Go Deeper

I couldn’t resist posting a picture of this iceberg as temperatures soar in our corner of the world. It fit with the subject I wanted to write about: a continuation of last week’s post on Conversations That Matter. In that post, I explored how conversation matters because in connecting with other people, we develop a deeper understanding of who they are. This week’s subject explores how going deeper promotes a deeper understanding of ourselves.

I wish I had taken a photograph of the ravens lined up on the electrical wires outside our door, but I didn’t think of it. As the sun was setting one evening, we—our family—heard the guttural caws of a flock of ravens, which grew louder as more joined them. The cause of this cawing seemed to be a dead raven just outside our front door. After about 15 minutes, they vanished. For four days in a row, they flocked to the trees and electrical wires in the immediate vicinity of our front door, cawing aggressively. I was afraid to pick up the crow to bury it, and of retribution should I do something offensive to this flock of ravens. Their cawing sounded angry.

After the fourth day, they vanished. We concluded they must have been taking part in a funeral ritual or whatever they do when a member of their flock dies. They were most certainly “going deep” into their ritual. We discussed (think conversations that matter) what those rituals might be and felt we’d experienced something unique. Our family’s shared witnessing of this corvid event brought up how we couldn’t really ascribe our human death rituals to that of a flock of ravens. Still, the experience was unnerving.

That unexpected event in our yard caused a lot of deeper thoughts about mortality. It promoted thoughts of my experiences with the death of people I knew, and it drew me closer to my family. How would I feel as I approached my own death? One thing I know for sure is that my mind, heart, and soul were all involved in comprehending a random event in the physical world. Most people are aware of what their thoughts and emotions are, but not so much aware of our soul’s role in going deeper. Like an iceberg, there is more beneath the surface than we think.

Research and reading about the subject of soul were daily activities when I was writing my book. It was hard to define and understand until my parents died and I saw their souls leave their body. My eyes didn’t record these events, but my mind’s eye and my senses did.

I think everyone knows our souls enter our bodies sometime after a baby is conceived. Some people know that as we have experiences and deal with life, we give away parts of our souls called soul fragments. I gave away soul fragments to many people I deemed far wiser and much more important. Relationships can involve an exchange of soul fragments; if the relationship ends, those soul fragments need to be returned to feel whole again, whether or not it ends badly.

The soul is crucial to understanding how to go deeper. Even though I knew I had a soul, I believed I didn’t have a relationship with it. It was somewhere in my body but didn’t seem to be an integrated part of me. I spent a lot of time on healing work, clearing out my inner garbage, listening to my intuition, breathwork, and practising emptying my mind. I also worked with local shaman Nikki Hainstock to retrieve lost soul fragments. My body felt different, and the feeling of being whole was unmistakable.

When we reconnect with our souls, it's also helpful to know how our minds, hearts, egos, and souls work together. This is the part of the iceberg that’s below the waterline, and where my experience with the ravens makes sense.

Over four days, the Ravens expressed themselves loudly, brazenly, fervently, to mourn one of their own who had died. While their profound grief defied human language, the takeaway for me was that acknowledging every facet of life is a healthy and essential part of being human. Just like the ravens responded to one of their kind dying, we can express our response to the tragedies and traumas we experience. The deeper one can go to feel what we feel in a safe way, the more we cope and the less emotional baggage we may have to dig out later.

I believe our souls are the only parts of us that endure when we die, based on seeing souls leave bodies after death. What happens to those souls, I’m not so sure about, but I know some of those souls walk this earth. Some of them haunt houses, have unfinished business, or have lost their way.

Some souls are reborn back to Earth in different bodies. I have detailed memories of past lives, as do many other people. My experience of soul as I go about my life takes the form of dreams, synchronicities/nudges, a deeper sense of what’s happening around me as in the raven funeral, and in words I need to hear.

I love the description one of my teachers, Laura Alden Kamm gave her class one day. These were words I needed to hear to reconnect with my soul.

You hold within powerful seeds of light, the light of your soul. Laura Alden Kamm

So the soul is a part of us, yet contains seeds of light. These are divine seeds that guide us and inform our personalities/egos as we live out our lives. Those seeds are available to us, but I believe we must choose to reconnect with our soul to access the divine seeds’ light. A connection with our soul is indeed a life-transforming step. The moment that happened, my soul became my inner genius, the one part of me that informed all the other parts of me: ego, mind, and heart.

What's the point in going deeper and doing all that work to reconnect with our souls? Our souls know what we planned to do on Earth before we were born. To understand ourselves, access that knowledge, and bring our passion and purpose to life, we only need to reconnect with those seeds of light in our souls.

The time is now to discover what our souls already know—be that other version of yourself; transition from reaction into creation and ignite your heart’s longing. WHY? So you can find your inner genius and love your life! Carlssen