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Aren’t I the only one here? What’s this business about me, a soul and all this spirituality stuff?

There’s a lot of talk about soul (not the music kind). This buzz is being captured by Disney’s just-released blockbuster movie by the same name. 

So, do you feel a little out of this whole loop? Defining the indefinable is a familiar challenge (it’s hard enough to think about God, right?).

Judaism has so many beautiful teachings about the soul, so let’s examine one small way of understanding our soul.

Is the you that is reading this the inner you? How do you become aware of your own actions? Do you rethink things, mull them over in you mind? Do you replay events over and over? Who is the “you” that is doing this? Well, it actually depends. We know there are several voices in our head….and it takes time to gain a refined ability to figure out who’s talking. There’s the ego, the body, the mind—all competing for a ticket to be in the front seat of your show.

Not to mention the poor little soul struggling to get its’ own voice heard. What a cacophony.

Our egos are talking to us all the time, wanting to pretend that they are our voice. Know how you can tell? The ego’s voice is not actually very nice, it’s the one saying things like: “You’re an imposter”, “You got to be kidding me, you think that you can do that?” “I want this thing…NOW”, “I need to stay in bed…” and a lot of other unsavory tidbits.

That voice is the cruel judge, the procrastinator, the incessant advice-giver, the one who lives in fear, the snide critic, the self-centered egotist, and any other image that you can conjure up that works for you. Identifying the voice as one that speaks out of Fear not Love will help.

In time, you’ll get to recognize these uninvited intrusive guests, which is the first step in muzzling them (notice I didn’t use the word silence…it’s likely that won’t happen).

Ultimately, you don’t have a soul, you are a soul. Your soul knows what is authentically true about you, but over time, as you can imagine, that voice gets hidden under a lot of other, well, garbage. Some spiritual teachers are more delicate…saying that ‘spiritual veils’ cover the purest part of ourselves, which is our soul.

One tool to be able to discern your authentic voice is to try out Rabbi Manis Friedman’s recommendation which makes things far more simpler. Just think of your soul as having two aspects which can serve as a more trusted guide.

Is your voice telling you to be Selfless or Selfish?

When you spend a little bit of time quieting down the noise, and start listening to the voice that needs your help, the selfless one, you should gain better footing.

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The saying “there are no atheists in foxholes” presumes that once under the threat of death, the most avowed atheist will plead to God for help in order to live. But how about in when waking up to a freshly wrapped day? Who does the atheist thank? Perhaps nature. How about when there’s good luck? Who gets thanked then? Exactly who is the recipient of gratitude when things work out?

What about our daily experiences? Are we like the “everyday atheist” who has no need for regular interactions with the Divine?

How about when we find ourselves avoiding an accident and call out “Thank God, I almost hit that car” or when we mindlessly say “Thank Heaven, I remembered to do…” .

Are we able to pause in that moment and actually focus on our gratitude to the Creator? Or do we just move on….?

We also tend to write off happy coincidences as just ‘good luck’ or we might even thank “Lady Luck” for our good fortune. Worse, as Jews, we might mindlessly request that others “cross your fingers” (of Christian origin, referring to the cross) or “knock on wood” (ditto plus pagan origins) when we hope things will work out in our favor.

Yet, when we experience pain or are filled with darkness, we might reach out, calling out to the One Above for solace from suffering. Or when we need answers for the unanswerable. The times of intense struggle are often when we tend to reach out to a higher power, to the One who might listen and receive our pleas. Is it possible that our everyday language might be a stumbling block for us?

Our uncomfortable feelings with invoking God’s name might be due to several reasons, but one could be the difficulty in acknowledging God in language that doesn’t fit the Jewish concept of God. 

“Judaism would be better off without the phrase “belief in God.”  First, it is a Christian phrase, not a Jewish one, and it suggests that the essence of religion is faith – a Christian value.  Second, the phrase implies a certain kind of God – a God in which one either does or does not believe, probably an anthropomorphic God, a cosmic puppetmaster who sorts the bad people from the good, and makes the rain fall.”

Michaelson states that the phrase “Belief in God” should be trashed in the ‘lexicographic graveyard’.

The trap that we might fall into is thinking about God as apart from us, instead of a part of us. 

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel writes about being in ‘radical amazement’ for existence itself, which is God. When we recite the Shema, we’re not just saying that God is One and not Two…we’re saying that God is All.  Everything in our lives is part of the grand wonderment that is creation. 

When we can experience life in that way, by regarding the world around us as special and sacred…and keep that within our minds even during the darkest days, we will be connecting with the spiritual deep within us. 

It means turning off our own naysaying ego that interrupts with “but that’s not realistic”, “that’s too difficult to do on a daily basis”, “who has time to focus on that all the time?”,  “I couldn’t possibly ignore all the bad things around me”, “that sounds too loosey-goosey for me”, and all the other blocks that will work their way into our path. 

Ignore those voices. Pay attention to the smaller voice inside you, the voice that is part of something bigger and greater, the part that is aligned with Love and not Fear. 

Try it.