Hi inventech,

From what I'm learning, there is spirit in everything. Maybe not individual spirits, but extensions of Earthspirit that reveals itself through various forms such as rocks, trees, animals.

Some animals such as birds and mammals have a type of soul but that type of soul is not capable of all that a human's soul can do, in my understanding.

When I go OB in the third subtle body or do phasing, I see other souls and some are not from Earth. But they all have some characteristics of their energyforms in common. These characteristics are best described as being like a torus, a very high energy configuration that attracts mass and other energy and is capable of generating alot of light.
When I asked to see animal souls I was told there is no such thing but they could show me spirit-forms of animals. These were much simpler. 
They could not show me bird soulforms yet due to some blockages I have. I don't have the 'channels' to receive such information because I haven't loved and respected birds enough.

Personally I've not meditated on soul in man-made arts, crafts, technology, etc. I know humans are made of many types of energy and that some of a creator's energy is left with his/her creation. Hand-made pottery comes to mind, but even loved objects, such as long-lived antiques, carry energies of their owners that other humans respond to.

If we just had more words beyond 'soul,' 'spirit', 'dead,' etc ,  then I think we could better understand the types and amounts of spiritual energies that animate life.

Bets

If you concentrate on animals or plants and let your consciousness slip away a bit, "expand" so to say, you can feel that animals and plants have souls too. As to how they work, I believe that depends on how their brains are structured (plants have a sort of brain too, dont want to go into biology too much here), some are closer to human states of being and some aren`t.

There is some sort of "essence" to every person and to every living thing, I can`t describe it any better. If there is a soul, this essence is it (I think). Also, this essence always has a little part of "me" in it, which makes me think there is something to the belief that everything is one in some fashion, yet everything is diverse at the same time.

Just try it, it`s a bit hard to describe . Tell me if you get somewhere (I sometimes fear I am just imagining things).

ah, betson, inside me, the war between pure, intellectual materialist-atheist thinking and intuitive, spiritual, connected thinking is going on in full force