What Insults Your Soul?

"Re-examine everything you've been told. Dismiss what insults your soul."

-- Walt Whitman

Following old Uncle Walt's advice sure simplifies life. It simplifies it so because at least 90% of what we're told these days is pure, unadulterated crap! You can dismiss most advertising, television, political rhetoric and commentary, Internet content, gossip, popular music, and religious diatribe as essentially soul-insulting. 

What's left? Not much. And that's a good thing. The static has been removed. The sounds of nature, of intimacy, of joy and of wisdom can finally, once again, be heard. 

Most of what we are told comes out of an ulterior motive. Someone wants to sell you something, or convince you of something, or get you to do something, and so they spin things in a way that they think will get results. Or they speak merely to boost their own ego, to feel better about the unspeakable. Either way the content insults your soul.

You're nice. You don't say, "Quit with the soul-insulting shit, already!" You smile and nod and maybe even insult their soul right back! And pretty soon we forget that we're all just bullshitting each other non-stop. Enough already! Not only do we need to dismiss the soul-insulting stuff others tell us, but we also need to jettison the same verbal crapola from our own lexicon.

Living for various periods of time in simple silence is not a bad thing. It may be a bit disconcerting at first, but you'll get used to it. And when you do, you'll hear birds sing, babies coo, lovers sigh, children question, and angels weep. You'll hear the natural soul-nourishing sounds of life. The cacophony will be gone; you will no longer bleed life force from the soul holes produced by the verbal violence that passes for communication in our post-modern world.

Your soul knows. Accept no insults. Be true to it, and life will be true to you.