Our knitted souls

Thinking about what it is to be alive. I started wondering. Perhaps, our souls are passed down from past lives to keep us warm. Gifted to us like pre-loved, hand-knitted jumpers. For us to wear. Care for. Fold. And unfold. As we need. A beautifully patterned jumper with a design unique to us. For us to add to, with the stitches of this life. And with holes for us to darn. Our job. To love this hand-knitted piece and to pass it on in the best shape possible, into the next life.

I have always thought of myself as my body. More than my body. But my body as the starting point. The tangible bit I can see. Until a couple of months ago. When, in a meditation, thinking about something I had read turned this idea completely on its head. It changed my perception of my life and of my identity. It was the idea of my body being merely a vessel for this life, for a travelling soul. And that who I am, is that travelling soul. And although I have heard of reincarnation. I know about past life theory. For some reason, this idea felt new to me. Suddenly, my sense of self expanded. Exponentially. Backwards. And forwards.

It started with Tom Chetwynd’s definition of soul, in his Dictionary of Sacred Myth. Which I had read the night before.

“The Soul is what lies beyond the borders of the conscious Ego. People often wonder where the myriad images in their dreams come from - especially those brilliant dreams which seem quite outside the scope of their lifetime of experience so far. But they are only the private portion, the individual share of a much vaster storehouse, the collective Unconscious, or collective Soul with its measureless depths and subhuman parts. This is the human Soul, evolved over millennia and passed down generation after generation: this Soul is lent to us by our ancestors, and we hold it in trust for our descendants, damaging and improving it, in the meanwhile.”

So we are soul minders. This was the first thing I thought, when I read this. We hold souls in trust. This was a beautiful image for me. And it shifted a few things. Immediately. Around responsibility. What I do now, shapes what happens next for whoever gets my soul in the future. And anyone further on along the eternal journey of this soul. Perhaps this is what Nietzsche meant about eternal recurrence. Our actions have an eternal recurring effect. If I unravel some of the stitches in my knitted soul, the next person has to restitch them. If I darn the hole in this knitted soul, the next person has one less hole to darn. If I make new holes, they have more to darn. This got me asking myself. How do I want to hand on this soul? A tattered mess? Or neatly folded, the wool soft with love?

Old soul.

The amazing poet, Joy Hargo, talks about ancestors turning up when we are born. She speaks of us being born with a deep knowing. And babies sleeping to forget this knowing. To then begin a life of remembering. To remember as we age. To take with us the knowing which finds us, into the next life. She says some babies don’t sleep away all their knowing. These are the children we talk about as having an ‘old soul’. They haven’t forgotten the collective knowing. A knowing gathered along the way with each life. Handed down to the next. The universal story.

Is the journey of getting old the realisation of the soul? Meeting the soul? Sitting with the soul? Getting to know the soul and its past journey before passing it on?

Chatting with my 15 year old daughter about this she used this idea to explain why some people have an inner wisdom and some do not. All souls may be old, she explained, but some are older than others. Her concept was that a soul may travel through multiple lives but for some, they don’t live long in each life. They die young again and again, and so they collect less wisdom than a soul that lives a longer life each time. One that experiences more of life, before meeting their soul. One with more knowing to pass on. So some are old souls. And others are newer old souls. I looked into my daughters eyes. The expression on her face. No doubt. An old soul. Who didn’t sleep away all her knowing.

“Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.”

Joy Hargo, Remember

And then the mind blowing question arrived in a meditation. But which am I? Am I the body caring for the soul? Or am I the soul, travelling through the body? This would definitely be one of those moments when my husband would say to me as he sometimes does, ‘I am so glad I do not have you brain, it would hurt my head.’

Perhaps we are not minding the soul. Perhaps we are visiting the body. Am I a soul, with a soul memory? Or am I the body, holding the soul for a while? When do I feel the soul? Or am I both? And when I meditate, is this when the soul comes to the surface of my body? Is it resting at other times in my back body? My heart centre? In the spaces between my fascia?

And where do souls go when they are not in a body? Where is the land of the souls? The garden of souls? In nature? Trees? There is a certain wisdom in an old tree. Perhaps trees hold souls. Sometimes many. Maybe this is why forests sometimes feel haunted. Maybe this is why houses do too. Built from the wood of trees. Perhaps.

The next question to arrive was about the connection between names and souls. I have always believed names choose us. They find us, rather than us choosing them. Maybe a name comes with the soul. I am named after my two of my great grandmothers. Kristina. Lavinia. Perhaps I am the Kristina soul. Who travelled through my father’s grandmother, rested in a forest for a generation before finding this body, in this lifetime. Perhaps I am a combination of the Kristina and the Lavinia souls? At this point in their journey they merge. Or, ego aside, am I merely a stitch in a collective pattern?

I am the knitted soul. We are all the knitted soul. And at this point. In this moment. Right now. I am, we are, the soul visiting a body and a body minding the soul. The combination of all. In this moment we cannot be separated. And when we die. We become the travelling soul. Until we land in another welcomed body. Until a pair of infant arms reach up for that knitted soul. With its holes and stitches. With the stories of past journeys weaved in the patterns and shape of what keeps the body warm.

I sat. Grateful for the soul. And then, a poem arrived. For all of us.

i am the weave
i am the woven

the tangled yarn
the unravelled

the pattern
the perfect stitch

i am the hole to be
darned

the knitted soul
i am