Is the soul physical, spiritual or both?

TOPICS: Transcending the conflict over words – many definitions of soul – a new understanding of the soul and its components – why reincarnation becomes necessary – what it is that reincarnates – four levels of the material realm – levels of the soul – how to transcend the soul – communicating with the soul – how is the soul connected to the physical body –

Question: Is the soul physical, spiritual or both? Is it comprised of energy or matter? Does the soul reside in the physical body and, if so, where? I have heard some say that it is located in the heart and others say it is in the solar plexus area. What is the best way to communicate with our soul? Can you please explain the difference between the soul and the spirit? Some people seem to get them confused or think that they are one and the same thing.

Answer from ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:

If you look at the history of humankind, you will see an almost endless string of conflicts. If you take a closer look at the conflicts, you will see that many of them originated from the fact that words can have different meanings to different people.

When you combine this with our teachings on the duality consciousness, you see that one effect of this consciousness is that it makes people think they are as gods, who can define what is right and wrong. In other words, the duality consciousness causes people to interpret words a certain way AND then believe that their interpretation is the only true one and all others are wrong. This often leads to what I have called epic dramas.

One effect of this consciousness is that certain words over time can become almost useless for a spiritual teacher. The reason is that different people attach different meanings to a word, and they always end up in a conflict about who is right. Thus, instead of listening for a higher teaching, people become focused on defending their present teaching and its use of words. People are literally caught up in fighting over the meaning of words instead of seeking an inner experience that transcends words.

You will see that some spiritual teachings define the soul one way and others define it another way. Some teachings use the word “soul” without giving a special definition of it; assuming everyone knows what the soul is. That is why we of the ascended masters have decided to give more specific teachings about the components of what most people call the soul. It is not our aim to hereby say that all other teachings are now wrong. But it is our aim to give a more detailed understanding of the components of self, so that spiritual seekers can rise above the various interpretations of the word soul.

So what we now teach is that the core of your being is the Conscious You. As you will see from our explanation, the Conscious You is an extension of the I AM Presence. Thus, it is spiritual and not physical at all. The Conscious You can descend into the material universe, but it can never be altered by any of the energies of this realm. The reason is that it is made out of consciousness and not energy. As I explain in another answer, everything in the world of form is created FROM energy, but it is created BY consciousness. The Conscious You has the ability to form a mental image and superimpose it upon the Ma-ter light, causing the light to take on the form of the image.

As also explained in the other answer, the Conscious You can co-create from an identity of seeing itself as a connected being or as a separate being. If it co-creates with a sense of separation, its mental images and the lower energies it generates cannot rise to the spiritual realm. Thus, they accumulate in the lower self, which can eventually become a very sophisticated and powerful sense of self. If the Conscious You identifies itself with the separate self it has created, then it cannot let it go when the physical body dies. Thus, reincarnation becomes a necessity, as it gives the Conscious You another chance to dis-identify itself from the separate self and attain Christ consciousness (in which it correctly identifies itself as an extension of God’s Being).

So when you look at a lifestream that reincarnates, it will be a combination of the Conscious You and the separate self. And it will indeed descend into the physical body from a higher level of vibration than the material realm. And that is why some teachings say that what reincarnates is the soul, and since it descends into the physical body from a higher realm, they assume that it came from the spiritual realm and thus that the soul was created in the spiritual realm.

You can gain a deeper understanding of this by combining it with our teaching about the four levels of the material realm. What you now see is that the Conscious You descends from the I AM Presence, which is located in the spiritual realm. The Conscious You creates or takes on a separate self in the identity realm. It then creates mental images based on that self in the mental realm and projects them upon the Ma-ter light through the emotional realm. Thus, the separate self is not spiritual at all, but is created in both the identity, mental and emotional realms.

So when the physical body dies, the separate self obviously cannot rise to the spiritual realm, because it is created out of the energies of the identity, mental and emotional realms. And when the Conscious You identifies itself fully with the separate self, it cannot rise higher either, meaning that in between embodiments, the Conscious You will “reside” in (have its self-awareness focused in) one of the three lower realms. And it is from here that the lifestream descends to its next embodiment. Thus, you see that what descends does not actually come from the spiritual realm—unless you define the “spiritual realm” as anything beyond the physical realm without distinguishing the identity, mental and emotional realms.

