When I was growing up in the South during the mid 70’s we use to refer to folks doing their everyday, ordinary stuff with creative authenticity as having soul or being soulful.
Peeking backwards I easily see myself being attracted to this soulful quality again and again in my relationships, my work choices, music, art and leisure. I see how much of this quality I have integrated into my life and my personality. I feel so in love with it. This quality of soulfulness feels like me plus divine and I crave the sweetness of each moment saturated with its impulse to thrive.
It sounds strange to call it by this new spiritually elite name but my evolutionary self is whispering its joy this morning as it assures me that it has been with me always and that I’ve known it as my Soul. My body naturally moves to bow in humble reverence for having known it as so much a part of me and seeing it so beautifully in others for such a long time. I honor every awakened glimpse of its magnificent expression.
This quality in me and in others is distinctly differently from that of Spirit or God which needs nothing, feels timeless, weightless, huge, and spacious. My soul is certainly discernable from my ego mind of cautions and criticisms which seems to echo the world’s patterns, motivations and values so absolutely unconcerned with soulful impracticality.
It is hard to express how still I feel in this moment, like the great pause of an aha moment at the peak of a giant holy mountain called life as I know it. I’ve been climbing up and down and all around this mountain for 3 decades, reaching and pausing on little summits all along the way fully believing that if I just keep going I would one day reach the top where my life would make perfect sense and cease being such an arduous endeavor.
~ Endeavoring to find myself, my dharma and God more fully expressed and my safety the prize inside the box but as I stand in this aha looking out over all that is possible and magnificent about me and my life, I admit not knowing much more than I did before about what will happen next. Strangely I do feel less threat, safer perhaps.
I sense a relaxed peace and hear a resounding ‘YES’ breathing in and out of me as my soul takes the lead. This is an incredible surrender for my ego self who has worked so cunningly to protect and shield my soul from a soulless world. Insisting it must be the leader of this human walkabout and resisting my soul’s direction at any cost. The cost of my ego-led life has been high and not just for me personally but for all of us.
I giggle and smile as my mind tries to make sense ~ “yeah, you are like a soul whisperer and your dharma is to be soulfully expressed so that it’s safer for others to be soulful, so that we can move and rise soulfully through the mountain and valleys of our evolution.” Man, that sounds so cool, doesn’t it? (grandiose enough for my ego to dismiss) And yet, this whisper or knowing about a soulful me hardly acts as the map to the treasure box of answers I once sought to find.
It’s a good thing I think that my soul requires no map and no instruction on how to be or where to go or how to lead my ego or how to breathe from the ground of being. A soulful life motioning toward God, checking my ego as I move? Yes, I can do that now. and so can you.
