This Soul it's only a word to us, that once was released into the air, and, as any word, became reflected in multiple bodies, with minds, feelings and a past.
And that's where we live, attached to sensations, memories and a constant need for reason.
A terrible thing that happens to us is sad, but it's worst if it controls who we become.
That's why there are so many forms of Art. We know we can be lift up to higher states of mind through contemplation. We can abandon our clothes, our bodies and be lift up into a state of pure simplicity and deeper understanding through Music for example, or a poem, or by letting ourselves immerse in Natures's delicate strength.
Action is a shadow of contemplation. If only one could keep himself in that unifying feeling of contemplating the amazing act of existing. No dispersion, but pure ecstasy of releasing ourselves from the physical world and contemplate the no absence of anything, for in letting ourselves rise up we become one with everything. Maybe the body is inside the Soul, and not the other way around.
“Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine. (...) The world is knowable, harmonious, and good. (...) The stars are like letters that inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky. Everything in the world is full of signs. All events are coordinated. All things depend on each other. Everything breathes together.”
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Plotinus
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