Sections:
Why this is the most important article you've ever read
How to know which Way to go
How to go that Way
1. Introduction
‘In you a god stirs. Time has called its whisper the Daemon, the Genius, the Soul… The wisdom that guides every seed to its blossom is the whisper… It knows how big you can be. It knows what you can be and it knows how to be… The whisper is the way.’
- Erick Godsey
What if you came with a blueprint for how to live your best life?
An instruction manual installed within you that knows the way to your highest potential.
But rather than a book or a script, it is manifests as a kind of guiding force.
There have been many different words used to describe this Force.
Most of the great humans referred to it in some way or another.
Carl Jung spoke of ‘a private demon who counsels him and whose mandates he must execute’.
Socrates, similarly, had his ‘Daemon’, ‘an inner or attendant spirit or inspiring force’.
Napoleon Bonaparte often mentioned his ‘Star’ that he saw ‘in all great moments.’ Giving him instructions on which way to go and when to move forward.
Oprah speaks of each person having a ‘Spiritual GPS: that persistent knowing inside of us’ , ‘our inner compass guiding us to move through our lives no matter what difficulties come our way’.
Albert Einstein emphasized the importance of an intelligence that seems to come from above and beyond our rational thinking mind, as he bluntly stated, ‘the only real valuable thing is intuition’.
James Hillman paints a strikingly similar picture in his book ‘The Soul’s Code’:
‘Before the birth, the soul of each of us chooses an image or design that then we will live on earth, and receive a companion to guide us up here, a daimon, which is unique and typical. However, when we come to the world, we forget all this and we believe we have been empty. It is the daimon who remembers the content of our image, the elements of the chosen drawing, he is the bearer of our destiny.’ ‘Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember this “something” as a signal calling in childhood when an urge out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an annunciation: This is what I must do, this is what I’ve got to have. This is who I am.’
In new age culture, we often hear of one’s higher self.
A kind of being that sits halfway between us and the Divine, constantly whispering in our ear the will of our Soul.
There’s no need to get caught up in the metaphysics around whether or not we have a higher self or a Soul.
We need to know nothing about the physics of wind in order to sail. We only have to know which way it's blowing and then raise our sails appropriately.
And that is exactly what this article is going is going to show you how to do.
I say ‘show’, but it’s more like ‘remind’. The knowledge of this primordial force comes naturally with being alive. You need nobody to give it to you.
For different reasons, we disconnect or forget.
So let's start off by getting clear about what it is that we're remembering here.
What is it?
It is that which guides you when you're clear.
It's the very thing that resonates.
The nail that gets hit on it's head at just the right time by just the right quote.
The gong that gets donged when you have an idea that excites every level of your being.
It is the magnetic energy that pulls you towards this over that.
The force beneath your curiosities and interests.
That inside of you which draws you more towards this person rather than that.
That pushed you to pick out that one book amongst the thousand others.
That which calls you to adventure and pushes you to take the leap in the face of danger.
The thing which, if obeyed, brings serendipity, synchronicity and good luck into your life.
It is the place into which things fall when they ‘feel right’.
And it is that which turns the acorn into the oak tree.
It is what pulls you back towards yourself.
It knows what you can be and it knows exactly how to get you there.
And there are consequences if you ignore it.
It contains the blueprint for your highest potential.
For the most maximum version of your self.
Ignore it, and hell will come upon you in the form of mediocrity, anxiety, depression, being lost and the treacherously deep knowing that you should have been oh so much more.
Nobody can see the instructions of your own Blueprint but you. Yet others who have learned the way can inspire you to remember how to interpret it’s language.
That’s what this guide is: a reminder to reconnect you to your Way-finding system.
Why is it Important?
Imagine you are God for a second.
Regardless of your beliefs, just play along here.
So you’re God, and there is a certain way you want things to be, let’s say.
‘But God doesn’t want anything, he’s God!’
Okay let’s replace ‘God’ with ‘Nature’ then…
Nature ‘wants’ things to be a certain way.
In the way that it wants the seed to sprout.
And the caterpillar to turn into a butterfly.
I think it's fair to say that She doesn't want us to throw empty coke cans into the ocean.
And that she would prefer if we stopped destroying the planet.
We can say this, because if we continue treating the earth like this, we will die. It will essentially get rid of us.
Like a body burning out a virus with a fever.
There is a type of mechanism at play here to return the planet to a state of balance.
This homeostatic mechanism is present everywhere.
People can either act in alignment with it, or they can act against it.
Nature wants you to act in alignment with it.
As Nature, how would you motivate people to do what you want them to do?
Pavlov’ll tell ya:
By rewarding them when they do what you want them to do, and punishing them when they don’t.
