Welcome to Renovating the Soul Podcast. I am your host, Alexandria Robinson, and I am so elated that you have joined me today for episode number eight. Renovating the Soul is all about doing the hard work of looking deep within so that we can take control of our lives instead of letting life happen to us. I am thankful for each of you. If this is your first time here, if you're a returning listener, I'm so excited and thankful that you have decided to tune in, and I'm really excited for today's episode. Before we jump in, I was like, let me give some life updates because I want to build an audience and a connection with you, Ashisaj. I want to build a connection with my audience, right? So I am eight months pregnant, which is why you guys hear all of these deep breaths, even though I haven't been doing anything, just talking gets me out of breath. But um, last week or two weeks ago, I got to go to Vegas with my husband, and let me tell you guys, eight months pregnant in Vegas was a dream. The food was so good. When I got back to Washington, I was like, Man, please put me on a plane and take me back to Bay, take me back to Vegas. I could have spent the rest of my pregnancy there just trying a bunch of different food until I had to go into labor. Um, but we are getting ready to welcome our fourth little boy. Yeah, four boys, which is crazy, which is I shouldn't say it like this, but I don't talk about it a lot because I really thought that I would have a girl in this life. And I guess God was like, nah, nah, pimp. You're gonna have you're gonna be thugging it out with these crazy boys. So, yes, we are getting ready to have our fourth boy here pretty soon. So, um, we're on episode eight. This season's gonna go to episode 10. Once the season wraps up, I was already planning on like a few months break, but that'll kind of be my maternity leave, and then we'll come back for season two in the fall. But I just thought, like, yeah, let me give some like life updates, talk about just regular life before we jump into you know the podcast episode. But um, as I mentioned, I'm I'm always, but I am I am excited for today's episode. I know I always say that, but I am. Um, I think I've shared this in another podcast or in another episode. I think I shared it that I get really excited for these episodes because a lot of these thoughts have just been in my head or in my journals or conversations with like people here and there, and so being able to sit down and organize the thoughts and share them with you all and listen to how they're helping you or though how they're challenging you or what questions come up for you is just really exciting and it's helping me to grow and learn. So I'm just really enjoying this journey with you all, and I hope you all are enjoying the journey with me. A few episodes back, we did our first soul talk, and I introduced this idea of soul talks where we talked about renovating. What does it mean to renovate? What does that process look like? And the idea behind these soul talks is to be intentional with having these conversations specifically on the soul because the podcast is renovating the soul. But if you've been around, or even if you've just taken a glance at the topics that we've discussed so far, we've talked about projecting bodily awareness, grief, right? These things that you wouldn't necessarily have to say soul in, but we have seen through those episodes how a lot of those things or all of those topics that we discussed have start they start from within. And so while we're not addressing specifics about the soul in every episode, or we're not talking about what renovating looks like in every episode, I want to make sure that we do have these pauses for us to have these discussions on the soul. What does the you know what what is what is what is a soul, right? What's a part of our soul? Um, what is renovating? What what does that process look like in our everyday lives? And the episode you all really enjoyed was that very first one, uh, why the soul matters. And a lot of you all came and said, and I think I might have mentioned this again before in another episode, but a lot of you all said, I didn't realize that you know my soul was so important, essentially, is kind of what people were saying. Or, yeah, you're right, maybe I should start paying more attention to the inner parts of me, right? That that I mean, it's it's all of you, like your soul is you, your soul is who you are, it's your personality, it's your emotions, and so that's kind of what we're gonna talk about today, but it's going to be from the um view of ancient philosophers, and I guess not not just the view of ancient philosophers, but where our ideas of the soul started and stemmed from stem from. Um, you're talking about, you know, you probably are familiar with some of the names of ancient philosophers, Plato, uh, Aristotle, Socrates, right? These names that are thrown around, but you have Homer and Seneca and a lot of other ancient philosophers that have influenced us, whether we know it or not. I think that's the thing a lot of us don't realize is how much of these uh of the ideas or the thoughts and the developments that um these ancient philosophers had way back in 600, 500, 700, 800, right 900 BC, how those thoughts as they are have been the foundation for what we understand today. So we're going to look at the early thoughts surrounding the soul from ancient philosophers and how within their time period, how the ideas and the thoughts um and how their critical thinking on the soul had evolved just between them as philosophers. And we will see the implications for what that means today. I'll make sure