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[GentleWanderer]

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[AnthroHeart]

Yeah, the soul is said to splinter.

[Adonai One]

According to Harry Potter, when you kill a person you split your soul, and you can place it within a series of objects to grant you immortality.

Like Harry Potter, there are many other fictional tales.

[anagogy]

I feel like there is a lot of confusion in regards to the topic of "soul retrieval".  It's not that you are losing chunks or splinters of your "soul", rather, it is that portions of your subconscious attention are being directed into destructive patterns of consciousness.  In other words, you have some malware operating in the background of your consciousness you need to clean up.  I can understand the confusion, however, because if you plumb the depths of the orange ray layer of your consciousness (I call it the "dream layer" because most people dream here at night) you come across all sorts of "aspects" of yourself that manifest as objective symbols.  So I can understand how a shaman might be plumbing the depths of another's orange ray, or their own orange ray, and come across these aspects of self and think of them as splinters of someones soul that need integrating.  It isn't exactly like that, but I can see how someone would confusedly interpret i that way.

[Parsons]

This is more general knowledge than explicitly stated in the Law of One: you are a soul who possess a body, not a body who possess a soul. So the idea of 'losing your soul' seems dubious to me. However, I tend to agree more with anagogy's statement.

[GentleWanderer]

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[Brian_Sanchez]

I think that we're always connected to our soul and I would say we are filled with our soul* more and more as we further our progression in spiritual growth as we all splintered from the one infinite creator, so gathering back the pieces (but always having a connection to them in the first place).

[anagogy]

Yes it can be confusing because i don't know what the shamans means by soul : is it what leaves the body after death and continue its evolution (Ra would say that after death the entity undergoes healing...) ?  Or is it what is called the Higher Self by Ra. It's confusing because the terms Higher Self, Soul, soul (astral and or mental body), Spirit, Oversoul, Monad are used by differents authors and it's not easy to know the connections.

According to you it is just about subconscious patterns ? I also thought about that. An enlightened being like Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi or Buddha is someone who has worked enough on himself to let his Soul enter, pervade and live within his body and mind to a very high degre. So don't you think that a person could be more or less connected and "filled" with her Soul ?

Well, it depends what you mean by "soul".  From my perspective "soul" is consciousness.  So those factors which reduce consciousness are the only things blocking "soul" or "spirit" from expressing fully.  So we have to ask ourselves, what is it that lowers consciousness?  Again, it is simply that which harnesses the energy of consciousness (attention) and then *traps* it in destructive mental patterns.  These are the patterns I spoke up before.  Ironically, in all those individuals you mentioned, they unanimously found that it was their very egos (which many would interpret as their "individual souls"), that stood in the way of realizing the highest nature of Being.  

As far as occult terminology, I agree those terms are confusing.  There is a more organic way to think about all that stuff when you understand the fundamental and functional basis for what we call: mind, body, and spirit.  All three are focuses of consciousness.  Mind is inner projected consciousness, body is outer projected consciousness, and spirit is the relationship between the two (you can think of it as the "integrator" between the subject/object nexus).  Another way to look at it is that spirit is looking in the mirror of mind, and seeing the reflection of matter.  The mirror will only reflect a true image of spirit when it is distortion free.  If their are smudges on the mirror, the reflection will not accurately show the nature of spirit.  The work of meditation -- of harnessing attention away from these patterns of mind which trap consciousness is akin to "polishing" our mental mirrors.  In time, with enough polishing, our minds will become pure reflectors of spirit, and we too will find our core of being.              

[Bourbon Betty]

I feel like there is a lot of confusion in regards to the topic of "soul retrieval".  It's not that you are losing chunks or splinters of your "soul", rather, it is that portions of your subconscious attention are being directed into destructive patterns of consciousness.  In other words, you have some malware operating in the background of your consciousness you need to clean up.

"Who's consciousness is it that these changes are happening in."

[Diana]

Soul Retrieval may just be another way of describing Fragmentation. When there is a trauma which threatens to undo us, we isolate that part of ourselves and bury the memories and feelings. This can be seen when adults suddenly are triggered to remember a sexual abuse as a child, when they had no memory of it before. It's a useful skill regarding survival, but presents as a barrier later on. The isolated portion still triggers us, and we don't know why.

So Soul Retrieval is presumably the shamanistic method of reintegrating those portions of our emotional selves, which have been fragmented and isolated from our consciousness to protect us, back into our conscious awareness. By doing so we can shed the triggers we react to without knowing why we are reacting. 