But instead of being given dog food, when we act in alignment with nature we are rewarded by feeling NATURAL.
It feels natural for us to remain hydrated, well fed and be a part of a community.
It feels unnatural for us to be thirsty, starving and alone.
I think we can all agree that the former is preferable.
In this same way, we feel more natural in certain environments and doing certain things over others.
If you're a hyper-creative individual working as an accountant, something is going to feel out of place. If you change over to a job that allows for you to express this creativity, you will probably feel much better.
But more than that, it will feel RIGHT.
And this is actually the feeling that we seek.
This is the language of the Soul. This is how it guides you.
The closer you live in alignment with your Soul, the more natural and ALIVE you feel.
The more Right your life starts to feel for you.
The further you live from it, the more unnatural, disconnected and lost you feel.
Hence the way Nature tells you what Nature wants.
When you do what it wants, it moves you towards that which you TRULY want.
It will not always move you closer to what you think you want.
And here lies an important distinction, between what Christina Lopes calls ‘Ego Dreams’ and ‘Soul Dreams’.
Following your Soul’s instructions does not bring you closer to your Ego Dreams.
But it does to your Soul Dreams.
Basically, Ego dreams are things that you think you want, but don’t. Whether this be because other people have convinced you that you should want this, or your small self has told you that you need this in order to validate yourself, these dreams are not actually what you want. They come from a place of lack.
What you actually want, she terms ‘Soul Dreams’. Soul Dreams come from a place of love and wholeness. They are embedded deep within us. Most of the time, deeper than our conscious awareness, and therefore unknown to us, waiting to be discovered. Soul Dream’s are our Soul’s deepest yearnings, and they are within our reach.
Pursue what’s in your head (ego dreams), and you’re alone.
‘Pursue what's in your heart (Soul dreams), and the universe will conspire to support you.’
- Rich Roll
So, why should we aim to follow Soul?
To put it very simply:
If we follow Soul, we move towards everything that we truly want. (heaven!)
And if we don’t, we move in the opposite direction. (hell!)
The stakes LITERALLY could not be higher.
This is the most important thing there is to do.
“No good can ever come from deviating from the path that you were destined to follow. You will be assailed by varieties of hidden pain. Most often you deviate because of the lure of money, of more immediate prospects of prosperity. Because this does not comply with something deep within you, your interest will lag and eventually the money will not come so easily. You will search for other easy sources of money, moving further and further away from your path. Not seeing clearly ahead of you, you will end up in a dead-end career. Even if your material needs are met, you will feel an emptiness inside that you will need to fill with any kind of belief system, drugs, or diversions. There is no compromise here, no way of escaping the dynamic. You will recognize how far you have deviated by the depth of your pain and frustration. You must listen to the message of this frustration, this pain, and let it guide you…It is a matter of life and death.”
- Robert Greene
How To Know Which Way to Go
‘I don’t hear a calling?’
‘I don’t think I have a path’
‘I feel no guiding force’
Friedrich Nietzche said something similar:
‘I just don’t seem to have a compass to tell me what I’m destined for…’
But then he goes on, and here’s the important part:
‘And yet in looking back everything seems to fit so well that it’s as if a guiding spirit has been showing me the way’
The first part of this quote is how many of us feel for a large part of our lives.
If this article has been doing nothing but frustrate you since you started reading it, then you’re probably getting poked right in the calling sized hole in your chest.
But I am here to tell you that that hole isn’t real.
You DO have a calling.
The Force IS pulling you.
You’re just making too much noise to hear it.
Moving around too much to feel it.
Let me show you what I mean:
Take your 15 year old self.
You may say that you don't know what your passion is and that nothing has pulled you in strong enough to qualify as a calling, but I guarantee that you have learned a hell of a lot about what it is you don’t like.
The way that we move towards the territory within which our ‘spark’ lies, is by sifting through and realising what does not call us.
If you zoom out, you will see that there is in fact an emerging pattern to what it is you don't like, and what is left behind...
Look at how certain you are that you don’t want to eat shit for a living.
There was a time, when you were a baby, when you didn’t know that.
Only once you ate that first piece of shit, you realized, that shit eating was not what you wanted to do for the rest of your life.
Since then, you’ve repeated this process and realised a whole many more things that don’t call you.
And just as a stone marble carver creates a work of art by chipping away at that which does not belong in the final product, you are getting closer to the life most suited for the real you.
People are frantically looking for their purpose in the form of a concise sentence or a grandiose achievement.
But living in your purpose is a way of being.
You’re too busy trying to hear what you think you should hear, that you can’t hear that deep, constant hum that is your calling.
