Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2002-05-25 05:32 pm
azurelunatic) wrote2002-05-25 05:32 pm
Logical Outline of Religion with regard to Soulmates
This is a copy/paste of comments I left here, feeding off a discussion... I felt it deserved reproducing here, partly to keep from getting into too tangled a nest of replies...
I briefly went into soulmates here...
The Platonic version does have its merits, but that's far too narrow a definition. First, it's perfectly possible to function without soulmate and be complete. It's just nicer to have someone to share with who has a compatible soultype. Second, it's not just one soulmate out there.
If you subscribe to a system of theism, the usual definition for Deity is "All that there is." This is composed of the usual bits: Things which people know, things which people are going to discover, and things that people won't discover.
Given that Deity is the set All That There Is, and humans exist, therefore humans are a subset of Deity.
Given that All That There Is, if not infinite, is Really Fucking Big, and the current known human lifespan is somewhat short of infinite, humans should not be confusing themselves with gods anytime soon.
If Deity is infinite, to fully understand Deity requires an infinite understanding. Human is finite. Finite Human cannot contain an infinite understanding (at least not for long and survive sane to report back). Therefore, no one Human can, at this time, fully understand Deity. Every individual Human's understanding of Deity is incomplete in some way.
If Deity is All That There Is, each Human's understanding of Deity is based on their experiences, both internal and external, with All That There Is. Being of limited lifespan and understanding, no one Human can experience each and every aspect of Deity. No human occupies the exact same position in spacetime. By that alone, every human has a different experience. No human has the same understanding of Deity.
That's the background.
Am choosing to define Soul, the quasi-mythical portion of the person that has the closest relationship to the Divine, under the umbrella of "things that humans have yet to fully understand/may never understand" to avoid conflicts over that at the moment. Bad logical practice, but it's done. I can't map the whole Deity in one essay. Perhaps map Soul as "The part of Human that is closest to understanding Divine".
In any case, as all Humans are a subset of All That There Is, we may all be logically viewed as "Children of the Divine", if one defines "Children" as "Smaller offshoot of self that has the chance of growing up to full understanding".
Every human is related to every other human, on first the very most basic level of subsets of All That There Is, and then on levels increasingly more complex and debatable.
Now we refer back to the bit where we noted that each human's understanding of the Divine was subject to certain logical limitations, involving space, time, and the relative durability/distribution of the human body/mind/attention span. Each human's understanding of the Divine is incomplete.
In most belief systems involving religion, there's often the urge to become closer to the Divine.
I propose that one's soulmate(s) are those with souls who have an understanding of the Divine both similar and different. Similar, so that there can be communication, and different, so that the differences may be shared to form a more complete picture out of the two perspectives. A binocular vision of the Divine, or at least part of it...
Soulmates, to me, are the optimal tradeoff between similar soul for good communication, and different soul for better overall understanding. There is no practical limit on the number of soulmates one may have. The only limit is how closely the user defines "soulmate" -- how much of a narrowed perspective offered by the soulmate closer in understanding, how much of an increased difficulty in communication offered by a soulmate with more differences.
I briefly went into soulmates here...
The Platonic version does have its merits, but that's far too narrow a definition. First, it's perfectly possible to function without soulmate and be complete. It's just nicer to have someone to share with who has a compatible soultype. Second, it's not just one soulmate out there.
If you subscribe to a system of theism, the usual definition for Deity is "All that there is." This is composed of the usual bits: Things which people know, things which people are going to discover, and things that people won't discover.
Given that Deity is the set All That There Is, and humans exist, therefore humans are a subset of Deity.
Given that All That There Is, if not infinite, is Really Fucking Big, and the current known human lifespan is somewhat short of infinite, humans should not be confusing themselves with gods anytime soon.
If Deity is infinite, to fully understand Deity requires an infinite understanding. Human is finite. Finite Human cannot contain an infinite understanding (at least not for long and survive sane to report back). Therefore, no one Human can, at this time, fully understand Deity. Every individual Human's understanding of Deity is incomplete in some way.
If Deity is All That There Is, each Human's understanding of Deity is based on their experiences, both internal and external, with All That There Is. Being of limited lifespan and understanding, no one Human can experience each and every aspect of Deity. No human occupies the exact same position in spacetime. By that alone, every human has a different experience. No human has the same understanding of Deity.
That's the background.
Am choosing to define Soul, the quasi-mythical portion of the person that has the closest relationship to the Divine, under the umbrella of "things that humans have yet to fully understand/may never understand" to avoid conflicts over that at the moment. Bad logical practice, but it's done. I can't map the whole Deity in one essay. Perhaps map Soul as "The part of Human that is closest to understanding Divine".
In any case, as all Humans are a subset of All That There Is, we may all be logically viewed as "Children of the Divine", if one defines "Children" as "Smaller offshoot of self that has the chance of growing up to full understanding".
Every human is related to every other human, on first the very most basic level of subsets of All That There Is, and then on levels increasingly more complex and debatable.
Now we refer back to the bit where we noted that each human's understanding of the Divine was subject to certain logical limitations, involving space, time, and the relative durability/distribution of the human body/mind/attention span. Each human's understanding of the Divine is incomplete.
In most belief systems involving religion, there's often the urge to become closer to the Divine.
I propose that one's soulmate(s) are those with souls who have an understanding of the Divine both similar and different. Similar, so that there can be communication, and different, so that the differences may be shared to form a more complete picture out of the two perspectives. A binocular vision of the Divine, or at least part of it...
Soulmates, to me, are the optimal tradeoff between similar soul for good communication, and different soul for better overall understanding. There is no practical limit on the number of soulmates one may have. The only limit is how closely the user defines "soulmate" -- how much of a narrowed perspective offered by the soulmate closer in understanding, how much of an increased difficulty in communication offered by a soulmate with more differences.
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Bibliography
Bujold, Lois McMaster. The Curse of Chalion
Hisamoto, Dr. Robert (KL7AM). Personal conversations.
Respectfully, I have to disagree....
But to me, when someone says, "You're a soulmate to me," frequently means, "I've decided I don't have to work on this relationship and I'm now going to rest on my laurels while all my expectations are fulfilled without communication and all my boundaries are maintained even though I don't express them or enforce them."
Maybe I'm just too cynical. I would like to believe in soulmates, it is a beautiful, poetic, romantic concept. There are certainly times when I feel as though I have merged with my lover, joined with him or her, made myself completely connected. But I know that is not something that can be counted on - it takes work, aggressive honesty, and communication.
Which is not to say that you don't have those things with the people you call soulmates. My only point here is that I believe that sometimes people can use the word "soulmate" to take advantage over others.
A Definition Thing
no subject
So, finite attention span, and cannot pay attention to all of the fractal details at once. But still.