What is the soul?
How does your soul respond to this image?
Sometimes, I catch glimpses of the soul as a mysterious animal, always just darting out of sight. This animal lives in the woods. It is mysterious – wise, kind, playful – and never completely knowable.
I know it has many secrets and much wisdom – the only wisdom I need for my life. The soul animal does not move in straight lines or go to a fixed destination – I can only follow it around corners, through the trees, catching impressions and senses of it as I go, uncovering hidden treasures and buried surprises. I feel compelled to follow it; there is no other choice.
I feel the soul wants to become conscious, to merge fully with our humanness and become the guiding force for our individual lives and for life on Earth. This requires our active participation. We need to invite soul into our lives; to meet it halfway. Our human soul is a part of the soul of the world, of life, and is connected to every other soul. It is trying to bring us back to this consciousness.
Soul is divine intelligence merged with our humanity. Perhaps if anything can save us (from despair as well as from physical extinction), and nature, it is for people to know, befriend and live by the soul.
My personal experience of becoming aware of this strange force that did not seem to fit in with a conventional way of living and understanding life was as a child, always wanting to know the truth – firstly, about what was happening in my family, and then later about how we live, relationships, work, nature, life itself. Then my desire for truth became subsumed by my desire to belong, until my early 30s, when it became my obsession again. The desire for truth was the gateway to the magic of the deep soul journey.
I feel that soul and truth are like twin souls: linked forever, part of each other. You can’t have one without the other.
Living the path of the soul is not easy (at least, not for me!). But it comes with a kind of deep relief – the relief of the soul. And I cannot do life any other way.