Like the fish in water, asking everybody for directions to the sea, you’re missing what is all around you.
'What’s my purpose? My destiny?'
"Purpose isn't in the future. Your purpose is in the present because your presence has purpose"
- HINDZ
We don’t discover it in our minds.
And this is fantastic news, because according to Oprah:
‘The Universe has a bigger, wider, deeper dream for you than you could ever imagine for yourself.’
You have the potential to manifest the life of your dreams. But you have to work with this force. It is the only thing that knows the way to the absolute maximum expression of yourself.
‘For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us… You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. ‘
- Yoda
Just like the acorn doesn’t need to do anything to listen to the force which pushes it to grow into the oak tree, we do not need to do anything to hear the whispers of our Soul.
Yes, it breaks out of it's shell and grows outwards. But the acorn is doing nothing on its own accord. It is simply allowing the inherent natural intelligence within it to take its course.
The Force is what happens when we aren’t forcing.
It is always pulling you to your destiny.
You only need to SURRENDER to it.
The only thing stopping you harnessing its full power, is your resistance to it.
What's stopping you, is you.
‘There lives a creative being inside all of us and we must get out of its way for it will give us no peace unless we do’
-M.C. Richards
We need to surrender our will to Thy Will.
Let go of your ideas of how things should be and instead move with them as they are.
There are greater forces at work, beyond our comprehension.
In the same way as our body heals itself when wounded, our entire being is constantly working to bring us back into alignment with our truest self.
This is the natural process.
This is healing.
Of course there are actions we can take that allow us to hear our inner whispers more clearly.
But these actions will arise and make themselves apparent as if they are coming to you.
Just like when you are hungry, you are called to the fridge.
When you are depressed, you might feel the call to exercise more, express yourself or seek out different healing modalities.
In fact, the very feeling of certain things ‘calling’ to you, is the experience of that alignment mechanism working.
Anything that you find yourself gravitating towards effortlessly, is calling you.
Which articles do you read when you’re lying on the couch?
What topics of conversation all bring you to life?
Which books stand out to you as you browse the book store?
Notice the naturalness and effortlessness with which these things pull you.
Of course we all have endless lists full of reasons as to why we shouldn’t and couldn’t allow ourselves to pursue these things more.
‘It’ll never lead to me making any money’
‘There’s no point’
‘I don’t have time to waste’
But before you give into that way of thinking. Ask yourself:
Is this really the part of you that you want to let captain ‘your one wild and precious life?’
This part of us is afraid and doesn’t like change.
It disguises this fear as ‘being realistic’.
It tells you you’re too grown up to follow your heart. Life isn’t a Disney movie anymore.
'Realists are often just dreamers who got their hearts broken along the way'
- Ashley Stahl
This part of our brain is responsible for our survival. It cares not about whether we are ALIVE or not.
This part of our brain, in modern western culture, is the single biggest obstacle that gets in the way of us following our Soul’s commands.
And it is the root cause of OVERTHINKING.
The difference between thinking and overthinking is like the difference between reading for an hour a day and reading for 9 hours a day.
The first is healthy and probably leads to growth, while the second gets in the way of life.
Overthinking is a form of running away. We run away from our feelings, into our imagination.
When you are overthinking, if you bring your attention back into your heart and body, you will most likely notice that there is discomfort there. That is why you went off up into your head. Into a transcendental realm devoid of feelings, surrounded only by thoughts.
When we realize that we need to do something that scares us, we experience literal discomfort in our bodies, which we don’t like feeling, so we hide in our heads.
Up there, we are swamped with reasons not to do that which we know we need to do. If we stay here for too long, we can lose touch with that knowing of what we need to do. And this is the goal of overthinking. To get rid of that discomfort. So, it smothers our Intuitive knowing with all kinds of reasonable sounding doubts and concerns.
Solution?
Let the mind settle.
“Your mind is like this water, my friend. When it is agitated, it becomes difficult to see. But if you allow it to settle, the answer becomes clear.”
- Master Oogway
When the mind is agitated, it can feel like there is no way out.
Yet if we take a step back from thinking, we find that solutions arise as if by magic!
Many of the greatest discoveries of all time were arrived at in this way.
'After ten long years of incessant thinking on the problem of general relativity, Albert Einstein decided one evening to simply give up. He had had enough. It was beyond him. He went to bed early, and when he awoke the solution suddenly came to him.’
- Robert Greene
Taking a step back can mean many different things. The important thing here is that you stop incessantly bashing your head against the problem you are trying to solve. Do something else. Give your mind some downtime.
As the dust settles, the solution will reveal itself.
SOULFULNESS
Another way to connect with your life force energy, is to do what feels soulful to you.
