“Put your soul in charge of your life,” that’s what I here
in my head.
Sometimes that works wonders for me.
“What would my soul say?” I ask myself when I struggle with
a difficult choice or challenge.
Just asking the question, just rolling the word soul around
in my mouth puts me in a different frame of mind; in fact it takes me out of my
mind altogether.
It awakens my spiritual intelligence and reveals a bigger
vision, a vaster perspective.
But when I am in a particularly stressful time, when I am in
the maze of my mind, the word “soul” can just add to my mental confusion.
What is the soul?
Is it real?
How do I connect with it?
Should I really put something so vague in charge of my life?
Here’s what’s been working for me recently. I’ve been
experimenting with putting LOVE in charge of my life.
Now, I may end up discovering that love and soul are the
same things, but I’m not that advanced yet!
When I get overwhelmed by trying to figure something out;
when go-to spiritual teachings sound like lame advice; when I panic because I
don’t know which way to go,
I put my hand on my chest, close my eyes, and
softly pat that spot in the centre of my ribcage, what some call the heart centre.
I breathe into that vulnerable, open place. I sit still, and I do what the poet
Rumi counsels us to do:
“Let yourself be silently drawn,” he writes, “by the
stronger pull of what you really love.”
The answer to it is not in your head.
It’s very real.
One of
my favourite authors, Annais Nin, wrote:
“Where the myth fails, human love
begins. Then we love a human being, not our dream. A human being with flaws.”
That
bit of wisdom can be applied to whatever you love, a flawed person, a flawed
job, a flawed town, a flawed talent, a flawed self.
You cannot answer the
question, “What do you really love?” until you drop the myth of perfection.
The
object of your love will never be perfect.
Only love itself, the embracing spirit
that pierces through fear and lights up the truth is perfect.
My answer to the question, “What do you really love?” turns
out to be oneself.
“I love my flawed self. I am responsible to my flawed self.
I will do what serves my good and worthy self, so that I can really love and
serve others.”
Once you get that startling yet predictable bit of truth out of
the way, then you can get on with shining the light of love on the other people
and places and jobs and things in your life.
It’s not that the heavens will
part and you suddenly will know exactly what to do sorry! It doesn’t work that
way.
But you will have a lot more space in which to really size up the
situation, to see and accept things clearly, and to make your decision from a
clean and loving place.
So it is
And so, this week, when I am struggling with a decision, or
slapped around by shame, or brought low by worry, or whipped up by anger, I vow
- before I act - to sit still with whatever situation has got me in its grip,
and to ask love to take charge of my life.
ps/smoh
