Soulwork is gaining a lot of attention these days. However, most people don’t know what it truly means. In its broadest sense, soulwork is our ability to draw on God as the infinite, enduring source of all we need in our lives.
So, to better understand soulwork and how it supports our well-being, we first need to understand that are created as spirit, soul, and body.
Spirit
Our spirit is eternal and unchanging. It is the pure essence of God within us and within all creation. It may be called such things as Christ Mind, Buddha Nature, Highest Self, True Being, or Pure Essence.
Soul
Our soul, which includes our mind, is the repository of awareness and information. It can access, through spirit, all the divine ideas and infinite possibilities within the universe. It uses intuition to discern how these ideas and possibilities can be demonstrated and shared in our lives and in the world.
Body
Our body is our earthly spacesuit. It’s the physical form we express in this life experience. It also is our intuitive, discernment barometer, sending us signals, for example, when our stomach rumbles, our heart flutters, or our eyes twitch. Even though we can develop, nurture, and even transform our bodies with exercise, cosmetics, and surgeries, they function best when they align with the soul.
Reflect Not Force
To flourish and discover the contentment, peace of mind, and well-being we seek, we must commit to doing soulwork because it’s our investment in ourselves. Just as we would invest money to grow our finances, so we invest our time and energy to grow ourselves. When we devote ourselves to nurturing our soul first, all our other assets appreciate.
Furthermore, because soulwork is more intuitive than intellectual, our greatest personal growth occurs within our souls. We can study many things or acquire new skills, but endless seeking and philosophizing often impedes our progress. If we constantly pursue, we usually are avoiding our own work, spiritually bypassing realizations and epiphanies, and skimming surfaces, rather than diving in deep. In essence, soulwork is about reflecting and allowing, not struggling and forcing.
Empowerment and Spiritual Maturity
Minister and Master Spiritual Teacher Emmet Fox explains it this way:
The door to the soul opens inward. That is often the reason we do not make our demonstration. We assume that it opens outward and we press and push against it as hard as we possibly can, seemingly oblivious to the fact that we are really but closing it all the more firmly against our good.*
Our soulwork also supports us, no matter our spiritual beliefs or religious affiliations, in being self-empowered, developing spiritual maturity, and discerning what fulfills us and our purpose. It isn’t a goal to accomplish, though it can help us achieve specific goals. It’s the slow, deliberate process that encourages personal transformation as we release the past to the past and feel more hopeful and fulfilled in the future.
Honor Experience and Imagination
As part of our soulwork process, we honor both our experience and our imagination. We use experiences to support our transformation. We remember that we have experiences, but we are not the experiences we have. We are spirit, soul, and body, as noted above. This awareness helps us both transcend and integrate what we learn on our journeys.
Our imagination, of which sleeping dreams and daydreams are a part, work with our faculties of wisdom, intuition, and faith to guide us in our best direction. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has said, this is taking the first step, even if we can’t see the whole staircase.
The Role of Prayer and Meditation
Soulwork is not only about prayer and meditation, but our prayer and meditation practice is part of our soulwork. For example, as we speak or write a prayer, we can gain clarity about our true needs and desires. Depending on our meditative process, our meditations can provide quiet time, so we can slow our pace and listen to our still, small voice. This helps us remember that we are spiritual beings, rather than human doings.
Internal Exploration
In doing soulwork, we may explore such things as Akashic records (a lineage of our past lives), horoscopes, intuitive scans, and psychic readings. These can be curious and fascinating, and perhaps insightful. But they still come from the outside, someone else telling us what to do or interpreting for us what we can interpret for ourselves.
And while we can consider our past lives or our future heavenly place, the truth is that we are here, on Earth, now. No one else can ever feed us enough, give us enough, or teach us enough to fulfill our own soul. That work, that gentle, tender nurturing we must do ourselves.
Our Divine Connection
Ultimately, soulwork is our connection with God, the Divine, Infinite Presence, or whatever term we use for our Higher Power. It helps us live our faith, discern our own way, and heed our intuition as a daily practice. And as we do our soulwork, we begin to feel our eternal oneness with God, the divine connection always available to every one of us.
Whoever you are, wherever you are on your life’s journey, the resources on this site are here to encourage and inspire you as you nurture your soul and love your life.
Namaste.
*Fox, Emmet, “The Door That Opens In,” Find and Use Your Inner Power, HarperSanFrancisco, 1937, p. 61.
© 2021 – Rev. Jennifer L. Sacks – All rights reserved.
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