SOUL ILLUMINATION 

Our multidimensional self

Whether we are aware of it or not we are all a soul.  You may wonder what it means to be a soul.  Being a soul is much different than being a person.  While the soul includes our personality, dreams, goals, thoughts, emotions and to do lists, it also includes much more.  It has added dimensions of energy and awareness that provide for expanded perspectives of experience and knowing.  In short the soul has access to more.  We are all hungry for this and yet sometimes it feels like an impossible trek to find our way to soul.  This is because being human gives us enough stuff to focus on to keep us busy for our lifetime.  It is easy to get caught up in all of the stuff and lose sight, or simply not focus on, anything beyond it.  Sensations, emotions and thoughts take up most of our bandwidth most of the time, and therefore there is not much energy or awareness left for soul.  

The good news is that soul exists, or is, regardless if we are paying attention to it or not.  The real question is, how conscious do you want to be of your soul?  Soul brings added dimensions and depths to your experience.  It is kind of like reading a book, but rather than just focusing on the content of the book, you see where the content came from, the past and future impact that the book had/has, and how the sentences say more than the concepts they share.  You feel, smell, and taste the words, all the while still seeing the physical nature of the book.  You notice the energetic qualities of the author of the book, and also from where they accessed the information as they wrote the words.  There is simply more to your experience because there is more of you there to experience it.  You can think of the difference between an infant’s experience of a book compared to that of an adult’s experience of the same book.  They will be two very different experiences because there are different aspects of self available from which to experience and know.  

There are no shortcuts into soul, even though many people try to find them.  There is a natural progression to the soul body coming more and more online.  We can however expose ourselves to environmental conditions that support the development of soul.  Just like a child would not learn to talk, read, write and develop its mental body in these ways unless it was exposed to environmental conditions that supported this, same for our soul.  What are the soul’s conditions for development?  Conditions include inner and outer fields that are more densely packed with light and greater coherence, clarity of mental content or clutter, and heart centered spaces.  Soul is more readily revealed when there are a collective of beings that resonate together in a similar frequency, hence the potency of things such as healing retreats or group healing.   

CLEARING THE WAY FOR SOUL 

Preparing the path

We can support soul’s development by clearing the way for it.  Just like if a child was learning to walk we would clear the path in front, so that the way was unimpeded.  We can also do this for our soul.  What interferes with the soul’s clear path and our conscious awareness of our soul?  Fixation on thoughts.  Thoughts are what we trip over as we progress on our path to soul.  When we are children our parents clear the way for us so that we can walk without running into furniture or falling over toys.  Even still we will sometimes fall and bump into things, because our parents aren’t always there every time we move.  Eventually we learn to navigate around the stuff.  As adults on the path to realizing our soul, there are people who can help us clear the path by emanating the frequency of heart/soul, so that we can tune our own antennas to it, even if only momentarily while we are in their presence.  Yet no one can go inside of our mind to remove the obstacles of our thoughts.  Rather it is us who must do this task. Here meditation becomes our most trusted ally on the path.  Without finding ways to navigate around our own thoughts, sustainably resting in our soul will be challenging.   

Obstacles are part of the path.  They help us learn by teaching us how to use our focus.  If we focus on the obstacle, we get lost in it and forget what the heck we were intending to do in the first place.  This is the state of the mind of most human beings.  We are lost in the obstacle, fixated on it, and have forgotten what we are doing.  This would be like the child falling and getting lost in playing with the toy that it tripped over, forgetting altogether that it was walking.  There is no problem in this.  The child will get the impulse to walk again once it is done being enamored with the toy.  Similarly we will get the impulse to seek our soul again, when we are done with the thought that we are currently entranced by.

We can learn to increase our capacity to transition from fixation on thought into the space of the soul by increasing our self-awareness.  You can’t shift your focus from your thoughts unless you know that you are focused on them.  Seems obvious and simple enough.  Yet we are often unaware that we are thinking, rather most of the time we are just thinking.  There is a big difference.  The difference is that if we are aware that we are thinking, we can consciously shift our focus off of the thought.  If we are just thinking there is no conscious awareness there and therefore nothing that is able to shift the focus.  We have to become conscious first, be aware that we are thinking, and not just thinking.  

Once you become aware, if you still are having trouble shifting your focus, then I find the easiest way to work with this is to simply let it be.  Let the thought just be.  Don’t try to do anything about it.  Just notice it.  Through this you will slowly start to release your grip on the thought and more space will arrive between your awareness and the thought.  As this space increases soul comes more into focus, because soul is the awareness that is aware.  This method works for sensations too.  If you find yourself fused with a sensation, unable to shift your focus off of it and its taking up the bandwidth of your awareness, just let it be, and eventually you will loosen your grip on it.  The quickest way to clear emotions that are taking up space is just to feel them.  

Soul is less mysterious than we think it is and yet it is full of magic, wonder and awe, particularly from our mind’s perspective and what we presently have access to in our current stage of development.  It is much closer on our developmental path than it is far away.  It is the next rung on the ladder.  Keeping clearing the obstacles and so soon enough you will be dancing with your soul.

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Spinal Analysis Chiropractor, Boulder, Colorado