Pssst…Can You Hear Me?

There’s been a meme going around on Facebook recently (at least it’s showing up on my feed) that has really captured my imagination.  While there are a few versions of it, this is basically how it goes:

               “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”

It’s been attributed to C.S. Lewis, but it turns out it originated with someone else – and that these exact words weren’t likely the original quote. Instead, the originator is most likely Scottish author and minister George MacDonald who wrote, “we talk as if we POSSESSED souls, instead of BEING souls.” (Source: https://checkyourfact.com/2019/09/18/fact-check-cs-lewis-soul-body-quote/).

Regardless of its origin, I decided to start my blogging journey with it because, after all, the name of my blog is Soul Whispers! To me, it’s only fitting that my first post introduce you to the idea of your soul whispering to you – which I believe it does.  But what I realized is that we just don’t often take the time to listen.  We may not even really know how to listen or what to listen for! So, I wanted to get you thinking about that in your life.  Do you know when your soul is talking to you? Can you hear it? Do you ever hear that little “Pssst…can you hear me?”

I want to say right off the top here that this blog isn’t about religion. It’s about what it means to me to be a soul with a body.  You might call it your higher self or your spirit, but whatever it is, I believe it’s here on earth in you for a purpose. It wants to learn and grow and experience all that life has to offer. To experience joy, pain, elation, depression – all of the beauty (and ugliness) of life here on earth. And, it wants to contribute to the world around you! It wants to be seen and heard and attended to.

So, why this quote? Well, I feel like we are disconnected from the “soul” part of us…at least I was. The material world we live in is busy and complicated and demands a lot of our bodies and minds. We get caught up earning a living, looking after family, commuting to work and listening to news of a world running amok while feeling powerless to slow it or stop it. We don’t take the time to just sit and listen to the messages our soul might be sending… It happened to me…

I had a body that was filled with pain…and all I could focus on was that. I was grieving so many losses – including my youth. My heart ached. I was sad. Depressed. Full of anxiety. My health (physical, mental, emotional) was abyssmal!  I was a wreck – a wreck who looked at her life one day and wondered what the heck had happened?! In hindsight, all the while I was experiencing what I saw as a crappy life, my soul was whispering to me – I think it was crying out for me to pay attention to it. To nurse it. To nurture it. To trust it.

So, here I am…talking to you about this. Trusting my soul that this is the right next step. Through my reading, thinking and journalling, I believe I finally figured out some ways to decipher the messages it was sending me (and continues to send me – though you have to admit that life can get a little loud sometimes and a little “Psst….can you hear me?” can get lost in the din!).

What I will be sharing with you are some of the experiences, insights and strategies I’ve used that have helped me make radical changes and improvements in my life by paying more attention to the wee voice inside of me. By having conversations with it…giving it a voice. In doing that, I’ve gone from feeling like a victim of the events and happenings in my life to understanding how I am a creator of them…ALL of them.

My journey is far from over.  I still stumble some days, and I’m ok with that because I know I’ll get up again another day with greater knowledge and understanding…and I’ll share those days with you too!

I do hope you’ll follow along and that what I share will in some small measure help you along your journey.