to show us those big highlights for what that means today and for what we understand um of the soul today, right? And I love this journey that we're gonna take today because we are gonna see how one philosopher's ideas affected the next philosopher's ideas and how they were expanded upon and built upon as time went on and as more critical thinking and assessing was was done about the soul. Um, this was a big topic, right? Of how does our soul affect our life, affect the the functions, affect who we are, right? What is the relationship between our soul and our body? What is the relationship between our soul and life? You know, questions that I'm sure a lot of us still have today. Does your soul go on after you die, or when you die, does your soul um uh what's the word I'm looking for? Does your soul uh dissolve, right? Does it does it go go away too? Or does it live on the ponder? So it's it's so exciting, it's so good. I'm really excited to be talking about this. I want to talk a little bit about why we're looking at ancient philosophers and why philosophy in itself is just important to understand. I am a novice to the philosophy world, to the ancient philosophers world. I've just gotten into philosophy in the last year and a half, two years. Not that again, not that I haven't come across it and didn't know the names and haven't read things here and there, especially during college and all of those things, but really doing my own deep dives and um and just finding like the love of it and the beauty in it is very new for me. And I can testify and say that in reading um the views and in reading a lot of these topics, I've gained so much insight and wisdom from how they see in the world, and that's why of philosophy, or why we take from the ancient philosophers, because again, whether we realize it or not, many modern ideas and fields of study came from the works of ancient philosophers. We're talking about many ideas and and fields of study today, they have influenced you know, ethics, politics, science. There's almost no field that a philosopher cannot touch, or that philosophy cannot influence or touch, or hasn't, right? Not to say that everything's been exhausted, but philosophy has had its hands in so much of the way the world functions, who we are and how we function um with one another. And then I I would say probably two of the biggest things for me about why philosophy is important, not even just the ancient philosophy, but even like you know, modern philosophy too, is that there that but with the ancient philosophers, right? Their insights and observations have stood the test of time. So as we have evolved and as we've gotten more technology and more savvy, and you know, we've developed as human beings and as societies all across the world, the ideas from the ancient philosophers have stood the test of time through all of that. There are a lot of things, right, that have been tested and and and tried and found not to be true. But when we look at ancient philosophers, we're seeing that the the things that they believe, the things that they seen, the the uh finality of where they landed on some of the ideas, right? Again, has developed into our modern ideas and fields of study and and just have influenced our lives all around, right? And then again, another critical piece for me is that their work came with critical thinking and analytical skills, so it's not just sitting around going, like you know, twiddling your thumbs and being able to say whatever you want, you know. Well, you know what I mean? Um, because I think we have to realize that even though people talk, even though people research, even though people get on a stage and they say things, it does not mean that what they're saying is actually been tested, it doesn't mean that what they are saying is actually been thought about or that they're using, you know, logic and reasoning and like we said, critical thinking skills and analytical skills to come to that conclusion. We can really sit down, and I and that's another thing about the about a bunch of memes that I see on Instagram or comments that I see on Instagram where people are tired of folks starting podcasts because they're just sitting down and saying whatever they want and there's no backing for it. I'm not even gonna get into a conversation that I saw recently on a podcast, but let's just say they were talking about something that I thought was very important with no facts and just saying whatever they want. And I mean, if you're smart enough, right, you know not to take things from those people, but I mean that's the thing when C's are planted in your mind, or or you hear something, right? Even if it's false, you may not necessarily know it's false in that moment, so you have to research, but a lot of us don't do that. So, anyways, I'm just saying that to say that we rely and we trust these philosophers because we trust that they're doing their due diligence and thinking hard and thinking critically and in analyzing um these things, and this is not left up to just them, like we're able to do this, and that's why we're having these conversations on this podcast because I believe that you're capable, I'm capable, we're capable of going deeper, of studying the hard topics, of uh critically thinking about who we are, critically thinking about what our soul uh means or how it affects our lives or or how it functions, right? That we can take from them, and then we also can establish what we do believe and what we don't believe. What I mean by that is, for example, I do believe that your soul goes on to live after you die, right? But you may believe differently, but that comes through