SOULED OUT

There exists a kind of beauty that the soul keeps through all that we endure.

 __________________ 

It was an innocent post. But the comments came fast and hard. Their anger surprised me. Both the people and their words.

Buried within the venom, or maybe more accurately, invisible in the white space between the sentences, there was an evident fatigue. One not of body but of soul.

When I am exhausted, I am typically cranky. Cranky doesn’t begin to describe what [through the reading] I heard. Having written the post with intention to mine the common ground, it surprised me that what resulted was precisely the opposite.

Those who rarely reach out with anything edifying made themselves known, in big and furious ways.

I was left with this troubling feeling that our souls have collectively detached from our thinking minds, that we are operating from a soulless, even primitive place instead.

There was a season when we lived in Napa that I remember noticing with a measure of curiosity that I couldn’t walk from my garden to my kitchen without audibly uttering, “I’m so tired.” I had thought right up until this week that the exhaustion I felt originated from a body that was in distress.

Here’s the revelation: My soul wasn’t struggling because of the cancer. The cancer was a symptom of a struggling soul.

This cancer journey, the one that caught me so off guard…is a direct result of a soul-starvation, rooted in the inattention to grief, anger, bitterness, neglect in my life.

Soul forms and guides everything about us. It is the gatekeeper of all that we allow in.

What are you allowing in?

Over the last five years I have dedicated 77 entries to exploration of the soul. Within the 241 stories, the word has been mentioned [if I counted correctly] 143 times. I’ve learned that making a shift requires a certain redundancy. Redundancy has a powerful impact. It’s how the soul awakens. Slowly, as it trusts what’s ahead.

“This is the reason you’re writing about it,” the Still Quiet Voice insists. “Someone needs to hear it again.”

Are you disconnected not only from others but yourself?
You are not alone in what you feel.  

Beyond the honor of sharing a conversation with you, the remarkable outcome of this weekly Journal is that my own words bear witness to who I am and what I believe. Sitting still. Sometimes a grueling process. Disciplining the mind, body and spirit to remain—

Long enough to sense what I’m feeling,

Feeling it and then letting the emotion wane,

Asking what good will come from my engagement,

If out of anger, frustration, or resentment, then I refrain.

Before engaging in any conversation, I count the cost, recognizing that giving myself even to something as simple as a comment on a post may require abandoning the aspects of who I am that I revere—

Consensus Builder

Beauty Maker

Hope Infuser

Life Giver

These are listed to inspire you to uncover yours.

In the weeks ahead the social conversations in every setting are likely to become more intense. In many ways, the health of our souls has never been more at risk. The most profound action I can take to protect what is sacred is to acknowledge that my power is not in my knowledge or opinions, but in the apprehended wisdom born of an alignment of body/mind/spirit. All three. Directed. In agreement. Souled out. All in.

In every encounter we have the opportunity to malign or uplift.
One feeds the ego, the other nourishes the soul.

This is where the fruit of our singular purpose lies. Not in acting as if we know everything. But in authentically knowing ourselves.

QUESTIONS TO ASK TO HEAL THE SOUL—

What signs am I disregarding that my soul is in need of my attention?

What do I long for?

Where do I go to get in touch with me?

When is the last time I did I deep-dive self-examination of:

My thoughts?

My heart?

My actions?

Where do I invest my time?

How do I feel when I’m alone?

How do I feel when I’m with others?

Do I often regret my actions when I’m with others?

What is my body telling me?

What is the thing I love about myself? When did I first see it manifest?

Is there a gifting or trait about myself that others are drawn to?

What is the area of my life where I consistently bear fruit?

Do I operate within the framework of sense-of-purpose?

Do I hold my ground. Or do I often give up or in?

NOTES:

The following words are some of my favorites, extracted from Journal entries over the last five years. Make the ones that resonate your own—

 Soul Is…
~A gratefulness for ‘what is’ and the longing for something that cannot be named.
~Recognition of self in a crowd.
~Trusting that who you are, is who you will show up as, again and again.
~Silence, a knowing, mind conversing with heart.
~Arbiter, sage, truth-teller in every circumstance.

 I may lose. But I will not lose myself. Nothing is worth that cost.

I pray with an embarrassing measure of frequency, “Dear God, just don’t let me get in the way.” It’s sometimes just too easy to become captivated by our own impression of what’s important, or interesting, or real.

Preparation is necessary but intuition is everything.  If I listen to what I see, and then see with my heart, there is always an opportunity to embed hope into the story that seems overwhelming, unchangeable, hopeless.

That gut feeling we often dismiss was embedded as a lifeline to cut through all the chatter in the brain that [too often] holds us back from reaching out, from embracing, from taking a chance.

Sometimes, we over-value what we know.
Often, we over-think.
Sometimes the most extraordinary outcome bears little resemblance to what we planned.
Often, the greatest gift we can give to ourselves, and others is to alter our course.
Sometimes life's most exquisite moments are discovered not in holding too tightly, but in gracefully letting go.

I read today that social media "hates the soul."
I imagine myself hunkered over a screen in contrast to walking in the forest or leaning in for a hug that nearly knocks me off my feet.
And I agree. Who wouldn’t…agree?

To define soul, I look to see its opposite having its way in me.
Anxiety. The killer of creativity, of every beautiful seemingly insignificant moment in our lives.

Despite the wisdom of the command, “Be anxious for nothing,” our agitation is flaming little fires everywhere.

How is it that we have become more comfortable with our dread than our dreams?

To approach each day with eagerness.
To write. To draw. To garden. To paint.
This is the essence of feeding the soul,
of being in the company of what we were created for.
That is, to Create.

To receive the gifts not so buried, we must be grounded and ready.
Present in the antiseptic. Even when what is in front of us feels sterile and removed.
It’s up to me to bring the humanity. It’s up to us to infuse our spaces with soul.

Let’s infuse the loveliest pieces of ourselves into the unlovely places.

Let’s paint the world with the color of soul.

We are the lovely interiors we seek—the condition of our hearts, the quiet of our spirits, the color of our souls. 

Have you not realized that the “you” in every moment is etched into the landscape? Have you misinterpreted that your actions and your energy go unnoticed and unseen?  

When we neglect to acknowledge what we bring to our surroundings, we default to the cookie-cutter versions of someone else’s beautiful life.

Who we are in the world depends first on who we are within.

In a broken world, the agony never ceases.  But neither does the light.
It is this Light [and not the darkness] that I carry for my children—
If they are to have any chance at preserving innocence
If they are to grow into men and women who will rise to every circumstance.

Prayer is the soul’s conversation with the brain. It is clarity and confirmation of what is known and believed deep within. 

Soul is not something mysterious or difficult to define. It is the whole of being human firmly imbedded in a singular moment in time.

Soul expands in the unhurried tempo.
It finds its rest in things once and still loved,
it stands elegant and enduring amid every unpleasant thing.

Soul is a window. Soul is the peeling in the paint.
Soul is the one peering through the crack in the shutter.
Soul is both abandon and restraint.

Soul finds its incarnation in deep connection, only realized by slowing way down.

The soul does not speak in code. Nor is it some quiet, passive observer. It is the master orchestrator of my life, of yours.

Soul is what defines us, enlivens us, prompts us to notice everything and render it useful, even essential in our comings and goings, amid our everyday lives.  

The soul refuses to be humanly defined. It is divinity mingled with our ordinary lives.

It is natural, even common, to relate soul to what comes after death. Yet how extraordinary to consider it the most essential element in how we live.