So you see my overall point, which is that much of the confusion around the soul is caused by the fact that there are different definitions or that there is no precise definition of the soul. If you say that the soul was created in the spiritual realm and is spirit, then the soul should be able to ascend and reincarnation would be unnecessary. If you say the soul is physical, then how could it ever ascend to the spiritual realm?

What we of the ascended masters are seeking to do is to give a more detailed view, namely that what most people call the soul is made up of various components—some of which are spiritual and some of which reside in the various levels of the material realm. And when you understand this, you can avoid the confusion.

So based on what I have said here, we can see that the lower part of your lifestream has various levels. And in each of these levels, you can accumulate beliefs and mental images based on the sense of separation. This accumulation has happened in many previous lifetimes, where you have responded to the conditions you encountered on earth. And since this planet has been deeply affected by the duality consciousness and certain fallen beings that have incarnated here, you could have been deeply wounded and traumatized in past lives. Thus, you could have much misqualified energy and many limiting beliefs stored in your four lower “bodies.”

In order for the Conscious You to extricate itself from – to stop identifying itself with – the lower self, it must transmute the lower energies and replace the limiting beliefs. These images and beliefs are all illusions, and in order to be free of them, the Conscious You must become conscious of them and make the decision to discard them and replace them with images based on Christ discernment. Yet you will often have to start by reducing the amount of misqualified energy, as it will cause so much emotional pain that you cannot uncover the underlying beliefs. We explain this in more detail and we give practical tools on the Transcendence Toolbox website.

The process whereby the Conscious You becomes conscious of the contents of the subconscious mind (the physical, emotional, mental and identity levels) can indeed be said to be a process whereby you communicate with the soul.

There are many ways to make the subconscious conscious, such as meditation or writing a journal. You can use several psychological healing techniques, and one of them is what is called working with the inner child. Others are Gestalt therapy or EMDR therapy. My technique for inner attunement can be used to communicate with your soul. Simply imagine that you are using me or your Christ self as a link for communicating with your soul. Then write down the thoughts that come to you during the meditation.

Now, consider your question:

Does the soul reside in the physical body and, if so, where? I have heard some say that it is located in the heart and others say it is in the solar plexus area.

As I have said, you have four lower “bodies” or four levels of the mind, and they form your energy field, often called the aura. Now, I know that popular belief is that the aura surrounds the physical body, and some even believe it is produced by the physical body, as a magnetic field is (supposedly, but wrongly) said to be produced by the physical magnet. Yet when you understand the teaching on the four levels of the material universe, you see that your aura is not produced by your physical body; your energy field produces the body. The physical body is simply the most dense aspect of your total energy field.

With this in mind, you can see that it is meaningless to assign the soul to a particular physical location in the body. Again, if you define the “soul” a certain way, you can obviously argue that it is located in a specific location, but my point is that there is not one physical location that is the entry point or anchor point between your three higher bodies and the physical body.

We give teachings about chakras, and all of the seven major chakras are points where your higher bodies interphase with your physical body. We teach that the energies from your I AM Presence first enters a chakra called the Secret Chamber of the Heart, which is said to be located behind the heart chakra but is actually in a higher level of vibration. From there it goes to the heart chakra before it then spreads out to the other chakras.

We have also said that the second chakra from the bottom is called the Seat of the Soul chakra, but this does not mean that all of your four lower bodies are anchored here. Again, if you define “soul” a certain way, you can indeed say that the soul is anchored in this chakra.

Yet if you reach for a higher understanding, you see that all of the chakras are important for your creative expression in the material world. Each chakra has different functions, and each chakra relates to what you can do with your physical body and conscious mind. My point being that the analytical, linear mind loves to divide everything into separate categories, but in reality, everything is one, interconnected whole. So what we have attempted to give you is a less linear, less divided and more interconnected view of your total being.