5 Tips To Connect With Your Soul If You’re Feeling Disconnected.

How do we connect and hear the messages arising from our souls?

Learning how to connect with the energy of our souls is necessary to live a vital, connected, and meaningful life.

We don’t commonly ask ourselves questions unless something feels off. When we feel disconnected from our true selves and stuck in our way of being, that doesn’t seem to serve us anymore.

This disconnect is often experienced as signs and symptoms. In the post, The Call of Your Soul: 10 Signs Your Soul is Speaking to You, I explore ways our soul attempts to get our attention.

For some, the signs are gradual and insidious; for others, they arise when something occurs that has us pause and rethink some of our core values and beliefs.

It’s not uncommon for people to enter a period often described as the dark night of the soul.

Ultimately, these signs are a message from your soul that you are ready to embark on what is a new journey for many of us. It is a journey of awakening to uncover who you are before the world tells you who you should be.

The challenge for many of us is that we have no idea how to go about our soul-searching journey. After all, there were no classes in soul-searching when I was in school.

We weren’t taught how to understand our inner worlds of thoughts, feelings, intuitive insights, connect with an intelligent Universe or listen to our souls.

Yet, to be deeply happy and fulfilled, we need to connect with the part of ourselves that represents our true self. This part is energized by our soul and includes a blueprint for who we’re meant to become. Much like an acorn, it will become an oak tree.

In the article, Deepen Your Meditation Practice By Using The Enneagram Of Personality; I explain how the Enneagram is an invaluable tool for discerning the promptings of our higher selves and the path of self-discovery. It helps us visualize our true selves and provides a map to evolve into it.

Over the past years, I have experimented with countless ways to create space for my shy soul to appear.

Here are the 5 tips to connect with your soul:

1. View the symptoms in your life as messengers.

This is a mindset shift for many of us. In our fast-paced, fix-it approach to life, we primarily focus on the problem and relieving the symptom to eliminate the discomfort rather than looking for a deeper cause and reason it arose in the first place.

There is a deeper meaning to what often feels like things out of our control. The soul is hungry for meaning, and when something in the outer world manifests as health issues, relationship troubles, and a life that lacks meaning, this is often a signal from the soul.

In the article, Transforming Chronic Stress: A Meditation Teacher’s Soulful Journey, I shared how the physical and emotional symptoms of stress that stopped my life in its tracks for a few months became the catalyst for discovering deeper parts of myself. It was a challenging time and yet I had a deep inner knowing that it was happening for a reason.

2. Pay attention to what expands your energy and what constricts it.

We all have life force energy that flows through us. This energy source is a sign from our soul that helps us navigate the forces in our lives. One force is fear/constriction, which drives us to remain the same and in our comfort zone. The other force is love/expansion, which urges us to move through discomfort to become whole and aligned.

When something aligns with our essence, we’ll have energy that naturally flows.

When something isn’t meant for us, our soul withdraws energy. This withdrawal most often shows up in our relationships and work. It is usually a message that we are outgrowing our current situation and are meant to make some changes.

This energy withdrawal that may be mistaken for depression contains a great deal of wisdom about what is meant for us and what isn’t meant for us.

3. Establish regular practices that enable you to tune in and ground yourself.

The soul, while resilient, is timid.

We must create space to connect with our inner wisdom and guidance system. Practices like meditation, mindfulness, prayer, journaling, and contemplation create such a space.

We must be honest about our consistency if we already have these practices.

For these practices to help us connect more deeply with ourselves, they need to become a regular part of our lives. Otherwise, they may be another distraction or serve as spiritual entertainment. The article, With So Many Choices, What’s The Best Meditation For Me? highlights suggestions and resources if you’d like to begin or get back on track with a core meditation practice.

4. Track signs from the Universe like synchronicities and coincidences.

I have kept a journal for many years to track signs I receive from the Universe. In this journal, I keep track of things that remind me that we live in a creative and intelligent Universe. When something curious happens as I go about my day, I take a few minutes before I go to sleep and make a quick note in my journal.

The soul often communicates through images, metaphors, dreams, intuitive hunches, and ideas that seem to pop into our minds out of nowhere. The more playful and fun we can be, the more this communication channel will be open to us.

5. Get curious and ask a lot of questions.

Earlier in our path, it is common for people to be impatient in getting the answers so that we can get rid of what are often confusing and uncomfortable feelings.

I sought guidance from energy healers, mediums, psychotherapists, past life readers, astrologers, numerologists, angel card readers, spiritual teachers, etc.

I was hoping to bypass the discomfort of not knowing and have someone give me the answers as to what my soul was asking of me.

Looking back, while I appreciated all these experiences and people, I realized that the most helpful were those who empowered me to access my inner wisdom rather than giving me the answers to my questions. Those just a little further along the path understand the awakening process.

For example, seek a meditation teacher who teaches you how to meditate rather than guides you in a pleasant experience. The angel reader teaches you how to look for your signs. The spiritual teacher helps you expand your worldview without telling you what to believe. The psychotherapist who understands the awakening process and views depression and anxiety as a sign from the soul provides valuable insight. The medical doctor knows you can’t separate the body from the soul.

This journey to connecting with our souls becomes the work of our life. We need to heal, grow, and evolve by living a life that aligns with who we are meant to become. When we do, we feel vital, connected, and like our lives matter.

(Original post-May 2015; Updated May 2020)