“Inner explorers travel to a world much more exciting and thrilling, much more beautiful and meaningful, much more satisfying and fulfilling, much more amazing and magnificent than any outer explorer will ever behold.”
A.H.Almaas, The Inner Journey Home
“Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.”
Joseph Campbell.
As we search for deeper meaning amidst accelerating social change and an uncertain future, there’s an evolutionary impulse pulsing through humanity, waking us up to the necessity for radical change that can only come from inside each one of us.
Exploration of our inner world, coming to know and understand our subjective experience, is what I call the soul journey. I understand the soul to be that bigger, wiser consciousness which carries within it our individual and collective sense of purpose and direction: our need to heal and evolve.
Through my own explorations of soul life over the years I have come to understand how many of our individual problems occur when we are disconnected from our inner life, and how the global problems we see today reflect this disconnection on a bigger scale.
An important part of my own soul work has been to delve into and map the subjective experiences and states of the inner life and, as a writer, to find a common language to describe these. In this way, for me, writing has become a vehicle for exploring and expressing soul. Whilst one of my psychic antennae is listening inwardly to the creative intelligence within me, the other antenna is sensing outwards towards you, the reader; so writing forms a bridge between being and doing, inner and outer, me and you. This inner delving is one way I can contribute to our collective liberation from the illusions of social conditioning; a liberation which is happening, and has to happen, if humanity is to survive on the planet with any quality of life. Throughout my soul journey it has dawned on me this is the most important thing I can do with my life: my life’s purpose.
Although pursuing the soul journey is not always easy and is frequently confusing, I feel blessed that I found my soul work and life purpose in my thirties, and have been able to pursue this path. Alongside my passion for writing, my life has been significantly shaped by the powerful experiential process of Gestalt therapy, in which I participated for twenty two years as a client and as a practitioner; as a learner and as a teacher. This too opened me to soul, propelled me into my quest, and gave me some invaluable tools for self awareness.
In the 22 Days of Transformation we are participating in an experiential here-and-now inquiry into what it means to live from soul. Some of the questions we asked on our journey this morning were:
What am I longing for?
What is possible?
What is my potential?
What nourishes me?
Soul is a deeper multi-dimensional self which presents through vision, images, memories, intuitions and hunches. It is a dimension of being which can be hidden, out of awareness, for years and then suddenly revealed to us in times of crisis or, in what are often referred to as spiritual awakenings, or spiritual emergencies.
The gateway to soul lies within the body, where all our memories are held. The soul is like a seed hidden inside us, and at the right time, the seed begins to push up through the earth of the body and make its way into the light.
Photo by Rose Diamond
Writing taken from “A Soulful Life”, from the e-book Consciousness Series. See: http://www.awholenewworld.net/ebooksbuy.htm
You may also enjoy, Migration to the Heartland: A Soul Journey in Aotearoa,
It was amazing. I had a future life progression to a happy life with a husband and children in India.