Heraldry of Soul -
what is it
Hi! I, Dr. Alexander Zelitchenko, a
philosopher, a psychologist, a historian and a theologian, invite you to make a
pilgrimage inside your own soul and to be granted your Coat of Soul at the end
of this expedition.
1.
What is a Coat of Soul and why is it a Coat of Soul
A Coat of Soul is a portrait of your
soul. A Coat of Arms aims to tell everybody about the merits of its possessor:
how good he is, what merits he has, and so on. The Coat of Soul also tells
about its possessor, but not only about his merits. It tells about his soul and
the soul's Way: about the possessor’s personality and talents, about the
conscious, the subconscious and the superconscious, about the forces that lift the person up and push him down, about the
person's goals and what helps a person reach these goals and what hinders him.
Different forms of shield, different
objects (ordinary in the language of classic heraldry), different colors, and
so on – all these are the symbols that tell about your soul.
Who needs a Coat of Soul? First, you do.
Why do you need it? To free yourself
from everything that tries to make you a slave and to gain the ability to move
along your Way as fast as possible.
Difficult
to understand? Thus, I need to open to you some
secrets, which you cannot learn at the usual school.
2.
Academic science and esoteric science
Besides all known academic science that
is taught in public schools, another science is studied in another sort of
school. This is the so-called esoteric or mystery science, although there is
nothing mysterious in it. Everybody may study it, but only if a person has
prepared himself for this kind of education - exactly in the same manner a
person must prepare himself to study, say, theoretical physics.
There are many esoteric schools. Some of
them are closely related to conventional religions – the mystics of western
Christianity, hesychasm of Orthodox Christianity, Sufism in Islam, Kabbalah in
Judaism, Dzogchen in Buddhism.
Other esoteric schools such as
Hermetism, Alchemy, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, theosophy, and dozens others
are more "religion-independent" (although each of them represents its
own religion).
All these schools tell the same picture
of the world, but sometimes in so different words that it is difficult to
understand that they speak about the same thing. The difference between the
schools is that they address different students. As a result, although they
speak of the same world and even of same goal of all human beings in the world,
each of them focuses on its own methods to reach this common goal.
One world and one aim are what make the
different schools similar. Different students and different ways are what make
them different.
Further, I will speak of the common esoteric view on the
world, which often differs from those of academic science.
3.
Esotericism in five minutes (philosophy and psychology)
In spite of the views of good old
academic science, even older esoteric science knows that the person does not
die psychologically when he dies physically. A physical body is only a dress of
the soul, and when the dress wears out, the soul simply changes it.
Of course, this is not
"simply" at all. For example, it is not necessary for the old
physical body to be replaced by a new physical body, as popular theories of
reincarnation addressed to very naive people say. But this is the essence of
what happens when a person dies.
What is the sense in all these changes?
To understand this, we must know that
besides the well-known physical world there is another, not less real subtle
(or fine) world, which we come to know through our mental experience.
The human soul lives in the fine world
and is itself a part of the fine world. It is possible to say that the soul is
made from fine material.
While living a sequence of its lives, a
soul changes itself and rises. What does this mean?
Some layers of the fine world are finer
and others are coarser. This is like the atmosphere of the earth, where the
higher we rise the more rarified (finer)the air
becomes. In contrast to the atmosphere, however, where the higher finer layers
are poorer (containing less air) than the lower coarser ones, in the fine
(spiritual) world, the finer layers are richer (containing more information, in
the language of computer science). Because of this, the higher layers of the
psychosphere of earth are brighter than the lower ones.
A human soul lives in several layers of
the fine world. Dark sides of the human mind, such as fears and anger, belong
to the lower layers, whereas the bright sides as, for example, feelings of
beauty, to the higher.
However, both fears and feelings of
beauty reside not in the lowest and the highest floors of the soul,
correspondingly. Both fears and feelings of beauty belong to the conscious part
of the soul. In the soul, however, there are the unconscious parts as well: the
lower unconscious part is called the sub-conscious and the upper unconscious
part is called the superconscious.
The human soul bridges the coarser
layers of the fine world with the finer ones. A human being works as a
transformer of the flows, which come from the lower and the upper layers of the
fine world and vice versa. Everything we hear, read and speak, all our ideas, opinions,
and thoughts are such flows.
Different people work in different
ranges, some people in the upper ones than others.
What is most important,
however, is that each soul in the course of the soul’s development rises from
the lower layers to the upper ones - from foolishness to wisdom, from envy to
kindness, or in other words, from imperfection to Perfection.
We all are alpinists climbing the
Mountain. And our climbing does not end even when we die. (Of course this does
not reduce the value of each minute of life even when it seems to be
meaningless because each minute provides us with such opportunities for
development, which we will not have after physical death.)
Academic science is rather far yet from
these discoveries, but esoteric science has always known this.
4.
The way of the soul
We are all climbing, but we are climbing
by different paths. Moreover, we carry with us different backpacks with
different climbing equipment. But what is even more important is that each of
us is winded by the whole net of different climbing ropes, which connect us
with our numerous visible and invisible companions in our climbing.
