It's always something.  Today it was yet another stupid comment uttered by an anyone, the type of person who says 'you'll be in my prayers' and then they don't say them, they never do.  They don't know how.  How often to kneel, when to say amen, where to do it, etc.  They do though say these things, these anyones and it is probably so they don't have to get into any further detail.  Details that they don't have even the vaguest clue about, details about the afterlife.  This anyone said, "they're always with us" and without a single bit of proof or even information they lie through their teeth.  They say this when really they ought to say, "well I just don't know" or how about "that's a nice dream you had" or how about just don't say anything at all?  There's that.  But no, nowadays these anyones must respond and respond in a manner that conveys their own spirituality.  That nice word, the one that tells everyone how nice one is.  I am spiritual.  I'm not one of these other things, I'm a neutral.  An observer but even better, a non participant.  A Schrodinger principle, neither here nor there.

Oh, you want an abortion? Sure they'll tell you, it isn't even human let alone spiritual. Because, this much is for sure, being spiritual requires an actual choice, involves an evolution and is more than anything else, completely egalitarian.  It is also equated with mindfulness and a fetus cannot have a mind, a developed sense of self that perpetuates this particular type of unregulated equality.  They can teach you all about mindfulness and clean food at workshops.  Sometimes you pay and you always register.  Sign up for some of that, yes,  No one bothers with the soul much anymore because well, there isn't much use for a soul if there isn't an afterlife and if things keep going the way they have been, no one will even dare to mention that word out of fear of retaliation.  Why?  I'll tell you why.  I'll tell you why most people cannot say much more beyond spiritual.  

HELL.  That's why.  Hell.  No one needs this thing called a soul and in fact, in order to own this thing called a soul one must be able to formulate a disposition for it once the body dies because a soul is separate from it. It has to go somewhere and there are only four possible places to go: a next life, no where, heaven and hell. That's it. The soul leaves the body, the spirit doesn't.  No one really talks about spirits leaving the body however they allow these spirits to hang around all over the place and say things like "they're always with us".  Are they? And, why? What would the purpose be of always hanging around us after they are flat out lifeless reminding us of our own promised demise? Like the movie Ghost, pushing pennies off of tables like cat videos. It is problematic in many ways. But hell, let's not take the fun out of death, the little bit of fun that we can extract from it anyway. Let's sell some spirit then.  And certainly there is a reason that in the past someone connected intoxication, whiskey and spirits.  It SELLS.  Hell doesn't.

The spirit of a person, that individuality that they created and either impressed us with or imposed on us, can remain for a very long time.  These 'spirits' then are the stuff of our imagination, memories and for some of us, hopes of reunion. Reunion and the desperate sense of loss in itself taints the occurrence of visions, dreams and other sensations that occur after someone dies. Or the spirit can be much larger in scope and cover a wide variety of ideas, in fact it is used synonymously with words like 'idea' and 'intention' when we say for instance, "in the spirit of wanting to agree".  Spirit becomes more than an individual, it becomes a group think. It literally wrote an entire Bible. No offense to Christians, absolutely none intended but this is the premise upon which several iterations of a text from several people came together to form what we call the Bible.  It is, I did not make that up.  I am just logical. All religious thought and non thought involves group think, afterall with over 8 billion people planet wide, there are no more individual options regardless of how proud you are believing that you are unique in your 'beliefs'.  

Soul on the other hand, is never used in the context of more than a single person and that is what distinguishes it from spirit and the 'spiritual'. It's a one body and one soul proposition unless of course you subscribe to the notion of reincarnation and many people do.  It's a nice idea this transmutation of souls across multiple time frames but with it usually comes a get out of jail free card. There is no real accountability in the sense that in order to be accountable, one must be conscious of one's accountability.  A vicious circle that. The entire purpose of a next temporal condition is to improve on this one or be penalized for it in the world of transmutation of energy.  And, in addition to that, what good are all these lives if one cannot appreciate living them one after the other after the other?  Sure, if you want to believe you have lived in the past I guess you are entitled to but honestly, no one can prove this. Any more than a believer can prove the afterlife except through a logical set of evidences and premises. The playing field in this is level IF and only if a person plays fairly. And, most of us don't. When I say "us" I mean both as individuals and as large congregates or 'religions'.  It is human nature to make stuff up when it comes to the 'spiritual' realm.  We like it.  Alot. But what happens to these folks who are reincarnated?  Are they as the anyone suggested 'always around us'?  Or are they packing up for the next journey?  Are they already in someone's uterus or being born at the exact hour as the Druze believe?  Hmm. When does someone do so badly that they are just not given another chance?  When they murder and rape a two year old?  I am fond of posting on social media sites that report on the seemingly modern trend of heinous crimes towards mostly children (Nancy Grace) that there is a reason for hell to exist.  An absolute reason it must exist even if you believe in reincarnation.  The life of a cockroach is even too good for most of these psychopaths that are demon possessed in extremis. All the same, even this heterogenous lineage of transmuted souls it ends up in one camp or the other i.e. heaven/hell or nothingness.  As well, when the physical universe ends, what's the point?  Where does one go?  Again, one of the other two camps, heaven/hell or nothing.  Why bother then with all that time existing if it means 1. you don't get to remember stuff and 2. you lose it all anyway at the end.  Doesn't make logical sense.

What is remarkable is that all the known systems we have can all be traced to these fundamental concerns of spirit and soul, one or the other or both.  Except for athiesm and well, they have no use for a soul do they?  And if they do, ask them why would they eed one and see what the answer is.  It will be as black of a hole as their core presumptions of lacking a creator and hence, a design.  Just willy nilly creatures like pollywogs who turn into legged frogs and bats who see with ultrasonic technology, like U-boats and B-1 bombers.  For sure, atheists have no soul because they have no use for one.  Their consciousness is just part of their inherent existence and isn't separate in any sense like a soul or even the lesser of the twins, a spirit is.  I'm not sure what they would say when faced with the grief of a friend.  Maybe, "tough luck" or something like that, like what one says when striking out even though the pitches were pretty good. They probably wouldn't say "they're always with us" because that doesn't make sense in their Creator free/design free world.  Maybe they just stare blankly and remember their own mother or father or a favorite guppy.  All about the same when it comes to biology in fact we have more in common with most pigs than we do with Neandrathals and use drosophilia for understanding the epithelium of the prostate.  No one matters more than a fly in reality. We should mourn them as much as we do our own and some people do imbue cows and birds with their own form of spiritual likening.  We just don't say to each other, "they're always with us".  Even vegans don't bother with that.  This is not to say that athiests aren't good ethical people.  It's just saying that they have no soul, no need for a soul and ought not have their feelings hurt for admitting it to them. Some of my best friends are insert word here, to be as inclusive as possible.