Envision Your Soul
A Commentary on Susan Wisehart's
Soul Visioning
By
Henry Reed
How can we make the shift from experiencing ourselves as persons who have souls to experiencing ourselves as souls expressing through a personality? I've asked students to draw a picture of their souls and to diagram how their souls connect to their conscious selves (see http://www.intuitive-connections.net/issue1/soul/souldraw1.htm for examples). Very often people draw a self-portrait with something like a kite flying above that is supposed to be the soul, as if it were an appendage top the body. It requires some deeper imagination, thinking outside the box of the body, to envision the person(ality) as emerging from the soul.
One of the ways this failure of the imagination affects us is how we respond to self-help books on "manifesting." It is easy to create affirmations about what we want and then to repeat them as if this mantra will bring about the fulfillment of our desires. What is also easy is to assume the conscious ego mind can pull off this trick. Sometimes it works, but often we get stuck, because the ego's leverage is actually quite weak compared to our soul. What we really need to do is the more difficult task of discovering what our soul wishes to manifest in order to fulfill its mission in life. A book has just come my way that reflects this same concern and presents a very workable alternative solution.
Soul Visioning: Clear the Past, Create Your Future (Llewellyn Publications) by Susan Wisehart, presents a seven-step process for connecting with yourself at a soul level as a way to gain deeper leverage into the manifesting process. Noting the relative weakness of the ego-mind in these matters, the author, a long-time transpersonal therapist, introduces spiritual processes to do the job the ego can't. Let me outline the seven steps to give you a better idea of her program for the soul's envisioning.
The first step is to review one's life to find a truly peak moment of experience. The purpose of this exercise (the book provides a link to an .mp3 audio file that one can use as a guided meditation) is to put the person in touch with one's spiritual ideals. This first step is essentially the same that the students of Edgar Cayce regularly learn and practice at their gatherings.
The second step resembles the ideals workshops conducted in Edgar Cayce workshops. It asks the person to outline how the spiritual ideals realized in step one would manifest in the various areas of one's life. As the author puts it, "What if you could wake up tomorrow and have your life be just the way you want it to be, guided by your soul wisdom? What quality of being would be expressed in your thinking, feeling, and doing?"
The third step involves a soul-guided journey into one's future. Rather than simply think about what you'd like to happen, in this process you first become aligned with the consciousness of your spiritual ideals and then let this higher consciousness guide your imagination into the future. Once again, the author provides a downloadable .mp3 audio guided meditation for this journey.
The fourth step involves a self-inventory to determine what blocks may exist to fulfilling the ideal future. These blocks tend to be self-limiting beliefs as well as payoffs the person receives for living a more limited, ego-based life. It is important to become aware of and to confront these sources of resistance.
The fifth step takes the reader on a journey into energy psychology, where we learn a variant of Gary Craig's "Emotional Freedom Technique," a method of self-acupuncture that uses no needles. It involves using one's finger to tap oneself at certain meridian points while stating affirmations that help release blocked energies.
The sixth step directs the use of the energy psychology methods to implant and imprint new attitudes and beliefs now that the blocks have been removed.
The seventh and final step involves practicing several exercises in forgiveness, often turbo-charged by accompanying energy psychology techniques. The purpose is to clear the mind of guilt and similar feelings that make it more difficult to maintain the consciousness of soul qualities.
This holistic and transpersonal approach to manifesting one's soul in life feels far more comprehensive and in-depth than the usual verbal affirmation approach. I have found that past life recall has helped me move to a more soul-centered attitude, and was pleased to find that the author includes resources for both past-life and in-between lives journeys to aid in the healing and transformation process.