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ASHES

It seems fitting to start with ashes. The phrase “ashes to ashes” arguably comes indirectly from the King James Bible (Genesis 3:19) when Adam and Eve are cast out of Garden of Eden: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” In popular literature, usage of “ashes to ashes” often substitutes for “dust to dust.” Although many Christians believe that after the body is returned to dust the soul lives on, in my prior belief system I had adopted the end-state version that at death our conscious self dies along with our body, and we assume the same soulless non-existent state we believe we had prior to birth. My view on this has changed markedly in recentyears.

For instance, I now believe thatthe soul is our recognizable conscious self and that it survives the physical death of the body, exiting from a dying or dead body from one of the center chakras (heart-throat area) or from the crown chakra (top of the head). Some people report actually witnessing the soul--seen as a small thread of lights or sparks of light--depart the body of a dying or dead person. While the body is alive, it’s believed that the soul is tethered to it, joined at a cellular level. There are a number of studies aimed at showing that the soul is the seat of consciousness and is distinct from brain function and brain activity. Brain dead does not mean soul dead. In fact, it’s quite theopposite.

The soul, simply put, is informational energy that vibrates at a high frequency. Each soul is unique, but shares information with every other soul--whether it be person, animal, or living creature of any kind. Some people believe everything has a soul--rocks, plants and trees, water, etc.--although some things have correspondingly lower energy vibration, less conscious awareness, lower intelligence, and fewer feelings. Supporters of this view seeeverything coming from God the Source and consequently everything bears at least some of the same information that human soulshave.

On a more personal level, the soul is the unique essence of who we are as individuals--call it the recognizableyou-ness in you or theme-ness in me. If we reincarnate, our soul brings our specialness to the new physical entity (new DNA) we become, whether we’re now a different gender, race, or even species. With a few exceptions (Jesus, for one, reportedly had soul memory from birth) we do not have soul memory when we are alive incarnate. Soul memory returns to us only after we phy