I had a dream once years ago that a spirit guide dug a room out under the house I grew up in and showed me a large, pristine room with only a bed in it and a child sleeping in the bed. The child was me, at age 6 or so. I went to the bed and sat on it, and asked my little-girl self if she wanted to come with me. She looked tired and said no. I "knew" at that point there was a room beyond that one where my 13-year-old self was sleeping. Oddly, I'd had that dream when vacationing in Jamaica. After that dream, I had the intention of reintegrating that little-girl self back into my consciousness, and sometimes meditated on it. About 6 years later I was sitting at my computer, and out of blue I felt that little-girl self come right into my heart. I felt a wave of emotion. I think this is an example of Soul Retrieval. The 13-year-old has not awakened yet.

I think we all repress traumas. I also think that the intention of wanting to reintegrate all parts of the self, however they may have been repressed, will start the process of uncovering those "lost" portions under guard and protection.

[GentleWanderer]

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[Minyatur]

I associated these concepts more with the mind than the soul when thinking/discussing them but I'd say the relationship between mind/soul makes drawing the line hard.

Going with past incarnational experiences also make it harder to attribute with solely the mind.

[Nicholas]

Soul Retrieval may just be another way of describing Fragmentation. When there is a trauma which threatens to undo us, we isolate that part of ourselves and bury the memories and feelings. This can be seen when adults suddenly are triggered to remember a sexual abuse as a child, when they had no memory of it before. It's a useful skill regarding survival, but presents as a barrier later on. The isolated portion still triggers us, and we don't know why.

So Soul Retrieval is presumably the shamanistic method of reintegrating those portions of our emotional selves, which have been fragmented and isolated from our consciousness to protect us, back into our conscious awareness. By doing so we can shed the triggers we react to without knowing why we are reacting. 

I had a dream once years ago that a spirit guide dug a room out under the house I grew up in and showed me a large, pristine room with only a bed in it and a child sleeping in the bed. The child was me, at age 6 or so. I went to the bed and sat on it, and asked my little-girl self if she wanted to come with me. She looked tired and said no. I "knew" at that point there was a room beyond that one where my 13-year-old self was sleeping. Oddly, I'd had that dream when vacationing in Jamaica. After that dream, I had the intention of reintegrating that little-girl self back into my consciousness, and sometimes meditated on it. About 6 years later I was sitting at my computer, and out of blue I felt that little-girl self come right into my heart. I felt a wave of emotion. I think this is an example of Soul Retrieval. The 13-year-old has not awakened yet.

I think we all repress traumas. I also think that the intention of wanting to reintegrate all parts of the self, however they may have been repressed, will start the process of uncovering those "lost" portions under guard and protection.

I love this! Thanks for sharing Diana as it is similar to my own experience. 

[AnthroHeart]

I don't know. I was sexually "abused" as a young kid, and it never bothered me. It excited me.
I've never blamed the lady who did it. So there was no trauma from that.

[Diana]

You mentioned fragmentation, i just saw that the title of Sandra Ingerman's book was "Soul Retrieval:  Mending the Fragmented Self".
It seems that soul loss, or fragmentation is caused by not wanting to experience and feel strong unpleasant emotions that occurs.
In his talk "Sitting through pain & catharsis" Scott Mandelker talked about the necessity to be willing to feel once pain and to be able to
be grateful for it. He said that wanting to avoid or repress pain is an agression upon oneself. What i understand is that being able to feel the pain will start to heal it and allows the soul part or subconscious pattern to reintegrate.

I do agree that at some point we need to be willing to feel pain, no matter how challenging. As children, when something traumatic happens we usually can't make that choice, but as an evolving adult, I think we must be willing to be conscious of it all and move on. I struggle with that in being here in this world, where so much suffering goes on—it's one thing to bear your own suffering and another level altogether to bear the suffering you observe in the world.

What i don't understand is that shaman think that a part of your soul can be stolen by another ill intentioned person you had a toxic relationship with.

I don't think anything is stolen. I think there are energy exchanges which happen. I think you can leave parts of yourself with others, and parts of others can lodge in you, with those you are enmeshed with. These parts can be given back and retrieved. Sexual relationships have yet another level to energy exchanges. And everything is multilayered and intertwined.

I've also read that you can retrieve soul parts from a past live.

I don't see why that wouldn't be possible. I worked with a girl whose mother saw a hypnotist for her asthma and she spontaneously regressed to a past life. While under she relived a past life where she and her husband killed their 2 children and themselves because they were starving. After the session her asthma disappeared and her daughter (the girl I worked with) understood why she was afraid of dolls and knives (her father killed her with a knife while holding her doll). Her mother in this life was her mother in that past life, and the past life mother had killed the son by strangulation (which created the asthma in this life).

Diana, do you sense that your 6 years old part is still living and integrated in you now  ?

Yes. Absolutely. I have a renewed sense of playfulness. I have a Hello Kitty license plate cover.

[GentleWanderer]

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