A Soulful Life

Frank, Mill Valley, 2013

The word used for soul in Ancient Greek is psyche, the word found in our words psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy. Imagine if we restored the original sense of soul to those fields, how we might deepen them and make the necessary connections between psychology and spirituality. If we neglect our souls, we lose both our humanity and our individuality and risk becoming more like our machines and more absorbed into a crowd mentality. 

I invite you to follow the example of the great teacher of soul, Socrates, and do something concrete to introduce soul into your life. Socrates writes about the Greek therapeia, which means either "care" or "service." He says that it's like the care you'd give a horse on a farm: you feed it, brush it down, exercise it, give it water, and clean its stall. That's the model for therapy of the soul. It's an everyday attention to specific needs, not a cure or repair after things have fallen apart. Its goal is not to make life problem-free, but to give ordinary life the depth and value that come with soulfulness. 

Distinguishing Soul from Spirit
Spirit directs your attention to the cosmos and the planet, to huge ideas and vast adventures, to prayer and meditation and other spiritual practices, to a worldview and philosophy of life. Spirit expands your heart and mind, gives you vision and courage, and eventually leaves you with a strong sense of meaning and purpose. 

Soul is more intimate, deep, and concrete. You care for your soul by keeping up your house, learning how to cook, playing sports or games, being around children, getting to know and love the region where you live. Soul allows you to become attached to the world, which is a kind of love. When the soul stirs, you feel things, both love and anger, and you have strong desires and even fears. You live life fully, instead of skirting it with intellectualism or excessive worries. 

There are certain things that the soul needs: a sense of home, deep friendship and casual friendliness, a poetic and metaphorical appreciation for words and images, attention to night dreams, the fine arts, an intimate relationship with the natural world, acquaintance with animals, memory in the form of storytelling or keeping old buildings and objects that have meaning. We can do many things to care for the soul such as reconciling our sexuality and spirituality, caring for children, finding work that we love, incorporating play and fun in everything we do, dealing effectively with loss and failure and inadequacies. The shadow, or the unconscious part of our personality that we remain ignorant to, is an important aspect of the soul. 

How do you make a soulful life for yourself? 
1. Serve the soul rather than the surface needs of life. If your soul is suffering neglect, you will have symptoms. You may feel depressed and your relationships may be hurting. You may notice you've been buying a lot of stuff lately. You may have neck or stomach pain. Know the difference between deeply caring for your soul and temporarily solving problems. Instead of immediately looking for routes to happiness, give time to exploring the needs of the soul to be sad. 

2. Your symptoms are the raw material for your soul-making. Look closely at your emotional struggles, diet, body pains, mindless habits to see what your soul is missing. Symptoms are painful and in need of tending and refining, but they contain the essence of what you are looking for. For example, if you drink too much, what is your soul looking for in the alcohol? If you eat too much, what part of your soul is in need of nourishing? Think poetically and resist responding on a surface level. 

3. Take time for reflection. Don't be quick to make decisions and go into action. In my opinion, the most important element of a soulful life is time alone in silence. It can be in the shower, in your car, washing the dishes, on a walk, in meditation. What is going on inside of you? Without the din of constant stimulation, what do you hear? What is your body trying to communicate to you? Often, you will intuitively know the answers to these questions, but find that you have been avoiding them. 

In Practice
Every day you have choices. You can do things that wound your soul, like being dominated by the work ethic or compulsively seeking more money, recognition, and possessions, or you can be around people who give you pleasure and do things that satisfy a desire deep inside you. Find those activities and resources that will nourish your soul: make/build/design/create, experience nature, bring art into your life, write down your dreams, journal, be physical, listen to music, play, tend your home, tune into animals, find community, pursue curiosity/learning, garden, cultivate generosity, get out of your routine, do new things, explore, spend time on your own... 

