Difference between soul and consciousness
 

What are the differences between soul and consciousness? Am I my soul?
When people say, when you die your soul will go where it belongs. Why use "my"? Does it mean, when your body dies, you <your soul> go where you belong?

what are your thoughts about it ValVan?
do you feel strongly one way or another?
my sense of things is that Truth resides within the heart.
perhaps, if we bring all questions into our heart-space,
we can 'measure' the truth of them according to how
our heart(s) relate to the ideas.

You are the whole Universe having your individual experience. So when you die, you as the Universe are reborn through someone else with their own unique consciousness.

This cycle then repeats ad infinitum so the Universe continues experiencing itself through each of us completely anew without any preconceptions.

There is no difference between soul and consciousness. Soul is consciousness, yet consciousness is not always soul. I see the soul as a unit of consciousness. As an example, a planet, solar system, galaxy have consciousness, yet no soul, at lest I would not call it that, it is much larger than a soul ever would be.
The soul doesn't go anywhere, and is not within this physical verse. In order to incarnate, the soul creates an energy structure we call spirit, and through this energy structure the soul connects to the physical realms.
Belong, where do we belong? This depends on our vibration. As our vibration goes up we as spirit move up. And the tendency is, yes, to return "home". A very long journey. Can not be measured in time.
Our first intent must be to expand consciousness, everything else will fall into place.

You've asked the right question, Val. No one can tell you to the answer to this. It annihilates every established narrative; there are no systems of belief that accommodate it. No one wants to grapple with the fearfulness of the answer.

Never stop asking what you are when you strip your humanity away, and never accept anyone else's answer on the subject. You can find this thing through meditation, challenging the shape and safety of your consciousness by force of will, night after night, and nowhere else.

The only guiding light you can trust is yourself. And, I suppose, "pure" techniques, which is to say, methods of meditation that do not tell you what to expect to witness, feel, or believe in.

Different people have different definitions for the words they use. In the context of psychic phenomena, for me "soul" is that which incarnates in the physical. "Consciousness" is a dimension that covers all the existence planes, on which the "soul" focuses: when you're awake your "soul" focuses on the physical range of consciousness, when you dream, project, die, your "soul" focuses on non-physical ranges of consciousness. Remember: in the non-physical there are neither space nor time dimensions, as we experience them here on the physical plane.

The "where you belong" has, in my view, a religious connotation, implying a God, a higher power that decides, on whatever criteria, your fate in the afterlife. I don't believe so.

I believe that when you die you wake up to the awareness your "soul" has over there, an widely expanded awareness compared to your awareness now.

It is very simple, just ask your soul to define itself, and go by that.

Since I have written about this subject before, I will cut and paste.

CONSCIOUSNESS

CON-SCIO-NESS
From Latin conscius, itself from
con- (a form of com- (“together”)
scire (“to know”).
scīre: present active infinitive of sciō "to know"
ness: state or quality of being

SOUL
Many religious doctrines and well known philosophers agree that the soul is
the self that is alive, that which animates the body, is immortal and thus incorporeal (invisible/not physical).
The soul is also recognised as spirit, psyche, ghost, mind, God, divine, light.

In Sanskrit "atman" literally means "breath, soul";
akin to Old English "breath"

'atma', (“wind, breath, soul”)
'atman' ('soul')

Also note that "atman" means "the True Self" —
one's True Self, generally translated into English as "Self",
beyond identification with the phenomenal reality of worldly existence.
Atman is the divine within the self.

The equivalent Latin world "Anima" refers to the "animating principle"
"to give life, alive"

The Latin "psyche" translation of Greek is "psykhe" is the “soul, breath”.
Mind is derived from "psyche".

In the Bible:
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Genesis 2:7


The words Consciousness, Mind, Psyche, Soul, Spirit are all metaphors.
These words all recognise that the incorporeal essence of man (species) is invisible and eternal.
It is that which animates life.

During the stillness of meditation and phasing, I know I am.
I am consciousness.
I am omnipresent, eternal life.
I dream of Universes and You-in-verses [hiSTORY] in mind,
which feels so sensational and real. I am SPELLbound.
When I dissolve the dream during meditation and phasing,
I know I am ALL one and Alone.

Your essential essence of being is the soul. It is what defines you. It is the part of you that loves.