Part 1 of this series on Reckoning with the Soul-Sickness of Our Time explored our troubled times and the wisdom needed to meet them.
In Part 2, we dove deeper into the symptoms and setbacks of a Soul-Sick world.
In Part 3, we’re going to begin exploring a path toward healing the Soul-Sickness of our time, and consider how we might nurture wholeness and awaken our inner wisdom as a starting point.
Nurturing Wholeness as a Path Toward Healing Soul-Sickness
In the personal Soul-Sickness of feeling all that comes with the bereavement of Soul, and in the collective Soul-Sickness expressed through judgmentalism, extremism, victimhood, co-dependence, self-importance, and likely many more symptoms we could explore, how do we heal?
What does our own Soul and the Soul of the World need for healing?
I certainly don’t have all the answers, and can only speak out of my own healing and what I see bringing healing in others and for the Earth.
If I were to choose a first step in healing Soul-Sickness, it would be to nurture wholeness.
When we nurture wholeness, we honor all parts of our being and life. We honor the wisdom way of knowing we spoke of in Part 1 of this article, which includes the emotional realm and the felt sense of the body as valid informants.
What does it look like to honor all of our being and all of life?
We might begin with removing the notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ from our judgments.
What if that emotion we usually label as ‘bad’ simply is? What if the emotion we label as ‘good’ simply is? What if situations, people, events, etc. simply are, as opposed to being separated out into categories of ‘good’ and ‘bad’?
When we focus on the current scientific epistemology, our tendency is to categorize and separate almost everything. As long as we do this, we also tend to ‘other’ the things we label as ‘bad,’ and nurture the things we label as ‘good.’
To nurture is to care for and encourage the growth and development of something.
What and how we practice anything is often a way that we nurture. If our practice is to separate and ‘other’ with only logic and linear thinking, we’re encouraging separation, and the Soul will continue seeking wholeness.
We’ll continue feeling something’s missing, because it is. We’re missing what our body might have to say about something, what our heart has to say, what the many parts of us and the experiences we’re labeling as ‘bad’ have to say.
What would encouraging wholeness look like?
On a personal level, this looks like embracing all parts of our being, getting to know them, integrating the parts of us we’ve shunned, ignored and even despised. The part of us that feels angry at being dismissed, or feels guilty for saying the wrong thing, or feels anxious about an upcoming responsibility craves to be seen and acknowledged. Yet in our more, better, faster, bigger approach to life, we press on, ignoring these feelings and thus ignoring the parts of ourselves that are speaking to us.
If we do acknowledge them at all, it’s often only with the logical part of our being that tells us these feelings are ‘in the way’ or ‘not worth it.’ Yet our body is trying to communicate the dysregulation it feels due to unresolved trauma it’s holding. Our emotions are trying to communicate the messages of our Soul that we keep ignoring because they’re too inconvenient.
When we nurture wholeness, we aren’t focused only on what’s convenient or will make us happy.
We are exploring what is Soul nourishing.
We’re cultivating compassion for ourselves and others. We’re letting go of our ideologies to meet the moment with attention and understanding.
When we nurture wholeness, we don’t include anything simply for the sake of inclusion, but for the sake of having a greater capacity to discern and to evolve. We don’t treat aspects of our being and of life as things that need fixing, but rather as things we can work with to grow and become.
We see the effectiveness in Earth healing through nurturing wholeness in practices like permaculture and regenerative agriculture. These practices take a slower approach, honoring and integrating the whole, valuing differences and diversity, and attuning to the wisdom of the land.
In nurturing wholeness, we explore how we’re alike rather than different.
We revere and distinguish our differences to honor what’s brought to the table as an offering to wholeness, aware of our interconnectedness, instead of separating because of them. We discover shared values, and perhaps even begin to find meaning together instead of incessantly searching for it alone.
In nurturing wholeness, we remember all of who we are and reconnect to what’s important. We move out of extreme co-dependence or independence, and cultivate interdependence. We set ourselves up to re-envision a new way forward that aligns with Soul, rather than ignoring it.
A-Wake-ning to Inner Wisdom as a Path Toward Healing Soul-Sickness
As we nurture wholeness, we connect to Soul, which also supports us in awakening our Inner Wisdom.
I often use the terms Soul, Inner Wisdom and Sacred Feminine interchangeably, as I believe they share similar and interwoven qualities.
Our Soul, when connected to the holistic conscience of our Spiritual Essence, can access the Soul Blueprint we spoke of in Part 1 of this article. Our Inner Wisdom is the way in which Soul communicates with and guides us forward on our unique path, and the Sacred Feminine is the driving force of Soul.
It’s the concept of ‘awakening’ that I want to speak to here as a path toward the healing of Soul-Sickness.
A ‘wake’ is an event in the Irish tradition for holding vigil upon death. A ‘wake’ is also a path left by a moving ship, often larger or wider than that of the ship itself. In Old Norse, a ‘wake’ is a hole in the ice, perhaps caused by a vessel moving through it.
What these ideas have in common is the concept of something left behind upon watchfulness and movement through what is frozen or dead.
The word ‘wake’ is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root word weg– which means ‘to be strong, be lively.’ The prefix a– is ‘one.’ The term ‘awaken’ is ‘to spring into being, originate.’ And, of course, we have the notion of awakening being a ‘rousing from sleep.’
What the concept of ‘awakening’ to Inner Wisdom or Soul suggests is that there is movement and watchfulness required as we learn to become one with our state of strength and aliveness. In awakening our Inner Wisdom, we are enlivening our Soul and coming into our original beingness. We’re learning to let go of what’s no longer relevant, move out of being stuck or frozen, and step into the fully expressed vitality and joy we’re capable of experiencing.
We are creating meaning out of what’s been, allowing our experience to stand for itself as the wisdom of our being.
While we can certainly awaken to our Soul through our own watchfulness and consciously activated will, there is something to be said for what’s left behind for others. In other words, perhaps some of the meaning of our life is created not by our own assessments of what’s been, but by the ways in which others are touched by our Soul.
Perhaps part of awakening is knowing that we’re not alone in this.
We are not the only one on the receiving end of the consequences of our actions, nor are we the only ones making meaning of them. With our awakening comes a new perspective to life, both for us and for those on this Soul Journey alongside us.
Attending to our own awakening ripples out, and thus brings healing on a bigger scale.
We must remember the wholeness we spoke of earlier as we strive on our path forward. That wholeness is the strength that awakening brings. It comes from an awareness of our interconnectedness and our role as one of many threads in the tapestry of ife.
The process of awakening to Soul must allow for uncertainty, chaos and the unknown that are part of the liminal space between death and rebirth.
When we can find love and wisdom in this space, true freedom is possible. Freedom is a capacity to live according to pure love, which honors our interconnectedness, expressing as our unique Soul intended.
But why is awakening so difficult?
Often a ‘wake’ also comes with deep grief. Let’s explore the importance of meeting this grief and heartbreak next.
