Do you believe your soul is returning here in various lives to work out all that you need to learn to evolve? Or, are you a person who perhaps believes in only one life, but also the eternal aspect of the soul after that one life? Or, are you someone who does not believe in either; there is one life and no afterlife?

I’m not here to say what is “right or wrong”, or what someone else “should or shouldn’t” believe, but only to share my own process on this idea of the evolving soul.

From a very young age, I always felt within me the presence of a higher creative power at work in the world. (If you’re sensitive, you can feel it between the lines in everything. The Native peoples call this “the web of life”.) However, exploring my feeling of this higher energy within the Christian church as a child, and again later as an adult, did not satisfy within me a suspicion that we need way more than one life to encompass all the learning a soul needs to perfect and move back to the One. I also could not accept the idea of a punishing God. (What truly loving being “punishes”?) I also could not accept the idea that such a God would dole out a life of poverty and strife to one person, while giving another a life of relative ease and wealth.

I think we have various experiences, over as many lifetimes as we need, to learn the important principles that various spiritual masters have come here to teach us. And, within each life we, and only we, are responsible for our choices, and the outcome of our lessons. (Taking responsibility eliminates the victim mentality and blame.) Ofttimes we also have other souls that will return to us again within several lives, different bodies playing different roles, so that we can work out our lessons together.

Religious institutions, although they play a role of bringing people together to explore spirituality, can also be one of the great dividers in society. What religion who is truly oriented to nurturing a spiritually evolved society, would condone or promote hatred of another? There are many paths to becoming spiritually evolved, and should we not be simply all helping each other on that path, if the positive evolution of humanity is indeed the common goal?

Eternally

We don’t remember
our other soul lives spent here,
alien Earth plane.

Swaths of sand smooth and
soften hard edges of lost
civilizations.

We visit, then with
infinite impermanence,
return to dust too.

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Soul Mate

Eternal surprise,
all the hellos and goodbyes,
right there in your eyes.

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Eternal Rhythm

The golden leaves fall,
fearing not the decay of
a coming winter.

Death is essential
to the renewal of life –
All will spring again.

If each in nature
can feel this simple rhythm,
so can humans too.

Why do we resist?
Our fears overshadow the
truth of our being.

But the fall leaves know,
they show us that we too will
green the tree anew.

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© Susan L Hart 2025 Soul Journey is a free read.

Read it online, or download the PDF here.