reading, researching, thinking critically, logic, reason, right? And so I encourage us to read and to take away from what they're saying, but again, we continue to do the hard work because we are just as capable as they were, right? Um, so I started recently started this new series that I wanted to share with you all. It's called Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers, and they're these small books, and they're on different topics: how to eat, how to flourish, how to be a friend, how to grieve, how to get over a breakup, um, how to be a leader, how to be a ruler. They're just these, they're really small books. I'll I'll of course link it in the description. And I bought several of them to uh read. I think I'm definitely gonna be reading them on my maternity leave. Um, but I I am getting into those. Um, I also started a book on grief from a philosophical view. Oh my gosh. So we're definitely gonna do another episode on grief, which is why I got the book. But to have read the beginning pages of that book and saw the feelings that philosophers had about grief, I couldn't believe it. They thought that grief was a sign of weakness. Like, okay, we're not gonna get into that because that's not what this episode is about. But I'm just saying this to say, and hopefully, I'm encouraging you and exciting you to go out and and to uh to read some uh philosophers, both modern, both ancient, and just get some new ideas, right? And and see how well packaged and uh well thought out, and just how much uh how significant their wisdom and their insights can be to how you live and how you see the world. So the word philosophy, the you know, kind of make sure we understand what that means. The word philosophy comes from the ancient Greek words for love and wisdom. So it's literally a love for wisdom. Um, and the philosophers they spend their time seeking to understand, or I should say the field of philosophy, right? They and philosophers that's funny. No, the field of philosophy. I was gonna say, I was gonna say the field of philosophy and the philosophers in it, but that's I don't know. I don't know why that's funny to me. Um, but philosophy, or you know, when you're studying philosophy, or when you are a philosopher, you're spending your time um seeking to understand the nature of reality, human existence, and our place in the world, right? So, quite literally, you're interested in who you are, who's around you, how you function, what's happening, right? And that's why philosophy is in a lot of things, like I said, ethics, politics, emotions, um, like we've we've seen the role of the body and the soul. Um, there's just almost no topic, right, that philosophy cannot touch, but that does not mean that it has touched everything. It also does not mean that this is the end all be all. So I'm not saying that we go to the ancient philosophers and we stop there. It's a great starting point uh point, it's a great place to start because again, these are beginning thoughts that have influenced much of what we understand today, but we have evolved, we have been able to use new resources and new um things that we understand about the world, about who we are, right? And so we start here, but we don't have to stop here, okay? So, most of everything that we're gonna talk about comes from this article called Ancient Theories of the Soul, and what I'm looking to do is to just kind of go through the evolution where these eyes did where the ideas started and how they evolved over time. I'm not going to like list the names of the specific philosophers, I'm just gonna try to give you this overview of how they evolved and then really touch on the points about the soul that I think are most important for us to understand when we're at the early stages or middle stages of understanding how our soul functions. And as always, I want you all to see and know that I'm just not I'm not just like make you know, I'm not just making this up, and I want you all to see, right, that the things that even I've been saying, just from what I have understood, understand and have understood about the soul, or things that I've read in other places, right? How these thoughts have been established long before you and I even existed, and how they have still again stood the test of time. So let's jump into it. So I will mention that at the beginning, one of the first philosophers noted in this article is Homer, and I know I just told you guys I wouldn't list the names. I'm I'm not gonna list like all of the names and go through, but I think it's important to um say Homer because he was one of the first uh philosophers that they started to take ideas from, and they uh and the rest of the philosophers' ideas evolved from these beginning thoughts of Homer, and in the beginning, the soul was thought of as um something that you can risk and lose, and that after death, this um thing like endures like like it's like a shade in the underworld, you're like a shadow in the underworld, right? But the real big emphasis is that the soul was only really associated with something that you can risk and lose, and a lot of times that was associated with being in battle or facing death, that's when you thought about the soul. You didn't really think about it in how you function day to day, it was really at that cusp of like I'm about to walk into danger or something is about to happen to me, and I'm you know about to lose my soul, which means I'm also about to perish. Um, and so along with that, once a person's soul has departed for good, the person is dead. But what I want us to take from this early view is that the soul was associated with life, and throughout