All the "flows" we transform,
i.e. all our ideas, opinions, thoughts, are such ropes, or to put it more
accurately, the threads of such ropes. Thus, we are living in the very complex
field of different forces, which we experience in our minds as our wishes,
feelings, goals, etc. Some of them force us up, others – down. But we are not
aware of all these forces, which act on us and determine our lives. Many of
them exist in our unconscious: the subconscious ones force us down, the
superconscious - up.
Your climbing equipment includes, among
other things, your abilities, your personal traits, your knowledge and your
skills. But there is one thing among your climbing equipment that is absolutely
wonderful. This device is a furnace that melts the weight that pulls you down
into the step of your climbing ladder.
Such transforming is your only
possibility to grow your ladder and thus to lift yourself up. This device is
self-awareness. By becoming aware of your own vices you are becoming free of
them and are subordinating them to you.
In this meaning, your spiritual
development is a struggle with your vices, and self-awareness is your most
powerful weapon in this battle.
However, although all religions teach
this wisdom (e.g. repentance in Christianity, or karmic knots healing in
Buddhism) only very few people know about it. Now you are one of them.
You develop all the time, and it is not
important whether you know about your development or not, whether you notice
your own development or not, or whether you move up or temporarily go down in
preparation for the future move up. However, when you are aware of your own
development you receive an opportunity, which you have not had earlier, to
accelerate it.
Now I may tell you why a Coat of Soul is
so valuable for you.
5. Meaning and Usefulness of Troubles
You are in trouble – unhappy
love, shortage of money, illness, loss of near one… For what?! Do I deserve
this!?! Although it may be cruelly sound, yes you do.
Each of us is hiking to the Top
of Mountain following his own trail, which is his shortest way to the Summit,
but it is a shortest way only for him. This trail comes through the awareness
of secret deeps of his individuality. However, not everybody likes the work of
self-cognition and self-analysis. There are many more pleasurable things to do
– dances, parties, drinking beer… Troubles are the response of World on such
our laziness. They force us to wake up and to start an inner work, for which in
other case we would not find a time. Thus, our troubles (like our vices, which
are closely related with our troubles) are the fuel for the engine of
self-awareness that lifts us up.
However, the need in this fuel exists just until the moment when we
become aware of the reason of trouble. As soon as we realize it (and thus lift
ourselves above it) the trouble ends.
Let us consider an
unhappy love. It may teach you a lot.
For example, you may discover own spiritual blindness, i.e. your
inability to see your beloved as he is in a reality, e.g. to see that he does
not need your passionate love. Or you may discover the selfish character of
your love, when what seems to you to be “I love him” is indeed “I love myself”
and your sweetheart may feel this. This is why his ignorance may be a form of his
response on your inability to love him, and as soon as you will begin to really
love him he will begin to respond you with his love. There are also a lot of other lessons we may
learn from the “unhappy” love. And, even if your love will not become
reciprocal after all, that lesson may be priceless for you. Moreover, when you
reject to extract the meaning of the lesson that one trouble
gives you, the life will prepare for you another lesson and so on until some
new trouble helps you to cut the rope that forces you down.
An understanding of this
esoteric law comes with big difficulties. However, even more difficult to
realize that many of you troubles are not personal yours, but they are common
for some groups you belong to. And to lift your above these collective troubles,
overall group has to become aware of them.
Unfair? Why I must suffer for others?! No, this
is quite fair because the significant part of your self is just “others”, “we”.
This is one more esoteric law.
6. Why do you need a coat of soul
The better you know yourself the faster
you move up. The process of creating your Coat of Soul itself gives you the
instrument for self-cognition. To make your Coat of Soul you must stay alone
and travel in your own soul, think about yourself and answer to yourself a
number of questions. If you wish, nobody else will know your answers. On the
other hand, you are free to share them with as many people as you want, if that
is what you wish. The most important thing is that you will know these answers.
This will make you a more powerful fighter with your masters and a more skilful
climber of that Mountain we all climb.
However, beware! Nobody knows what you
will discover inside of yourself. All of us keep inside ourselves a lot of
beings we would not like to deal with, and your discoveries may be rather
unpleasant, painful, or even frightful. But such pain is necessary for you to
start breaking free from your chains, to transform these same chains, which
prevent you from developing, into the instrument that would serve your
development.
Besides a coat of soul helps
you to better understand yourself, it helps you to better understand other
people and your relationships with them. For example, you may try to draw the
coat of soul of your near one. Is it easy for you? Now draw the coat of soul of
him as you want he be. How similar are these two coats of soul? Now try to draw
his coat of soul as you think he would draw it himself, and invite him to draw
his coat of soul himself and show the result to you. Compare these coats and
decide whether you know your near one well enough. It is possible to invent a
lot of such exercises and each of them will discover for you the new sides of
your personality, of your near one, and of your relationships. However, be
careful: the knowledge of how your friend thinks about you may be painful, if
he thinks worse than you are expecting he does.
Thus, try injuring neither him, nor yourself when you build coats of
soul together.
I hope, however, that in your travel
inside yourself, what is interesting and useful will prevail over what is
unpleasant.
Welcome to CoatOfSoul.com!