What does your soul say to you? Do you even hear it?
If there were no judgment on your actions or intentions, if the mind didn’t wander into the past or jump into the future questioning what could go wrong, you might begin to hear the voice of your soul clamoring for attention and for your permission to unleash its power. Your soul knows you best, it is the truest part of you, and what it’ll reveal to you if you allow it and listen for it (even if it takes a while) is an answer that will give you both a sense of peace and a feeling of enthusiasm. Your soul is a life force, so it seeks to energize you. Your soul is also a love-force, so it seeks to satisfy you. Your soul is not like anyone else’s, but it is in every way perfect.
Your soul is also undaunted and relentless. It’ll keep kicking you to listen and respond until you finally RSVP your definitive “yes, I will be there. I will show up for this awesome event, my soul’s celebration of its purpose.”
When life feels uncomfortable, limiting, depressing, unsatisfying, abrasive, empty, it is your soul that won’t let you stay there. It is that knowing place within that won’t allow you to remain in a small or ugly space and just live with it. Your soul will make darn sure you don’t get too comfortable with your discomfort. The chafing that happens in life, those fires we pass through, can be a clear and powerful sign that we are not at one with our soul. Maybe we are compromising. Perhaps we are selling our lives short. But blessedly, our soul is powerful enough and persistent enough that it won’t let that happen! God bless your soul!
Let me tell you a little more about this inner being that I am calling your soul. It is God’s changeless Truth about you. It is your home base. It is the core of your being as you were created to be. It is the Life within you that answers to your name only. You can’t escape your soul. It is what makes you you.
Our soul gets drowned out by the noise of personal sense and circumstance, opinions, and judgment. The voice of our singing soul is rejected as too impossibly good and right, so much so that it has no relevance in reality to us. It is rejected by the rationalizations of an irrational mind — the one that is attuned to fears, doubts, history, comparisons and opinions, but not to the Truth or to Love. That limited and limiting mind has become the accepted one, the acknowledged source of information, but that doesn’t mean it is wise, or powerful, or even helpful.
Let me make one crucial thing very clear. Your soul is not a dreamer. Your soul is a realist. Your soul not only knows what is right and powerful and perfect for you, your soul also knows what is absolutely possible, achievable. Your soul is not simply telling you what you want to hear (but not always believe) but is telling you what you need to know to be what is actually the easiest and most reasonable and fully justified thing in the world — you!
You are poetry and power. Your life is absolutely begging you (and so am I!) to live in Truth, to live the poetic and powerful life that suits you. Yours is a life that is beautiful and inspiring and also impactful, energized, and world-changing!
Okay. So take a few minutes here and answer these questions for yourself: If there was no judgment on me or on my desires, what would make me feel the most free and happy, eager and excited? What calls to me for discovery and exploration? What, when I think of it, gives me the greatest feeling of peace within?
You may or may not have a clear picture, but you probably have some ideas. Nurture those and keep on listening, in your own way and time, and heed the answers. They may be specific aspirations in work or life, or they may be qualities or ideals that resonate with your idea of joy and satisfaction. Write these down as a real and reachable intention, not as a fiction. Look at them and recognize their validity. Keep them private and cherished. And remember that this awakening vision is between you and your soul, and you can trust your soul more than you can trust people’s well-meaning opinions. Your soul is your deepest self. Your soul wants you to shine. Your soul knows you best and loves you for what it knows.
Honor your inspired dream with your willingness to give it the time of day.
So, hearing our soul isn’t that hard, but it isn’t always that easy either. There’s a lot of static that gets in the way. I’m going to give you a little heads-up on some common “noisemakers” that tend to keep us from hearing the clear and true song of our soul. Being alert about these, we can actively change the station from that garbage so we can hear the music of our hearts telling us what is both right for us and entirely reasonable to achieve.
So, here are 5 common noisemakers:
- Past history and past experiences. We tend to build a frame of reference around what’s happened in our lives before. The arguments that prevent us from moving forward can be loud in our head, or even from others, reminding us how something was, how we are, and why there’s no point in listening to our soul. We know how it will end up. When you recognize those thoughts and memories causing you to disbelieve, wake up to that trickery. The big and powerful question here to that little devil is, “Just because it happened before, why must it happen again?” And along with that, I would ask this question: “What about me now makes this idea, vision, opportunity different and possible?
- Judgment of the idea and mostly judgment of ourselves. Self-criticism is a screamer. It drowns out peace and joy and hides our own beauty from us along with our natural potential for success. The critic in you needs to be shut down, and your inner advocate, best friend and biggest fan, needs to speak up for you. You do have within you that voice of confidence and trust. This inner voice is God’s Truth about you, and if you silence the critic with lovingkindness to yourself, that voice announcing your own worthiness and brilliance will be heard. And with it, naturally, comes the voice of your soul inviting you to make the best use of your worthiness and come and get all the good that is rightfully yours.
- Comparisons. Your life is your You are you. Looking at another’s experience is limiting and it so deprives you of the gift of experiencing your life — the one that truly suits you and pleases you. If you are looking over there at what so and so got and trying to achieve that, you are missing the very precise gift the universe has given you, tailor-made to satisfy you and to bless the world, too. Your good is not only your good, it is your GREAT!
- Habitual thinking. I call this getting comfortable with our discomfort. We often get used to living with less, settling for a limited amount of good, thinking conditionally and just going about life because it isn’t that bad, but, likewise, it isn’t that good either. The familiar may be the known, but is it the inspiring? And, mostly, is it really big enough for you? The best way to break this lulling white noise is to entice us with the idea of experiencing other options. It helps at times to recall a time when you made a change, in spite of resistance to it, and found it to be truly liberating, right and successful.
- Ask yourself if there is some sense of fear banging around in your head — fear of change, failure, mistake. I invite you to think about how much good that fear is actually doing you. How is it working for you to stay fixed on expectation of mistakes and failure and meanwhile failing, maybe, at joy? Isn’t it worth it to eagerly explore your own power and to recognize that while truly you cannot fail, you may be rejecting an opportunity, an invitation with your name on it, to succeed?
Let’s give ourselves unconditional permission to fearlessly shine. Let’s recognize that our most genuine self is the one that is naturally awesome. It is your living, loving soul and it sustains the Truth. Own it. Do whatever it takes to continue to acknowledge your soul’s voice for you and to shut up that noise that would silence that true description of you and its promise for your life.
Live poetically and powerfully. Start today. And let me know if I can help in any way.
www.poeticandpowerfulliving.com
Originally published at poeticandpowerfulliving.wordpress.com on October 10, 2016.
Originally published at medium.com