In our series on Reckoning with the Soul-Sickness of Our Time, we’ve explored the troubles of our time, the wisdom needed to face them, and the symptoms and setbacks of Soul-Sickness.
We’ve also explored some ideas for healing Soul-Sickness such as nurturing wholeness, awakening to Inner Wisdom, and allowing for heartbreak and grief.
In this 5th and final part of the series, I’d like to bring together what we’ve been exploring, and encourage ways to find solace in the insanity, and bring solace forward into the world.
Defining Solace as a Remedy to the Insanity of Soul-Sickness
I have a deep passion for solace, so much so that my signature program is titled Solace.
Solace is largely seen as a state of comfort in grief.
In Part 4 of this article series, we spoke of the importance of heartbreak and grief on the journey to healing Soul-Sickness. My own experience of being with my heartbreak and grief, and often desperately longing for solace to comfort me, inspired me to center my coaching and teaching work around solace.
I’m not writing to talk about my program, though I hope you’ll check it out and get on the waitlist if it’s not open for enrollment when you’re reading this. I’m writing to speak of the genuine importance of solace as part of our path to healing.
If we’re going to meet heartbreak and grief, we must also find comfort in that grief to help ensure we don’t get lost in it.
Solace is not just a word meaning ‘comfort’ or ‘consolation.’ The word solace is composed of sol- + ace.
Sol- is the Proto-Indo-European root meaning ‘whole.’ It’s also a term that means ‘sun.’ Sol is pronounced the same as Soul.
Ace is a word that means ‘one’ or ‘a whole unity’ or ‘to score.’ There is a connotation of excellence, achievement, value, and quality in the word ace.
We might consider solace to be a word that represents oneness with or achievement of our wholeness or light.
I believe solace is a journey we embark upon to unite with our Essence, our Inner Sun, our Divinity, our Inner Wisdom, our True Self. Solace is a union with Soul that in turn unites us with Spirit.
In a world seemingly going mad, little work is required to meet insanity with more insanity.
Sanity is a soundness of mind, body and Soul. Sanity is a connection to full conscience. Solace is a path toward this sanity, as well as the sanity itself.
The path of solace requires effort.
We’ve established in Part 1 of our series that human beings are comfortable with a focus on the intellect, often leaving out other ways of knowing that provide access to full conscience.
In more recent evolution, we’ve gotten better at understanding and beginning to meet our emotions, though we still have a long way to go to achieve emotional mastery.
Where we’re grossly underdeveloped is in the realm of conscious will, which is critical for us to move into our next stage of evolution.
Conscious will is a capacity to discern with the wholeness of our being and make choices that are aligned with regeneration, life-giving force, love, and wisdom.
A common misconception is that there’s a lack of will force in humanity to create change. I propose that we lack conscious will.
People are always choosing something. There’s some kind of will force, strong or weak, behind every action. What’s lacking is consciousness in our will. For will to be fully conscious, it must come from a place of full conscience as we outlined in Part 1.
The many symptoms we outlined in Part 2 of this series, judgmentalism, self-importance, victimhood, etc., all compromise our will. They cloud our consciousness and deplete our energy such that we have little left to exercise our will in life-giving and uplifting ways.
It’s so much easier to stay in the comfort zone of Soul-Sickness in a Soul-Sick world, rather than commit to the work and discomfort required to find the healing and solace that serves our evolutionary path.
Most of us would rather run away to a more sane place, hoping to magically fix everything and feel better. The problem is that we take our insanity with us. This will only infect those places if we don’t first work on finding solace within.
While we don’t have to do it alone, in fact it’s better done in communion with others that can reflect back to us, we must begin by awakening our own Inner Wisdom and nurturing our wholeness inwardly.
This is done not by outsourcing our power to gurus or experts, but by slowly exploring and discovering our Inner Wilderness. The journey to solace allows us to re-integrate the fragmented parts of our Soul and find wholeness within.
Solace is a journey of beingness and process, more than a destination. Rather than running after or searching for a solution or result that is ‘one-and-done,’ solace is a sustainable process of meeting and expansively expressing our highest love-and-wisdom-filled potential.
When we choose solace over insanity, we begin to remember who we are, reconnect to what matters, and re-envision new possibilities for the future.
This is a Soul-fulfilling path of awakening our conscious will (remembering), cultivating emotional mastery (reconnecting), and finding clarity in our thinking (re-envisioning).
