Old Souls

Someone once told me I was an Old Soul. She also told me that just means I’m a very slow learner! Maybe, I just I love life so much that I want to keep coming back. (It works if you work it.) Most days, I love what I get to do in the world and I most certainly love the natural world. It sustains me. From catching a Humming Bird out of the corner of my eye, to seeing a Hawk riding the up-drafts, to the elegant-winged and ugly-headed Turkey Vultures  soaring from valley to hill, my head is up and searching the skies for and delighting in signs of life. Old souls may also be looking down for the life in the grass, the cracks, the hidden bugs under leaf and vine. 

When you've been around for several incarnations, you may get the hang of skills more quickly than your peers this lifetime. How can you tell a slow learner from the rest of the pack? Look for those subtle skills - like spatial visualization and continuity of color and consistency of bread dough and the little things that may otherwise go unnoticed. My Grammy hummed while she did menial tasks, as if nothing - from scrubbing toilets and floors to ironing and cooking supper for her family - could get her down. Look to the one who has had experience with navigating the troubles this lifetime and has come out the other side of trauma without too many scars or nicks or traits that slow her/him down. Look to the Old Souls to guide you through the storms of life.

The Old Soul may be a slow learner, but s/he has a lot of fun with life. It's not as serious as we might be led to believe. There's always room for a guffaw, a chortle, a hissy laugh through the nose or a sudden burst of soda through the nose when something suddenly catches you as FUNNY. Now, THAT strikes me as FUNNY. (I saw Robin Hayes do it with milk in 1956 when Ingrid Gemser made her laugh at lunch under the pergola at Elysian Heights Elementary School near downtown Los Angeles.)

Old Souls laugh a lot. They scratch their heads at the antics of their fellow humans who are too new to the planet to understand the meaning of life is to thrive... to grow and learn and stretch the boundaries of time and space to leap for the MilkyWay and know that what we are seeing is 100,000 years in the past. It takes light THAT long to travel in actual time from the nearest reaches of the Milky Way to our particular mud-ball spinning round one particular star in the galaxy. It's old news, folks. Maybe the Old Souls were around in a previous lifetime to receive the actual stellar waves of what we're only now able to SEE out there in the cosmos. We're tiny; our lives a blip on the cosmic calendar.

I believe that there are tesseracts... tubes through which we can travel at "warp speed" (Scotty) and take short-cuts to where ever we deem it is possible to go! I believe that we'll figure out this space/time/travel continuum thingy in the not too distant future and that we'll enjoy the ride until we decide to do something else.

Old Souls may have many many lifetimes under their belts, but the experience of loving one part of creation deeply, profoundly and unashamedly is probably the deepest and sweetest imprint to cherish. To have loved one human or all of humanity with passion and purpose and sacrifice, or to have loved one idea or set of ideas into being - THIS is the total lesson of all the lives of all the Creatures of all the galaxies in the Universe. Love. It isn’t trite. It’s true.

There has only ever been one song the UNI- verse. We were sung into being by this one song for this, and perhaps, many other lifetimes. I'm grateful for the life I've been given. I'm full of gratitude for the opportunities I've had to learn and to teach my fellow humans that laughter matters. Lightness of heart matters.

The ancient ones in Egypt had a scale - a mythic scale - that was used at the end of life to determine if your particular life was a successful life. Anubis, the Jackal Headed God, would place your heart on one  balancing pan and a feather on the other. If your heart were no heavier than the feather, you passed into eternal life with the lightness of that feather. To be light of heart has terrific value. It's good to remember in what we think of as heavy-hearted times that in the grand scheme, it's not so serious as we may think. Lightening up doesn't mean we stop actively fighting evil, it just means we can have a bit of fun with the work... humming optional.

I remember reading The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak wherein Death is the beginning narrator. Death describes the heft and color of each soul it gathers as it swoops over Nazi Germany liberating each from its torment and struggle. Some souls are light of color and of weight. Others are so heavy even indestructible Death has trouble freeing them from the body. Some are the color of night, the color of slime mold, the color of death itself. Still others are rainbow hued and silky of texture. Diaphanous. The gems in Marcus Zusak's tale number at least one per page. I hold onto the image of that release of souls as I watch with certain reverence and also irreverence the ordinary lift-off of souls as they depart. I'm happy to be alive. I'm happy to have had another swirl round the sun and to learn whatever I can this day so as to be available for yet another day and another year and perhaps several more life-times. Am I too attached to life? Perhaps. I don't care for ultimate rest as an enlightened being (evidently, we're all destined to become enlightened - some century) but I do love life and even in its most difficult moments, I cherish the authentic tears and terrors as they wash through me. Laughter is lovely. Laughter tickles. 

Life: It's all lovely and totally without equal in the universe. 

Old Souls never come back as rocks. Rockstars, maybe. But totally animated!