Echoes to Follow

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.

If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

The Gospel of Thomas

*****

A few years ago, as a result of a serendipitous encounter with a book gifted to me by an unlikely source, I saw myself write these words in my journal:

“Ignore the callings of your soul at your peril.”

It struck with such a resounding chord that I was catapulted into a deep reverie. If that was not enough, a series of dreams began to emerge, dreams that were potent enough to send me off to find a Jungian analyst, to christen that alternative world a “dreamscape”, stumble across the words from the Gospel of Thomas, launch into a deep inner pilgrimage, and somehow find a thread of life course that had eluded me for my entire life.

Given that my profession revolves around the realization of potential (of course it would be given what I just described, after all, we teach what we most need to learn), I have been unable to ignore the callings. While I’d love to provide some clear formula, approach, or technique, my experience suggests there is no such cookie-cutter to be found where the Soul’s work unfolds. Instead, it comes as parables, impressions, dreams, and sudden insights, all of which fall within the bounds of myth, story and archetype.

I have come to an analogy which fits as well as anything.

Spirituality is like echolocation. We cannot know the source of our calling,

or even the nature or character of the calling.

Yet we can follow the feeling of it.

The Soul’s path is not a mental one, but an experiential one.

Let me provide a little more framing. Many years ago a spiritual teacher told me that if we could find the feeling of something in our body, we would be able to navigate accordingly. Then, a renegade Tibetan Buddhist proposes that enlightenment is an experience in the body.

If these notions are true, then the language of the Soul, the guidance of the non-material world, regardless of what we believe about it, is always echoing.

No wonder depth psychology, meditation, contemplation, journaling, dream work, visioning, imagining, art and countless forms of somatic practices are so valuable. They are all experiential, and yet they provide a subtle and powerful means of navigation.

Why does it matter?

Let’s be honest. No one can answer that. Yet so many of the wisest humans have pointed us inward, and every sacred text points toward the mystical way.

What if this is our purpose? What then are we to do with the day before us?