What is Soul Work?

What is Soul work?

Soul Work- as used here- is intentional transformation, that includes release & regeneration, and that creates root level change and healing in the seen and unseen aspects of your life. It simultaneously has an impact on your epigenetics & your spirit, while also unleashing your latent gifts, dreams and manifestion in the world.

Soul work allows for an integration of fragmented and disconnected parts of you to come back online and has the effect of unifying our physical, energetic, emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies in such a way that it produces an indescribable sense of wholeness, resiliency and deep connection. 

In Greek folklore, the soul was illustrated as a butterfly. The metamorphic process of caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly is the epitome of soul work being a transformational process. You could say the whole purpose of the soul is to experience transformation. 

Soul work is “parts work”.

In Greek, psyche means soul. Soul work is inner work. When we “go inside” we encounter our psyche! So our psychological woundings, archetypes and “parts work” is all a significant aspect of engaging with life on a soul-level. From Internal Family Systems to the archetype work of Carl Jung & Carolyn Myss to Bill Plotkin and Angeles Arrien’s work of integrating archetypes, shadow, and the medicine wheel – resourcing our psyche and learning our internal voices, dialogues, behavior patterns, and the underlying programmed blueprints of our daily lives, we engage with our soul work. 

When we are able to differentiate all the “parts” inside, re-parent ourselves, bring a mature loving compassion and have more objectivity with our reactions, emotions and behaviors, we begin to create our experiences instead of the world happening to us. It is a process of discovering the deep Self – the unshakeable, true center of our being. When we are in our center, we operate from our soul-self. 

Soul work is spirit work.

We don’t do soul work without tapping into our spiritual identity, beliefs and connection. When we deep dive into our soul work, we literally are diving down and engaging with underworld habitats. Meaning this is the place we heal and tend to our past woundings, pain, fear and trauma. But as we send our roots downward, the nutrients assimilated in this process are naturally sent upward to the trunk and branches of your being. Your branches grow upward towards the heavens, the upper world of light, ecstasy and spiritual connection. 

Most of us want all the good stuff – the bliss, love, all the feel good wealths of existence, but the price is facing our pain and all the things of the underworld. 

Soul work to me is also spiritual work and they feed each other. It’s a rhythmic pulse between worlds and it also feeds the World. We pump life force through our being and keep the energy moving when we descend down and then rise up. And there is no rising up until the roots get down.

Soul work leads you into your life dream.

Bill Plotkin defines soul as: “… our unique and deepest individual identity…” Doing soul work leads to uncovering your truest identity and wholeness – a process that leads to the ineffable tethering to your life dream. The life dream being one part practical and described in a “doable” sense and one part a mystery housed deep in your bones, a state of being.

Soul work is cultured in mysterium.

Lastly, soul work lives in the mysterium of visionary states, intuitive knowing, spiritual downloads, synchronicity, and in wisdom and healing that comes through shamanic states of consciousness. 

A culture maxed out on “beta” brain waves (logical, left brained, high focus) is more and more turning to traditional and indigenous methods for alternating consciousness – from plant medicines to binaural beats and sound healing to sonic drivers like drumming and rattles. People are realizing what is missing from their experience that used to be prevalent in many earth based and ancient cultures – communing with spirit, nature and your own soul in holistic brain wave states, shamanic states of consiousness, or heart-centered relating.

It is through these gifts of vision and mystical states that we access the images of our soul. After all, images are the soul’s first language. Just as we can connect with another’s soul by seeing into their eyes, it is our higher vision and intuition, ironically, that actually solidifies our relationship with psyche, mind and body.

Soul work creates intimacy with self and other. 

Soul work naturally develops the beneficence and luminescence of heart-centered living -including high quality relating and meaningful, satiating and hi vibe relationships. Going inward we get to know ourselves. Your relationship with yourself is the anchor point of all your other relationships in life. And as we encounter our soul, we encounter the soul in others. 

We begin to encounter the soul of the world.

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Stay tuned for my next blog articles, 8 Doorways into Soul Work, Part 1 and Part 2.

Resources:

Internal Family Systems developed by Richard C. Schwartz 

Wild Mind and Soulcraft by Bill Plotkin

The 4-Fold Way by Angeles Arrien

Carolyn Myss – www.Myss.com