The Mystery of Soul: An Excerpt From Holy Love

By Elisa Romeo, MFT, & Adam Foley

Most of us have speculated over questions in our head: Is the Soul real? What truly is the Soul? Do I really have a Soul? Does everyone have a Soul? What purpose does the Soul serve?

Many have tried to answer these questions through psychological analysis, the scientific method, or by combing through religious texts. Though all of these methods may provide clues hinting toward the existence of Soul, they cannot prove the Soul’s existence. This is because the part of us that wants, or desperately needs, proof of the Soul is the very part of us that is blocking us from Soul’s truth: our mind.

In an overly ambitious society, we are motivated by conquest and understanding. We want to understand how the unknown works. We want to know what the stars are made of as much as we want to comprehend the intricacies of another’s psyche. But the Soul can never be known as long as we approach spiritual inquiry solely through the mind. For the purposes of this book, we approach Soul using a new, intuitive method. We no longer make a mental decision regarding whether we believe the Soul exists. Rather, we reawaken the intuitive awareness that already knows, experiences, and remembers the Soul as real.

The ego wants to feel secure by bringing light to our unknown aspects, but the Soul’s truth lies in its cloaked and mysterious beauty. As Joseph Campbell wrote in The Hero’s Journey, “Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.” Soul helps us move away from trying to analyse the spiritual mysteries of our lives and allows us to live in sync within the mystery that is the miracle of life.

That provocative feeling that you are more than this is true. Soul lives within our preverbal state, shining through the cracks of our mind. We can feel Soul’s existence in glimpses, sometimes in a dream, through instinct, or in a moment of grace. We often experience it in nature: as we gaze upon a vast starry night or feel the magic behind a luminous sunrise, we feel the meaning inherent in the universe and the sense of a bigger play in which we have a small, but crucial, role.

Whether we know it or not, Soul affects every moment of our lives. Soul is an invisible force, interwoven in our being, nearly impossible to quantify but hosting the seat of all meaning in our lives. Soul is the feeling of purpose beating in our chest. Soul is the spark of our true nature, an eternal guide, and a source of unconditional love. Soul is the fountain of life force pouring from our hearts. Soul breaks through conditioned patterns, appearing as our highest and sainted self in moments of uncanny grace, generosity, and forgiveness. We will never fully understand the Soul, but we can feel the Soul, speak with the Soul, and have a relationship with our own Soul and the Souls of our loved ones. Our ability to hear and connect to Soul determines the most important drive in our nature: whether we wake up feeling alive with passion for life, willing to love and be loved, ready to inhabit our most confident and fulfilled sense of self.

The Soul speaks as a whisper in the back of our consciousness, a voice so close and familiar it may have become forgotten background noise. In college, Adam and his roommates could only afford to rent a house neighbouring a high-traffic freeway. At first the endless noise of cars was almost unbearable, but within months he hardly noticed it. In fact, when he went home for the holidays, the quiet absence of the freeway noise felt jarring. The Soul, similarly, exists as a constant stream of self. Soul is a quality running through all of our thoughts, emotions, and impulses, yet most of us have slowly tuned this awareness out over the years.

We are not to be blamed for the unconscious desensitization of the Soul; rather, it’s the fault of a culture that encourages mentally dominated living. Like any muscle, our connection to our Soul, when unused and unappreciated, grows weak. With training, practice, and patience, however, we can reacquaint ourselves with our inner strength and Soul’s power.

Retuning our minds to turn inward and listen to Soul’s steady stream of love is a process, but one that is well worth the work. We no longer feel like motherless children wandering through life, attempting to make the right choices. We are left feeling confident in our own existence. We feel whole. We become one with qualities of joy and grounded belonging. We come to trust ourselves in profound and miraculous ways. We no longer compare, judge, and undermine ourselves but instead relax into our being. When we open to unconditional love, radical healing is instantaneous, as our hearts become reacquainted with the unwavering eternal hum behind and within everything. The only work ahead is not to attempt to solve the riddle of whether or not Soul exists, but just to slow down, listen, and feel. To meet the Soul, we simply open our doors of perception to its subtle language.

Soul Speaks Through Intuition

People talk about intuition like it’s magic or something reserved for the few, yet we all have access to it. We simply need to reacquaint ourselves with it. Soul is often called the still, small voice for a reason — it is quite common for the noise of the world to drown it out. Intuition speaks to us through the internal details: a pull on the back of our mind, aha light bulb moments, or a soft knowing in our heart. In fact, we already know our Soul, but for most, it is only in fleeting doses that are far too easily dismissed. Being connected to Soul does not make life pain free, but it does immensely reduce the amount of suffering. When we feel confident in the inner spiritual meaning of our lives and the purpose behind the struggles we endure, suffering quickly goes from meaningless to meaningful.

In our relationships it is easy to fall into a mission-driven model of picking our partners apart to figure out what makes them tick underneath the hood. Especially during a rough patch, we can become more critical and complicated in our thinking in an attempt to identify what is wrong — when sometimes getting the answer may be as easy as listening to our intuition.

Excerpted from the book from Holy Love: The Essential Guide to Sul-Fulfilling Relationships. Copyright ©2022 by Elisa Romeo, MFT, and Adam Foley. Printed with permission from New World Library — www.newworldlibrary.com.

About the Authors

Elisa Romeo, MFT, and Adam Foley are the authors of Holy Love: The Essential Guide to Soul-Fulfilling Relationships and co-hosts of the Holy and Human Podcast. Together, they help individuals awaken and deepen their soulful nature within relationship.

Visit them online at http://www.holyandhuman.com