all the philosophers that we're gonna see, the soul is associated with life. Even though Homer believed that once your soul departed, it's gone for good, he's still telling us that without a soul, you have no life. It's really important. But over time, what happened was that Homer's connection between a person's soul and the thought of their life being um, you know, vulnerable or at risk became less prominent. And we start to see the soul become it's very interesting. The soul became both both a broad thing and a narrow thing, right? Where it's broad enough that it encompasses so much of who we are, but narrow enough that we can see those lanes and those things in which it does affect, right? Um, and so over time, like I said, this Homer view, this view of this uh that that Homer started with began to um become less prominent. Honestly, it just became uh lost upon the the ancient philosophers because they started to see the soul function in more than more than that way. Um, it's also important to note that many of the ancient philosophers, when speaking on the soul, associated the soul with all living things, with every kind of living things, including plants, and oh man, there's another one I can't remember, but and um including plants, animals, um, you know, humans, right? Anything that was living was thought to be associated with having a soul. So as time goes on, then there becomes a broad way of acting and being that is associated or attributed to the soul. So in the fifth century, we start to see that um taking pleasure in food or taking pleasure in drink, sexual desire, those things begin to be associated to the soul, and then you have these intense emotions or that or crisis or feelings, right? Uh like love and hate, joy, grief, anger, shame that are also associated with the soul. Then you also see things like courage and boldness connected. So it's important here to note that the connection between soul and characteristics like boldness and courage in that fifth century is where we start to see the soul become thought of as a source of moral qualities like temperance and justice as well. Justice was another big one that was associated with the soul in that time. So, from that starting place of Homer, now we're seeing the soul associated with um cognitive and intellectual activities, emotional uh uh responses and activities, right? We start to see the soul again become more broad. And I would imagine that it was helpful to understand that your soul affects many of these things because if you're assuming that it came from you know your brain, right? Your act, you know, your brain or body parts, right? There's a question of, well, I can't physically touch those things, and we're gonna get into that in a second. But I could imagine just as it helps us, that it helped them to begin to understand their function in the world a little better. That's just I don't know, kind of a random thought I just had, right? But um, but one of the things that really lacked was the connection or the distinction between body and soul. There really wasn't a lot of distinction. They knew that they were different, but they didn't think that they were radically different, they didn't think that they were so different, it's just that one was physical and one was not, essentially. And so that's another thing that has developed over time, and that's a conversation that we'll have next season. I'm super pumped to talk about our body and our soul and that connection and how that goes together, and to learn more to tell you all, and to just you know have that because I think it's important that we do not ignore our body, and that is something that I wanted to make sure I addressed that we don't ignore our body, we don't ignore our bodily functions, and we I think we can actually understand ourselves more when we understand the connection between our body and our soul, and how much uh the emotions that happen from our soul affect our body, our heart rate increases, right? You get sweaty, um, you get a you get a Headache from crying because you're sad, right? Like seeing how so much of what happens in our soul affects what happens in our body, and I can attest to that firsthand because I am a worry bug. Like, if I start to get scared or if I'm getting angry, my heart rate just increases. But again, that anger is not coming from my heart, it's the anger from my soul then affecting my body. So, yeah, I I'm excited. I'm so excited to talk about that. But uh, I so I just wanted to note that, right? That in in this time, and in and over time, there does become more understanding of how the body and the soul function together. But in what I read, I would say that that was probably one of the more um harder parts of this that they were kind of grappling through. That I was no, I can say that like this the this the bot the connection between the body and the soul was where I seen the most differences. Let's say it like that, between philosophers, where you could tell that they were really trying to understand the role between the body and the soul, and not all landing in the same place with that, definitely hearing each other and taking from each other's thoughts, right? Different philosophers in different centuries or in different times, but I would say that that's where you see a lot of differences between the philosophers is that connection between the body and the soul. Either way, we'll get into that later and we'll talk about it. We'll talk about it more. But what we can say today about how the views um evolved within that time between the ancient philosophers on the body and the soul was from not having a a good distinction, not