The Human and the Soul

There’s a concept I’ve been playing with for the past few months that has awakened everything within me.

It’s as if I’ve been living with the light switch off, bumping into furniture and stubbing my toes on the rough corners of life.

But once this awareness activated, it was like I had access to a remote that would flood the room with a light so bright it almost hurt.

Sometimes, I think that’s what it’s like when we find our power.

Sometimes, we start to tap into something that feels too big, too good, too easy to be true or real that we scare ourselves with it.

It’s like finding Narnia, a secret that is just our own and we’re too afraid to tell anyone because the only thing scarier than coming face-to-face with your power is not having anyone else see it too.

For the past 17 years, I’ve been a student of the soul.

I didn’t always know it as it was happening, but in hindsight it’s easy to see.

I was a philosophy major in college, preferring then to call myself a true lover of wisdom or student of the mind.

I spent four years buried in books in the library and preferring intimate dinner parties with other philosophy majors rather than partying with my peers.

I went on to study psychology, later getting two master’s degrees, a license, and working as an inpatient therapist for many years.

But the most profound wisdom I’ve gleaned wasn’t in the classroom or with teachers or as a therapist: It’s been from the experiences of my life.

The experiences that broke me, the experiences that made me question everything, and the experiences in which I decided to rise even when it didn’t feel possible.

What I see now is so much of our pain comes from not understanding this code, this distinction, this differentiation between the two very real worlds that we inhabit:

The Human and the Soul.

Modern science has instilled in us an extreme preoccupation with the human.

What can we see, what can we measure, what makes sense, what are the symptoms, what’s wrong and where is the pill that can fix it?

We search for answers in a stew that only leads to more questions, more problems, and more people to blame.

We focus on the past, our development, our attachment figures, our traumas, our neuroses, our shortcomings, and our excuses.

At times, this is needed.

We are divine souls living in human bodies and the human experience does need tending to. The problem occurs when we think this is all there is and get stuck in it.

One of my biggest gripes with modern therapy is this incessant search for the root cause of every hardship, pathology, and symptom. And then, even if we find it, there’s a focus on staying there, swimming in it, and validating it until it bleeds.

We tend to our wounds like precious jewels and we stay stuck in the worst part of the human experience because this is the narrative of our time.

The truth is that it is an art to know when you’re tending to your human self versus coddling it.

It is a skill to know when your human needs healing and when it is time to activate the soul.

It is a gift you give yourself to transcend the human stories and move into a realm that is more grand than you could ever imagine.

2023 was a year of deep medicine for me.

It was extremely painful, often brutal, and it tested me to my limits.

But there is no challenge that if navigated leaves us without a gift, even if the gift is recognizing our own strength.

The gift I received from 2023 was the understanding that if you stay stuck in human stories, you will continue to live out very human problems. But if you can practice calling on your soul, magical things will happen.

To activate the soul is to build a muscle: Do not be discouraged if you get off track or it takes longer than it seems to be taking those around you.

Trust in yourself requires moving beyond the human stories of guilt, shame, comparison, jealousy, and regret. It asks that you believe in things you can’t see or touch or smell or taste.

Trust in the soul requires super-human strength and living life differently. It means not getting scared by your own power or needing someone else to say, “I see it too!” before you own it.

The Human and the Soul.

You get to decide where you’ll source your power.