The essence of a soul

by Heather

We are a living, breathing manifestation of this beautiful and generous planet. –Thich Nhat Hanh

In a SoulCollage deck, there are several Transpersonal cards–Source, Witness, and Soul Essence. I made a Source card some time ago, I haven’t found images for my Witness card yet–and here’s the Soul Essence card I made today. The Soul Essence card represents the maker’s eternal soul and its unique potential.

I found this card a challenge. It’s difficult to conceptualize your soul while you’re incarnated, or so it seems to me. A number of Soul Essence cards I’ve seen include images that reflect the maker’s current gender, but that didn’t feel right to me.

Thanks to various past-life explorations, I know that I’ve been Jacob, a shepherd in the Bronze Age; a master mason who worked on Rouen Cathedral and Canterbury Cathedral; and a stern, humorless, old-school English fisherman–none of whom shared my current gender.

I do see a couple of threads running consistently through these lives–one being strength, the other mastery. In my life as Jacob–a calm, peaceful, idyllic life–I was known for my wisdom about nature, and was a leader among the other shepherds. In my current life I have a tendency to become an expert on whatever I’m working on, almost without intending to. I have to say, I do not enjoy my own incompetence.

I am undeniably an incompetent bowler–unless we change the rules and gutter balls become a good thing–and I would much rather watch others who have grace and skill play, than play myself.

The other common thread is that, as far as I know, all of my incarnations (I’ve been told more than a hundred) have been on this planet. It makes me quite sad to think that due to our foolhardy destructiveness over a relatively short period of time (i.e., the Industrial Age), it might not be possible for me to finish my soul’s education here on planet Earth. I’ve read in several places that our little planet is generally considered a difficult school. Would it be the Harvard of the universe? Perhaps it’s more of an MIT, Penn, or Duke. All I know is that it’s been my home–or perhaps better, home away from home–for millennia. I hope enough of us wake up to reality and take action in time.

Long may we be nurtured by Mother Earth.

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