Wisdom of the Soul and Life's Challenges

By Halim Ozkaptan, PhD

The relationship between the soul, consciousness and spirituality is presented. The soul is a part of God that he has bestowed upon us. It is our moral source. It represents our love and positive emotions that contribute to our moral value and growth. Consciousness is our creative and life force that derives from the soul. It is the spark of life that creates and sustains us. Our spirituality reflects the quality of our soul that is expressed through our conscious behavior. It is the intermediary between the soul and consciousness. We are spiritual beings living a mortal life and are reflections of God’s love and spirit. Free will and choice are our burden. We are challenged to avoid less than honorable deeds. Our behavior, actions and treatment of others become the essence of our character. We are also spiritually interconnected. We attract like spirits throughout our lives for support, personal growth or loss. Our life represents the wisdom of our soul.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Apr 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781483467702

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WISDOM OF

THE SOUL

AND LIFE’S

CHALLENGES

Halim Ozkaptan, PhD

Copyright © 2017 Halim Ozkaptan, PhD.

Cover picture: Cape Canaveral Sunrise, photographed by Dr. William Swart.

This book can be purchased at: www. booksbyoz.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-6771-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-6770-2 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 03/28/2017

Table of Contents

Preface

1 Introduction

2 God and the Soul

God

The Soul

3 Attributes of the Soul

Love

Prayer

Faith

Goodwill

Charity

Desire

Hope

Sleep and Dreams

Intuition and Instincts

Group Souls

4 Consciousness

Source of Creation

Consciousness in all Life Forms

Out of Body Experiences

5 Attributes of Consciousness

Thoughts

Beliefs

Self-Suggestion

Other Life Forms

6 Spirituality

7 Free Will

8 Our Moral Challenge

9 Religion

The Religious Instinct

Organized Religion

Toxicity of Religious Leaders

Persons of Faith

Personal Religious Background

10 Spiritual Darkness

Predators

Evil

Sin

Shame

Jealousy

Prejudice

Forgiveness and Forbearance

11 A Good Person

Description of a Good Peron

The Importance of a Good Person

12 Life’s Challenges

Life’s Storms

Importance of Resolve

Surrender of Resolve

Perseverance

Quality of Life

13 Why Bad Things Happen

Hardship as a Challenge

Hardship as a Deterrent

Hardship to Prevent a Greater Loss

Hardship as Atonement

Boundaries of Success and Failure

14 Self Realization

Self-Realization

Your Potential

Multiple Paths to Success

Dignity of Work

Your Body and Health

Life Expectancy

15 Love and Marriage

Love

Marriage

Motherhood

Children

Families

Divorce

16 Human Relationships

Human Relationships

Friends

Society

17 Success and Happiness

Success

Happiness

Character

Fear

Courage and Cowardice

18 Sex and Homosexuality

Sex

Homosexuality

Birth and Abortion

Suicide

19 Age and Death

Age

Despair

Death

Grief

20 War and Mass Death

War

Mass Death

21 Heaven, Hell and Reincarnation

Heaven

Hell

Reincarnation

22 Conclusion

Appendix A Racial and National Diversity

Racial Diversity

National Diversity

Appendix B The Impact of Political Philosophies

Democracy

Socialism

Communism

Appendix C The Calamity of Nations

References

Dedication

Elinor

During our marriage, you have been steadfast in your love and devotion. You have placed no conditions on me and have never asked anything for yourself. You have made my happiness and welfare more important than your own. You have persevered without complaint in difficult times, and have been steadfast in dangerous situations. You have raised four beautiful children with love and cheerfulness. You express goodwill to every one you meet and extend charity to all those in need. On the publication date of this book, we will have been married over 65 years. You are as beautiful today as the day we met and I still love you with the same passion.

Oz

Acknowledgement

An author gets his first test of reality by the reviewers of his early drafts. It can be as difficult a task for them as it is for the author. Fortunately, I was encouraged by my wife Elinor and daughter Ruthann Klemmens, and benefited from their comments and suggestions. I am also indebted to Dr. Kent Williams, who made many suggestions and wrote the following Foreword.

Foreword

Dr. Kent Williams, Professor, University of Central Florida

Dr. Ozkaptan has a skill for addressing difficult topics and concepts, as witnessed by his prior books. This manuscript is no different by addressing the The Wisdom of The Soul and Life’ Challenges. The soul is viewed as the capsule for life’s wisdom. It is viewed as housing our basic motives and experiences that are acquired through millennia of interactions with our environment. These experiences are selected and passed on by the evolutionary processes created by God. God is viewed as the self-organizing process responsible for the creation of the universe and our species. This view is the only valid explanation, since our development could not have been achieved by the Darwinian notion of random selection. There has not been sufficient time to have created the human sophistication and development that we have today. Some other external force must have been involved to have speeded up the organization and development of our species and environment, as we know it today. It was and is a self-organizing and continuing creative process rather than a random one.

