30 Oct November: Lean into the Soul

Timing is a funny thing. You know that feeling when everything flows? Like a dam that has broken and allows you float effortlessly through your day week or years. The lights— all green, people—friendly! You make the bus or plane connection, have that perfect conversation that directed you to the perfect place for that perfect thing. It feels magical, like the world is just right.

If you know that experience, then you also know its opposite. That crunchy feeling when everything seems to go wrong. People are actually horrible, you missed your bus, which made you late for work which started a day of red lights. You keep missing the beat of your our success and fervour. Those days feel decidedly less magical, borderline maniacal, and we wonder what we have done to upset our luck. We become superstitious and try to control the good when it arrives and keep the bad at bay. We try to manage our lives and failing that micro manage, then when that still doesn’t work micro- micro manage.

When the mind wraps self into a tight little micro managed corner, there is really only one thing left to do.

Lean into the soul.

What do we know about this elusive thing? Maybe the soul is a little fox that hangs out in the periphery and waits for the right time to pounce. Maybe it needs to out fox the mind and the tenuous grasp it has on our lives. Maybe it knows not to call us too soon, before we can trust our eyes to see what’s true. Maybe the soul is a wild wise thing and our task is not to chase it, but to make space for it, in us.

The pressure of doing more, of accomplishing more of having more is sorely tempting, we just want to be enough. But the shy little fox of our soul isn’t interested in worldly things. It doesn’t care how many things we have or if we as Rumi said “failed our vows a thousand times.” And it is definitely not interested in being bossed around by our brain which, by design limits, defines, judges and brings order to— no. Our soul is bigger than we can fathom and more reckless than we are comfortable with. It defies definition holding all possibility of the universe in its soft brown eyes.

The soul has a timing that no amount of force can change. We can woo it, cry out to it, tend it, admire it in others, but we cannot control it. Unlike how the nature of the mind is to be limiting, the soul knows no bounds, doesn’t give a whit about our plans or what we have written in our daily planners.

There is no good time for a breakdown, or breakthrough, there is no perfect time to die or be born. Over the most impactful and meaningful events of our lives, we literally have no control.

Let the mind have its temper tantrum with that. It’s right, it’s not fair.

After it calms down I have something to tell you… let me whisper it into your ear…Our minds, wonderful as they are, simply cannot imagine how incredible divine timing is. It cannot fathom the reverence and grace that will seemingly drop out of the sky, when we let go of our need to know.  We cannot, will not believe how much the soul wants for us, how guided, blessed and loved we truly are.

The mind wants to believe in the limited story, it wants to keep flinging our past failures in front of us again and again saying “this is who you are!”

But the soul knows better.

The soul is infinite.

The soul will steady on through life times until we are ready to invite it in. It will hover in the shadows, dance close to our wild edges, it will radiate through us in our greatest heartbreaks and shine with us as we fall in love.

November is calling us to lean into our soul. What does the soul say about your life? About your choices? About your body? What does your soul want you to know?

Our minds can only do so much, we are in turmoil over the state of this world and rightly so. Einstein famously said “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

So perhaps these times are not about thinking at all, but leaning in the mystery of living.

How mysterious it is to love, to rest, to take pleasure in the gift of life. To watch as the seasons turn, to celebrate, mourn and eventually rise into the spaciousness of our souls.

I cannot predict the what and the how of what is to come, but I know my soul is rooting for me, as yours is rooting for you. I am willing to lean in to the mystery of being alive in these times, are you with me? Can we linger at the edge of the forest together and call in the wild light of possibility? Can we trust that there is a timing greater than we will ever fathom at that it is kinder than we could ever imagine?

Can we lean into the soul?

ever in awe,

Jacqui