I think it must be in our hearts, that our souls actually dwell... although I feel my soul seep out into my limbs from my heart and my throat and my mind when I dance, it must rest in our hearts to nurture and fill. Maybe when we sleep.
Our hearts are not so different from each other's...not the way they are shaped nor the mechanics of their beatings. But deep inside, there is the diamond. The soul, that is as individual as a snowflake or a sunbeam, or as multifaceted as a diamond when cherished and cut and shaped to bring about the most glorious and valuable shine of all.
Diamonds have a depth where the shadows lie smoldering, and a glittering and smooth surface where the eye can see clearly it's beauty. No one can ever say they know their own soul unless they have delved deep into their heart. My mind and my heart and my soul are all disconnected in parts, yet enclosed within the same world needing the same life force to work...yet, if my mind and my heart stop living, I like to believe my soul will go on as it is... freed from it's bondage of our physical muscle and blood... recycling into something of magic, while regaining a host.
Thus our souls, our diamonds, are as old as the ages. And they have gathered wisdom from the ancient days when all was new...Our souls, like the mountains and the seas, are ever changing and evolving, adding new landscape to their design and burning with the heat of life and love and all things shifting. How wonderful that our bodies get to be the keepers of those diamonds while we live!
Many people believe that our "life force" is our blood and bones and muscle and grit...but I think it is our soul that brings to us our personalities, and our destinies. I never believed, entirely, of "soul mates" and used to "pooh-pooh" the idea of reincarnation, but I am beginning to feel differently nowadays. It is the ultimate recycling plan...it is the way nature works. Nothing really stops "being" ...it just changes, morphs or something, into another form. Why wouldn't our soul just go on and eventually find itself in another generation and another new body to carry on....?
There is something in all of us that speaks and draws us to a passion that is strong and magnetic beyond understanding. I happen to feel like I am still living outside of my "home"... in a new age, and a new place that I don't quite belong. I have never been to Ireland, or to Scotland, or to anyplace where Gaelic and Pagan hearts gather in peace, and yet here I am.... irresistably drawn to all things Celtic. I come to the conclusion that my soul remembers. Like Harry Potter's snitch, my soul has a "flesh memory" that hangs onto it's origin and it's "home"...
This could all be fantasy. An over-active imagination, brought on by boredom wrought from a suburban lifestyle of a middle aged woman who finds herself planted in a vast superficial bubble of soccer moms and pedicures.
I look for adventures and grit whenever I can... it's tough to satisfy my diamond of a soul, craving wild hikes and hunts, and challenges of defeating anonymous and invisible status. I have been known to climb on my roof to read a book, or just gaze at a star, and to climb fences ten feet tall just to feel it when I fly over them...and to know that I am halfway done with this life already...I want my soul to take my body with it this time... I want to go home, with my soul where it belongs. Wherever that is.
