For Where Your Treasure Is

There your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:21.

There is an interesting dichotomy between body and soul. As an aside, or perhaps more accurately as a precursor to what I am about to say I have long pondered what exactly is the soul. What is that thing, that substance that defines the human soul? I have come to a conclusion that the soul is comprised of numerous attributes all culminating in that which is the essence of the person. One might call it the Self, the Center, the Christ. The Logos.

The attributes that define the Self, the mental and emotional, the unseen attributes, you cannot actually locate within your physical body but given a little thought you know it to be there nonetheless. You cannot see or hear your emotions or your thoughts, all that makes up your non-physical existence but that does not make them any less ‘there’. That we cannot view them underneath a microscope does not make them any less real.

As an aside this is where our scientific thought fails us in so many ways, or rather I should say this is where the notion that science reveals all truth fails us. Science declares that in order for something to be true, let us use the word ‘fact’, it must be observable and repeatable given the same set of external criteria, which is to say that if all factors in an experiment remain exactly the same every time than every time I should get the same results. Scientific fact. The truth. So let me ask, is that they way emotions and thoughts work? Hardly. Can I view emotions and thoughts in a laboratory on a petrie dish, define the physical conditions and know with confidence that my test will yield the same result time and time again? Hardly. Yet we know that thoughts and emotions exist. We know that humanity is comprised not only of material but also that which is immaterial. No scientist would dispute that.

But that’s another story for another time and let me get back to my original thought which was the dichotomy between body and soul.

That which ultimately decays and dies and that which lives on forever.

Our mental and emotional systems are meant to operate. If they are shut down for years and years they do not wither and die as will a physical body part. Use it or lose does not apply to that which comprises our souls. The pressure of non-use builds over the years, like a pressure-cooker. Steam building up in a closed container, it does not dissipate but rather increases in strength, searching, straining for a way out until one day it explodes. The pressure finally exceeds the level at which the heart and mind can bear and the result is bursting forth of contents, most probably in a very destructive and ugly mess.

Use it or face the ugly consequences would be a more apt way to describe the phenomenon.

There is a good reason for this.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.