You are a soul. You have a body

I always enjoyed the show I Survived but recently I was lucky enough to catch another show by the same creators called I Survived: Beyond and Back. I'll admit that it's my new obsession cuz I truly can't get enough of it! It tells the story of 3 people (usually 3) who have had a near death experience. Their hearts have stopped for either a short or surprisingly long amount of time and they all came back to life with memories of what took place while they were, for lack of a better word, dead. It was amazing to hear each persons recollection since they shared so many similarities. Having been met by a loved one who had passed before them or by what they say was an angel or even God himself. Being engulfed in a superior white/yellowish light, having no sense of time or any of their daily responsibilities and having a wave of calm and peace running through them. They all experienced a feeling of being loved and welcomed as if they were returning home from an extended holiday and they all claimed to have felt rejected and hurt when they were told they had to return to their bodies, not wanting to leave this very special place. It sparked such a huge interest in me that I started looking up other stories on the internet and much to my surprise there were hundreds if not thousands of other people who were claiming to have gone through almost the same exact thing. But who or what went through these experiences if the person lay dead with no heart beat? I've always feared dying because I always wondered what was going to happen after my body took its last breath. I knew we all had to die at some point but I just couldn't accept that my inner voice, the voice of reason, compassion and joy would be silent forever. Where would all my thoughts go? And what about all the people I love so dearly? Where would all that love for them go? But after watching and reading those stories I began to feel at ease with the whole process of dying and leaving behind my physical self. I started to feel that I, like the people in the stories and the rest of mankind are in a sense immortal. That always present voice inside that fills us with laughter and joy, tells us to help our fellow neighbor and to give thanks isn't a voice at all, its our soul. Being religious has nothing to do with it, period. We all posses a soul, whether given to us by God or the universe itself I cannot say but I know whether we believe in it or not its there working to keep us on the right path. Our human life is not reality. Its our souls journey in a physical form and once we've completed our task we will be called home. What we idolize here on earth, money, status, power and so on are all distractions from our true purpose. The main thing all those who'd passed and came back had in common were the feelings of love, peace and joy while "in the light" and those feelings wouldn't be possible without a soul. Its a sign, at least to me anyway, that what we have inside of us is much more real and valuable than anything we could possibly posses in material form. Our true power comes from our soul. Its what gives us our strength to carry on even when everything seems to be falling apart. Its what gives us the faith to fall asleep each night even though there's no guarantee that we'll wake up in the morning. Its our own personal navigation system telling us which choices to make along the way. Of course part of life's beauty is the ability to make choices for ourselves since the soul can only do so much. But many times we say "I knew I shouldn't have" or "The voice inside told me not to" yet we made the choice to do it anyway, ignoring our souls direction. Instead of blocking out the voice we should be embracing it since our souls main purpose is to guide us towards ultimate peace and happiness, freeing us from our earthly mundane existence. Our soul is the sum total of who we are, past, present and future. In the words of  C.S. Lewis - "You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body".