Our soul is the battleground, and a treasure house of elevation.

It's the atmosphere tech innovators hide most from, dismissing as the least important aspect of their existence and ability to accomplish professional goals.

The blunt reality is that the health of our soul determines how persistently we’re able to secure victory, while mitigating loss in order to transform it. Especially in the chaotic, unbridled world of emerging software and hardware innovation.

Especially when facing down a personal work performance challenge.

Our soul is what we’re each fully responsible to intimately understand, and powerfully steward, while enforcing ownership and sober control over its development.

Believer-practitioners in the teachings of Jesus Christ understand the soul to be the dynamic, energetic vessel and interpreter of our material and spiritual world. It is our processor, a living recorder, an internal witness.

The unusual nature of our soul is that it can regress in maturity, stay as-is, or evolve. Our soul is mutable – always shifting – based on the inputs and experiences received and engaged with throughout life.

Our soul is the atmosphere where our humanity and character are tested.

It's where our beliefs and values are formed and conditioned, destroyed and discarded, transformed, challenged, and affirmed.

The soul stands as the communication bridge between:

our body – helping us to function on Earth.
God as Spirit – where our individual inner spirit is sourced from and firmly protected by, completely distinct from our soul.
the spiritual realm – unseen worlds where both loving and malevolent beings reside, who relentlessly use opportunities to affect the state of our soul, by influencing our actions, behavior, thoughts, feelings, outcomes, and responses to life situations.

Our soul is made of three parts:

Mind – thought (random, reactive, responsive), belief, meaning, story, memory, information sorting and retention, abstract and concrete processing, and creativity all are formed and live here

Analytical, scholarly, logic-driven application is only one surface function of our cognitive nature.
Many tech innovators are stuck here, idolizing this operation of their soul. The view being that one’s own mind and brain are the only places to evolve and flex “consciousness” to “control / manifest” outcomes and “impact” others.

Will – our intentional, focused, passionate drive to achieve, win, and fulfill desired goals. It’s where we exercise choice – free will. Consequences (results and outcomes) are the fruit from every decision and action we choose to enforce and perform, under the assumption of exercising free will.

I personally view the will as the bridge between our own mind and emotions. Our will is unusually sensitive to external influences directed at us with clear intent to incite self-sabotage and derailment, regarding our performance at work.

The urge to control and manifest power over other humans – versus over one’s own character misfires and weaknesses – also shows up here.
- My pastors talk about this being the foundational realm of witchcraft and sorcery in action. Other words for this dysfunctional drive to constrain the will of another person for personal gain are: manipulation, coercion, bullying, microaggressions, bias, discrimination, envy, gossip…power-trippin’.
- Our will out of balance signals soul disorder and disruption by malevolent (harmful, unclean, oppressive, enslaving) beliefs and habits – a state Jesus Christ radically and boldly fought against, attained victory over, and taught his disciples to successfully battle down, in numerous ways.

Emotions – the felt, sensory, nonverbal “weather patterns” of our direct experience and impressions received from physical and spiritual activities, emanating through our bodies. Our emotional life is a communicative phenomena offered beyond words, emoted in kinetic, somatic, and energetically combustible ways:

Examples:
- Crying
- Laughter
- Frowning
- Hugging
- Crossed arms
- Eyes softening
- (The feeling of) “weak” knees
- Boldly-postured/open/forward-facing chest
- “Butterflies in the stomach”
The emotional space is where many tech innovators struggle. The inability to articulate and process emotions, to practice compassion-driven self-reflection, to be empathetic toward, or to exercise emotional intelligence when dealing with others all signal that our soul is wounded, oppressed, or ensnared in limitation and unnatural obstruction.
- This is also the place where the most wounded of innovators resort to habitual (addictive) use of substances / drugs / alcohol / and yes: I include psychedelics.
- The intention being a DIY attempt to force “relief” from feeling overwhelmed by unaddressed emotions. Or, to force “self-mastery” over unprocessed, buried emotions that are only choked under the veneer of exploring / “tripping” through issues requiring extreme, radical sobriety – full, conscious power and soul agency – to directly confront, resolve, put to death, and transform.

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In Part Three of this series, I’ll dive a little deeper into the atmosphere of our soul, sharing key “spiritual players” that influence the human soul’s development, from Biblical insights.

Part 2 ⋮ Hidden Realms of Poor Performance