A Soulful Life

A Soulful Life | Maui Vision Magazine - Oct-Nov '09 Issue

What is "the soul?" This word, among others that attempt to describe something of a spiritual nature, can be distorted by centuries of cultural and personal misperception. We've inherited definitions of "the soul" through the mental filters of our ancestors. One definition of the soul that comes to mind is one that was passed on to me at a young age. It states that the soul is an eternal, yet elusive part of the self that either burns or is "saved" in the "afterlife".  As a child, through this fundamental, religious wording, I first vaguely understood the soul to be somehow different or separate from myself but at the same time something I needed to be concerned about. The idea was: if I was "good" my soul would go to heaven. If I was "bad", well, that was an unspeakable scenario since after all, God could be a bit of a tyrant who has lost his temper at times. You know that God, he's a handful! Needless to say, these ideas are a lot for a young mind in Sunday school to absorb.  Plenty of dualities and misperceptions about the nature of life, self and God have been buried in our unconscious minds for generations. It is these and other very emotionally latent beliefs that stand in our way of personally and deeply experiencing our souls.

In the film, "The Secret", the premise is that we create our reality by what we believe and feel emotionally. This basic truth applies to deeper levels of the unconscious mind as well. As an example, we might unknowingly believe in God as a somewhat punishing parental figure who makes life very hard for us, sometimes apparently for no reason. This could appear as a feeling of being punished through our life circumstances. It may manifest in struggles in relationship, work, money, etc. Any belief about an omnipresent being in control of our lives can color every experience! Likewise, we hold unconscious misperceptions about ourselves. We believe we are our personalities and are separate from our souls. This is a fracture within the self that manifests in deeply ingrained emotional patterns. All of the false ideas that we hold in our minds, bodies, dna and subtle energy levels serve to keep us separate from the deep personal essence within us, the soul. They serve to keep us fearful of The Ocean of Love that infuses our souls and permeates everything. No wonder we have been spinning our wheels!

The good news is that we can release it all. We have the capacity as human/spiritual beings to clean out the stored emotional mistruths and disharmonies. We can heal the personality structures that keep us separate from our true selves. This opens the door to the higher frequencies of love and feelings of elation that have been waiting to merge with us all along.

So again, what is the soul? In it's purest state, it is the highest version of your individual essence. It is the joyful, love-filled presence that awaits beneath your humanity. It longs to come forward into your body, mind and life. It longs to spiritualize matter through you and awaken you to the truth that you are a drop in an ocean of love. This felt experience will supersede the limits of the conceptual mind and present you with the limitlessness of the heart. Once it has infused you with it's higher intelligence, universal wisdom will break through conditioned thought and love will "think" through you in multi-dimension. There are no limits to the love of the soul.

The following is a meditation that, when practiced sincerely, will begin to unveil the soul through felt experience while identifying and releasing points of resistance to it.

Meditation:

1. Relax fully and feel" your heart center, the portal to the soul.
2. Ask the presence of love to show you the way, deeper into your essence.
3. Feel the nuances of love and depth.
4. Drop deep into the feeling.
5. With sincere intention ask to be shown the truth of who you are and feel it fully. (Feelings of the love infused soul bring deep pleasure. Anything that does not feel good is of the disharmony in mind/emotion and spiritual misperception.)
6. When you are anchored in pleasure, ask to intuitively see, feel hear or know the part of you that resists The Love.
7. Invite the loving arms of your lighted soul to encircle this pain and accept it with unconditional presence as it reveals its suffering and releases.
8. Drop deeper into the divine presence of soul in your heart, feel and relax into it.
9. Invite this feeling into your body and life and allow it to lead the way.