This is a magical word, because everyone has an idea of what it means to them and somehow it bypasses peoples' woo-woo barriers.
This will be different for each person. And that’s the point!
For one person, doing yoga in a forest might feel soulful for them.
For another, running around town naked at night getting chased by the cops might be just what the doctor ordered!
Feel what comes up for you when you read that word and go do more of that.
THE COMFORT PIT VS THE SOUL PULL
Now when I say, ‘stop trying' I don’t mean, ‘give into all of your impulses and never work hard.’
In fact, if you give in to Soul, you will most likely be taken through a baptism of fire.
This is no easy road.
People who follow their inner guidance don’t end up eating cheetohs on the couch all day.
On the contrary, they often work harder than most people and end up having to make sacrifices unimaginable to most people.
This is because they started to give in to what REALLY wants to happen.
Nobody REALLY wants to spend the whole day eating cheetohs.
People who are stuck in perpetual cycles of giving into each impulse that comes along and never actually working hard towards a longer term more fulfilling goal, are usually the most unhappy.
These people are in the grips of the ‘Comfort Pit’.
In this pit, we are held back by fear from going where we TRULY want to go.
So the two distinct forces at play here are:
The Comfort Pit vs the Soul Pull.
And there are clear felt differences in the textures of the two:
When comfort holds, it is via the mind. It will sound like a bunch of different reasons why you don’t need to do something. As you give in to it, you feel fear dissipate and soon feelings of guilt, shame and smallness replace it. You try to push them away or pretend they’re not there, but deep down you know you should’ve done different.
When Soul calls, it is felt in the body. It’s usually electrifying and quite often terrifying. At the moment of the call, there is a flash of knowing ‘I need to do this’, that often very quickly gets smothered by a myriad of reasons not to do it.
"Anytime you say 'Yes' with your mind when your body says 'No,' you will lead yourself farther and farther and farther away from your path"
- Elizabeth Gilbert
If you feel carefully, you will notice that comfort doesn’t pull you.
You hold on to it.
This holding on can come in many forms:
Resisting a career change even though it’s draining your chi.
Staying in a toxic relationship.
Avoiding things that you’re afraid of.
These are all examples of what Joseph Campbell calls, ‘Refusal of the call’.
When we hold on, we block the flow of life force energy. This causes a pressure to build up, usually resulting in some type of ‘disorder’.
Depression and anxiety are the two most common examples.
These are not ‘disorders’, or signs of brokenness but rather signals.
Callings from within for change.
But instead of acknowledging and working with them, we gear for war against them.
Numbing them with medications, substances and mind numbing distractions.
Medicating these inner signals is like taking a bunch of painkillers so you can sit on a hot stove...
In order to straighten ourselves out, we need to feel everything. All of our pain, sadness, depression, anxiety, apathy, lostness etc.
We need to listen to our inner most selves.
‘It whispers, and if you don't get the whisper, the whisper gets louder. If you don't get the whisper when it gets louder, I call it like a little pebble — a little thump — upside the head... If you don't pay attention to the problem, the pebble then becomes like a brick.’
- Oprah
Feel your pain and it will naturally push you towards healing, just as your finger pulls itself off the hot stove.
In order to hear the music, we need to take the earplugs out.
But why do we even have earplugs in in the first place?
WOUNDS.
Because the music got a little too loud at some point.
Life overwhelmed us and we didn’t know how to deal, so we did what we needed to do to cope.
These overwhelmingly loud events are called wounds. We all have them. Nobody had a perfect upbringing. Even Moses was sent down a river in a basket.
Poor lil' guy
But seriously, many people think that their deepest wounds are the things that stop them from fulfilling their potential.
When actually, the opposite is true.
‘The wound is the place where the light enters you’
-Rumi
The story of the wounded healer is universally applicable. The wound is what drives and directs you.
When information is being shared that is potentially applicable to the healing of your wound, the solving of your biggest problem, your eyes will widen and your ears will prick.
We are given an endless source of energy to investigate our wounds. What could be more important than fixing THAT thing.
Often we don’t know exactly what they are, but we feel an intuitive resonance with anything that might help us solve the puzzle.
Our ‘Golden wound’ is the question that our life has the potential to answer.
As we work towards healing this wound, we accumulate vast amounts of poignant wisdom and knowledge through our own experience that can be used to help others.
In this way, the call of the healer is heard.
HOW TO FOLLOW IT
Once you feel the direction in which life is pulling you, the next step is to walk forth with COURAGE.
The more you do this, the more you learn to TRUST the process.
Life begins to snowball.
Your resources of courage become more and more plentiful, as trust becomes habitual.
