My Soul is in the Cloud
Photo by Jessie Eastland –
In the Mojave Desert, a Towering Vertical cloud appears to be set in place by a hand of the Gods.
In thinking about the relationship of the soul to the body, a nice analogy occurred to me:
I don’t want to lose my computer, I don’t want it to die on me. But I don’t have to worry too much because all my data is stored in the Cloud. I just have to get another machine and download my unique identity.
Perhaps it is the same thing with dying. Of course I don’t want to, but when I do, perhaps nothing is lost (though access may change, passwords may need to be remembered or discovered!)
With this analogy I avoid dualism – it’s not that my soul is ‘up there’ and my body ‘down here’. My soul and body are one (as software and hardware make the computer what it is) but if my body goes, my soul still retains its unique existence until it’s time to reincarnate!
I’d be really interested to know if you find this a helpful analogy!
22 Responses to “My Soul is in the Cloud”
Pretty good and helpful analogy I think Philip. The most important aspect of which, in my opinion and belief anyway, is that the apparent separation of our physical and non-physical aspects are just that, apparent rather than real, that there really is no separation.
Steve 🙂
Thanks Philip, it works for me. It also reminds me to backup my soul at regular intervals.
Yes very useful analogy and gives endless possibilities for metaphor and allegory making sence of complex emotions and modern technology, thank you.
You found a wonderful comforting picture – nothing is lost whatever form the soul will achieve in eternal live or in other lives on earth. Thank you!
Barbara
Well, ego being an illusion and the body being part of the Biosphere, everything gets recycled anyway. No need for reincarnation! I rather like the idea of disappearing completely in a non-toxic residue-free way.
As John O’Donohue would say, “our body is in our Soul”. Thus, the body will compost back into the Earth and our Soul shall continue the journey…. Thank you Philip for your insightful posts! An Austin, Texas follower….
That’s a nice way of putting it – “our body is in our Soul” – rather than the usual reverse way of saying it! Thank you Gaye! 🙂
Yes thank you – that works for me Philip. It puts into words how I feel about it all.
Yes it chimes well. It also has that quantum element as the cloud is both ‘there’ and ‘here’.
Hello Philip,
That is exactly how it is! A very modern analogy that makes it easy to understand. Nothing is lost because we Are the universe unfolding its potential, and this is it being me, and that is it being you. ?
So…EVERYBODY’s soul goes ‘up there’? What about all those really evil people? Do we also have a ‘down there’? The Christian philosophy appears to think so – in various formats! (altho’ I understand they’ve recently disposed of the fire & brimstone, together with the guys in red wielding pitchforks etc!) Personally I don’t think a soul needs a ‘place’- whether in a cloud or in the company of ‘Angels’ or ‘Devils’. Once we get into analogies the whole concept of the Cosmos is lost
There is no up there or down there. That’s religion’s belief. There is only a universe (or universes) unfolding its potential.
Thumbs UP. Great metaphor.
Hmmm — I like the way you put it. I have thought about this a lot too: “How do the lessons I learn in one life, the wisdom I hopefully gather, translate into a sort of cumulative karma for my ongoing, perhaps evolving spirit, as it is perhaps recycled, re-incarnated again and again?” And of course, there is the fear most of us probably have of losing what we think of as our individual selves when we die, even with, and perhaps especially with a belief in reincarnation. I once spoke briefly with a Thai Buddhist monk who told me he spent much time in deep meditation “remembering” his many thousand previous lives in order I gathered, to fully understand and harvest the cumulative wisdom. This construct of yours gives another accessible, and rather comforting way to think about this. Thanks for sharing.
Dear Philip,
An interesting analogy and one that I’m reasonably comfortable with but isn’t there a lot more to it?
When other animals die (and while they live…) they seem to pass on their thoughts, behaviours and learning to others in a way that is hard to understand from a human view point. Is this something that we should aspire to? Rather than just storing and accessing our soul in the cloud, should we make it accessible to others so that they can access and learn from shared experience? I seem to remember the concept of the Akhasic Record being a human cloud.
Of course open access to our souls would be fraught with danger!
This is showing my age a bit, perhaps, but when I read the title to this blog entry, the first thing that popped into my mind was not computer technology, but instead the glowing nimbus that is often painted around the heads of saints and supernatural beings (the word “nimbus” also refers to a type of cloud). And I remembered an interesting and somewhat challenging assertion made by a minister at a funeral I recently attended: “We are all saints.”
So yes, I found this analogy to be helpful. Not only because I appreciate your own perspective, but because it also jogged some tangential thoughts of my own. Thank you!
The computer analogy has been used quite successfully for a number of years now. I particularly like how the idea of the hardware ( in essence the “us”) needs information that has no physical form for it to work. In other words, without the information that has no physical form, the computer doesn’t work.
I really, really like this analogy. No need to overthink it, it doesn’t have to be all encompassing. It conveys the basic idea very aptly. Thank you!
Of course – when my personal Software catches the “virus” of anxiety, my Hardware goes out of order – and the poor body suffers! Of course – my soul and my body are one! Of course – from time to time all we have to leave our Hardwares, but with all experience!
How lucky we are!
Well said 🙂
I found these comments very helpful. Thank you.
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