When these elements of will, emotion and thought are brought into consciousness, we can also bring them into coherence, healing and refining until all aspects of our being are in agreement before taking action. Finding this coherence is the very process of reckoning we’ve been talking about in this series of articles.
Reckoning is not about finding the proverbial ‘happy ending,’ but about seeing, accepting and integrating all aspects of our being that we may come into wholeness.
When we reckon with what is, i.e. what we’re given, we can transcend and include all that is, which aligns us more with solace. Solace returns us to Soul, and helps us to ensoul our lives with beauty, imagination, possibility, creativity, love and wisdom. Solace brings us to a place of true freedom, no longer imprisoned by walls of limited consciousness.
Soul is something not easily described, yet we seem to know when it’s missing.
Soul speaks in pictures, symbols, archetypes, stories, dreams, creative expression, emotions, imagination, intuition, inspiration, and Nature. It’s time for us to pay more attention to these languages, exploring broader ways of knowing, and bringing the Wisdom of Soul to our lives.
Soul is the fullness of being, a bottom-up, Wisdom-based contrast to balance the top down emphasis on Love and Spirit. This integration of Soul and Spirit births True Freedom.
Solace is not only about easing our personal heartbreak and grief. Part of the journey to solace is bringing solace as a healing balm forth into the Outer Wilderness of the greater world, and deepening our solace along the way.
Bringing Solace Forward
How can we bring solace to others and to the world when it seems like such a personal journey?
The beauty of solace, i.e. oneness with our inner light, is that we need only be that light in order to bring it to the world.
We don’t need to impose our views, or convince anyone of anything. We don’t need to prove ourselves or seek permission from anyone. Invitations to share gifts and wisdom come naturally to a radiant and coherent Soul.
When we’re in a state of solace, and constantly on the journey to the full potential of solace, we’re able to trust ourselves. We experience a wellness of Soul, which means that we have the means to consciously contribute, create and expand in alignment with what is life-giving, while honoring our uniqueness and staving off hopelessness.
We’re able to step into the Outer Wilderness to see more of ourselves reflected back to us and deepen our journey to solace, without giving our true empowerment away to the False Power or False Powerlessness we defined in Part 2.
In alignment with Soul, we’re connected to the source of creativity, resilience, beauty, coherence, collaboration, wisdom, healing, and rebirthing in the face of troubled times.
Soulfulness brings forth deep gratitude and compassion, allowing us to accept what is and find meaning in it.
To bring solace forward is to live in alignment with our Soul.
Create something of beauty in your humble corner of existence, and watch how it ripples out to those around you. Feel the world smile back at you in reciprocity, even while your Soul expected nothing in return for its authentic expression.
Share your stories, and show up unapologetically, inspiring others to do the same in support of their own journey to solace.
Sometimes solace can feel lonely.
Soul is intrinsic, yet we keep seeking ourselves extrinsically. We fear loneliness, and thus resist finding solace. It takes courage to embark on this journey to solace, and to share it with others even when we feel alone in doing so.
Consider that the word solo stems from the same root as solace, sol-, and means ‘alone.’ We can also note that the word ‘alone’ means to be ‘without reference to another.’ Alone is al + one. Perhaps it’s in reaching solace, a union with our inner light without reference to another, that we may become ‘all one’ in our interconnectedness with life.
The intrinsic nature of awakened Soul allows for the weaving together with the Soul of the World. Our commitment to solace, to the journey of remembering, reconnecting, re-envisioning and rebirthing, to the healing of our Soul-Sickness, brings a commitment to the Soul of the World.
To bring solace forward, we need only continue our path of reckoning, seeking understanding and awakening of Inner Wisdom over answers.
We will find others on this path, and find healing together as we remember we’re all on this journey, consciously or not.
We’re all experiencing heartbreak and longing for safe spaces to properly grieve. Our Souls are all striving for wholeness and for us to a-wake-n to our Inner Wise Woman.
The more consciousness we bring to this journey, the less tangled we’ll be in the symptoms of Soul-Sickness, and the more joy and freedom we can experience in our lives.
If ever you feel unsure of how to show up, how to bring solace forward, how to be on this journey to reckoning with and healing Soul-Sickness, remember one thing…
Your Soul knows.
You need only make space for listening to your Soul, heeding its wisdom, and integrating its fragmented parts to find healing.
And, if you’d like some extra support along the way, I hope you’ll reach out for support through personal coaching and/or community connection to bolster your journey.
May your journey be blessed!
