Introduction
This edition of The Complete Soul has been moderately revised and republished as part of my STONYWATER Books imprint. The central argument remains the same: the soul is not an incomplete or evolving entity moving toward wholeness, but a complete spiritual reality already grounded in God. In revising the book, I have clarified key terms, strengthened transitions, refined several scriptural discussions, and brought the practical chapters on meditation and prayer into closer alignment with the book’s central premise.
The book still reflects an evolution in my own thinking on spiritual matters. Though I agree with much of what I believed many years ago, my understanding of the soul, consciousness, Jesus, and spiritual practice has changed. I have discovered that the simplest truth can remain veiled in plain sight. Only a slight shift in perception allows us to see it, but our chest of treasured preconceptions often keeps us from doing that very thing.
Though it is important to keep an open mind to the ideas of others, the standard I now value most is the one that encourages me to trust the ideas born in me and to follow them to their logical conclusions. Emilie Cady stated that every person must sooner or later learn to stand alone with God. Her words have stayed with me as a personal directive to trust the inner meeting place where each of us must finally arrive. No teacher, institution, or inherited system can do that work for us.
In this present edition, The Complete Soul: Exposing the Myth of Soul Evolution, honoring that directive has required me to step outside some of the basic givens of my formal Unity training while remaining solidly grounded in the principle of oneness with God.
Though I have devoted my life to teaching the Unity message, I do not write here as an official representative of the Unity Movement. Readers familiar with Christian New Thought will recognize many familiar terms, but they will also notice important departures, especially from Charles Fillmore’s teaching on regeneration and soul evolution. My purpose is not to reject the tradition that formed me, but to reconsider certain inherited assumptions in light of the complete soul.
Cady advised readers to set aside previous theories long enough to let a new framework speak for itself. I ask the same here—not that you surrender discernment, but that you allow the argument to unfold before deciding whether it rings true.
How to Read This Book
This book is both an argument and an invitation. The argument challenges the assumption that the soul is incomplete and gradually evolving toward wholeness. The invitation is to consider that the soul is complete now, and that the real work is not to improve the soul but to shift self-awareness from the senses-based self-image back to its spiritual foundation.
You may find some ideas in these pages unfamiliar, especially if you are accustomed to traditional New Thought language about soul growth, regeneration, or spiritual development. I ask only that you let the model unfold before deciding whether it fits. The early chapters explain why the evolving-soul premise no longer satisfies me; the later chapters offer meditation and prayer as practical ways of experiencing the complete soul rather than merely thinking about it.
Read, then, with both discernment and patience. If a statement seems too strong, too unfamiliar, or even contrary to your present understanding, allow it to rest for a while. Some ideas may become clearer only after the whole framework is in view. My purpose is not to ask you to accept a new doctrine, but to encourage you to test these ideas against your own deepest spiritual knowing.
The earlier chapters develop the argument: why I believe the evolving-soul model should be reconsidered and how that model has shaped metaphysical Christianity. The later chapters turn to practice, especially meditation and prayer, as ways of experiencing the complete soul directly. Each chapter can be summarized as follows:
Chapter 1: My Own Journey describes some personal history and key factors leading to changes in my present thinking.
Chapter 2: The Fillmorian Influence details the origins of my own exposure to the notion of soul evolution and contrasts this widely accepted concept with some of the revelations coming from the burgeoning field of near-death research.
Chapter 3: The Jesus Factor removes Jesus from the role of larger-than-life, fully regenerated Way Shower, and places him in the more accessible position of one who was aware of his complete soul and advised his listeners that they shared the same status.
Chapter 4: Consciousness, Soul, Self-Image takes a new look at the traditional spirit, soul, and body model of the human being and explains why soul, consciousness, and body provides a better way to understand the soul’s present completeness and relationship to the material plane. For reasons I will make clear, I have adopted self-image rather than ego to describe the senses-based identity that most have mistaken for their real self.
Chapter 5: The Myth of Soul Evolution focuses on the soul as complete now and why embracing this truth will have a positive and productive impact on our life. I propose that we are not here because our soul has more to learn from life in a body, but simply because we have made the choice to be here.
