Difference between Soul and Spirit
 

For the longest time I thought Soul and Spirit were interchangeable, but I recently asked myself "is there really a difference?" I developed my own opinion after researching an article on that question and I was wondering if other people have thought something similar.

Spirit is the gift to mankind that is unified and connected directly to God.

Soul is the observable traits we experience like emotion, our morals, intelligence, ideas, creativity, personality, and love

So then our body is the character of those two combined in a dense moment of life to have control over our own reality and growth.

It's a short summary because I came up with this thought a hour ago while driving home, but I really felt a need to share on this forum.
Hopefully in sharing this thought others will relate to it or even have their own opinion on that question. Happy Easter fellow seekers

Be careful: don't dream and drive! You don't want to find out all the answers sooner than you have to.

I googled, and as expected, there is no consensus on definitions.

The first two I encountered:

the function of our spirit is to contact God and receive God, and the function of our soul is to express God

and:

While the two words are often used interchangeably, the primary distinction between soul and spirit in man is that the soul is the animate life, or the seat of the senses, desires, affections, and appetites. The spirit is that part of us that connects, or refuses to connect, to God.

I believe that there is an entity that incarnates as a personality, and that the personality has an inner-self, which interfaces with the inner-world, and an ego / outer-self, which perceives the outer (physical) world. This seems to have similarities with both definitions above, but I wouldn't use those labels, soul and spirit.

I don't think that it matters what labels you use as long as you have a concept about what you're talking about.

Another approach is that Spirit relates to our very Being, while Soul relates to Consciousness.

So Being expresses as individualised Consciousness which then finds expression through the personality in the physical body.

Consciousness is the silent observer of our emotions, our morals, our intelligence, our ideas, our creativity, in short all that makes up the personality.

Consciousness can look outwards to personality or inwards to Being. Although really, there is no inwards or outwards.

Peace

I would have to agree with Iamthat on this


Namaste

Soul is like our hard drive it records our lives
Spirit or Atman is the divine spark that animates our body

It's just semantics too slow the Mind down and confuse it by taking something that's one and dividing it into Mini you are you and if you want to talk yourself into multiple different categories that's fine but you're still you

Interesting question. I believe soul is the individual aspect of our being, while spirit is the unified connection to all spirit.

Good question. I think Soul is internal and deep, while spirit is a form of internal expression.

Who is in charge? :hug2: