Tuesday, February 7, 2012

How to Listen to Your Soul

Our soul is always trying to communicate with us. I haven't figured out all the ways I've not heard it but I have found a few that I will share.

  • Have you always wanted to do something but found a reason not to? I have always wanted to be a writer but never pursued it. As you can tell from this blog I love to write. Yet, I never wrote a book like I am now. Those urges that you've always had are your soul speaking to you. I am not talking of unrealistic dreams but obviously achievable actions.
  • Consistant unfulfilled world views. (See below on ethics) I have major problems with people's ethical violations. I see the world a certain way and do not understand why others do not see ethical situations as I do. This doesn't mean that I should try to understand the world. It means my soul is telling me to live that way to the nth degree. 
  • Things constantly falling into your life that fall outside what you would expect. For instance, over the course of your life people constantly try to get you to go to ceramics classes and it always baffled you because, "I am not an artist". Go the the class already! 
Selfish Compassion?

My father once pointed out that Mother Theresa's motivations could have been selfish. He wasn't saying anything negative about her. He was saying that her faith claims to reward lives such as hers. Thereby, she could be doing those wonderful things with a selfish motivation.

In reading the Dalai Lama, he makes a similar claim in that our compassionate acts and kindnesses much us feel good. Therefore, it is okay to practice selfish compassion.

I bring this up because today, I was able to forgive. I was able to forgive those involved in the incident that caused my PTSD, other people's most recent misdeeds and people who wronged me so long ago that I can't remember their names. You would think that latter group wouldn't matter. It did.

When I was truly able to forgive, it was as if a thousand points of tension released from my body. (Come on, you thought I was going to say a thousand points of light didn't you?) I felt GREAT.

Now the downside was that I wasn't able to fully hold it, not yet. Some of that crap is still there but I did get rid of a bunch of it. I spent a lot of time today thinking of forgiveness, compassion and the like.

I was amused to learn that the Dalai Lama's version of ethics is what makes me angry. I have always tried to live by them but few others can even understand what I'm talking about. Over the years, this has stoked my anger, in complete contradiction to my ethics. His ethical principals ought to be obvious to anyone. I am going to work on embodying these principals for myself and the further manifestation of my soul because I have learned to listen to it. (See above)

3 comments:

Yvonne said...

Believe it or not the Soul leads me using the internet. Seriously. I have learned more, met more people, and been exposed to more wisdom and ideas than any other way that I can think of. Teilhard de Chardin argued FIFTY YEARS BEFORE the internet was conceived that the interaction between human consciousness, souls and spirit would be facilitated by the integration of thought in something that he called the "noosphere." Looking back at this idea it resembles cyberspace. It seems that the Higher Self can use our (primitive) technological tools to speak to us and guide us, leading us ultimately back TO EACH OTHER. We are one.

Mike Sententia said...

In this post, and your next one, you talk about recognizing the difference between thoughts that come from yourself, and thoughts that come from your soul. Sorry if you've already covered this, I'm new here, but could you elaborate? Could you describe the feeling? I find that often, people are using different words to describe the same things, and once we describe how it feels, everyone understands one another better.

Robert said...

Mike's question answered on February 12 here:
http://doingmagick.blogspot.com/2012/02/whoa-whoa-whoa-feelings.html