Letting Your Soul Show

Recently I received an email from a conscientious woman whom I know to be devoted to warming the world in her own special ways.  She was venting frustration over this year’s onslaught of holiday greeting cards that felt, well, obligatory to her.  To put it in her words “…it concerns me a bit that people are so busy, and/or don’t take the time to write a little personal note.”

This made me smile with empathy.

We are trained to live our lives a very specific way.  I mean that word–trained.  I speak to the homes we are raised in, the social circles that support us, the communities and societies that extend out from each of these facets.  But I do not use that word in an accusatory way, more like a tree that seeds new growth from itself because that’s its nature.  We are supported by our social systems to see to it that our basic needs get met.  Far past the time of our basic needs being met we continue to run in burdened circles convinced that that’s the way because that’s what we were taught, and it seems that that’s what everyone else is doing.  So eventually we find ourselves–we all do this–on autopilot.  Treating the precious the way we were programmed to approach the burdensome rounds of eat, sleep, shelter because we were never taught that the precious is the most basic need.  We devalue our experiences with each misfired application of this training, call it stress and secretly wonder how any of its worth it.

In my practice with clients as a life coach, and with women specifically, we refer to this as soul injury.  It’s a wound with roots in the very nature of humanity and one of the fine ironies of this life.  There is no singular reason or cause other than being human doesn’t come with a rule book.  Yet that’s what makes it ironic:  the soul is what enlivens us, but to break the cycle of soulessness takes a hearty dose of–well, you guessed it, soul.

Soul life is relational life, in every aspect of the word.  It’s how we relate firstly to our self, the inner-talk and treatment that underlies all our choices, and it extends to our relations with all of life that surrounds us.   When we slow down, pay attention to within, to the way we quietly think and treat our self, that relationship will then impact the way we treat not just other people but the whole way we live our life.  It really is that simple.  We seek the precious, the soul inside us, or we don’t.  And if we haven’t been taught, then we run our rounds.

The beautiful side of this irony is that soul life is expansive, contagious.  Think about the random stranger that sparkles a smile at you while holding the gas station door open.  Think about the warm feeling as you automatically smile back.  That little space there, where your smile is born, that’s your soul space.  The more you affirm its reality, the more it grows.  The more it does so the more others enliven at this apparent mystery firing you up from within.  This doesn’t take years of practice.  You can start right now.

I hope you will.  It’s Christmas, Solstice, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa,  these many celebrations of light.  The season of goodwill. When just below the stressful rounds our hearts ache with a longing for more from life and love.  So may you start with your own light, may you start today, right now.  May it easily happen that you relate to your own life as precious, and allow this relation to slow you down, allow it to change your rounds to make room for the little bits of light and preciousness that literally pour out in bounties all around.  May that awareness become your living  thanks and may that thanks be the grace that contributes to increasing the light and goodwill of right now.  May that increase grow exponentially,  may it confirm the soul, the preciousness.  May it be how we all help each other heal.  When you get caught in the web of stress and blame and rounds, as you will, as I will, as we do, may that be precious, poignant with humor and light, too–because of growing awareness of our funny little human sameness.  May that allow us to trust in a warmth for ourselves and each other.  Maybe can’t see it, but for sure we know how soul feels.  May we let that show.

Photo courtesy of Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hadesigns/5474234563/sizes/z/in/photostream/