Limitless

Huntington Beach, CA 2017

You cannot define the soul

When defined, it is confined

Hopelessness hasn't comparison

To what the caged bird feels

The caged bird cries out for the soul defined

And rejoices and praises the cage 

Who stole it’s freedom for its hospitality

A soul defined desires to fly

Yet weeps over clipped wings

It survives in the fold of words

Sent from the prosaic

When we define something, it has one meaning or one implication. The desire to understand, to explain and obtain knowledge of the ‘unknown’ is something all of humanity has strived for.

The human soul however, is I feel impossible to define. This contradicts the innate desire to explain and give reason to almost everything in the world, including the unexplainable. The soul is mystifyingly deep, and controversially unique. To define something as unrestricted as the soul is a living paradox. The human soul is ever expressive and transforming, we simply cannot define it even if we desired to do so. When we attempt to define someone, we try to limit their soul when in itself it is limitless. We cannot separate the human soul, and the human as we can the human spirit and the human.

Attempting to define a soul, we tell it what it can and cannot do. This would change the entire DNA of the soul itself, and it no longer is human soul, but human mortality. The idea of doing this means we take our lives and hollow them out, leaving out the soul that fills our mortal body. If this were possible, humans would become empty shells with no true purpose or drive other than their physiological needs. The desire to know more, or to obtain purpose would not exist.

When the soul itself is immortal and from God, “God within us”, the soul “defined” limits us to our experiences in the present, and does not allow the future or the past to change and shape us continuously, because only God can do such a work. If we were to characterize the human soul, it no longer is ever changing and expressive. We then have taken away the soul itself because we have taken away it’s limitlessness.

God himself cannot be put in a box, yet we attempt to do this in many ways. How we want Him to be, where we think He should be, and when He should be there. God does not change when we limit him, we change when we limit him. We put ourselves and our lives in the same box intended for God. Doing this we become blind and deaf to everything else that does not fit into our “box”. In the box where the human mortality now lives, the human soul attached stays on the outside of the box alongside God. The human inside the box feels his soul is lost, the meaning of life is skewed and he has no real purpose. If he were to tear down the walls he built, he would see all that did not fit in his box, he would recognize his soul had been with him this whole time and he was only blind to it.

I believe this is what we mean when we refer to the “lost souls” of the world, and how they eventually “find themselves” or “find God”. When God himself has always been and will be. To “find” God also limits Him, and the soul within us. Which again, is simply impossible. We do not find ourselves, or find God. Our blind eyes begin to see, and our deaf ears begin hear. Our souls and God wait on us, not the other way around.

I write this because I saw a question online asking about the human spirit, which I think stems from the human soul. Human spirit can be defined in multiple ways, yet where it comes from cannot be. Again, showing us we have limitations in our mortality. I think instead of focusing so much on our limitations as Christians or any religious person, we should focus on the limitless. The soul is tied to this life and the life after, so in the life of today and in this world, it is endless. If we can fully appreciate the limitless of our own souls, we can fully embrace our limitless God.

What does it really mean to live limitless? I think it is this.

When we allow God to use our soul, our spirit and our mortal bodies, we truly become limitless. We become limitless because in Him and Him alone we can be. To carry the presence of God on earth, aligning our lives with Jesus so he can live through us, and to bring Heaven to Earth is the only way we can obtain limitlessness.

When we allow ourselves to become nothing, so He can truly become everything.