really seeing much differences. Then we start to see philosophers pick up on the idea saying, Well, the body and soul actually do differ in what they actually are, that it's not just um you know, uh simple differences like that, you know, they're just one's one's mobile and one's not, but that they actually differ in the type of thing that they are, one being um perceptible and perishable, and the other being intelligible and exempt from destruction. So the intelligible and exempt from destruction is our soul, and then the perceptible and the perishable is our body. Um, and so that did start to influence the way again that these philosophers seen the um relationship between the soul and the body. I would say that where I saw a lot of the struggle or the differences and ideas is how exactly those two function differently and how they affect one another. And there are again a lot of back and forth about is our body responsible for our emotions or our soul responsible for our emotions? Is it our brain that you know function makes us function and do these things, or is it our soul that makes us function and do these things? Different philosophers had different views on those, and so I do want to read this quote from the article directly from the article. But before I read that, I want to say that many of the philosophers, from what how I understood and from what I read, did come to that same conclusion that you know, your body again, this physical thing, and it's not responsible for all things, but it's responsible for a lot important things. Um, but your soul is that thing that they started to associate with like being divine, there's something special about having a soul, and there's something important to understand about having a soul, and that's why they started to say that your soul affects the way you lead and rule and love other people, because we're now stepping away from this idea that the soul and body are only a little different, and now understanding how big of a role the soul plays, and that the soul affects the body and not the other way around, if that makes sense. Like, not saying that the body can't affect the soul, right? But it's typically our soul, the things that happen within us that affect then our body, right? If our emotions, which we are all emotional beings, um, our emotions, right? Again, how we respond, and all of those things, uh, not just only affect our body, but how we live, how we think, how we process, and that's why the soul was so important for these ancient philosophers to really understand and um you know and and dwell upon. It's it's it is our lives there again. There is no life without the soul, and so if our life is connected to a soul, then we better be looking at that thing. We we better be trying to understand what's going on with it, right? But I want to read this. Um, it's uh specifically of the ideas come from Plato. So I want to see. I mean, I want to read this. So it hardly needs pointing out that the soul, as Plato conceives of it, is crucially characterized by cognitive and intellectual features. It is something that reasons more or less well, depending on the extent to which it is disturbed or distracted by the body and the senses, something that regulates and controls the body and its desires and affections, especially if it is a wise soul, presumably in a way that involves and renders effective judgments about what it is best to do and how it is best to behave, and something that has, as the kind of adornment that is truly appropriate to it, virtues such as temperance, justice, and courage. So it's a mouthful, but it's a beautiful mouthful because there's some concepts in here that I want to kind of pull apart really fast. Um first, where he's saying where he's saying, our soul is what reasons, our soul is what reasons, but I love that it I okay, I'm getting excited. When I get excited, I start to stumble over my words. So let me just let me just collect myself. Um our soul is something that reasons, but I love this line that says more or less will, right? And in it he gives a few reasons, depending on um if the if you are disturbed or distracted by the body and the senses. What that means is are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Are you tired? Um, do you have a headache, right? That you can reason more well, you can reason more well. I'm trying to use his words, but I don't think that worked. Um, you can reason well or you can reason unwell, right? But depending upon, again, how your soul is affected by what's going on from your body. That's why I think it's all good, right? Because, like, yeah, if I'm hungry, what do we have now? What is the term that we use now? Hangry. My way, how about to tell you four-year-old, but he's not four. My one-year-old is is oh lord, the boy can't think straight if he's hungry. It's it's just it's like what is happening. Um, but I think that's important to say, right? Because our body, our senses, what's happening to us does cause us to be, or I should say, I should say, can cause us to be distracted. I look at this more so in our interactions outside because think about when you're interacting with someone, right? And they're just appeal to have to deal with, they're not able to function well or reason well, right? You reason well too, like reads when I'm saying reason well, you're not making good decisions, you're not able to come to the right conclusions, you're not able to actually think through through things. That's another little thing that we say is don't go to the grocery store hungry. Why? Because you go to the grocery store hungry, and then you start grabbing all kinds of stuff, and