This is part two of a three-part series. If you’re a new reader, here is part one, which explores what gets in the way of you living your purpose.
The more you (re)connect with your soul, the more tension arises. Perhaps, like me, you wake up to the reality that you spend most of your waking hours at best boring your soul, and at worst crushing it.
Perhaps you’ve been hearing your soul’s desperate whispers for months, years, or even decades. But ignorance is bliss and your setup in Shoudlandia is convenient. Your soul grew silent in defeat. Or, you’ve only now begun to hear it. Either way, the whispers have amplified, morphing into a constant background hum that permeates your being. Patiently waiting for you to muster the courage to listen, and act.
A daunting awareness arises: Is it time for your stay in Shouldlandia to come to an end? Dread swallows you. The urgency is overwhelming. No matter how many times you ask yourself why you’re here — you don’t get a clear answer.
Something in you is awakening, asking to be taken into the world, but you’re unsure what it is, where it needs to go, and how it wants to be delivered. Another more immediate question emerges: How on earth do you find out why you’re here?
Individuating your way into clarity
The fact that you’re asking yourself these questions means you’re on the path — a path Carl Jung called individuation.
Individuation is the process of self-realization through which you move from ego consciousness into the goals and purposes of the soul. Your vehicle for this journey is your inner work.
As you grow your awareness of all the fragments of your being, you dissolve the barrier between your conscious and unconscious. You learn to hold the polarities within you and integrate your shadow. It’s the journey towards wholeness.
This journey results not only in healing and freedom but also in confusion. How does your inner transformation change how you give yourself to the world?
The present moment is a gift from the universe, the mushrooms reminded me during a recent journey. If the universe gifted you the present moment, what is it that you are leaving behind? The question that’s plagued me for years still echoes in my mind.
Your gifts emerge from your journey, your story will reveal what you’re meant to give to the world, all you need to do is live it, the mushrooms affirmed. The gifts you carry will emerge from the work you do within yourself.
“It is one of the oldest tricks the universe plays on us”,
writes. “The universe buries strange jewels within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.”Bill Plotkin expands on this sentiment:
“The gift you carry for others is not an attempt to save the world but to fully belong to it. It’s not possible to save the world by trying to save it. You need to find what is genuinely yours to offer the world before you can make it a better place. Discovering your unique gift to bring to your community is your greatest opportunity and challenge. The offering of that gift — your true self — is the most you can do to love and serve the world. And it is all the world needs.”
A part of you is not excited about the treasure hunt ahead, however. It wants safety, clarity, and control. Unsurprisingly, this part — your ego — is not the part that has the answers. Your soul does, and because your soul is all-knowing, it doesn’t rush or fear.
Learning the mother tongue of your soul
The best way to gain clarity is by temporarily disabling your ego. Soul dialogue is unlikely to occur in your regular waking consciousness. As Bill Plotkin writes, “the uninitiated ego is the primary obstacle to the conscious experience of the soul.”
You may dissolve your ego through vision quests, shamanic journeys, dreamwork, extended meditation, or psychedelic journeys. The psychedelic experience particularly is a profound catalyst for individuation when properly integrated thanks to its capacity to make the unconscious conscious in record time.
During your soul encounter, you may get your answers delivered on a silver platter. What’s more likely, however, is that you’ll get a clue that will take years to decipher.
Learn the language of the heart and teach it, Iboga, one of the most potent medicines for soul encounters, told me over a year ago. While elusively clear at the time, this guidance has become more obscure by the day. I have no doubts I’ll spend the rest of my life uncovering its meaning.
And so, rather than looking for answers, I’m learning to live the questions, as Rilke instructed:
“The essence of this time of life, he wrote, is in the questions: I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
And while my ego is screaming at me, I need to know now! What is my one big purpose in life!, I sit back and remind myself: You cannot force your way into insight. All you can do is your work. Remove the walls around your heart, brick by brick. Learn its language. Your heart is the vocal chord of your soul. Learn to listen and understand, and it will guide you.
The responsibility of the gift
Only few meaningfully progress on the path of individuation and enjoy the healing and freedom it brings. Even fewer encounter their soul. If you’re one of the lucky few — congrats. And, condolences.
I have good and bad news for you.
The good news: you’ve been given an invaluable gift.
The bad news: it comes with a responsibility.
The responsibility of the gift is a natural law, understood by indigenous cultures across the globe. Receiving a gift comes with the responsibility of giving a gift.
A gift that brings both a burden and joy. The burden is “the promise that will kill us to break”, in the words of poet
. The joy arises from “expressing, again and again, the gift that is ours alone to give”, as Bill Plotkin writes.I did not get on the internet and open up about my most vulnerable, shameful parts because I thought it was fun, or necessarily a good idea. I did it because I had to. Because my soul was driving me to express itself, and the best way I knew to do that was through writing. The acute awareness that something is brewing inside me has simultaneously infused my soul with meaning and enamored my ego’s impatience.
As the sacred cactus gently reminded me a while ago — I did not receive healing just so I could live a more beautiful, free life. My journey is a gift that bears fruit beyond my own well-being. I imagine it will be similar for you.
However, this does not mean these fruits have to feed many.
As
reminds us:“So many people squelch the expression of their gifts by thinking that they must do something big with them. One’s own actions are not enough—one must write a book that reaches millions. How quickly this turns into a competition over whose ideas get heard. How it invalidates the small, beautiful strivings of the bulk of humanity—invalidates, paradoxically, the very things we must start doing en masse to sustain a livable planet.”
Your gift is the unique flavor of love you’ve grown as the result of your journey. The expression of your love, in whichever form you may choose to share it, is precisely the potion that someone on this planet needs. Whether that’s your child, partner, community, or the broader population.
There’s likely not going to be just one way to express that love. There is no purpose to your gift other than to give it, there’s nothing to be achieved, no minimum impact. The heart has no agenda, it’s only ever the ego’s grandiosity that attaches to outcomes.
And while the nature of your gift can only be revealed by your soul, it’s your ego that will carry it into the world. Your ego is not the enemy. Magic happens in the divine interplay between the two when you activate the ego’s force to execute the soul’s agenda.
To be continued next week…
〰️ Bill Plotkin’s Soulcraft is an essential deep dive into these themes
〰️ This book is a great, short read on Jungian Psychology if you’re eager to learn more about individuation
〰️
’s Big Magic inspires creative living beyond fear〰️ What Ibogaine taught me about learning the language of the heart
This article is just brilliant. I feel this three part article was written for me to aid me in my individuation journey.
I am connecting with my soul in these last couple of months and indeed tension arises.
“Your gifts emerge from your journey, your story will reveal what you’re meant to give to the world, all you need to do is live it” The mashrooms were so right.
Loved the quote by Charles Eisenstein!
How paradoxical that most of us follow our ego into trying to reach the masses, when what the world needs most is the masses focusing on individuation.
Is it because our society and history obsesses with legacy and widely impactful individuals?
Or more simply that our ego craves glory and our history is simply a reflection of a world ran by ego for centuries?