Chapter 6: Exploring the Myth considers the undeniable facts of biological evolution, and explains why we cannot apply these facts to the soul.
Chapter 7: A Paradigm Shift demonstrates how the views we hold of the nature of God, the nature of the individual, and the nature of the individual’s relationship to God are key to understanding why we, and others, hold our particular worldview.
Chapter 8: Our Executive Faculties examines our natural faculties of imagination, faith, judgment, will, and elimination and explains the role each one plays in the formation of our consciousness and life conditions.
Chapter 9: Natural Supply acknowledges the soul’s spiritual support system and suggests ways of tapping into it to create the best avenue of expression in our material environment.
Chapter 10: Meditation focuses on why a first-hand experience with our soul is critical to our spiritual understanding.
Chapter 11: Meditation Exercises presents a series of exercises that range from simple contemplation to full-blown meditation practices. The exercises will help the reader overcome specific preconceptions that block a more fulfilling meditative experience.
Chapter 12: Prayer describes applications of our executive faculties to engage in a prayer technique that is simple to understand and applicable to every situation.
I offer these thoughts with respect for the tradition that formed me and with equal respect for the inner authority that eventually requires each of us to stand alone with God. My hope is that this book stimulates new self-understanding and encourages you to know yourself as the complete soul—not something you will one day become, but what you are right now.
1: My Own Journey
Emilie Cady’s ocean-drop analogy gave me a way to understand my relationship to God. A single drop of ocean water is not the whole ocean, yet it contains the same essential nature as the ocean itself. A drop, a pail, a barrel, and the whole sea differ in size and scale, but not in composition. Each carries the same elements in the same relation. The drop is not the entire ocean, yet it is still complete as ocean water.
I was sixteen when I first encountered that analogy, and on that day a light came on that has never gone off. Cady helped me see that my spiritual essence, like water taken from the ocean, could share the same nature as the ocean itself. I understood that I was not the whole of God, but I was beginning to make that all-important connection of oneness between God and myself.
Jesus presented a different challenge. I understood how he could speak of his unity with the Father with complete confidence, even in words that shocked his listeners. I grasped how he could say he was in the Father and the Father was in him, while still acknowledging that the Father was greater. If the water in the pail could speak of the ocean, could it not make the same kind of statement? I could believe Jesus himself when he said the works he did, others could do as well, and even greater works.
The difficulty was not with the claims Jesus made for himself or for others. My growing discomfort was with the claims others made about him. I understood the logic of using Jesus as our primary example, our Wayshower, a clear illustration of what we can and must become. In him, we had a trustworthy standard of morality, sound spiritual logic by which we could measure and be measured. What would this very old, highly evolved soul have to say about our handling of that difficult neighbor, or that church dispute, or that beggar on the street? What would he think, say, and do if he were in our place? More importantly, what should I think, say, and do to become more like this worker of miracles who healed the sick, fed the multitudes, forgave his enemies, walked on water, calmed angry seas, and transformed his own dead flesh into shining immortality?
Where did this view of our Wayshower come from? Was Jesus really all of these things, or could this superhuman portrayal represent a composite of old-world Christian evangelicals and overzealous modern metaphysicians? Wherever it came from, I was beginning to realize that this larger-than-life status assigned to him was completely inaccessible. If we are to believe testimony from the Gospels themselves, the most enthusiastic response to Jesus and his teachings came from the common people. Is it not possible that this Wayshower had a more down-to-earth understanding of our spiritual objectives?
I had no reason to doubt my spiritual teacher’s portrayal of Jesus as the prime example for the rest of us still struggling to master the tyrannical desires of body and mind. I could accept in theory that my essence was the same as his, that every spiritual lesson learned, every obstacle overcome added more drops to my pail. Still, Jesus and I remained light-years apart. He was not merely in another league; he was in a league of his own.
At times, I seemed to be making spiritual progress. At other times, I felt as if mine was a leaking pail, a broken cistern, as Jeremiah put it, that could hold no water. Overall, I moved forward with the faith that despite the vast gulf between where I was and where I needed to be, I was making a net gain. My evolving soul, though advancing at a glacial pace, was indeed edging forward. Even with that little voice from somewhere in the back seat of my mind constantly asking, “Are we there yet?” I continued plodding along, trusting that this sense of urgency would one day be satisfied. If God was in no hurry, why should I be?
Yet this little voice would not be silenced. It did not grow quieter but louder, asking questions that more patience alone could not appease. I began finding significant challenges to the evolving soul model in the teachings of Jesus himself. In one very short parable, he explained that the kingdom of heaven was like a treasure hidden in a field. A man happened upon the treasure, covered it again, and in his joy sold everything he owned to buy that field. His ability to purchase it did not depend on a preordained timeline that evolving souls must follow. The speed with which he acquired the field depended only on his willingness to let go of his present possessions.
I later related this parable to my own spiritual awakening in the revised edition of my first book, A Practical Guide to Meditation & Prayer.
In that earlier book, I described one of the major turning points in my spiritual life as beginning in a season of deep frustration. I had been trying to force myself into the kind of spiritual consciousness I believed I should have, but the effort only intensified my emptiness. One night, after a day of anger, exhaustion, and surrender, something in me opened. I experienced a profound sense of love, order, peace, and complete acceptance. For a few moments, I knew myself and the world from a larger perspective, and I wanted others to see what I was seeing. I did not yet have language for it, but I would later understand this as a mystical awakening whose effects would continue to shape my life.
After this high experience and the many aftershocks that followed, it seemed inconceivable that I would ever leave the beauty of that absolute love and step again into the shallow domain of illusion and half-truths generated by the senses. Yet the world called, and the dazzle of illumination grew dim. The disappointment was like waking from a satisfying dream to a hot, humid night, the lonely chirp of a cricket serving as a stark reminder of my attachment to mundane existence.
The experience left me with the impractical knowledge that the thing everyone is looking for in churches, careers, relationships, money, power, books, sex, drugs, food, sports, movies, and countless other places, I had found in those few spiritually lucid moments. My restless self had briefly settled in peaceful repose on its eternal foundation.
In the years that followed, however, I often felt that revelation was more a curse than a blessing. It set me apart and instilled a kind of aloneness that made me question whether I really belonged on this planet. I had stumbled on the hidden treasure, but I did not want to lay it back in the ground, cover it, or go and sell all other possessions to buy the field. I wanted to lift it from the earth and hold it forever, a response I am sure would be normal to anyone. I was like the near-death experiencer who does not want to return to the body but is told, “It’s not your time. You have to go back.” The kingdom I had briefly experienced was not of this world. I had peered through a hole in the fence of a gated community I could not enter. Having seen this great wealth and beauty, returning to the plain streets of my world was enormously frustrating.
Those few moments of lifting the veil and experiencing a profoundly beautiful cosmic awareness ultimately set me on the path to ministry. My message, fueled only by my experience of God, would center on God as a living presence whose existence I could not deny. Never in my young life had I felt so complete or so supported by the everlasting arms of love that sustained my very existence, all without condition or price. I had no major healing to talk about, no rags-to-riches story I could hold out to the world as proof of my life-altering revelation. Despite this handicap, I could not deny the permanent impact this elusive treasure had on me. I knew my highest service would be to tell others that they too had their own inner field, their own hidden treasure. I took the formal steps of entering the Unity ministry to become a champion of those who, like me, had been called from that far country of life-at-the-surface and were making their way back to their true spiritual home.
For much of my ministerial career, I maintained the evolving soul model as the most workable and practical. I wandered in and out of the awareness of absolute love, sometimes feeling very much at home in God, and other times out again on yet another hopeful venture into some new far country. Why not just stay home? Why repeat this prodigal eating of husks when I knew the advantages of staying home? Why, like Paul, do I find myself failing to do the good I truly want to do, while repeating the very thing I know works against me?
The best answer seemed to be the partially filled pail theory, the notion of the evolving soul. Though I was beginning to regard this idea with increasing skepticism, my pail was obviously not full. Mine was an immature soul, an adolescent doing what adolescents do. I was leaving home in high moments of strength and self-assurance and returning when that strength waned and fear and insecurity drove me into repentant humility. I could envision a day of coming home and staying home, but apparently I was not spiritually mature enough to settle into my true, God-given estate. I was an evolving though impatient soul, not yet seasoned with the sweet stability of maturity.
Still, I could not forget the sheer completeness I had felt in those fleeting moments of absolute knowing. There was no question that the water in my pail was drawn from that cosmic ocean we call God. I could not shake the growing suspicion that my pail was already full.
The Complete Soul
Then a slight shift in my understanding of the hidden treasure occurred to me. My wife and I were relaxing at a friend’s cabin in Colorado when it suddenly dawned on me that the treasure was not a partially filled pail or a potential to be developed, but something whose present value already exceeded all else the man owned. I realized that this parable was a metaphor depicting the soul as hidden treasure whose full value is already established.
I had thought of myself as having repeatedly left this field because I was spiritually immature. But the man did not leave for this reason. Quite the opposite, he left because he was mature enough to recognize the value of the treasure. Like me, he had found what he was looking for. He had stopped trying to acquire more things and was divesting himself of everything that was of lesser value than this treasure. I realized this was exactly what I was doing. My eye had become single, my choice between God and mammon clear. I wasn’t leaving the field, as I had supposed, for the adolescent purpose of squandering or acquiring something more. Like the man, I left to unburden myself of things of lesser value so that I might buy that field. In my own way, I was moving my self-awareness from a pail-centered self-image to its true ocean-water foundation, the soul.
The revelation did not stop there. I began to realize that if you draw one pail of water from the ocean today and another in a year from now, the age of the water in each pail is still the same. Likewise, one soul, regardless of when or how many times it has incarnated, is no more advanced than another. As with the water in the pail, the clock we think is ticking in regard to the soul is relative only to time spent in a body. The soul, like water, neither ages nor matures.
What I had gradually begun to suspect was now blossoming into a full-blown realization: the premise of an evolving soul, as logical as it had once seemed, was wrong. I could now see that the soul is complete, has always been complete, and that years devoted to further spiritual study would make it no more complete. The spiritual problem that confronts us is not the result of soul immaturity. The problem lies in what we mean when we speak the pronoun I. Thus far, we have associated it almost exclusively with the pail, the self-image. The I must be understood as a reference to the water, the soul.
My pail, I began to realize, is indeed full, my soul eternally complete. As an individualized projection of God, created in the image and after the likeness of God, it cannot be otherwise. My essence, my foundation of being, is as equal in composition to God as the water in the pail is equal in composition to the ocean. As Jesus put it, the harvest—soul completion—is not four months, four lifetimes, or four hundred lifetimes away. This field is already ripe for harvest. Everything is in place right now. The truth that sets us free is present, accessible, and will never be more so than it is at this moment.
I was beginning to see that from the instant I stumbled upon my own treasure, I had been undergoing a major shift in values. I was not aware of it at the time, but I had begun selling those possessions that were preventing me from embracing the truth of my soul. Though I am still sorting through inconsistencies in self-perceptions and beliefs about the world, I have come to accept that we are not here to convince the world we are something other than what we are at our sincerest, most authentic level. If we express qualities the world deems great, it is not because we have labored hard to manufacture them. We express them because we are simply doing what comes naturally. We made the choice to be here, to give expression to our soul, to give it a face, a voice, and a way to interact in the world that is ours and ours alone.
This is why, in this book, I am placing emphasis on experiencing the soul rather than knowing God. It is not that knowing God is unimportant, but I choose to follow Jesus’ premise that if you have known me—the soul—you have known the Father, the soul’s source. Studying a single pail of ocean water is not nearly as intimidating as studying the entire ocean. Yet, following this analogy, understanding the composition of the water in the pail is equivalent to understanding the composition of the water in the entire ocean. When you experience your soul, you experience God.
All of us carry preconceived ideas about who and what we are at the spiritual level. Because I attribute much of my early understanding of this subject to the writings of Charles Fillmore, it is appropriate to examine that influence and show how and why I have reconsidered its importance in my current thinking.