I call the high and light aspects of my being SPIRIT and the dark and heavy aspects SOUL. Soul is at home in the deep, shaded valleys. Heavy torpid flowers saturated with black grow there.
The rivers flow like warm syrup. They empty into huge oceans of soul. Spirit is a land of high, white peaks and glittering jewel-like lakes and flowers.
Life is sparse and sounds travel great distances. There is soul music, soul food, and soul love.
People need to climb the mountain not simply because it is there, but because the soulful divinity needs to be mated with the spirit.
According to a Talmudic legend, an angel escorts the soul from its abode in heaven into the tomb and there unites it to the embryo. The angel tutors the new being in the mysteries of the world, transporting it to heaven and darkness to see the heights and depths of creation, revealing to it the ways of beauty, truth, and goodness, disclosing the potential of its future life on earth, even to the time and place of death. As the child matures within the womb, it ponders the wonders it has seen. Then, at the instant of birth, the angel touches the child on the mouth, erasing all memory of these marvelous revelations.