Am I a Soul Man? I'm not yet certain

I once was told by a psychic that I had an ‘old soul.’ I wasn’t entirely certain, not being terribly well-versed back then in the metaphysical arts, what she meant.

In essence, it meant that my codger of a soul had been around for a few lifetimes and was nearly finished its journey through the universe. That was a good thing, she told me. All those wrinkles on my soul meant that I had made some good changes.

One of them, she suggested, was to have quit the relationship I’d had with my second wife who was possessed of a very juvenile soul. My ex, you see, had also gone to her for a reading. I wondered about the ethics of her telling me about the pubescent nature of my ex’s soul, but I didn’t question it since I wanted to find out whatever dirt I could on her. Anyway, the psychic didn’t like her much; I could tell.

So, you see, my ex's zit-infested soul was still inclined to be throwing adolescent tantrums and making lousy judgment calls, while mine was more in the line of an impatient grandparent constantly thinking: “Geez, what next from this kid?”

I am, as you might have noticed, making light of all this stuff. In truth, I know a bit more about it than that, and at a slightly more complex level. I've done a lot of reading since then. I’ve read my Jung and my Joseph Campbell and other source books that ponder what is deemed the bare essence of us as individuals – the thing that makes us what and who we are – the soul.

And, it’s there. To me there is no doubt. Whether or not it’s divinely inspired is a matter of individual belief. But, the fact remains there is neither a religion nor a society, from the most sophisticated to the most rudimentary, that denies this essence.

If you doubt it, then look at a corpse. It may even be the corpse of one you know (knew) well. Something is missing. The corporeal shell is there, but nothing more.

I once held the head of a dying deer in my arms. A car had hit it. Not mine, blessedly. One second the deer was alive and its eyes were watching, watching – and then it was dead. There was no mistaking. The eyes immediately clouded. An element had left the hapless animal. Do deer have souls? I’m not about to go there, but native peoples assuredly believe they have. Who is to say they’re wrong?

At the moment I am reading an intriguing book entitled The Snow Leopard, by Peter Mattheissen. It’s an old book, published back in 1978 and at its barest essence it concerns Mattheissen’s trek into the remotest regions of the Himalayas. He has many motivations, including wanting to put the recent death of his estranged wife behind him.

But, there is more than this in his quest; there is more than the amazingly rare snow leopard in his quest, there is his journey to find his soul and come to grips with what life, love, death and the whole damn thing mean to us as individuals, since it is surely an individual thing, Mattheissen, who is now a Buddhist priest in upstate New York, finally concludes. But, it is a tortuous route to reach that conclusion.

He too, he deduced, had an old soul, which is why he went on a metaphysical rather than material quest. We old souls tend to do that, my psychic told me those many years ago.

I suspect she was right in that, too. Never has my soul been fed by stuff. But it has been fed by meditation, thought, reading, love, sex, travel and all the other non-stuff things.

So, now that I have laid my soul – as I understand it, which is not at all, kind of a Zen thing, y’understand – bare, I am going to move on and watch the Simpsons. Nelson has far more soul than many might realize.