Three People In One

You are three people, one nested within the other.

You are a divine person.

Nested within a rational person.

Nested within an animal person.

The divine person within you is drawn upward, like the flame of a candle, towards the spiritual and the divine. It has no interest in any worldly pleasures—unless it can find within them some transcendent meaning.

The animal person within you is drawn downward, towards eating and drinking and all forms of bodily pleasure. It has no interest in anything it can’t enjoy right now.

The rational person within you moves in both directions. It flies upward towards fascinating ideas, seeing ahead, taking the big picture into account. But it remains tied up with its ego, and so is easily seduced, even hijacked, by the animal.

From its deeply nested position, your divine person can’t even breathe without the consent of the animal person. But the animal has no interest in divine people, and the divine person has no common ground to start a conversation with the animal.

So the divine person has only one strategy that can work: To win over the animal, it has to speak with the rational person within you, inspiring the wisdom of your mind and the intuition of your heart with divine knowledge packaged in easily digested, chewable niblets.

Seeing the rational person within you all excited, the animal will want to know what’s going on. That’s when that rational soul can take the next step, to convince the animal that divine wisdom isn’t so bizarre after all, and that life is so much richer when everything has meaning and purpose.

With a common inspiration, three souls now work together in peace and harmony towards a single goal.