Allowing your life to express the beauty of your soul

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Today I would like to talk about something that I call the Soulful Ache.

I love this wording because it embodies the essence – it’s deeper than pain, more like a calling, or deep inner ache.

It’s the ache of when your soul is asking for more — she wants you to go deeper, in your healing, in honoring your needs, wants, and desires.

It’s not surface-level stuff here – I’m taking deep soul-level desire.

Some of you may already relate and some of you may be wondering if this speaks to you.

Let me explain a little further.

It can show up in subtle ways maybe a pervasive uneasiness, that something is wrong but you can’t quite place your finger on it.

I have a belief that a lot of anxiety, not all, many cases stem from getting caught up in our lives, don’t we feel like we have the time to stop to simply feel and process our internal state or we’re just scared of what will show up if we do.

So we keep going, sometimes self-numbing and self-medicating with work, staying busy, or whatever escape mechanism of choice.

Another telling sign is when we begin to notice that we feel sad or empty, during what should be “happy” moments.

This is the one that did it for me — When I began to reach certain career highlights and I’d be smiling on the outside and the inside felt like this gaping emptiness – like a hole or a deep deep void.

When you get to a point when nothing is fulfilling or satisfying – something deeper is calling you.

A deeper level of your soul’s expression, your next-level growth.

When we get to this moment in life, where nothing seems to satiate our thirst and nothing ever seems like enough it may be tempting to do a few things.

1. Control everything – which my fellow type-A’s maybe most tempted to do

2. Become complacent and resign to this is as good as it gets

3. If you’re a bit of an adrenaline junkie you may want to uproot and dismantle everything

And you may feel a mixture of all the above depending on the moment.

In these moments it is so key to get still and listen.

Your soul is calling your forth wanting to get your attention – and it can be really really scary.

You may not want to hear what IT has to say – partially because you already know and aren’t ready to be with it.

I remember when I just finished grad school and I was beginning to create this perfect little life. I had a cute apartment right by Lake Merritt in Oakland, a really cute boyfriend who was just as smart and emotionally intelligent as he was attractive.

But truthfully, I wasn’t happy with my perfect little life taking form, and anytime I got still I heard this nagging voice that I needed to let him go.

I ignored it, to all avail, he was perfect in every way. I meannn….he was well-traveled, multi-lingual, thoughtful.

Around this time, I started meditating and also received some messages about my career – this is when I began learning more about entrepreneurship which led me to lead workshops in San Francisco and eventually completing my coaches training with CTI – then the Coaches Training Institute, in recent years renamed Co-Active Training Institute.

I was willing to transform the career as I was very unhappy at work – but letting go of him made exactly no sense.

I took a leave of absence from work to pursue my entrepreneurial dreams and shortly thereafter, he broke up with me – heart-wrenching.

He asked me to go for a walk by the lake and gave me a whistle attached to a band that I could wear around my wrist, that he had purchased.

He told me he wanted me to be safe, and to remember to drink enough water and not to work too hard.

Then he said — I’ve been thinking about marrying you and when a man thinks of marrying a woman he thinks if he can make her happy for the rest of her life and if he can’t he won’t.

I really really love you but I think you would get bored with me…he explained a bit further and then said.

If I’m not going to marry you, I have to break up with you – I can’t string you along.

Crushed!

I know, there’s so much we can unpack here but the main point in me sharing this story is he felt it — I was uneasy, I was bored,

I did go to sleep at night and think – is this it? Is this life?

I told you he was emotionally intelligent and very intuitive. He was a Northern Cali kid.

When we are going through this, often the people in our lives can pick up on it. It may have nothing to do with them, but they feel the impact.

That was the beginning of a very windy path road that has led me here.

Within 6 months, I had moved to a new city, sunny LA, was working for myself, tripled my income. And living an entirely different life.

This was a phase in my late twenties where I began to redefine what I could have and experience, in my life.

It was like he was the energy around my soul seeking to express inner ways before I even allowed myself to see it.

This is one of the gifts of true and great friendship and love.

——————

When we begin to stop and listen to these inner urges it can be scary to face what we hear —

1. We may feel these drastic urges to shift and they often can be very valid intuitive hunches.

2, And sometimes we follow these drastic urges, to experience moments of bliss and joy from all of the newness to find ourselves back in that same place.

Can anyone relate?

Before you begin racking your brain regarding how to discern which is which – I have something that may support you in this discovery process.

The first thing to remember is that there is no need to figure it out or control the outcome — It’s about uncovering the Essence.

Something I learned from Carolyn Myss’ work on the saboteur is to listen to the urge and what is calling from you on a Soul level – and allow clarity to unfold.

For example, let’s say you are wanting a new home, maybe the Essence of this is to feel at home in your own body. You may actually manifest a new home, more in alignment with who you’re becoming.

The new home may seem like the what, however, it is more so the outcome of listening to your inner urges on a deeper level and aligning with more of YOU.

You could jump to buying or manifesting a new home, without doing the deep inner work and find yourself equally unhappy in the new home.

Or you can go within and get clear on what your soul is calling forth and align with that — This is how we begin to create a life we love from the inside out.

Uncovering the Essence our soul is calling forth as we grow spiritually and emotionally requires listening, staying curious, going deeper, and listening to the messages on each level.

Here are a few steps you can work into your process to begin cultivating your inner listening on deeper levels.

If you are listening to this, you probably already have an ear or sense for listening – this may help you go deeper, especially in those moments when you feel the urge to react, suppress, or resist.

In any process or ritual you complete in your life it is always important, to begin with intention.

First, Set an Intention – getting clear on your intention is the foundational step. In this case, your intention may simply be to understand the essence of what your Soulful Ache is trying to speak to you.

You may not have all of the answers, that’s not even the goal. When your soul is speaking to you, you will always be given the information you need at the moment.

2. Write it down. Once you clarify your intention, ask for guidance and write it down. Depending on your spiritual or religious practice you may choose to write a prayer, an affirmation, or a statement requesting to have the heart and mind to listen and hear.

3. Listen. The third step may seem obvious but it is imperative — Listen. Take the time to sit in your meditation and get still. Pay attention to your dreams, flashes of insights, get curious, about your emotional and energetic state.

One of the pivotal gifts in this process of discernment for me has been learning to listen and speak to the emotions and sensations in and around my body.

I call it Somatic Awareness. You can literally have conversations with your organs when you get intimate enough with the Present moment. They will tell you what they need and the energetic reasons behind what is happening in your body.

It’s not about getting attached to what currently IS or your thoughts around what is coming up – it is about getting curious.

Curiosity lends itself to listening, allowing the unknown to reveal itself, and in the past to be released.

Mind like water.

4. Lastly, Rinse and Repeat. Continue this process, of setting your intention, writing it down as a form of prayer, affirmation, or request, and deepen your listening.

Allow it to be like peeling back layers of an onion as you distill the Essence of this calling. Get support when and where necessary.

After some time this will become a way of life.

As you do, so much will unfold.

Your life will evolve from the inside out, more and more in alignment with who you’re becoming

The strength and the courage to stay the path will be bestowed upon you, as grace and mercy.

All you have to do is take the first step and then the next.

I will leave you with this quote by Maya Angelou

“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” ~ Maya Angelou

Allow yourself to transform from the inside out – allowing your life to express deeper and deeper levels of the beauty of your soul.