What I Mean By "Your Soul's Purpose"
What I Mean By "Your Soul's Purpose"
It's Probably Not What You Think It Is.
Embody Your Light is a newsletter written by Brooks Barron for visionary leaders who are called to create profound positive impact through the embodiment of their soul’s unique gifts. Subscribe to get the next edition delivered to your inbox:
Choosing to Listen
Many people I meet are interested in and excited about the idea of finding and following their soul’s purpose. At the same time, they are often unsure or confused about what that idea really means.
On some level, I believe we all actually already understand the concept of soul's purpose. That’s because we all came to this dimension of reality with a soul. Your soul is here with you and it always will be, even if you spend a lot of your time disconnected from it. That part of you already inherently knows. The trick is simply learning how to listen.
I bet your soul hears us talking about it right now. It might even be speaking up, if it feels you opening to it. If so, that’s most likely happening through an embodied experience of sensations that make you feel… well, fully alive.
Pause right now. Can you feel it? You’ll need to be discerning in your awareness, but just check — does your energy feel different than it did when you began reading this post? Perhaps a pleasant new sensation in the body — something like a rising, expanding or opening, maybe in the upper chest or heart area? Maybe you noticed your awareness widen and soften. Maybe the worldly concerns of your mind pulled back briefly or even melted away.
That feeling is your gateway. If you have even the slightest hint of it, that’s tremendous.
Ok… but what do I do with that?
Well, this is where we often trip ourselves up.
Our souls already know what it means to find and follow our true purpose. But another part of us — the mind, personality, or uninitiated ego — doesn’t get it. The soul speaks in its own language, and the mind experiences that as nonsensical or irrational. Unable to fit the language of soul into its paradigm of logic and reason, the mind perceives a threat. It then employs any and every strategy necessary to defend against this perceived danger and keep you where it feels safe (i.e. the status quo, the ego in control, egocentric consciousness).
Ironically, this reason-loving part of us gets pretty irrational pretty quickly when it senses a threat to its control. If you look into it, you might find a fairly mellow defense strategy at first (i.e. “This is silly,” “I don’t get it,” “I’m doing just fine, thank you very much,” or “I don’t have time for soul stuff, there are more important things I need to attend to”). If you keep pushing, you’ll likely find some more frantic and desperate defense strategies underneath (i.e. “You better not even think about listening to your soul because that would result in a catastrophic destabilizing of your entire life!!!”).
Now to be fair to our sweet egos, there is actually a grain of truth in that sentiment. Listening to your soul might radically shake some things up. It’s like taking off a blindfold — you’re going to have to face, feel, and deal with seeing yourself and your life more clearly. Once you’ve seen, you won’t be able to unsee. So, yes — be intentional and cautious around when you choose to start listening to your soul.
But would you rather face the truth or live blind?
The first step is choosing to listen. It’s up to you to determine when is the right moment in your life for that.
When the moment comes, make an internal commitment with yourself. Mark the day on the calendar that you committed to listening to your soul. When your ego gets scared and tries to pull you backward, remind yourself of that inner commitment. It will help you remember the bigger game you are playing and will support you in staying the course.
Opening to the Mystery
Three Tips for Listening to Your Soul
Once you have made the choice to listen, here are three tips:
Let go of your need to understand.
To actually hear what your soul has to say, you need to willingly go into the unknown. You need to linger in murky, confusing, scary and unfamiliar places. If you get too attached to making sense of what you experience, you’ll kill the magic. Your ego will sneak back into the driver’s seat and convince you that anything that doesn’t make sense isn’t trustworthy. On the contrary — if it doesn’t make sense to your ego, that’s a good sign! In fact, that’s the whole point. It means you might actually be listening to a part of yourself that isn’t ego. Keep going. Stay curious. Stay open. The clarity will arrive when you are ready.
Get really quiet and slow.
The ego thrives on speed and action. Keeping you occupied with things to do and more things to worry about is one of its favorite ways of maintaining control. If you want to hear your soul, you need to get really quiet and slow. This is one reason why I love vision quests. I didn’t understand what it meant to really listen to myself and how to differentiate the quiet, subtle voice of soul from the loud, clambering voices of ego until I spent 3 days and 3 nights ceremonially alone in the wilderness with no food and no distractions. It was so hard and uncomfortable. But when the mind chatter finally settled, for the first time in my life, I was fully available to the magic.
