Befriending the soul.

Make space. Move toward the center. Keep the channel open.

A few short years ago, the things that bring me closer to my soul meant nothing to me.

I didn’t dance or sing. I spent little time outside and meditated only sporadically. I didn’t understand the power of silence and sound (I still don’t, not really).

I let my mind be cluttered.

I was always busy. Busy felt good. Rest smelled like laziness. When I made time for my body, it had to be efficient. I needed music or podcasts to keep myself occupied.

Walking and writing were the only things I stuck by pure instinct. Those got me through the COVID years.

I was not curious about my soul.

I made no space for it.

When I gained a glimpse of its strange realms, I got scared. What I saw had nothing to do with the life I was living. Nothing at all. Ze-Ro.

I had to slow down a lot to realize that I was running on autopilot.

I needed distance, space beyond words, to notice that I did not choose when and how much to participate in the infinite ‘happening’. I just woke up and let myself be flooded.

Things are different now.

I used to rely on goals and plans. Now I try to balance thinking and listening. I ground myself in the moment. I notice questions bubble up, float like soft foam on the waves of my consciousness.

Why am I here?

What am I here to do?

What is there to create and to share?

How can I contribute to what is to be done?

I wait.

I wait for the touch of the wind, for a bird to sing, for a whisper. I wait for an answer to form and roll in from the deep.

If nothing happens, I let the mind get to work. I trust that more guidance will be revealed after taking another step.

Then I move.

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Soul allows you to become attached to the world, which is 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 moralistic worries. — Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul

“Most of the time I was convinced I’d lost it. But there were other times... I thought I was mainlining the secret truth of the universe. — Rust Cohle, True Detective

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Sometimes my writing journey feels like a series of useful dead-ends. It led me to creativity and art, to spirit and the voice, to the intimate spaces of the soul. Along the way, I tried one label after another. I always reached the same conclusion: not that.

Finance substack. Not that.

Money and meaning. Not that.

Mind-body journaling. Not that.

Help others write. Not that.

I think of writing now as just one aspect of our voice, our sacred and most intimate vibration. A gateway to the space of the soul. Now that is interesting to me.

Why are you here?

What do you care about?

Who are you behind the mask?

Why do you hold yourself back?

What is stuck that wants to move?

What answers do you carry deep inside?

What obvious next step are you avoiding?

What is waiting at the center of your labyrinth?

What golden vision of your life do you not dare look at?

Those are the questions that interest me.

They are fascinating, strange, and challenging.

If they are not, you haven’t scratched the surface. You are walking circles around your maze.

I’ve found these questions to exist in a space of paradox: we carry the answers within. We just don’t have access to the room. We grope in the dark in a jumble of keys. We look for signs in the flickering light of a lonely torch. Answers are revealed one step and one lesson at a time.

Maybe these are the only questions that I can help explore.

Not because I have answers, but because I’ve been there. Because it is the one area in which my mirror feels a tiny bit polished.