The essence of spiritual experience is our recognition of the infinite mysteries that abound in life like those surrounding love, death, illness, meaning, work, and home. Respect for the mysterious is, to me, the heart of spirituality. Have fun knowing that you don't know what's going to happen to you, that you can't possibly know what's going to happen to you. It's not your job to know! Rather, what's important is to keep investing in a soulful life and have faith that whatever does happen, that YOU WILL BE OK. 

Make this soul care a way of life, and you may discover what the Greeks called eudaimonia -- a good sprit, or, in the deepest sense, happiness. 

Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore

True Belonging

Lake Elsinore, CA

The present moment of your life, when you really stop and notice it, is filled with constantly changing conditions. Of course, there are the changing conditions and situations around you: sights, sounds, smells, people, and so on. None of these lasts. You cannot hold on to them. And also the closer, more intimate experiences - those in your inner life of mind and body - are always in flux. Yet, much of the anxiety in our lives comes from the fact that we cannot hold on to anyone or anything. When things are good, we fear change. We cling to people, trying to assure that they'll never leave. How can we ever live happily knowing that nothing lasts? Perhaps the secret lies in learning how to become more at home, at ease, accepting, and wise about the truth of constant change. 

In the midst of constant change, perhaps what must stop is you? Is it possible that the only thing that could stop is you? Or perhaps, some part of you, a part that can be known, is already stopped and is merely waiting to be found? Could it also be that, when you stop, you notice and appreciate the amazing array of interconnections continuously maintaining your life and linking you with so many others? Learning to look more closely at threads of interconnection and interdependency operating in each moment could become a strategy that supports you in times of stress or loneliness. 

For example, imagine that you are about to eat an apple. As you look closely at the apple, what do you see? How did that apple come to be in your hand?

The apple represents the growth of a seed into a fruit-bearing tree that was nourished by light, moisture, nutrients, and many other things. The tree bore fruit that was picked and prepared by someone and transported somehow to a market or fruit stand, where you likely purchased it with money you had earned from doing something for someone else in another series of relationships. Once the apple is in your hand, the different systems of your own mind and body become involved to bite, chew, swallow, and digest the apple and absorb its nutrients. 

And that is only part of the story. Where did the apple seed come from? How did you learn to do what you did to earn the money to buy the apple? How did you get to the place where you bought the apple? 

On one level, all this can seem like an abstraction, but on another level, if you look deeply enough, can you envision the seed, the sunlight, the workers' touch, and all of the other elements in the long body of events behind the apple you are now holding? Without any one of these elements, the apple would be different or would not be there at all. 

Learning to stop, rest, and flex your view in this particular way - noticing the interconnectedness in experience that is changing every moment - could mean learning how to keep your heart open to any experience, or anyone. 

When you trace the essential elements of life - water, soil, air, sunlight - you begin to see how closely linked you really are with all living things. You share in the sources of life with so many others. 

- Jeffrey Brantley and Wendy Millstine, True Belonging

Make Peace With Social Media

Pablo Picasso, "“Marie-Thérèse au Béret Rouge et au Col de Fourrure”

We’re alive during such a progressive time and yet we’re falling backward.

Most of us seem to simultaneously be dependent on modern technology and be frustrated with how it’s transformed areas of our lives. We love being able to easily communicate and connect, but the more we communicate, the less we really connect. We text and “like” each other’s posts so that we get the sense of knowing each other without physically getting together or really sharing. Often, we end up feeling worse about ourselves after a stroll on social media. There's regret if we had an amazing night and didn't get a picture to prove it. It's hard to understand how to create a curated, "on-brand" feed or how to appropriately edit photos or captions. Plus, there's weird professional pressure to be a "personality" and accrue followers. And yet our addiction grows!!

So, how do we live more authentic and fulfilling lives in an Instagram world? 

SEEKING APPROVAL AND VALIDATION FROM OTHERS
Our brains are deeply wired to seek social approval - that we're good, that we're doing it right, that people like us. Part of this is a normal drive for belonging and survival, but it can be unhealthy when our own self-worth is based on external sources, like approval from others. 

