Great question Ana, I have contemplated this often myself. As always, I can only offer my truth...

To me, everything in the phenominal universe is created from consciousness or spirit. In other words pure awareness of the zero-sum-total of everything - everything/nothing simultaneously.

Awareness manifests as multiple (apparently separate) parts like waves on a vast ocean. It is the interplay between the 'parts' that causes relativity and from that the experience of life.

To me, the soul is the 'memory of the original condition of oneness'. It only arises when there is separation between the parts, so if you can imagine two magnets touching one another. You only experience the force between them when you pull the magnets apart. This analogy is like the soul. That's why we experience love within the universe - the pull drawing us back together as one.

So the soul only arises for us as an experience when we experience separation and the flow back to unity. So naturally when we incarnate, we incarnate with the experience of soul because we are incarnating as something separate from the whole.

I see the soul acting like a sheath to the spirit within always reminding us of our true state of unity.

Aaaaaaha!!!

Brilliant analogy - I couldn't find the words.

So, perhaps, Spirit is the Ocean... and the soul are like the bubbles (formed of ocean - yet uniquely separate, until they become - the ocean again).

Love
Ana

That resonates with me. The yogi Paramahansa Prajnanananda sings a song which goes "I am a bubble oh make me the sea".

To me, the surface tension of the bubbles would represent the soul. It also raises the interesting topic of duality.

Many say that the apparent duality of separateness disappears with enlightenment but to me, that is not the case. The soul still exists and so we still experience separation whist simultaneously knowing the oneness of everthing.