Understanding of the soul In the Islamic understanding each individual is made up of three parts. One part material and two part ethereal. In English both ethereal parts have been translated as soul, mistakenly, from Arabic, Farsi, Sawahili, Turkish, and every Middle Eastern language.
The physical body - Jasad
The lower Self - Nafs
The higher Self or Soul - Rouh
The physical body needs shelter, food, water, physical activity, medicine, and sleep to survive.
The lower self is used to refer to physical desires that go beyond the basics needs. Some may be justified while others are not. Sex, specific food preference and napping are justified physical wants. While alcohol, drugs, food binging, or over sleeping aren't. We refer to these desires by saying my lower self wants to sleep now, my lower self would kill for some pork chops, and/or my lower self wants to bone this person.
The higher self is used to refer to the ethereal needs. What does your soul need ?
1. To connect with our creator through meditation, prayer, visions, dreams, or astral projection. In Arabic we say my soul is being called upon, or missing a part, when referring to needing to pray or meditate.
2. To love and be loved by those around you. We literally say in Arabic as a figure of speech my soul is in my son, in describing the unconditional love of a parent, and how placing my most valuable component in him to feel his pain and joy instantly. We say my soul has parted, when a loved one passes. We also say my soul is wondering to my living mother, in describing how I miss her.
3. To serve a purpose. This purpose could be learning, creating, clearing, building, crafting, understanding, simplifying, uncovering or teaching anything. This validates the meaning of our highly vibrating soul withing this weak and dying physical shell. We say my soul is driving this need, ill stop when it stops, to describe the unstoppable force taking over.
4. To keep vibrating at high frequencies by maintaining good ethics. Staying virtuous keeps the soul vibrant; while breaking values by lying, cheating, or acting evil thickens the pressure on your soul slowing down the vibrations, causing sadness, depression and melancholy to eat away at you.
Of course it is also believed the more you feed and satisfy your lower self it prevails as the dominant driver over you. And the more you feed and satisfy you higher self the more it dominates your beliefs, choices, and actions. It's also understood that with our death; both the physical and lower self end. Leaving only our higher self to pass on.