What is the language of the soul? For me it is meaning. This poses a bit of a problem though as most people battle to describe meaning in their lives and more often opt for a single sentence description. Our mind tries to distill the experience of meaning into its essence, it unconsciously reduces it into a bite sized piece for us.

The unconscious Self (what I call soul) works in the opposite way, it is about expansion and interconnection. When we reduce the meaning in our lives into such small bits it hinders our potential to link to the deeper identity within. How can we become fully aware of what is meaningful to us if we don’t begin to learn how to speak in the dynamic connected way in which meaning emerges for us from that deep unconscious Self?

As an illustration of this I’d like to share an example of this in my own life. I had an insight this weekend whilst putting some guava’s out in the sun to ripen, that ‘everything has its time’. The instant reduction into a phrase made me pause and dig deeper into why that was important to me.

If I were to try to tell you all that was going on in my soul it would read like this:

“Internally something has shifted after my holiday in the Transkei, what it is, is uncertain. It’s lying there under the surface, waiting to ripen, waiting to come into my life. The smell of these guava’s is wonderful, it’s transporting me to the fruit sellers of my childhood in Durban. A sunny tropical time filled with bananas, avocado and hibiscus flowers. Carried from cold Winter in dusty Johannesburg to the hot and humid coast by the power of those ripening guavas is mirroring the turning and directing of internal forces creating change inside me. Just as the seasons change, just as fruit ripens so too am I changing. I must be patient with me and not eat the fruit before it’s ripe. Everything has its time.”

This very different description really opened up my eyes, the external image of putting fruit in the sun to ripen had resonated deep within me, it had connected with my unconscious which had responded with  direction, guidance and self awareness. Now I’m not saying we should be talking like this all the time, it’s hardly practical but we should be able to do it for ourselves. We need to learn the words, connections and symbols of our soul so that we can use them to describe to our conscious mind the messages of meaning we receive. Your soul is always trying to show you what will truly fulfill you, you just need to speak it’s language.

What has been meaningful to you in your life recently? Do you know all the reasons why? How would you describe why it’s meaningful to you?

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