The Everyday Road to the Soul

THE EVERYDAY ROAD TO THE SOUL

Jen Loui

For many thousands of years the human race has, through grace or tears, found its way along a path of lighted recognitions, each one a bit brighter than the previous. We have gone from being mandatory survivalists, to being attuned to those intangible things which dictate our trajectory as living, sentient beings. The way has been necessarily slow, with occasional setbacks and lives of static existence. But eventually, each one of us comes to a rise in our inner landscape from which we can sense the pull of a manifestation of life bigger than just us. We feel compelled to follow this beckoning energy and begin our trek towards that thing we call a soul.

You are likely on that journey now.

When we’re just starting out in search of our souls, we’re probably doing two things at once – living, and noticing. This involves a lot of acclimating ourselves to a much different daily landscape than the one the world presents. We might start to notice that engaging in our lives as we always have no longer feels as fulfilling. We make inner corrections that impact our outer movement, all in an effort to get ourselves in sync with something that feels as fundamental as breathing. This ability to shift perceptions and see our lives - and the entire world for that matter - from a whole new perspective is informed by a deep knowing – a knowing we call “the intuition”. Everyone has it. Even animals have it, though with them we’re told it is more of a wild instinct than a thoughtful revelation. Intuition in the human is more of an organic knowing that something is true. To learn to pay attention to it and follow it with discrimination is an important part of being on a path towards the soul.

Of course, not every intuitive revelation comes with fireworks, and it is often within the mundane actions of daily life and living that the soul will call to us. It’s good to keep in mind that the communication we establish with our soul can move from within us, outward – and from the soul, inward to our consciousness.

As this is so, in our everyday lives we’re often given quick moments of depth, moments of magnetic pull, which provide us a mechanism of approach to our souls. This pull may guide us to stop in the moment to comprehend something of indescribable beauty or inspire us toward acts of creativity. All we need at first is to listen, and then take simple action. Is there a sunset of exquisite beauty outside your window? Watch it until the colors fade to grey. Does an urge rise up in you to do something, anything, but spend another day on the couch watching TV? Sing. Paint with vibrant colors, dance in your living-room, write beautiful words. Any of these actions, in their beauty and simplicity, are tiny moments of soul contact. Done over and over with joy and focus we are strengthening our line of approach. We are creating more mature minds and hearts. This in turn will provide quicker access to the communion we seek.

Creativity is a bridge between the soul and the human. The act of creation puts us in touch with the lines of beauty and strength which flow from our souls towards us.

Many civilizations over time have recognized that the power of such simple actions puts us squarely in the moment. And being “in the moment” invites the soul in. Ancient philosophers felt that, to get to this point, we could choose to temporarily step away from our lives and, for a short or long period of time, sit squarely in the moment with ourselves. One pointed focus, blending the mind and heart, can take us to that place of clarity and creativity – with the bonus of a peaceful, content mind. In meditation, the moment itself is the thing created.

What we decide to do with that moment is up to us, but we will likely come to a place on our journey where we see that we can have a real impact on our physical world – using the power of our minds. From this point onward, our journey changes.

The everyday road to the soul can be found within hundreds of existing actions – like accessing the power of meditation by simply stepping away from our lives for a few minutes. Some of the more powerful actions come with a solid foundation of science behind them. Something as basic as creating sound, or “speaking” has, within esoteric scientific teachings, a potent impact on our surroundings. In the books by Alice Bailey, speech is called “the most occult manifestation in existence.” She also says “When we speak, we evoke a thought and make it present…. Speech reveals, and right speech can create a form of beneficent purpose.” It is good to remember as we live our lives of everyday activities, that the sounds we make combined with the words we speak WILL create a thing which did not exist before we spoke. Speaking thoughts, clothes those ideas in a lasting vibration that hangs on the air long after we have gone silent again.

Another everyday concept is love. But not love as we have likely been taught. Sentiment has its place, but if we are talking about the kind of love utilized by our soul, we must take the concept out of its human sheath and approach the needy world in a new way. Alice Bailey, in one of her lectures on the myth of Hercules, put it like this, starting with the well-known words of the Christ: A new commandment I give you, that you must love one another. “This is no sentiment… let us be loving and kind. That is just decent behavior! The love that the Christ enunciated is an intelligent understanding and appreciation of the need of the individual, just as you find him.” The words just as you find him need to take hold of us as we pursue the path of our soul. It’s not our need to save or love that should be our focus, but the need of the individuals we engage with.

One of the most potent concepts ever created by the thinking mind of humanity - one which has the potential to impact the course of events on our planet – is what is sometimes called the Science of Collective Intentionality or the Science of Shared Intent. In the Alice Bailey books, the Tibetan refers to it as Massed Intent. Everyone who has ever attended a sports event has experienced massed intent. It’s a powerful coming together of emotional thoughts, where everyone is intensely focused on one outcome. You’ve likely heard sports casters use the phrase “The atmosphere is electric!” That’s because it is. Emotionally electric. At a sporting event this mental electricity is right there, surrounding us, just waiting to be focused towards a higher purpose. To do this, we would need to switch from a strictly emotional expression to a mental expression. In the book White Magic, it is said “The race is progressing into an era wherein… thought power will be used for appeal and for the guidance of the world, as now physical and emotional means are employed.” The science behind the approach says that the power lies in the strength of the request and the energy thus created. So the more human minds which are focused on the shared intent, the more energy is being created around that intent. Energy which can and will bring about change.

Such is the evocation of Triangles. When we pool our minds to create an ideal form, the Triangle of light, we are literally bringing light by means of thought power, into our world. The Triangles we visualize become part of the Etheric energy of our planet and are strengthened each time we focus on them. The more of them there are, and the more power we give them through our united intent, the better they define the energetic envelope of our planet. Light attracts more light, and on and on. This enhances the overall life of humanity, and the earth itself. The use of our minds as we pool them with a great many others is on its way to becoming an everyday approach to righting the ship of the world.

Along these lines, there is a phrase we use, every day, to denote thinking clearly. We tell each other to “use your common sense”. This phrase has become a way to infer that someone is not being very smart. But the ancient and original meaning of this phrase “common-sense” was based on the belief that when you synthesized and unified all of your five senses, (sight sound hearing taste touch) you created one over-arching and superior “common” sense. Literally, the living mind.

Which brings us back to the soul. In our everyday lives, when we truly use our minds, we are using the greatest tool the soul has to reach us. To think, to formulate, to perceive – these are qualities of the soul. If we give ourselves the opportunity to think and to wonder, the soul inches closer. The everyday road to the soul can be traveled by every kind of individual. We don’t need to be scholars – we just need to have the insight to see what is all around us. “Humanity needs to purify its existence, so reconstruction must begin from the hearth, from everyday life.” “Does a messenger necessarily have to be a giant? And must a Ray be nothing less than blinding? And wouldn’t a voice of deafening volume be harmful? Right now, a multitude of manifestations, insignificant in appearance, are traversing the world. A person who can train himself to observe the smallest, will also understand the greatest.”

“We can help each other by speaking the very simplest words.”

Agni Yoga: Heart

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