What’s a Soul-Writing Journey? And why would you want to take one?
A soul-writing-journey has the potential to be many things. Today, I want to talk about a soul-writing-journey as a very specific process I’ve designed, to guide you to explore one aspect of your life through writing.
A soul-writing-journey will help you to understand your life through the lens of your soul. When you look at your life’s journey this way, you’re able to shift your perspective on what you’ve been through.
As human beings, we don’t like it when things don’t work out the way we hoped they would. When life gets hard, and things break down or fall apart completely, it’s easy to look for someone to blame. Sometimes that someone is another person, sometimes it’s our self. Either way, the impulse to blame will lead you to feel stuck.
When, however, you face a challenging situation and you let your soul have a voice about what’s going on, you start to see things differently. While you may have only been seeing what you’ve done wrong, or how messed up things are, your soul will invite you to see a larger picture.
“What are you learning?” your soul might ask. Or, “What’s being repaired, that could only be repaired this way?”
When you start to ask those kinds of questions, you gain a new perspective on your life. You actually start seeing it as a journey, with lessons, instead of a series of things at which you either succeed or fail. You may still want to change something that feels out of sorts, but you’ll approach that change with a more expansive curiosity.
As the 13th century mystic poet Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi wrote:
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense.
What I’ve come to know is that my soul loves to “lie down in that grass…out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing.” When I get to that field, everything changes. Instead of wondering why this is so hard, or why I failed so miserably at that, I start to see things from the eyes of my soul. My soul sees everything with so much love and compassion. My soul also sees things as learning opportunities. It’s taken me some time to come to terms with the fact that what my soul came here to learn may defy the plan I’d thought was such a good idea. But I’ve come to trust that things lighten and ease when I’m willing to understand my soul’s perspective.
The poet John Keats said it this way:
“Call the world if you Please “The vale of Soul-making”. Then you will find out the use of the world.”
If soul-making is indeed the use of the world–as in, it’s why we’re here– how do you come into closer contact with your soul, so you can know its purpose in being here?
Of course there’s no one way, but writing is one tried and trued way that people have used for centuries.
I’ve created several courses that have been designed as soul-writing-journeys. A soul-writing-journey builds on writing’s natural tendency to be a pathway to the soul, by incorporating specific exercises that will quickly allow you to connect with your soul’s voice.
My students and I have found soul-writing-journeys to be rich ways to explore and hear the soul’s voice and point of view, while also nourishing your creativity and deepening the power of your writing voice.
The first soul-writing-journey I created is called Come Home To Your Body. It combines writing and radical self care. I’ll be offering that course through DailyOm later this month. I just learned that it will be launched on March 28, not early in March, as I’d originally thought. That means if you’re interested, you can start preparing now, and when March 28 arrives, be fully ready to dive in!
If you want to learn more about the course, go here. All registration happens through DailyOm, and thanks to their generous sliding scale, you can sign up for as little as $10.00!!
Next week I’ll talk more about how a soul-writing-journey helps you come home to your body. Meanwhile, if you feel inclined to listen more deeply to your soul this week, I suggest you try this, as a writing exercise:
1.Sit down where you can be quiet and undisturbed for 5-15 minutes. It doesn’t take long to connect to your soul through writing! It just takes a little focused attention.
2. Let one hand rest on your heart and one hand rest on your belly. Take three, gentle breaths, bringing your awareness to the sensation of your breath coming in and out of your nose.
3. Pick up your pen with your usual writing hand. Write down a question that genuinely concerns you right now. It can be personal or it can be collective, or political. Whatever is on your mind or in your heart that feels troubling or unresolved, write it as a question.
4. Consciously invite your soul to be present. Ask your soul to write through your hand.
5. Then, pick up your pen with your “other hand.” (I.e. if you’re right-handed, use your left hand.”) Start writing your response to this question with this hand.
6. Continue writing with your “other hand” as long as you want, and then keep going with your usual writing hand. It may be awkward or slow-going to write with your “other hand” but you’ll find your soul can speak very clearly that way, as you’ll bypass the traditional pathways of your left brain.
7. After you write, read what you wrote. If you have more questions, ask them, and let your soul respond again. Keep going for as long as you want, or until you feel satisfied with what you’ve heard your soul say.
Writing this way can be highly illuminating, if you let yourself do it. Start with five minutes and see what happens!
If you’re curious about the 21 Day Soul Writing Journey Come Home To Your Body, you can find more information here:
https://deboraseidman.com/21-day-soul-writing-journey/
I’d love to hear what happens when you ask your soul’s response to a question that’s troubling you!
Blessings on all the songs and stories of your soul,
Debora
www.deborseidman.com