then you get home and realize I didn't get any of the important things, right? Um, so and you ground yourself with the list. You say, Okay, I know I'm hungry, I know I'm not gonna be able to focus or think well. You know, we know that thinking is part of the soul. Um, so let me bring my list, or let me make sure that I stay on task, or whatever it is. A very simple example, but very uh um uh relatable to exactly what he's trying to get us to understand. The reason why I'm emphasizing the good and bad idea is because it is super important to understand that you can have a good soul and a bad soul, and we're gonna talk about that because I think I have either another quote or just a little more on that, but it's so important because it I mentioned this in the first soul talk that when we talk about the soul, actually, I shouldn't say when we talk about the soul, I should say when you look up the soul and when you see the people who are talking about the soul, there's kind of this kumbaya about it. This, like, if like you're meditating and you're doing these things and you're praying, and like you know, I think for as being a Christian, I think there is like an elitist kind of mindset because Christians believe that we have a soul. Most Christians believe, and I don't almost say all most Christians believe that we have a soul, and that after we die, that soul goes on to live. But also, a lot of Christians aren't really doing the work to better their souls, but that's neither here nor there. Um, but there's kind of this elitist mindset when it comes to like we have a soul, but it's like y'all can have good souls and bad souls too. We all can have a good soul and bad soul, and that's why I keep saying this is not reserved for people who practice religions or people who you know have certain like spiritual practices, right? This is for those who believe they have a soul, and for people who want to understand and believe in how much I should say, people who want to understand how much that soul affects what they do, and for those who do understand how much the soul affects what they do, and that can be good or bad. You have people whose souls are tainted, you have people who have just been like warped in what they've been doing for so long, right? That if you're not establishing good behaviors and good characteristics, right? Uh I'm I don't want to list up uh examples, but if you just haven't established those things, no matter what life has handed you, you've made those decisions, you can have a bad, corrupted soul, and we see that, right? We see that it in what happens to people. Um, anyways, well, we can come back to that later, but I just really enjoy that he didn't say just because you have a soul or or you recognize you have a soul, it's all gonna be fine and Danny. They actually really hit on it. It it to me, I read it in this tone of not fear, but just caution. I read it in this tone of caution that you can have a good and bad soul, and that these men wanted to make sure that their souls functioned in the right way, in the proper way. Because one of the examples that they used was about being drunk, and they would say, you know, if you're drunk, like and I'm I'm paraphrased and I'm adding kind of my own spin on this, but it's like if you're drunk, what is happening in your soul? It was an indicator, indication that something in your soul is not right, right? And that's just that's an example that they kept using, and I just thought, man, they they really hitting on these on these drunkards in their time. But I thought that that again was very interesting. But again, I read it in this tone of like caution where it made me want to think about and say, huh, yeah, you have to watch the way that your responses are to go to to again go back to what is happening in your soul. Then I love again here he says that the soul regulates and controls the body and its desires and affections, it regulates and controls the body, its desires and affections, and then he in in quotes for directly from his um paper, it says, especially if it is a wise soul. So, again, this idea that there are wise souls, unwise souls, saying that you can regulate and control your body, your desires, and your affections better if it is a wise soul. But I just think it is so interesting to frame it again in that way, and I hope that it's getting us to see that again, we still believe these things that the soul does regulate and control the body, its desires and its functions, that um the soul is the the source of our reasoning, right? And I do believe, right, that whether you're I mean, that that a lot of how you function in life depends upon the condition of your soul. That's why I started this podcast because not all not everyone is healthy, not everyone is looking at their soul. Some people have been walking around with anger as their comforter for years and have never really taken the time to understand why or to dig deeper, and you blame it on all these other things, right? You can say, or even making excuses like the the hangry thing. Oh, yeah, when I'm hangry, then I just um I just lash out, and that's not okay. Perfect example. I knew somebody that in college never understood this concept, you guys. But let's talk about it real fast. In college, I so okay, sorry, let me. I just get so excited. I know you guys be like, girl, if you don't get it together and spit it out, but okay, let me go back. I've already mentioned in the episode about like my journey, how I grew up very churchy, very Christian. So, my idea of alcohol, I thought that if you take one sip, you get drunk. Okay, that was my relationship with alcohol, I was super scared