/desire/will, which our mind then carries into the realm of thinking and wanting, and then in turn our brain translates into action from those forces.
So our soul is our inner guide that leads us forward. Many Buddhists practice compassion as a training of their mind, but this must ultimately originate in their soul to desire it and to be it. Otherwise, our mind eventually succumbs or breaks down. We must go back to our originating selves, a higher power, a deeper abiding voice. However, our mind bridges the soul to our body and when our minds are closed, we have limited to no access to our soul, our inner guide. We must open ourselves to the constant nature of our inner soul.
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3 Responses to “Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul Part 7 of 9: Reaching Higher”
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I totally love this concept.
I think it sort of sums up the rest of the concepts that we’ve covered this last week. I think our culture pushes the concept of forcing actions instead of realizing the power of the soul and that energizing the soul and creating passion is what creates results in actions. You really described that well, Dr. Lam. 
I think our culture is just doing things the hard way…lol Like, our culture tells people they have to force themselves to study if they want to learn something, or that we have to beat ourselves to death with endurance to get off the couch and exercise, or that we have to force ourselves to diet and eat healthy, when if there was an inner passion of the soul to learn, to be fit, to be healthy, to live, etc, we would have a natural desire to do those things without the forcing mentality, and nothing could stop us from reaching our goals, because I don’t think anything gets in the way of passion. And ironically, the forcing mentality is what actually stifles our soul in the first place! I find it is something our culture pushes everywhere. It’s very hard to get away from that because it’s so ingrained in our western thinking.
I’ll give one example of how our society is going about it in the wrong way.
My sister, Holly, was taking a college class on photography because she really wanted to know how to take good pictures, mind you, she is an A student, well at the start of the class she was exuberant about learning how to take professional shots…well, instead of igniting Holly’s passion for photography, the teacher told the students that they might think this class is going to be easy, but it will be hard. lol Well, the teacher made the class nothing but boring and stressful because they had to do a bunch of assignments that were not creative and had to learn a bunch of history on photography. Well, Holly made the grade and decided that she is not interested in photography anymore…lol The proper way to go about getting a student to want to learn something would be to ignite the student’s inward passion and start the flame with his/her curiosity and creativity. Nothing would stop the student from learning the lighting, focus, angles, and parts to the camera, and maybe even the history. Just an example and I think this concept pertains to all aspects of life.
Great point about not having our minds closed in order to access our soul, but also stubbornly holding to a blind belief or perspective even if one thinks s/he is being open minded, can hinder someone reaching his/her inner soul too.
I think having compassion, having curiosity, having creativity, and having it come from within is what allows our focus to shift to others or another perspective instead of the focus being on ourselves which allows us to step into our soul. Just my take…lol Oh, man!!! It’s so long! Yikes!
You’re just one rock’n Doc!! 
Dr. Lam, your blogs stimulate my thinking!
great points. in fact, you will be surprised how dead on you are with my blog series coming up in about a little over a week!
Goody goody!!! Can’t wait, Dr. Lam!!!