...to all of you who happen to have gotten to know me, or to be more precise my never-ending mails, esp. Jim! and to all of those who joined the list recently and who if they are interested in long-talk-mails on philosophical matters are more than welcome to join in the discussion! hi to Lindsey and Mike, welcome to the list - I'm a newcomer, too actually; and not to forget: hello to all the "oldies" as in those who've been on the list for a very long time, but whom I haven't yet made the pleasure of meeting (as in virtually "meeting")! ... yes I guess that sums it up, pretty well, hehe ;-}

<wondering if anyone missed me + curious to know if anyone, from the people that don't respond, reads through my long essay-like posts or if I'm just being another arrogant egoist who thinks his/her thoughts must be read because they're so great>.. well, anyhow: school. This says it all, I guess.

"the soul is what happens to all of your energy, organized thoughts and the emotional stance that you interact with after your material existence" - yeah, I liked that definition a lot, I mean it seems logical. How else can you imagine to exist after death than in your soul or (better put it this way) as your soul. I can even feel (or that's at least what I imagine to feel) myself as a soul in a way. Because when you sort of try to find where the real essence of you resides, like if it's in the brain (right behind the eyes I'd suppose, because it kinda feels natural) or if it's in your heart, or wherever it might be. I never seem to find that one spot, but I tend to imagine that it's a soul that is all over me, that makes me whole, in a way, and that is really undetectable by whatever means of scientifical method. I mean, yeah, the scientists try to link things like a soul to the activity in our brain, both in the parts that are responsible for our conscious and our subconscious, but I don't think that they will ever come to really determine what a soul is, where it is or how it looks like, neither how it functions (if you even can use that word, i.e. "function" in this context, which I personally sort of dislike here).

Thus, us thinking about it and trying to figure it out is in a way senseless, but only "in a way", because I think it is soul-reaching and it brings us in a closer relation to our souls - which we oftentimes forget. I often wonder: why is it that we forget the most essential? like the soul, etc. and concentrate on the minor issues of our lives and lose ourselves in the meaninglessness of such lives deprived of deepness? hmm.. maybe because these important things are too obvious and we tend to take them for granted and overlook them?

yeah, I also get this creepy kind of feeling when I visit the cementery... "creepy" as in revealing and deep, and surreal. Because I think that they can see us (well maybe not, I'm not really sure about this, but sometimes I imagine it to be true) and this perspective I gain, by thinking of how the dead think of us is very insightfull, because you get to see how many moments of your life you've wasted on unimportant stuff

ohh.. we seem to disagree on this one completely. I just cannot imagine animals having a soul. Or let me put it this way: since I don't consider animals to be equal to us humans (in terms of emotions and insight) I don't see how they could possess a soul - which would make them appear on the same level as us, humans. Maybe they have some kind of a spiritual "animal" equivalent of a soul, but it certainly isn't comparable to our soul.