of alcohol. I was scared of a lot of things, but I was like really scared of alcohol because I literally thought that if you take one sip, you get drunk. So, anyways, I was having this conversation with like a group of people who they were older than me, they were you know over 21. I was in college, I was not 21 yet, so I had not had experience with like drinking alcohol, what happens to you when you drink alcohol? But I knew that something was off with this comment where someone said, you know, I'm pretty much like this, like I'm nice when I don't drink, but when I drink, a whole nother side comes out of me, and then I turn into a a B-word, and I want to fight and I wanna, and I was like, I don't think that alcohol should change you that much to where you're one person when you don't drink, and you're another person when you do drink. Now, when she when they said it at the time, I didn't go that deep in my thoughts. But when I started to be able to drink, you know, when I turned 21 and I started to drink, you know, not again, I was super scared of alcohol, so I was not like a three-drink shots girl. I was like like Amaretto Sour, which y'all know is really no alcohol in that, you know, the green apple sour or whatever, thinking I'm doing something that I wasn't. But when I did like have lemon drops and other things that I would drink, I realized that like who I am when I've had drinks is the same person, like who I'm not, like, whatever happens to me when I drink is who I am. So for me, I get really lovey dovey, really like I love you guys, I just love everyone. Like, that's me, right? But that's who I am. When I'm not drinking, I'm like that, even if those feelings are lying dormant, and that's why the the ancient philosophers was saying too was that when you're drunk, it's bringing up things that are often lying dormant or just not present all the time. And so when she said that, I'm like, and as again, as I began to understand more, I was like, Hold up, that's who you are for real deep down inside, and that's not okay. It's not okay to make excuses and say, Oh, because I'm hungry, or oh, because I'm drunk, or I drank uh, you know, had a drink or whatever. I'm a monster now, you guys just have to deal with it. No, you need to get help and you need to get an ASAP. Okay, and so that's again why, like, that's again why it's important for us to be assessing and for us to have this understanding of how our soul works. Our soul doesn't just spark up new things because you had a lemon drop or two. No, those things have already been inside of you and they need to be addressed and dealt with. Amen. Amen. Okay, so I didn't finish that quote too. So after he said, especially if it is if it is a wise soul, it said, presumably, in a way that involves and renders effective judgments about what it is best to do and how to best behave, right? So, again, here we have the soul being attributed to let's go back to it, like reason. It's being attributed to regulating and controlling our body, our desires, and our affections, and it's saying that it's done in a way that renders effective judgments about what it is best to do and how to best behave in that situation, right? Um, yeah, so we could go so many ways with that, but I want to keep us going. So then there was this this question that I loved what is it that when present in a body makes it living? A soul. You are living if you have a soul. You have a soul if you are living. If you do not have a soul, you are dead. Okay, so then I'm gonna read this last quote, and this one again was on the condition of the soul, and I think this is so important, and then we're gonna wrap up. So, depending on the condition of their soul, a person can be better or worse at doing these things. So, doing things like um courage, planning, temperance, practical thoughts, thinking, emotions, desires, beliefs, making decisions, um, figuring out what's best to do, what's not to do, regulating your body, reasoning, right? The you can be better or worse at doing these things depending upon the condition of your soul. The just person whose soul is in the best condition is truly excellent at living a human life, and that they are excellent at doing the various things that are importantly involved in leading a distinctively human life. When this desires are frustrated, it gives rise to emotional responses such as anger and indignation, and to behavior that expresses and naturally flows from such responses, which has a profound implications both for what is to have, sorry, both for what it is to have one's soul or mind in optimal condition, and for how it is that this condition is brought best brought about. Okay, I know again that's amount for we're not gonna break that one down altogether, but I do just want to hint at I do just want to touch on the beginning of this where it says the just person whose soul is in the best condition is truly excellent at living a human life. The condition of our soul does affect the condition of our lives, and that there is a condition of our soul for better or for worse, and that's what these philosophers have led us to believe. Now, I am not um keen to whether or not, or I should say, I'm not keen to how much that part of it has stuck with us today. I don't know how much we still talk about the condition of our soul being good or bad. I know we try to strike like stay away from calling people bad or saying that people have bad souls, but that's just the reality that people are nasty and mean and unhappy and ungrateful, and again, whatever we talked about, projecting, right? Or or comparing just all of these things, you know, those people that you've met