What’s your soul story? Why are you here? What is your soul-aligned life and work?
Imagine this reality is like a dream and your consciousness came here to this game of life, to experience and learn from playing in this reality.
You’re here as this “avatar”, which you call you, but this is not the complete picture of you. There is also a part of you that is less ephemeral and essential.
So far this might sound a bit far-fetched, but is it?
Let’s look at the seeming facts. You came into this world (aka virtual reality), with a character. You have features, characteristics, pre-dispositions and traits, many of which are unique to you. Even being born into the same family, or at the same time and place as someone else, you were not born the same.
What I’m trying to say is that you were not born a blank canvas, which has been painted on by circumstance and society.
You came with a built-in memory and program, which is unique to you. Another way of putting this is to say you came with a story. A story that was already started, that you came to continue in some way.
Let’s call this your Soul Story, a deep narrative that extends beyond this lifetime. Given you have a Soul Story, this must have some implications for the questions I started with:
What’s your story? Why are you here?
What’s meaningful?
What matters to you?
In his work with the Presencing Institute, Otto Scharmer asks two similar questions, which I believe are fundamentally relate to your Soul Story and living a soul-aligned life.
Who are you? What is your Work?
And here I combine the two to ask: What is your soul-aligned work?
These are challenging questions to answer requiring deep reflection, inquiry and possibly need to be broken down in order to achieve insight. Doing so can allow you to align to your soul and do work that is born deep within you, at your essence.
Perhaps your life gives you clues, to recognize the soul, the deep meaning. Previously, I spoke about finding the right ingredients to create work you love, in essence these ingredients are aspects of your soul story being revealed.
They often relate to your story, sometimes your struggle; they wouldn’t matter to you if they hadn’t been part of your story in some way!
What’s pleasurable?
You’ve probably heard the phrase follow your bliss. Well, could this be precisely your essence/soul speaking to you? Just as the pleasure/pain mechanism keeps us safe and tells us to take our hand out of the fire, by the same token when you find work that is tedious or boring, perhaps that’s an indication for the need for change or more challenge. When you love doing something, the time flies by, that is soul indicating you’re on track!
What are you good at?
We were not all cast in the same mould! Your greatest joy can be using the gifts you were given, especially in service. They are also a big part of your soul story, and basing our work on them is a service to ourselves and others.
The Story so far…
So the clues to answer these fundamental questions of our Soul Story can be in these things, but there is more…
I believe that this chapter is just a continuation of a long book. Stories are perpetuated inter-generationally through culture and genetics. You could delve into past lives and the stories of your ancestors, but I believe everything you need to know is revealed to you, in this life.
To get a clue as to why you’re here and what your work here might be, perhaps it’s a good idea to look at the story of your life so far…
In a movie, what often happens at the beginning is a gentle build up of characters and circumstances so that the second part of the film can play out. If you look at your life in this way, as if it’s a stage, set for something to unfold and for you to step into a role, then things begin to take on a deeper meaning.
Imagine that your Work is part of the bigger picture of your spiritual/personal development, the story of a hero’s journey.
What happens in the earlier part of your life allows the stage to be set with the perfect conditions for the evolution of your character and soul. The struggles and challenges in the first part of the story give clues to what you’re here to do in the second part.
How to discover your Soul-aligned Work or Business
How can you find your soul-aligned work or business?
Reviewing or even writing out a particular thread of the story of your life (more on this in a following post), say work, can be a useful exercise to get insight into the story that wants to emerge.
Looking at the whole story, struggles and challenges are where often meaning can be found. Challenges have the potential to unlock the real meaning in your life. In them there are opportunities for learning, transformation and growth, resulting in the forging of qualities which can be used to make a contribution to others.
Asking the right questions can also reveal the essence of your story.
Here are some questions you could reflect on:
What matters to you most?
What’s your story about?
What words describe your soul/essence?
What’s been your struggle/challenge?
What are you here to learn?
What is the transformation you need to make?
When do you experience Flow?
What do you most want to create?
What ‘work’ brings you joy and a feeling of gratitude?
Keep on track and do soul-aligned work
From my experience, I feel joy and deep gratitude when I’m engaged in work that is soul-aligned.
You’re not doing it just for the money, aggrandising the ego or to in fact to get anywhere. Doing this work is in fact the greatest satisfaction because you’re being true Self. I believe that it can be the source of much happiness, because you are in fact becoming who you are!
You are Becoming
You and your life are a work in progress, a work of art in the making! Hold yourself in this space of possibility.
Yours is a story of becoming, of shedding your limitations and redefining who you think you are! You are emerging beyond what you’ve ever been before…
Photo by Daria Shevtsova from Pexels
