What we call the "soul" is that part of us that is made to comprehend the grand mystery that is God. When I say "comprehend," that is exactly what I mean. We cannot "know" God in the sense that we can know a math problem or even the way we "know" another person. The issue is, whatever we think we "know," God is infinitely more than that. So in this relationship there is, rather than an infinite regression as we find in philosophy, an infinite ascension; we come to some conclusion, realize that God is more than that, and then reach beyond it to the next conclusion.
The problems start when we misuse our soul-senses, which are designed to see and not to be seen. If we turn these senses away from the One who created them, pointing them inward to the task of self-scrutiny, then we create a kind of feedback loop in which we dredge up the very worst in ourselves, hold it to the light of discovery, and then consume it instead of offering it to God. We return again and again to view the things that distort the image of God, trying desperately to do what only He has the grace to do. Most of us are constitutionally incapable of not doing this. Perversely, it is another part of our basic fallenness.
And so we return to the purpose of the soul: to gaze upon the omnipotence and the immanance of God and to offer itself in a continual act of self-immolation. The self is destroyed, the ego is dethroned, and the soul is re-united with our bodies and our emotions. It is an act of re-creation. The false self, which judges itself harshly by what it does or achieves is minimized and the true self, which perceives itself solely as it relates to God, comes to the fore. The Fall is reversed and God achieves the goal of the cross: the redemption of whole people.
Christ is risen.
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