Social comparison is inevitable and we all do it, but it is especially rampant on social media. One problem is that we know ourselves from the inside, but we only know others from the outside. We're constantly aware of our insecurities and faults, but all we know of others is what they do and tell us, which is a far narrower source of information. Since we mostly present the best versions of ourselves on these platforms, reality is lost on social media. 

What's important is acknowledging that flaws are part of being human and that struggle therefore connects us to others. Everyone is every bit as disturbed as we are. Without knowing exactly what troubles each person, we can be sure that it's something. Rather than comparing ourselves to other people and watching our self-esteem bounce around as a result, we can remind ourselves that everyone suffers and feels painful emotions. Recognizing our common humanity means seeing our flaws and imperfections as something that unites us to others, rather than setting ourselves apart.

AN ANTIDOTE TO LONELINESS
Just as human beings have a basic need for food and shelter, we also have a basic need to belong to a group and form relationships. Social rejection signals that we are all alone—that we are vulnerable—and need to either form new connections or rekindle old ones to protect ourselves against the many threats that are out there.

The hard truth is that we are all at once irredeemably alone and also not alone at all. We are born alone, in many ways we live alone, and ultimately we will die alone. No one will ever fully know what it's like to be you. And yet - look around you - everything you see is here because other people constructed it or harvested the materials or packaged it or built the roads to get it here. Everyday you entrust your life to other people. Then there's the natural world: an ever-present ecosystem brimming with life, of which we are a part. We're all sitting on a planet spinning around in the middle of absolutely nowhere. All of us - all of the species - are on one little ball of dirt spinning around one of the stars. The sun beams you feel on your skin are from the same source as the sunlight on the arm of a person in India and is the same light that helps your food to grow. 

You see, you don't need social media to affirm your belonging. You cannot not belong to this world. 

SOURCE OF PROTECTION
Cell phones allow people to limit their attention and absorb themselves into a very focused sphere of stimuli and activities. In this way, technology provides a shelter from having to think about the world’s situation and your personal problems. It's also useful when you're at a party and you have no one to talk to ... grab your phone and you're never alone! You're fine, you're cool, you're not awkward. You can just absorb yourself in a little protected world on the screen with your friends. And, god forbid, you ever get bored; on this device there are endless sources of distraction. 

The disadvantage is that with our bid to escape ennui, life actually becomes shallower, more frantic, and more desperate. The more we react by trying to get rid of boredom or discomfort, the less equipped we are to deal with it. Distracting ourselves again and again, we never learn how to cope with the uncomfortable sensations that come when we can’t get satisfaction. Avoiding your feelings is escapism. And the problems persist.

Instead of distracting yourself and numbing your feelings, try to open them. Can you just stand here alone and be uncomfortable? Can you pause the busyness and resist the urge to always be doing something? Can you stand in line or sit at a red light and notice what's going on around you instead of scrolling through your feed? Seeking bits of distraction is ok, but understand that they can be superficial responses to deeper issues. 

INSPIRATION & CREATIVITY
The internet is probably the greatest invention of our time. We really do have the potential to learn about everything. Political and spiritual messages spread, ideas disseminate, advocacy groups form, inspiration abounds, access to art and beauty becomes part of our daily lives. 

Let the stuff that makes you smile be what shines in your posts. Aim for content that's meant to delight, illustrate, celebrate, and entertain. Inquire what you are hoping to get from this post (praise? attention? connection? support?) and explore those desires. Be authentic and show the messiness of your life. Don't try to sanitize it.

Finally, recognize that you are the one using the internet to get something you want, rather than allowing it to manipulate you. Social media is a tool that you are choosing to use. It is a collection of words and pictures that only appear in front of you because of some coding, a battery, and a wifi signal in an otherwise useless combination of glass and plastic. 