Approach the journey like an adventure.
A powerful antidote to fear is fun and excitement. It’s good to have a mix of both. That’s why I enjoy adventures in the mountains! The fear is a healthy component of the experience — it keeps you humble, thoughtful, and conservative in your decision making. It motivates you to surround yourself with skilled and trustworthy adventure partners. But if you let it keep you from getting out there entirely, you’re missing the point. Remember how much fun it can be to venture into unknown territory! If an adventure was predictable and risk-free, it wouldn’t be an adventure. It wouldn’t make you come alive. So — go push yourself and test your limits in the inner wilderness of soul. See what you discover. Reach new heights, enjoy breathtaking views, and come home to tell the tale. Why? Because you can.
“Because it’s there.”
— English climber George Mallory, on why he was attempting to climb Mt Everest
The True Meaning of Your Soul’s Purpose
You can’t really know your soul’s purpose until you’ve leapt headlong into the mystery, deconstructed your ego, encountered the life-changing magic of your soul, and fully integrated that experience (probably several times over). That process will fundamentally change who you are and the perspective through which you see the world. You will have begun to learn the language of soul, so you can actually make some sense of what it’s telling you. With continued devotion and practice, you may eventually become the being who can live that purpose into reality.
But before you’ve traveled that territory, you don’t know what you don’t know. Trying to understand the meaning of your soul’s purpose from that place is like trying to read a manuscript written in a language you can’t understand. It simply doesn’t work.
That doesn’t mean you can’t still live a very purposeful life. Of course you can — and many amazing people do. It just won’t be a life driven by your soul’s purpose, or at least, what I’m pointing to when I use those words. It will be a life infused with a little less magic and mystery.
The path of soul is not a particularly well-trodden one in our present day and age. That’s exactly why it presents such a tremendous opportunity. It’s a gateway into a higher plane of consciousness — one that transcends and includes the ego. Because not many people are currently traveling this path, those that do will come home with a set of incredibly valuable and unique perspectives and capabilities.
I believe those who have the courage to travel this path will be those who lead us into a better future. That is, those who genuinely follow the path with integrity. Those who don’t cut any corners and don’t succumb to spiritual bypassing or spiritual materialism — both of which are manifestations of the ego tricking you into believing you’ve transcended it when really it is just as firmly in control as ever.
As these intrepid adventurers dive headlong into the mystery, lose themselves, find their soul and come back with a twinkle of magic in their eye, they will become the leaders who can show the rest of us the way.
Want to do something truly meaningful with your life?
Something fundamentally game-changing and profound?
If so, the path of soul may be for you.
It will take you through some dark and scary territory. You’ll swim upstream, at least for a while. You’ll battle all the norms and expectations of the prevailing cultural consciousness and consensus reality.
But at some point, you’ll break through to the other side — and you’ll start to feel a new sort of current at your back. You will realize the true potential you’ve always sensed deep inside your own heart. You’ll transcend the plane of consciousness from which we created our current mess. You’ll start to see — and create — a brighter path of human evolution.
People may think you’re crazy.
The gamechangers of history always get that.
Power Awakening — One More Week to Apply!
If you feel called to the journey of soul and now is the time for you to take the leap, you may be a perfect fit for Starlight Leadership’s Power Awakening Program.
Power Awakening is a 3-month rite of passage that supports visionary leaders in finding and following their soul’s true purpose.
An immersive journey of inspiration and renewal, this program is the perfect deep dive for a leader who has reached a threshold in their life and is ready to break through to the next level.
Newly restructured to create greater ease and accessibility, the program is now available for the reduced price of $9500.
Cohort Dates: May 31 - September 6
Application Deadline: May 15
Depth In Nature Retreat — June 27-30
The purpose of this retreat is to ground ourselves in wild nature, reconnect to source, build soulful community, release blockages, and step powerfully into our unique creative expression.
Programming includes group coaching, time in beautiful mountain wilderness, nature-based Soulcraft practice, a fire ceremony, and a sacred mushroom ceremony.
You may be a fit for this retreat if you have already traveled to some depth on the consciousness journey and feel called to express your soul’s unique gifts in the world.
Investment: $2500 (includes lodging & food)
Embody Your Light is a newsletter written by Brooks Barron for visionary leaders who are called to create profound positive impact through the embodiment of their soul’s unique gifts. Subscribe to get the next edition delivered to your inbox: