Can I feel my soul?

We Christians like to talk a lot about souls. I am not quite sure why we seem so sure that we have them, but we seem to like the idea that they are there. We talk about the soul being what is left to hopefully go to heaven when we die. But we have no clear understanding of what it is composed of, where it inhabits us and what we should do with it.

The Old Testament doesn't really say much about it. God created each one of us with a "life force" not a soul, according to the original Aramaic that the Old Testament was written in. What is left out in our modern translations is that God also imbued animals with the same "life force", so it probably came closer to meaning that God gave us life; or made us alive.Of course, some animal aficionados like the idea of animals having a soul too. But, most likely, the birth story of our universe was more related to a life force that made us different from rocks, for instance, or chairs and such. The complication is, of course, that we know that plants are alive but no life force was given to them, I don't think. Correct me if I am wrong.

The concept of soul seems to have originated in the New Testament, around the time the Greeks were influencing how people looked at the world. Aristotle and Plato both had concepts of a person or thing that seemed to set the concept apart from the thing . One of them thought the concept was in the thing, the other thought that it was entirely apart from the thing. In either case, "chair" was different from an actual chair. "Rock" was different from an actual rock. Essence of chair. Essence of rock.

It isn't a far stretch to take this one step further and think of essence of person as distinct, though contained in, the actual person.Or, something residing in us apart from our physical selves. Essence of us.

So what is soul? Is soul a little piece of me, the essence of me? Is soul a little piece of God, essence of God manifest in me? If so, that might help explain why we are told that we were created in God's image. Maybe that image is "soul" rather than the physical appearance that some people think was meant when the bible says we were created in God's image.

As I continue my prayer and mediation life I struggle with the term soul. Since I am reading St. Teresa of Avila's book The Interior Castle I am incited to find my soul and connect it to God. However, I am left wondering where it is. Is the connection I feel with God on occasion, made with my soul? How come I can't feel my soul or locate it in my body. What exactly does it do, this soul of mine? Will prayer made it bigger and better or is it simply a channel? Can I feel my soul?