The Soul Journey

The beauty of the spiritual journey is that there is no expiration date. Although there is a specific period in our lives when we should embark on this journey, it is one that we can begin at any time throughout our life. 

Ideally, we would begin to examine our lives from the big picture view as we enter our 20’s and begin our quest into adult life. Asking ourselves questions like, what am I passionate about? What do I believe spiritually? Who do I love? We begin to make choices aligned with our beliefs and values from our spiritual foundation, to career, to our relationships. As we enter our 30’s, we make the natural progression to the next stage of our lives as responsible adults.

For many, our lives did not take this particularly singular path. This could be due to a difficult childhood, life traumas, poor choices, or simply being ignorant of this concept. It is never too late to embark on the spiritual journey. We can choose to take this path on our own or we can wait for the Universe to wake us up.

The guidance is within us and all around us, if we just pay attention. It may start out as a small nagging feeling about your partner, or you may start to feel a twinge of unrest in your profession. You may start to see Ravens everywhere you go or keep seeing the number 4 frequently throughout the day. This is our inner voice trying to get our attention.

When we ignore the messages, we will begin to experience more complexities in our lives. We may start to feel some kind of physical pain, or our relationship will begin to become more difficult. We may even find that we start to dislike going to work each day. Our attitudes shift and we can begin to feel despondent, depressed, bitter, even frustrated or angry. 

As we continue to ignore the messages from within, we eventually get a wake-up call that we are on the wrong path in life and it’s time to change. These experiences come in the form of life altering events such as debilitating illness, divorce, death of a loved one, or financial loss.

Inner work will take us to the core of our being, where we can get to the root cause of our fears, insecurities, outdated tribal beliefs, and destructive behavior patterns. We can get to the root cause of our fear of change. There are many Inner Work Practices available to guide us on the path, including Soul Work, Chakra Energy Healing, Inner Child and Shadow/Archetype work.

Inner work gives us the ability to work with the energy of our Shadows and Archetypes in their light. We all have shadow sides because we all have egos and at one point or another, we have all been through pain and trauma in our lives. As we go through challenging and traumatic situations and do not release the pain from the experience, the wounds continue to fester, and our shadow sides manifest.

Many of these wounds occur in childhood. Through Inner Child work we can work through our painful memories. Even something that seems mundane to us as adults, like being told at school by our classmates that Santa does not exist, could prove traumatic. Being children, when we hear such news our first instinct is to go to an adult for support. 

What if in that exact moment you went home to tell your Mom all about this terrible thing you heard at school and for the first time, she gave you the “oh, it will be ok honey” because for the first time, right in that moment, she was too busy to hug you, leaving you feeling rejected and abandoned. 

We are designed to receive our Soul Life Lessons as early as childhood and how we respond to these situations will change our energetic makeup as we move forward throughout childhood into adulthood. When we fail to address these issues as we get older, our shadows grow and cause chaos in our adult lives.

By digging deep into our inner landscape, we can travel back to our childhood through Inner Child work, and we can understand and integrate our shadows through Shadow work. Navigating through the dark to get to the light and retrieve the innate wisdom our Shadows and Archetypes are here to teach us. 

Many of our Soul Life Lessons connect to all of humanity, as they are universal. Practicing forgiveness, love, patience, nonjudgement, and compassion are life lessons we should all strive to embody in our daily lives. 

However, there are deeper lessons that we as individuals need to learn. This follows the concept that our Soul Lessons represent our spiritual agreement or contract that we made prior to birth. This contract guides us on our journey through life with a set of predetermined experiences, relationships and lessons that are critical for personal development and soul growth.

These lessons run soul deep and can also relate to a past life, karmic lessons or the soul contract that you co-created with God, the Divine or the Source. Soul lessons have existed for centuries and across many cultures and religious belief systems. 

One soul lesson example is a person who experienced a debilitating accident that renders them in a wheelchair. They have a choice to wallow in depression, resentment, and hate at the injustice of their life circumstances or they can choose to live through the power of their spirit. To view the situation symbolically and find the lesson the experience is trying to teach them and live the wisdom from the lesson. 

It may be a lesson in asking for help and support, understanding that no amount of independence eliminates the need for human connection. Or it may be a lesson in judgement and forgiveness from harshly judging others with disabilities. We are all destined to learn our Soul Life Lessons.  

The journey within can be a tricky one, filled with dark, murky forests and winding paths that seem to have no end. But it is a journey we do not have to take alone. Animals and Tarot can guide us to retrieve memories we have resisted to uncover and work through and help us unlock the hidden fears we have buried.

Personally, I have found Tarot most effective with Inner Child memory retrieval and Shadow work. Working with animals has been an all-encompassing journey. I have been able to connect animals and their symbolism to Soul Work, Chakras, Inner Child, Shadow/Archetype work. This has been a guiding light with my Inner Work Practices. 

In addition to symbolism references, I created a collection of Written Series inspired by doing inner work with Animals and Tarot. An important part of my inner world includes writing. It gives me great joy to write about various spirit animal encounters, and Tarot experiences and connecting their healing messages through the intersecting paths of inner work. 

On the Soul Journey, we can examine our experiences symbolically which allows us to cast aside blame, judgement, and our need to control the outcome. This gives us the ability to see how our own choices and actions created our own reality. We can release the hold the past has over us and embrace the wisdom from the experience. 

With empathy, compassion, and understanding, we can heal our individual and collective wounds and experience the deeper connection we all share.  We can learn our Soul Life Lessons, spiritually grow and live peaceful, balanced lives. 

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