One day I started hearing my soul. She sounds like a newborn baby, and she cries to get everything she needs. Every day she demanded that I get up and go, insisting that I could not stay in a job that was not my true passion, and that it was better to try and fail than never to try.
At first, I said to her, “Leave me alone!”. I just ignored her and continued my work in high tech.
Then I tried to bribe her with another expensive and unnecessary garment I had bought, and by signing up for all kinds of workshops that were supposed to feed my soul after so many hours of work.
“It should satisfy you!” I told her, “You don’t really think I should leave everything, do you?”
But her cries grew louder!
I finally realized that if I continued to ignore my soul, I would find myself fatter, with silver hair, stuck in the same place, in the same job, which is probably not my destiny.
“All right,” I said. “I will resign from my job. But where do you want me to go? Do you want me to be a Shiatsu, Yoga or Pilates teacher? Do you want me to read tarot cards? Are you sure I will find a job that will fill me with desire and enthusiasm?”
I did not yet know what her answer was, but I had already heard the opinions of my co-workers when I shared them with my new ideas:
One told me that a friend of his friend resigned, to be independent and failed. He couldn’t return to work in high tech and found himself returning to live with his parents in order to save on expenses.
Another told me that his girlfriend was studying music at university and immediately discovered that it was impossible to earn a penny from it. She left music and today works in high tech.
And the last one: “I had a friend who decided to leave high tech and… died!”
“All roads lead to high tech,” I thought. “And I want to be a salmon swimming against the stream, without even knowing where it will take me?”
“Okay, my soul,” I tried to explain to her affectionately. “You have to get rid of this idea!”
“Do you remember that when I was little my parents could not buy any luxury product because we did not have enough money? Now I can sleep peacefully, because every first of the month the salary goes into the bank account. Do you really want me to give up this economic security?”
But she kept pushing me, and one day I had an understanding.
I understood my soul. There was always something I wanted to do, that I loved – to write.
I always wrote. I also remembered when I was thirteen, I tried to write a novel.
I found the way!
Now I just need the courage to tell my parents about the decision I made, and to face the obvious question: “And what will you do with it?”
“Yes. I know that at my age I had to work in one of the “four major professions in the world” (computers, law, corporate management, and psychology), And then get married, take out a mortgage, have children and so on. But I need to do something else! I am not claiming that I am not afraid to make a mistake in this decision I made. I’m dead scared. But at this moment I can no longer bargain and ignore my soul.” (Lee Kahlo, Maariv newspaper)
What is the soul? And how can her voice be heard?
The “Message of the Grail” answers these two questions clearly:
The soul is the true essence of man, the spiritual part of him. The source of the spirit is in the spiritual sphere, from which it emerges in a state of unconsciousness to the journey of development, and like a seed, it needs for that purpose a material world. In other words, it can be said that this world allows a person to develop the spiritual potential that is in him. If he succeeds in this, he completes his mission and after his death will be able to return to his home, to the spiritual sphere, to heaven, as a conscious creature. If not, he will have to re-roll in another body to continue his developmental process (I will write about the difference between spirit and soul in another article).
Our soul “speaks” to us through intuition. The ability to hear the voice of the soul was not only given to prophets, poets, or simple people like Lee Kahlo, who suddenly, one day, receives guidance from her soul regarding the profession she must choose.
Every person can hear the voice of his soul and this ability is closely related to our ability to listen to our intuition.
For example: We all know the first impression, when we meet someone for the first time. The saying “the first impression always determines”, is not said for nothing, it is an intuitive perception.
Intuition belongs to the soul, or to the spirit world, which is beyond space and time, and so it immediately perceives the character of the person we have just known, whether pleasant or not.
Now, if during the conversation with him this intuitive perception changes under the influence of the intellect, then almost always, at the end of the relationship the initial impression will be confirmed.
Hence, we all hear the voice of the soul. Listening to this voice, its development and making decisions according to the instructions of the soul – all these are up to us.
Are we not afraid that life will pass while we are detached from the soul, from our true essence?
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach used to tell the following story on the High Holy Days:
“Do you know how the holy Baal Shem Tov defines heaven and hell? I wish you and me longevity, but after a thousand years, we ascend to a superior court, where we are shown two films: in one film we see what we were, and in another – what we could have been. The Baal Shem Tov says that if the two films are identical, it is heaven. But if they are not similar – it’s hell…”
Every soul has a unique and original way of expressing itself, and it is not just a matter of listening to it to know which profession to choose. The disconnection from it or the connection you have- affect all the choices we will make in life: the family we will have, the friends we choose and the decisions we will make when we face the various challenges that life will bring us.
In the book “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” Tolstoy describes the life of a man who is completely detached from his soul. He chose his job, his wife, and friends, according to social parameters, and one day he falls off a ladder and suffers from an illness.
As is often the case, pain and suffering cause Ivan Ilyich to begin to hear the voice of his soul. It is not easy for him to discover that his life was a life of lies- death from a spiritual point of view. In any case, thanks to his observation of his last days, he finally gets to “live.”
If we do not want to wake up at the last minute like Ivan Ilyich, we can start today with a little exercise: “If this year was the last year of my life, how would I want to live it?”
When we ask ourselves this question, we connect to the recognition that life passes quickly, and the moment has come to live authentically and out of loyalty to the one and only way of our soul.