by Tara-jenelle Walsh
Who are you?
Do you know?
I mean really know who you are, as in who’s behind the curtain, past your thoughts, underneath your skin, deep inside . . . beyond your desires and joys, and below your deepest pain. The Real You.
Not what you look like, how old you are, or how much you weigh. Not what job you have, how smart you are, or what they pay. Not your upbringing,
how wise you are, or what you’ve learned. Not what happened to you, how brave you are, or how you’ve been burned.
Not even who you hope to be or your future goals and dreams. The “you” that existed before you even took your very first breath.
Your Soul.
Do you know who you are on a Soul level?
Have you come to know that part of you at all?
How does it show up in your life? Do you feel it
when it does? Do you trust it?
Have you consciously invited your Soul to live with you and to be an active part of this life with your mind and body? Do you even believe that you have a Soul?
Oddly enough, the question “Who are you?” is rarely asked. It’s a question we would ask of ourselves, of course—yet self inquiry may not be humanity’s long suit.
And this is not the only inquiry that the largest number of people seem to ignore.
Do you believe that you came here intentionally or by happenstance? For a particular reason, or with no agenda at all?
Both of these questions—Who are you? and Why are you here?—are central to the human experience. Yet apart from history’s great philosophers, theologians, and spiritual leaders, most of humanity seems to roll through generation after generation just living, without any interest in solving these riddles—or being too busy with simple survival to be concerned with them.
People everywhere seem to be running in emotional circles, trying to figure out how to make sense of it all without addressing the riddles. They want to fix themselves and jump-start their lives to end the blind monotony of their existence. They tend to focus on finding a solution to the immediate problem that they think will make everything better, rather than looking at who they are as a whole and how all of their beliefs, feelings, and thoughts have led them to where they are now.
While the answers to the questions above may not seem to have much to do with whether we survive, they will have everything to do with how we survive. Through the exploration of our reason for being, we will find a deeper understanding of any current dilemma or unhappiness we are facing.
We have a choice to live as happy, joyful beings, regardless of our exterior circumstances, or move through our days closed off to the real joys of life—which will have little to do with our circumstances.
Life’s Agenda: Bigger Than You Think I certainly can’t imagine that we are on this planet simply to eat, work, and sleep. And we aren’t here just to procreate and keep humanity going, because if we were, all of us would have children. Why, then, are we here?
I believe it’s for a much larger reason.Some say that the human body is a vehicle for the Soul; that each one of us is a Soul that has a body, a spiritual being that has become physical, not simply a physical entity. I agree with them. And if all of us believed that, many of us would have to admit that we’ve had it backward for hundreds of years. We would have to question life at the deepest level regarding love, religion, sex, politics—all of it. We’d have to question ourselves at the deepest level.
If we were to truly believe that we are all Souls living through a human body, we would be deeply motivated to treat others with kindness, look them
in the eyes, knowing that they were one of us. We would have to feel.
But the beliefs about who we are aren’t collective. Neither are the beliefs about why we’re here. And given millions of diverse and scattered beliefs about these matters, it’s no wonder we feel separate from each other, and so often find ourselves at war.Knowing this and seeing it throughout life, the first question of anyone exploring the idea of the Soul would be: Why would the Soul even desire to come to physicality? Why would it choose to engage in such an experience?
Like so many of us, I, too, have pondered these questions, wondering what the point of life really is and why we’re all here in the world. My mind has long been serenading my Soul with the longstanding inquiry, “What’s it all about, Alfie?”
The answer that always sings back to me is that the Soul has taken the journey to physicality so that it may experience all the daily joys and challenges, elations and anxieties, tears and laughter that are part of human life, knowing that these are its greatest opportunities to feel what it already knows.
What it knows is that its natural state is oneness with all of life. It is clear that there’s no separation between it and anything else. But it cannot feel
oneness outside the physical, because outside the physical there is only conceptualization. Only through physical expression is Concept turned into Experience.
This then, is its agenda. And the quickest, most effective way for the Soul to experience oneness is for us, its physical counterpart, to fully feel whatever we are confronting in any moment—joy, fear, love, sadness (any and every emotion, not only the ones we have deemed good or positive)—then to fully express those feelings (to ourselves, others, or life), and finally, to combine those two experiences in a way that allows us to authentically connect with others through the feelings we have identified and expressed. This becomes a Sacred Formula. It is a process that can be articulated and activated, by which the Soul’s objective may be achieved.
The first two parts of the formula (Feel, Express) place you in touch with your True Self. They fuel the last part of the formula (Connect), which introduces
the most authentic you to others. It is this connection with other human beings that produces our largest and most impactful experience of oneness, causing
us to realize that, in fact, oneness is not theoretical, but actual.
This begs the ultimate question: If our Soul is here
to experience itself experiencing oneness through Feeling, Expressing, and Connecting, shouldn’t we allow ourselves to do that more fully? What’s holding us back?
For many, lack of courage.
Specifically, Soul Courage.
