Looking at the Soul through Mobility
Essay , march 18 , 2026
Nothing in this universe, to human knowledge, is stationary. We exist in a state of constant movement. The universe itself is constantly expanding, moving everything within it as it does so. Most planets and objects in the universe spin as they orbit around their stars or other objects, unless they are tidally locked around another object. (Vogel, 2024) Even in that case, they still orbit around something. Some astronomers even suggest that our universe itself is spinning. (Universe Today, 2025) Even our molecules themselves are constantly in movement. (Haw, 2000) Our souls as well are in this permanent state of movement. When one views the soul as mobile and fluid rather than static, they’re able to fully understand the soul’s freedom, transformation, and connection.
Mobility allows the soul to move towards its own freedom. The soul must be an unfixed object in order to shift and move into this new state. In Plato’s famous “Allegory of the Cave”, he discusses a scenario in which a group of men are living in a cave, only able to look forward while watching a puppet show. These puppet representations of items and concepts in our world are their only references for these concepts. Plato poses that if someone should “drag [one of the men] thence by force up the ascent” from the cave and into the real world, it would be difficult for him to adjust, but eventually “he would be able to look upon the sun itself and see its true nature, not by reflections in water or phantasms of it in an alien setting, but in and by itself in its own place.” (Rau, Hamilton, & Cairns, 1962) Plato’s allegory of the cave is ultimately meant to end with us questioning if we are like the men in the cave. If so, then who would forcibly drag us into the real world? Poets and philosophers alike have used movement to convey the freeing of the soul. While Plato describes the soul as being “dragged” into enlightenment, Contemporary poet Ted Hughes, in his poem The Jaguar, describes the enlightened soul of a Jaguar to be spinning, striding along in the wilderness, and the world rolling as the jaguar bounces. It’s interesting to note the specific use of the word “spin”, with the specific wording being, “ He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him // More than to the visionary his cell: / His stride is wildernesses of freedom: / The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel. / Over the cage floor the horizons come.” The Jaguar of the poem is confined in the zoo, but his soul is free. The poem draws to mind the Neo-slave narrative Beloved, in which the characters deal with the profound and generational impact of slavery. Morrison writes, “Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.” (Morrison, 1987) In Beloved, the characters are physically free, but their souls are still trapped and confined by slavery. The soul must move into a state of freedom, leaping over itself, climbing up the walls of the cave, and spinning into its own form.
While the soul has the capacity to move into a state of freedom, the soul also has the ability to move into a state of becoming something entirely new. In Deleuze & Guattari’s novel A Thousand Plateaus, they discuss the multiplicity and complexity of living. As our souls move, their experiential systems shift. They naturally grow and change with us, as change is the state of the universe. Deleuze & Guattari state, “Werewolves become vampires when they die. This is not surprising, since becoming and multiplicity are the same thing.” Children become adults as they age. Grief morphs slowly into anger or into acceptance. Our feelings grow and change, and our souls mature alongside us. Examining the soul as a mobile, flexible being capable of change and growth, rather than a static guide or force, allows us to begin to better examine the soul as a part of our own biological systems. Identity is something that grows, our bodies grow, and our souls themselves are scarred and morphed by living in this world.
An infant reaches for an object to learn more about it. He might bring it closer to himself, to put it in his mouth. He might move himself closer to the object, scooting or crawling across the floor. In touching these objects, in exploring them, he is not only attached to them through his mouth, or hand, or possibly foot, but also by Newton’s universal constant force that binds every particle in the universe together. The movement of the soul is not only a method of freedom and transformation, but of connection. As we pay attention to objects, our souls stretch towards them. When we stretch towards an object, we begin to know it. We learn what it is, how it works, what it tastes like. In "The Art and Ethics of Attention", author Thomas Pfau states, “attention constitutes an achievement, a habit of focused seeing and participating in what gives itself to us.” Attention is an action, something that we participate in, and something that we achieve. Much of Pfau’s article describes attention as a form of empathy. When we attend to something, we connect to it. Our brains neurons fire, and our souls attend. As well as this attention, when we stretch towards a character in a novel, we begin to know it. We learn what its role is, what its motivations and desires are. We begin to identify with the words on the page. Through this play, we begin to know more about the souls of the things around us. We reach towards the soul of the characters inside the novel, or towards our friends. We reach towards the soul of the crayon, or the food we enjoy. The ways that we move affect our souls. They leave stretch marks, growing pains. In Keat’s poem Ode To Psyche, he states “Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane / In some untrodden region of my mind”, referring to the Goddess Psyche, as well as his own internal psyche/soul/mind. He describes himself as becoming Psyche’s priest, and building her a shrine in his own mind. He’s actively reaching towards this concept, connecting with it in this deep religious way. In this way, the soul is shown to not be an isolated creation. Our souls have long been communal objects, pinpoints of spiderwebs that connect to everything around us. In imagining our souls as inseparable from their surroundings, as constantly moving and changing and growing things, we can understand how inseparable we are from the larger world.
To conclude, the soul is not a static figure. It is not fixed inside of our hearts. To trap and contain the soul as such an object is to refuse it of its potential. The soul is an entity of us that is constantly moving, as with everything in this world. By understanding and examining this fact, we’re able to understand the soul’s role in our freedoms, in our transformations, and in our connections to the world around us at large.
References
attention | Etymology, origin and meaning of attention by etymonline. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.etymonline.com website: https://www.etymonline.com/word/attention
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus. Bloomsbury.
Haw, M. (2000). Molecules in a spin. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/news000720-6
Koberlein, B. (2025, April 17). An Interesting Solution to the Hubble Tension: The Universe is Slowly Spinning. Retrieved March 18, 2026, from Universe Today website: https://www.universetoday.com/articles/an-interesting-solution-to-the-hubble-tension-the-universe-is-slowly-spinning
Morrison, T. (1987). Beloved. London: Vintage.
News, U. (2025, April 14). UH astronomer finds the universe could be spinning | University of Hawaiʻi System News. Retrieved from University of Hawaiʻi System News website: https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2025/04/14/universe-could-be-spinning/
Pfau, T. (2014). The Art and Ethics of Attention.
Rau, C. D., Hamilton, E., & Cairns, H. (1962). The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 21(2), 234. https://doi.org/10.2307/427222
Vogel, T. (2024, December 10). Tidal Locking - NASA Science. Retrieved from science.nasa.gov website: https://science.nasa.gov/moon/tidal-locking/