The soul reflects and abstracts the experience and organization that we discover through our interactions with the environment and life’s challenges. This creative process applies not only to our physical and mental environment but to all life as we know it. Dr. Ozkaptan postulates that our present wisdom, as a result of our interactions with the environment, is housed and passed on through our souls. Consequently, wisdom and acquiring wisdom, is about learning God’s rules and our moral responsibilities. Our consciousness, as a result, reflects God’s rules as they are reflected in the soul and are passed down through the years. They reflect our creative, generative processes and our interaction with other persons and the environment. God is viewed as the creative force of the world and its inhabitants, and passes on the collective wisdom of the soul.

This book also represents the Transcendent Self. It is a term applied by the noted psychoanalytic theorist Carl Jung to describe the psychic force which is rarely actualized and expressed by individuals, but which is inherent in all mankind. It describes the wisdom which is characteristic of major religious figures and philosophers throughout history. It can be likened to a Zen state of mind whereby one’s lifelong experiences emerge to form a new state of consciousness beyond the boundaries of current social cognition. This is the state of mind which generated the present text. It is an integration, better yet a harmony, of various beliefs about notions of morality, religion and social governance. Dr. Ozkaptan entangles ideas from Christianity, Islam, evolutionary psychology, psychoanalytic theory, and mythology to present a set of principles to live by consistent with transcendence, much akin to a Course in Miracles and the Seth books, yet more palatable for our times. It is a refreshing break from our digital, mechanistic way of thinking about why we are here. It personifies the emergent nature of our universe and the self-organizing forces which strive to give order to chaos. Dr. Ozkaptan gives hope for the preservation of the mysteries of life by the eternal spirit which resides in all of us.

Prologue

When I retired at the age of 70, I looked back and reminisced about my experiences and the many vicissitudes and directions that my life had taken, as well as those of my friends. What stood out in my mind were the many unexpected gains and losses that I and my friends had experienced. During the past, my spiritual awareness had also steadily increased. I tried to understand whether we were just flesh and blood, to die and be lost to eternity? Or were we spiritual beings, with eternal life through reincarnation? As an older person, I had more time to contemplate these issues, which led to my first book Life’s Purpose – The Development of Your Living and Eternal Spirit. It was an attempt to describe my spiritual insights. Other books were written for the following reasons.

One day after many years of being married, my wife remarked that We are beyond love. Her remark and insight inspired me to write a book with the same title. It described what I viewed as the genesis of love and the elements of a happy marriage. My wife also raised four beautiful children. Later, I realized that I had contributed little to their development. I had been too preoccupied trying to earn a living and attending school, to have the time to be attentive to them. As a result, I wrote a book Love is not Enough, in order to describe what my wife had practiced and what I wished I had done in raising our children. When I was a consultant to the U.S. Army, a senior General asked me how soldiers found the courage and fortitude to face danger and the possibly of death during combat? He had seen many acts of courage, despite danger during the Vietnam War. It was a challenging question, and led to two co-authored books: Conquering Fear and the The Power of Courage.

After the Twin Towers attack on 9/11/ 2001, the denigration of the Moslem religion began in America. Well known TV and radio commentators made many negative and false statements about Islam, when it was obvious that they knew nothing about it. It prompted me to write the book: Islam and the Koran Described and Defended. Later, as a result of my frequent interactions with young adults, I was often surprised by their lack of goals and general aimlessness. This led me to write Overcoming Life’s Challenges for Success and Happiness. In addition, I was also interested in the subject area of our creation and consciousness. The reports of continued consciousness during near death experiences were interesting and revealing to me. This led me to write Consciousness, Source of Creation, Spirituality and Eternal Life.

Finally, at the age of 86, the quality and relationship of our soul and spirituality to the events of our lives, and for the moral and physical development of mankind, became more apparent to me. It led to the writing of the present book. It borrows from all of my earlier books, and discusses in a more comprehensive way all of the facets and dimensions of our lives, as they are related to our moral and spiritual destiny. It describes how we are created by and are a part of God’s soul. It discusses and explains our creation, spiritual reality and purpose in life. It asserts that we are spiritual beings living a mortal life. Due to our gift of free will, we make good and bad decisions. Our purpose on earth, as a result, is to test and develop our spiritual and moral worth in order to become worthy of God’s love. In effect, our life on earth is a morality play.

While on earth, we live in a one dimensional system that we call time. When we pass over, after the demise of our body, our consciousness remains as a part of God’s spirit and consciousness. At that time, we live in a three dimensional reality consisting of the past, present and future. We review our former lives on earth, judge our behavior and feel the pain that we may have caused others. Through reincarnation, we return to earth to continue our spiritual development