EVOLUTION AND THE HUMAN SOUL: PART ONE

Many people on the planet at this time are feeling the call of their souls to be more present and connected and to speak their truth in positive ways to help all of humanity.  But what does that mean exactly and how might we actually get to answer that call and be in service in practical ways?  What does it mean to evolve? And what is the human soul?  And what is its purpose? 

Evolution has long been the driver for our physical and mental growth, but we evolve spiritually too.  How can we tap into that spiritual evolution to have a more full experience of who we are at that level?  And why might that be essential for us at this time on the planet?

In the previous series of Who I Am and Who I Am Not, we looked at normal human development of the Core Four (mind, body, spirit, emotions).  We discussed how, when the Core Four are able to grow healthily, they forge good boundaries, and a good ‘sense of self’ can develop.  Once in place, the soul can then emerge from that sense of self and inform and guide the narrative of that person’s life.  We also briefly examined how trauma can impact our understanding of who we are and even thwart our relationship with our souls, and that healing is needed if we are to evolve properly. 

THE SOUL AS OUR COMPASS FOR EVOLUTION

In the west we don’t really have a concrete understanding of what the soul could be. In shamanism, the soul is the ‘energetic essence’ of who and what we truly are; the immortal self, lived over many lifetimes. 

The soul is our composite knowing; the informed receptacle for everything we have experienced and that we now know.  It is eternal and the Light that animates it is divine.   In the 1740’s, philosopher and scientist Emanuel Swedenborg wrote that humans were the “seedbed” of the angelic realm.  I believe this to be true.  The soul is the mechanism through which we evolve, meaning that we rise in consciousness, and it inhabits our bodies, usually at first behind the heart chakra, but it can reside anywhere inside or even outside the body.  We can have a full quotient of our soul present within or attached to us, or we can have parts of our soul ‘lost’ to us through trauma.

The wisdom of the soul is ours, by right.  We have earned it.  We can learn quickly, or slowly, throughout our lifetimes but however we learn, the soul retains that wisdom from one lifetime to the next.  

As we learn in each lifetime, evolution occurs by the wise soul making itself ‘felt’ to us like a compass, an inner guide, through suggestions to the mortal self, in any given circumstance.  This ‘felt’ suggestion may feel like being “called” to do something, it might feel like ‘conscience’, or a small voice when faced with a decision, or it may feel like an ‘urge’ to be somewhere, or a feeling that we are ‘exactly where we are meant to be’ at this time.  The soul speaks to us in feeling, not in thinking.  As consciousness elevates, we see a reduction in our judgement for others, and a reduction in our identifying with and our associating with the mind, and an increase in our compassion for all beings. 

The soul gives us the evolutionary path to ‘god consciousness’ and invites our conscious awareness to follow it, and so, in practical ways, we subsequently attain higher and higher levels of this awareness.

In fact, while the soul’s purpose is to grow and absorb more knowing and to evolve, its method for doing this is to constantly invite the Core Four mortal self, in everyday events, to increase its awareness.  The soul is aware and the mortal consciousness usually is not.  As this process unfolds, the soul invites greater and greater awareness and the Core Four follow suit, if they wish.  The soul is our compass; where the soul leads, we are invited to follow.  In practical terms, if the Core Four follows the soul, it will eventually have the same perspective as the soul, and act accordingly in any given situation.  Wisdom and compassion are the measures for our evolution at a soul level. Depending upon how wise (evolved) the soul has become, the Core Four in everyday life can become similarly wise (evolved).  And in so doing, a wise soul can create a wise conscious person and we ‘wake up’ and are aware in a loving way.  The higher awareness (divine) becomes imbued in the physical: heaven on earth.

But what does that mean in practical terms, for the Core Four to have the same elevated consciousness, day-to-day, as an evolved soul?  It means that individuals would honour the concept of Free Will, respect and honour all lifeforms, and be ‘in service’ to life, in alignment with the Will of the divine.  It also means peace on earth and an inclusive and respectful ecology for all.

THE EXCEPTION OF THE MIND

One distinctive exception to the elevation of consciousness in the structure of the mortal ‘Core Four' self, is that as the Core Four rises in awareness, the emotions, the spirit and to an extent the body, can lift, but at some point, the mind must be left aside.  This means that the more we elevate in consciousness, the more the divine cannot be understood mentally.  “To know God, one must be ‘out of one’s mind’”, goes the saying.  This is because the mind is purely a human mortal construct; it can never access the divine faculty of ‘knowing’, it can only ‘think’.  To be stuck in ‘thinking’ is to never access the levels of knowing-consciousness that the soul contains.  

This is a curious and distinct quality unique to humans (as far as we know).  Animals, largely, live in a state of ‘pre-thought’, whereas most humans live in a state of ‘thinking’, or identification with their thoughts.  

The French philosopher and mathematician, René Descartes, famously, albeit erroneously, said: “I think, therefore I am”, in conclusion to a study of doubting and then accepting ones’ existence.   Descartes claimed that thought, not experience, was the route to understanding eternal truths.  But this is not so, because ‘to know’ eternal truths, that is, to access “the One and the Endless, the Mind that has balked the profoundest of mortals” (Patrick Kavanagh, in his poem ‘The One’), one must access ‘knowing’, not thinking, and knowing is impossible with the mind.  The mind can only analyse and deduce, whereas ‘knowing’ is a faculty of the soul, which is the retainer of all wisdom from experiences over many lifetimes.  Descartes would have been more accurate to have said, “I know, therefore I am”.  

The enlightenment movement later debunked Descartes assertion, with the empiricism theory, stating that knowing was gained through experience.  A leading philosopher at that time, John Locke, argued that we are born without innate knowledge and anything known first enters the mind through the senses.  While Locke acknowledged that knowledge through experience is true, I would say that his assertion that we enter the world as ‘blank slate’ newborns is untrue, because it denies the unmeasurable (therefore unscientific) soul; the highest, wisest part of ourselves.  Sadly, that ‘blank slate’ reasoning would later become the basis of eighteenth-century psychology and the ‘unmeasurable, so unknowable’ approach informs much of what we in the west understand about the soul today.

But the soul is knowable and known.  When we ‘think’, that thought is held by the mind.  When we ‘know’ something, it is known by the soul. 

In the next essay on this subject, we will look at the benefits that accrue from doing this work and how choosing the path of consciousness evolution opens us up to being more present and more connected with each other, in a way that makes us feel more alive.  On the planet at this time we are being asked to elevate our consciousness so that we can become more present and connected with each other, to navigate these shifting tides and move out of the old patriarchal model and into the new egalitarian one that is already underway.

DO YOU FEEL THE CALLING?

We are hosting a Retreat in the South of France in the Fall of 2025 to address all of these issues and to specifically help people to get into their highest awareness.  We are inviting all of those of you who feel called to come forward, to step into their power and be a conscious player in this new stage of human consciousness evolution.

Email mail@suzanne-connolly.com to be added to the list for more information about the retreat.

Blessings!