So we’re looking at the two sorts of energy, both of which, when all the bits and bobs, surface accoutrements, distractions and detours, are stripped away, are best understood as Love, because they are life, and if life isn’t love then there is no life (bit clumsy, but you see what I mean). The force which is Nature, flowing through everything, embodied or embedded or expressed or expelled, is just that; force. The wind, the sea, the force that makes plants and trees grow from seeds, that turns caterpillars into butterflies, that makes an engine run when you explode fuel inside it. Nature is as it is, no messing, no thinking, no pondering, no meditating. No sense of right or wrong, good or bad, morals or ethics. Unutterably beautiful, magnificent, red in tooth and claw, cruel and insensitive. Tidal waves, predators, beauty, ugliness, cruelty, kindness; it’s all part of it.
The force which is Soul (remembering each individual Soul is unique) is something else entirely. Conscious and ‘conscient’ energy, consciousness aware of itself, and able to enquire into and explore the nature of itself. It has tools to do this, superstructures which are there to mediate its relationship with the daily physical world; the mind, the intellect, the emotions, the senses. The trick, as anyone who meditates knows, is that to turn on our true sense of Self, get to the place of peace, power and love that engulfs us in the Bliss of Being, you have to turn those superstructures off. Teach yourself to let go. You can’t force your thoughts to stop; that is in itself a thought. Let it come, let it go, glimpse the clear water beneath, relax and gently bring yourself back to gazing into the still pool. You are the pool. Pure essence. Pure you. Pure Love. But this time, love with conscience. Con-science, self knowing. Nothing cruel about this love.