Eye of Modok

I’m sure you’ve heard people refer to someone as an “old soul.” After all, those who somehow manage to maintain composure while all hell is breaking loose around them often seem to have been around the block a few times. Of course, this brings up the question of which block and what exactly entails one circumnavigation of said block. Inevitably, we consider past lives.

I know it’s a question of semantics, but I prefer to think of them as alternate or parallel lives, as I believe we are living each of them, past, present and future, simultaneously. Decisions, thoughts, beliefs and actions in one life affect all others. The interesting thing is that if you trace the connections on “upward” you get to the point where you find assemblage points of what appear to be larger organisms of which we are mere parts. Even these “oversouls” out which all of we individuated ego-constructs form are mere divisions of yet larger pools of consciousness. Continue on up the chain and you reach the inevitable point where all is one. At least as far as we are capable of perceiving.

My take on “old souls” and “new souls” is that its a question of complexity rather than age. Each of us, in our earthborn forms, is a unique combination of traits. We are endowed with gifts and laden with burdens, which are actually gifts in disguise, though it may be hard to view them as such while you’re lugging them around. A brash, “young” soul may lack the sophisication and foresight of an “older” soul but it is also free of the liablities associated with a more complex system, such as fearfulness and rigidity, and will most likely posses far fewer neuroses. Where one might look down upon the simpletons who go about satisfying their carnal whims and fanices without ever giving thought to life’s mysteries, one also, no doubt, envies them their freedom to do so.

We are individuals. That fact alone is truly remarkable. But, just the fact that there are 400 channels on your TV doesn’t make them all watchable. In fact, many of them are quite boring. Except, perhaps, to the people who can relate. One man’s boring documentary is another’s riveting saga of heroism and adventure. Such are our lives.

Now, if you are going to fracture a large entity, namely an oversoul, or Oversoul, if you prefer, into many small entities in order to experience what it is like to be god* from every possible angle, any one of these viewpoints will likely make a god feel trapped in a frightfully limited form. Some roles are going to appear, on the surface, to have decided advantages over the others and others will appear to have all the cards stacked against them. We are all living the drama that is our lives. Who can say that any one life is less valuable input toward the totality of human experience? You obviously need it all or there would be no whole. Ordinary people are capable of the most extraordinary things. Even the people you detest most for their abominable behavior are just another you and are doing their best to live as gods in their tiny, limited worlds.

Yet, what of those “old souls?” How is that they seem to have found the answers this time around? I believe the balance lies in all of the horrific lives that have been led in our “past”, are currently being led and will, I pray to a lesser extent, be led in the future. Mind you, this is only my view and there are plenty of people who believe in a single soul which incarnates over and over again in a linear fashion. I don’t think my view is really that different except that it eliminates time, which I feel is an illusory construct of the physical universe, or rather a fundamental component without which the physical universe could not exist in its present state.

I think the problem is that it is very hard to avoid linear thinking when using a human brain to think with. It’s easy to look at the “bottom” of the scale and the “top.” In fact, we enjoy doing this so much, our lives are replete with dualities. Our tendency is to line things up, create scales and then measure where we lie along the axis. The way experience time is a marvelous example of our gravititaion toward such behavior. If you remove the limitation that all events must be played out in a linear fashion, however, you can appreciate how perfectly everything fits together to form the whole. You experience the totality of your existence, not merely the little lo res video clip you are currently viewing. From that perspective, it’s hard to think in terms of evolution, because everything just simply is. All of the gaps must be filled with something, however, and there is no space unoccupied. Now, zoom in on any single point and keep zoomimg. Keep zooming. Ah! There you are!

*My god is not your God, so don’t expect him/her/it/them/us to comform to your expectations.