The Soul Is Dressed In Chemicals

We play with obscure forces, which we cannot lay hold of, by the names we give them, as children play with fire, and it seems for a moment as if all the energy had lain unused in things until we came to apply it to our transitory life and its needs.

But repeatedly. . . these forces shake off their names and rise. . . against their little lords, no, not even against, they simply rise, and civilizations fall from the shoulders of the earth.

Rainer Maria Rilke's poem Worpswede talks about the invisible energy that manifests from the self. The soul is dressed in chemicals in physical life; we wear the garments from all the elements of earth. Our cells are changed by the food, drugs, and chemicals we absorb. They become part of the us we call the self. Our beliefs about those substances make them real. Rilke talks about the hidden aspects that surface from our distorted beliefs about the self. These thoughts create blockage, and we experience a reality filled with distortion.

The self is multidimensional. We are more than one self. We are the obscure forces that we can't identify until we examine our beliefs. Rilke used poetry to identify with other selves. He found comfort in his diversity, and agony in its realness. The agony was an emotional response to his fear of these obscure forces. He repeated this cycle of insanity until he found common ground for all his selves. That common ground was the acceptance of his own creations.