Everyday Canvas

Soul Passages

Prompt: Create a blog entry with this opening line: "It was a death that began it all and another death that led us on."

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"It was a death that began it all and another death that led us on."
I started this entry with this quote only because the prompt asked us to do so.

Googling the quote gave me a few links to a 14th-century murder-mystery book called Morality Play by Barry Unsworth 206 pages. Doubleday/Nan A. Talese, as Morality Plays were the literary norm of that century. The story is about a monk who gets involved in a small-town murder drama.

As intriguing and apocalyptic the meaning of the quote may be taken, it starts with the monk and other people of religion like him making the soul-passage easier on the dead/killed people. This I say because I read the first page of the book on Amazon, though not the entire book.

Therefore, I wish to write on the idea of a soul’s passage rather than the death itself, and since I can’t claim to know what happens to people after death, I’ll attempt to focus my thinking on the passages a soul takes during its limited time on earth.

It might just be that the first passage of a soul is when a person grows up outwardly or inwardly and finds the courage in himself or herself to decide for herself or himself how to think, how to feel, and how to act. Once he or she realizes this is his nature-or-God-given right, that person has successfully completed that passage.

Yet, that is not all. When people begin to decide for themselves, knowingly or not knowingly, they fall into the trap of self-sabotage. Truth is, nobody sabotages himself while having a good ride. As the poet Shinji Moon said, “There is a shipwreck between your ribs. You are a box with fragile written on it, and so many people have not handled you with care.” Most self-sabotages happen because of open or hidden fears, suffering, having been mishandled, or hopelessness, but there is always hope, nothing to fear, and people who can truly decide for themselves can easily get over this self-sabotage phase. When they do that, another soul passage is achieved.

If the above passage is completed successfully, people have become wise enough to hold on to their place in society, in their circle, or in their home, and they don’t give up their rights unnecessarily. A mother, for example, doesn’t think twice to take time off for herself. After all, she knows she has a right to a downtime just like anyone else.

Another soul passage is truly accepting oneself and others the way the person and anyone else is, regardless of looks, financial or social status, or even past or future achievements.

But the most important soul passage happens when a person can give his or her heart to true love, and by love, I don’t mean only the romantic kind. There are many kinds of love, but rising in love in any one of them is the same. (Mind you, I didn’t say falling in love.)

As a Sufi poet says: “The quest for Love changes us. There is no seeker among those who has searched for Love and who has not matured on the way. The moment you start looking for Love, you start to change within and without.” This soul passage is what the saints are made of whether canonized or not, in any religion, belief or disbelief, and saints are many among us as they belong to all of humanity.