one- what is the path to lightning flash, is it bravery, or ... selfless service to others.

i would like to obtain many times. not just once, is it a a one time thing?

two - is the soul just the soul? is it always been this way for everyone?

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One: There is no universal path, just yours for you, but I have noted in a number of *satori stories*, accounts of others satori, a common element of humility. 

That makes sense.  If it was your secret, which it is, would you share it with just anyone?

Two:  I dont know.

one - the path to lightening flash, is skeptical naivete masked in pure subservience to divine will, aka, an inquisitive childlike curiosity that is determined to make its own mind up, yet doggedly under the umbrella of sensitivity to your next foot fall

two - the soul is like a wreath/wraith (either will suffice), and it amounts to two plus two, two opposing dialectics, and two that are twin. When we counteract, as a whole, any single one of the four, then the sun/moon, light/dark, yin/yang, pos/neg of the conglomeration, that is us, becomes confused, thus it is best if we can maintain stability by assenting to a higher authority the orchestration of ourselves.  This is when the bodhi mind is given the head to supervise our spiritual texture/expanse, and the lower mind/self attends to basic survival to take care of the body.  The soul toes the line to the bodies, for it is the bodies that enables the experience, and hence the evolution of the soul.  So the soul is not just the soul in a life, as it is intrinsically woven into a web where the bodhi mind and the lower body has a part to play.

you may so, however if soul were only a metaphor then carnivals would only be a whisper on the wind,

 hushed forth by the heaving of an oak, that only could muster tentative desire for fripperies, giddy delight, and excess (in the extreme).

there are, though, metaphors for the soul

these being among them, a dove released from cupped hands

a swallow in its migration

a pillow stuffed with herbs that keep the moths, moulds and crawling hoards away

and, a helium balloon rising through the sky that eventually begins to shrivel and fall because the balloon material has begun to perish from the heat, and the helium has begun to dissipate