The Nature of the Soul
Inspired by the Gospel of Mary
The soul does not belong to this world, though it is born into it. Nor does it belong to time, though it moves within time. It is a mystery concealed within flesh, an invisible sanctuary through which the Eternal beholds creation. Before it ever entered the womb, before it clothed itself in memory, language, history, or form, it rested in the silent knowledge of the One from whom it came. It knew nothing of division, for it had not yet learned the illusion of “I” and “other.” It existed as light exists within the sun—not separate from its source, yet capable of radiating its own unique brilliance.
The tragedy of the human condition is not that the soul has fallen from God, but that consciousness has become fascinated with its own reflections. We mistake the movement of the mind for the movement of the soul. We mistake emotion for being, thought for wisdom, identity for essence. Gradually, we begin to live from the surface of ourselves, until the voice of the world becomes louder than the silent knowing that has always dwelt within. Yet nothing essential has been lost. The soul has never ceased to remember what the mind has forgotten. It waits with extraordinary patience beneath every fear, every ambition, every wound, and every certainty, not asking to be improved, but to be uncovered.
The Gospel of Mary reveals that liberation is not an ascent into another world, but a descent into the deepest truth of our own being. The soul does not journey toward God as though crossing an immeasurable distance. Rather, it awakens from the dream that there has ever been a distance to cross. Every veil that falls away reveals that what we sought was already seeking us; what we longed to behold had always been beholding us. This is why true awakening often feels less like discovering something new than remembering something infinitely ancient. The soul recognizes Truth with the intimacy of one who has never ceased to belong to it.
For this reason, the soul cannot ultimately be wounded by the world. The personality may be wounded. The body may suffer. The heart may break. Even the mind may descend into confusion. But the soul remains untouched because its being does not arise from circumstance; it arises from the Divine. Just as the depths of the sea remain undisturbed though storms rage upon its surface, so the soul abides in a stillness that no violence can invade and no sorrow can diminish. It carries within itself an uncreated silence, a sanctuary where the Breath of God is eternally being breathed.
Mary Magdalene understood that the spiritual path is not the perfection of the self but its transparenting. Every attachment to a false identity obscures the radiance already present. Every judgment, every fear, every claim of possession adds another veil between consciousness and Reality. The work is therefore not to become holy, but to cease identifying with that which is not holy. The soul does not become light; it ceases to believe it is darkness. It does not acquire Divine Life; it discovers that Divine Life has always been its hidden ground.
Perhaps this is why the Risen Christ first appeared to Mary Magdalene. She had learned to love beyond possession, to remain beyond certainty, and to seek beyond appearances. She recognized Him not because her eyes perceived more clearly than those of the others, but because her soul had become sufficiently transparent for Truth to recognize itself within her. This is the great mystery: it is not we who first behold God, but God who beholds Himself through the soul that has remembered its own original nature.
The destiny of the soul is therefore neither escape nor reward. Its destiny is participation. It is to become so emptied of illusion that the Divine Life flows through it without resistance, until every thought, every word, every gesture, and every breath become a revelation of the Love from which it has never been separate. In this awakening, the soul discovers that eternity was never waiting beyond death. Eternity has always been the deepest dimension of the present moment, where God is forever giving Himself to creation and creation is forever returning itself to God.
St. Teresa of Ávila, the Spanish Christian Mystic, invites us into this same mystery when she writes that the soul is like a castle fashioned entirely from a single diamond or a crystal of perfect clarity, containing many dwelling places. The soul is not merely something that possesses God as one object among many. Rather, it is a living temple whose innermost chamber has always been inhabited by the Divine Presence. The tragedy, St. Teresa observes, is not that God is absent from the soul, but that we spend our lives wandering through its outer rooms, fascinated by distractions, fears, and attachments, rarely venturing toward the radiant center where God eternally dwells.
Yet even St. Teresa’s castle must be approached with reverence, for the soul is not simply a structure through which we pass from room to room. The soul is itself a living mystery. It cannot be measured by psychology, nor exhausted by philosophy, because it participates in the very life of God. Every movement toward its center is simultaneously a movement beyond ourselves. The deeper we descend into the soul, the less we encounter the isolated self and the more we encounter the Infinite. What first appeared to be “my soul” gradually reveals itself to be the place where Divine Love has always been giving itself without measure.
This is why every authentic mystical tradition speaks of self-emptying before it speaks of illumination. The soul cannot be filled because it is empty; it must be emptied because it is already full. It is full of images, identities, opinions, fears, ambitions, and subtle claims of ownership that obscure the One who silently waits beneath them all. The journey inward is therefore not an accumulation of spiritual experiences, but a gradual relinquishment of everything that is not Real. As each veil falls away, the soul does not become more divine; it discovers that its deepest ground has always rested in the Divine Ground.
Perhaps this is what Mary Magdalene understood more deeply than any of the disciples. She sought neither certainty nor power, neither position nor recognition. She sought only the Beloved. And because she loved beyond possession, she became capable of perceiving a reality hidden from those who still looked with the eyes of the world. The Risen Christ was not revealed to her because she had acquired greater knowledge, but because love had made her soul transparent enough for Truth to shine through it.
Perhaps the greatest misunderstanding is that we believe we have a soul.
We speak of my soul as though it were another possession, another part of ourselves that we occasionally remember to care for. Yet the mystics invite us to reverse the question entirely.
What if it is not that you have a soul…
What if the soul has you?
What if the soul is the deeper reality, and the personality is simply the temporary garment it wears for a little while?
Imagine standing on the shore watching the waves. No wave has an independent existence. It rises, takes on a unique form, dances for a few moments in the light, and then returns to the sea. If the wave could speak, it might say, “This is my ocean.” Yet the truth is exactly the opposite.
The ocean has become the wave.
Perhaps the soul is like this.
We spend our lives saying, “This is my soul.”
But the soul gently whispers,
“This is my life.”
The soul has taken your face.
It has borrowed your hands.
It has learned to speak through your voice.
It has chosen your joys, your sorrows, your relationships, your gifts, even your wounds—not because these define it, but because they become the sacred language through which Love can become visible in this particular lifetime.
Your life is not separate from your soul.
It is the very place where your soul is learning how to reveal God in a way that has never existed before and will never exist again.
This changes everything.
For the question is no longer,
“What does my soul want?”
The question becomes,
“What is my soul trying to reveal through the life it has entrusted to me?”
Every encounter is a revelation.
Every joy is an opening.
Every sorrow is a teacher.
Every exile is a deeper return.
Every breath is an opportunity for the invisible to become visible.
The soul does not ask us to escape our humanity. It asks us to become so fully inhabited by the Divine that our humanity itself becomes transparent to Love.
Upcoming Events
Join me for the Magdalene – Christos Shabbat for the Month of August. Online Gathering. CLICK HERE
Lion´s Gate Creating Soul Ceremony and Workshop. CLICK HERE
The Aramaic Path of the Rose Accredited Training. Online. CLICK HERE
Mary Magdalene and the 13 Petalled Rose. Online 13 Day Journey only available in the month of Virgo. Registration is open. CLICK HERE
Sending love and blessings to all of you.
AHAVA,
Ana Otero