that are just simply so miserable, and uh looking at this idea of the soul, understanding the soul has given me more empathy and and you know, sometimes empathy because that's a little deeper, but more times sympathy for those people whose souls are not in a good condition. Being your soul not being in a good condition does not mean you're a bad person either. It doesn't mean that you go around and you're angry and you're cussing everybody out all the time, your soul not being in a good condition can be why you are at home, you know, and in a cycle of depression. It can also be why nothing makes you happy. The condition of your soul not being okay really has more to do with where you are and what happens in your life than just how you treat other people. Now, that's a big part of it. I don't want to ignore that because oftentimes, again, when you are unhealthy on the inside and you can't take accountability for your own things and you have not assessed yourself, you do take it out on other people. But I know so many people that if that could benefit from understanding the condition of their soul and then being an active participant in their life to better their souls, and so I really love this emphasis on the condition of their souls, right? And and these are the this this like living an excellent life and and being in a distinctively great human, those things are the views of the ancient philosopher, right? And then I love that it says this when it's desires are frustrated. So your desires are frustrated, the soul's desires are frustrated, it gives rise to emotional responses such as anger and indignation. The anger and the frustration that I felt when I had road rage showed me more about what was going on inside of me than about like the cars around me, if that makes sense. The condition of our soul doesn't necessarily stay the same in every single moment, right? Like, and it's not to say that your soul just kind of like up and down, like you're happy, you're down, you're happy, you're down. No, there is an overall condition, right? I think there is an overall like healthiness or unhealthiness, but just because I have a healthy soul doesn't mean that there are still areas within me that are unhealthy or that need to be addressed. We're really like scratching the surface, okay? But I hope that this was enough to start to see where some of these views on the soul have come from and how inspirational and um How much we can take from the ideas. I wish I could just, I mean, I I really could go on and on because there's so much that I would love to say, especially again about that condition, and just about how many things that we've seen them come to understand are a part of our soul or attributed to our soul. To go from that beginning where the soul is only associated when it's vulnerable or at risk or you're about to die. That's the only time you think of your soul, like you know, saying something like, Oh, my soul, you know, at the very end and not throughout your life, to getting all the way to this end. I'm saying that the condition of our soul affects how we live, and that if we're paying attention to that, it can determine how our lives here on earth pan out, you know, how how healthy we are, how we flourish, how we thrive, how we think, how we live, how we interact, how we are in our marriages and and relationships and friendships that we have gone from that very beginning to all the way to this, um, with just these philosophers. We haven't even gotten on modern ideas, these are like ancient philosophers. We're still in the BC days. Every human, every man should be thinking about their soul. I just think that it's so beautiful to have a soul, and it is so beautiful to be able to have a part in how that soul affects my life. I think that it is a beautiful thing that I should be an active participant, that I should be the one um looking at assessing, developing, growing, thinking, writing, whatever it is. Like I get to do that, and again, it takes so much of the uh blame and guilt and shame and frustration that I may have towards what has happened to me or towards what people have done to me or towards what life has handed me. Knowing that I have a choice, knowing that you know what, I can let this make me or break me, I can let this get me angry, or I can respond in a different way. Like knowing that that choice is up to me and I don't have to rely on someone else to do it is so beautiful to me. It it really is, and I hope it's just as beautiful to you all. So I hope you all have enjoyed this episode. Um, I really again, like we said, I'll say like this we really just scratched the surface of the soul and the functions, but I hope that it was again enough to kind of get you started on your own research journey. Uh, as always, I'll put the links in the bottom. As always, hit me up, DM me. Y'all be kind of quiet. So DM your girl, text your girl. I know a lot of y'all are still saying you're catching up to the episodes. Um, but and and that's fine too. But I just I want to hear from you all, love to hear your questions, your thoughts, what you have found. And then as we go on, we'll talk about you know the ideas that how these ideas have affected us today, right? And I'd love to hear what you think. What do you believe? What do you not believe? What are you iffy on, right? Because I have things for sure that I'm like, I don't know. So I would love to just hear like your thoughts, your questions, how what this sparked up for you. Um, but yeah, so email me, DM me. Thank you all for tuning in. I am so appreciative that you were here. And until next time, let's keep doing the work to renovate this hole.