You learn that you can and always should trust that feeling.
That feeling we call INTUITION.
And the way to build and strengthen your relationship to your intuition, is to follow it and see what happens.
Intuition is a funny thing. Often it leads us in a seemingly irrational direction, or to an endpoint that we weren't aiming for.
Often it is a voice that only we can hear, or a vision that only we can see.
This can be challenging, as it often feels like everyone is telling us to go the other way.
But deep down, we KNOW that this feeling is trustworthy.
But we can quite easily lose touch with that knowingness and instead be governed by other people’s opinions and ideas of how we should live.
This is why we need the COURAGE to trust ourselves. Often, we disconnect from our knowingness on purpose because we felt it leading us towards a waterfall downstream. So we pull out and paddle to safety.
We sever our Trust in life.
We then find ourselves cut off from our own life force energy and the winds of life seem to stop blowing at our backs.
We start to feel incapable of dealing with what the world is throwing at us on a daily basis.
So we try to stay safe and comfortable by avoiding anything that scares us or makes us anxious.
Deepak Chopra calls this a state of ‘CONTRACTION.’
‘Contraction prevents precisely the free expansion that enables us to find our connection to Spirit.’
Contraction feels terrible.
It is a state allergic to strength, confidence and optimism.
One feels like a loser, unable to rise up and meet life where it’s at.
It is hopelessness, insecurities and irrational fears mixed into a curdling cauldron of confusion and shame.
Avoidance after avoidance, we eventually completely forget about the Power that lies within us.
We get cut off from our inner compass and constipate ourselves with all kinds of limiting beliefs and stories.
We stay where it’s safe, passing up on valuable opportunities.
We feel STUCK.
So what’s the antidote to all this?
COURAGE.
DO WHAT SCARES YOU.
The most common advice to people who are having a recurring dream of being chased by a monster, is to stop running, turn around and face it.
What they usually find is that the monster either disappears or turns into a harmless child.
And when you’re no longer being chased, you can finally ask yourself, ‘what do I want to do?’
You can’t answer this question until you’re done running.
Until then, fear is your ruler.
And it leaves little space for your soul to shine through.
Most people don’t face their fear because part of them feels like they won’t be able to handle it.
But, as Frank Ocean said ‘God gave you what you can handle’.
But first you need to look at life square in the eyes.
In doing this, we become capable.
Jordan Peterson sums it up very well here:
‘If you impose a stressor on two groups of people, and on one group the stressor is imposed involuntarily and on the other group the stressor is picked up voluntarily. People who pick up the stressor voluntarily use a whole different psychophysiological system to deal with it. They use the system that’s associated with approach and challenge, not the system that’s associated with defensive aggression and withdrawal. The system that’s associated with challenge is much more associated with positive emotion and much less associated with negative emotion’
As long as you are running away from that which scares you, you are constantly sending the message to your mind and body that you are being hunted.
But as soon as you make the conscious decision to face it, you become the hunter.
We need to constantly keep our fears at bay, by doing that which makes us uncomfortable.
SELF DOUBT
The next thing that comes up when you start following Soul, is this voice in your head that seemingly does everything it can to stop you from doing so.
Steven Pressfield calls this force ‘resistance’.
“Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. … If you take Resistance at its word, you deserve everything you get. Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.”
Self-doubt tells us that we shouldn’t do it because we can’t.
The reality is that if there is a True Will, that comes from the bottom of our hearts and souls, then THERE IS ALWAYS A WAY.
When we move with Soul, we see how:
‘There is no such thing as failure; failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.'
- Oprah
All that happens is that we get closer and closer to the truth of who we are and what we truly want.
You shoot for the stars, land on mars, recalibrate, and shoot again.
Each time getting nearer and a better idea of what it is you’re really aiming for.
The key here is to shoot.
Sit down and do the work
But sometimes it feels like we still don't know the answer.
In such times, it's okay to phone a friend.
Only it doesn't have to involve a phone, nor a friend.
What I mean here is to find INSPIRATION.
Self-doubt attempts to dampen the fire within.
Consuming soul-inspiring content, which connects to you deeply, is often enough to stoke that fire so that self-doubt burns away in that moment, just long enough to allow you to glimpse the way forward.
Feeding your soul with things that RESONATE, is the way to do this.
Articles, books, conversations, videos, movies, art, anything!
As long as it hits your Spirit.
Recognise when your soul is hungry and feel into what nourishes it.
And this is what this whole article is really about. How to listen to yourself and move with the currents of your deepest being.
There is no greater way to live.
To listen to and follow one’s inner guidance is live the life that you are meant to live.
It is build your own stairway to heaven.