To quote Louis C.K., "It’s now, we’re us and this is here.  If you’re in pain, this too shall pass.  If you’re in luxury, this too shall pass.  Ask an old lady how she’s doing.  The internet is not real.  Draw a picture on a napkin."

The Voice Inside Your Head

Big Sur, CA

Meg just said something really funny. I haven't said anything. Nicole still hasn't made eye contact with me - does she not like me or is this just the way she is? Laura is cleaning up the dishes from the party. I should have been more helpful like that, I'm so selfish. I could help now. Oh my god, Meg just made another funny comment - she's so charming. I wish I came up with stuff like that. They must think I'm lame. I feel like I'm just standing here. Nicole's boob is hanging out of her dress and I keep looking at it. I ate that hummus, I hope my breath is ok. Have I stayed long enough at this party? Can I slip out now? -- Me. True story from last night.

In case you haven’t noticed, you have a mental dialogue going on inside your head that never stops. It just keeps going and going. Have you ever wondered why it talks in there? How does it decide what to say and when to say it? How much of what it says turns out to be true? How much of what it says is even important? And if right now you are hearing, "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't have any voice in my head!" -- that's the voice we're talking about. 

Take the time to step back, examine this voice, and get to know it better. If you spend some time observing this mental voice, the first thing you will notice is that it never shuts up. When left to its own, it just talks. It's actually a shocking realization when you first notice that your mind is constantly talking. 

The best way to free yourself from this incessant chatter, is to step back and view it objectively. Don’t think about it, just notice it. It doesn't matter what it's saying, it's just a voice talking in your head. If you're hearing it talk, then it's obviously not you. You are not that voice. You are the one who hears the voice. You are the one who notices that it's talking. 

One of the problems is that you're likely to believe what it's saying. But these words are not true ~ they're not The Truth, they're not a fact. It's not a fact that these women in the example from my party last night were thinking I was "lame." But when I listen to that voice, I begin to believe it, which makes me act that way, and then I do end up being lame! 

Try this: Suppose you were looking at three objects - a flowerpot, a photograph, and a book - and were then asked, "Which of these objects is you?" You'd say, "None of them! I'm the one who's looking at what you're putting in front of me. It doesn't matter what you put in front of me, it's always going to be me looking at it." You see, it's an act of subject perceiving various objects. This is also true of hearing the voice inside. It doesn't make any difference what it's saying, you are the one who is aware of it. But you are not the voice itself. 

There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind – you are the one who hears it. If you don’t understand this, you will try to figure out which of the many things the voice says is really you, is really the truth. The answer is simple: NONE OF THEM.

If you watch objectively, you will see that when there’s a buildup of nervous, fearful, or desire-based energies inside, the voice becomes extremely active. You'll also notice that at times the voice is actually narrating the world for you ("Look at that dog. Brrr, it's cold out here. I love this song"). This narration makes you feel more comfortable with the world around you. Like backseat driving, it makes you feel as though things are more in control.

This mental manipulation of the outer experience allows you to buffer reality as it comes in. Your consciousness is actually experiencing your mental model of reality, not reality itself. You can control your mind whereas you can’t control the world!! If you can’t get the world the way you like it, you internally verbalize it, judge it, complain about it, and then decide what to do about it. This makes you feel empowered. Reality is just too real for most of us, so we temper it with the mind.

You will come to see that the mind TALKS all the time because you gave it a job to do. You use it as a protection mechanism, a form of defense. Ultimately, it makes you feel more secure. As long as that’s what you want, you will be forced to constantly use your mind to protect yourself from life, instead of living it.

True personal growth is about transcending the part of you that is not okay and needs protection. This is done by constantly remembering that you are THE ONE INSIDE THAT NOTICES THE VOICE TALKING. That is the way out. Come to know the one who watches the voice, and you will come to know one of the great mysteries of creation. 

- Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul