9 Pillars to live a Soul-Led Life

So here are the 9 Pillars to live a Soul-Led Life.

 Pillar 1 –  Remain Awake

One of the main ways is through daily connection or something you may have heard called a spiritual practice.

This is traditionally a regular time of meditation or prayer, set aside from your normal daily activities.

Some even establish a ritual or ceremony around this time.

For others, it is living into your highest values on a day-to-day basis, following your intuitive nudges or “soul bread crumbs” on even the most mundane decisions.

Whether you choose a formalized daily ritual, or the more informal expression of your values or better yet both, the bottom line is living a Soul-Led life.

Whether your work be healing, coaching or creating socially-conscious, hypoallergenic laundry soap, in the end, it’s about shining your highest self out to uplift the world. 

Pillar 2 – Stay In Your Body

freeThis may feel a bit contradictory.  There’s a definite temptation to stay out of your body, especially after a lovely morning meditation.  When you’re all floaty and wonderful feeling, returning to the body can feel like a bit of a jolt. 

You can’t be a spiritual being having a physical experience without your body.

I don’t know about you, but I was raised to see my body as a tool for me to use, abuse and ultimately use up. 

In my clients, I’ve observed that some hate their bodies and even have an adversarial relationship. 

Take stock of YOUR relationship with your body.  

Do you hate things about it?  Love things about it?

What do you say about it?

Do you neglect it in any way? Do you prioritize it’s needs? Which ones? 

Was there a trauma, molestation or assault that has caused you to subconsciously feel unsafe within your body?

If you answered yes to the last question – consider getting professional assistance to re-establish a sense of safety.  Talk therapy is the first thing that springs to mind, but the research shows that hypno therapy beats talk therapy in speed and effectiveness.  (Set up a free coffee chat about your situation.)

This relationship can be changed, molded into something much more pleasant for both of you. 

It starts with tiny bits of appreciation.  Then acting on that appreciation, by giving your body what it’s asking for – healthy, helpful food in moderate amounts, cool, clean water, periods of movement, periods of rest. 

Care for your physicality, partner with your body – it makes being in your physical vehicle a better experience.  

Pillar 3 – Do YOUR Healing Work

By this I mean start with you and yourself – your shadow, your core wounds, your inner soundtrack and how you talk with yourself. 

Yes, this is hard, and perhaps the last place you want to go, but it’s why you are here. Your Primary mission if you will.

Because it’s hard, there’s a temptation to want to fix everyone else, so you can feel better.

There a few problems with this approach:

First one is – They are not going to change until they are good and ready.  And they have to do their work.   It’s like eating, everyone has to do their own eating.  It can’t be delegated.  It may be time to accept that you cannot make them ready. You cannot do their work for them. You cannot just “fix” them.

Second one is – This is the ultimate procrastination and distraction from doing your own work.  If you can’t do your work until the whole world is handled, you’ll never face your past, your fears or your shadow.  All scarry things granted.  But one thing I have consistently discovered, once I face my past, my fears or my shadow, they are never as big and nasty as I thought they were.

Third one is – Where ever you go, there you are.  You can try “fix” the messed up people around you.  You can run off and find place with different people or even without people. There is one person you cannot get way from –  yourself.  The good news is, this is also the one person you CAN change and improve.  And this is the one person who can create a more supportive inner environment for you.

It’s mastery work to heal your own self.  And it’s growth to look at how you may have contributed to a poor interaction.  It might be in a major way it might be in a minor way, but it always takes 2.

How can you grow, and heal – regardless of what anyone else in the world is doing around you?   Or even to you. The last is really PhD level work.  Shout out to you Nelson Mandela.

And when you think you’re done, do it over again and sweep another layer out.

This is lifelong work, and your house needs to be clean so you don’t track your junk into someone else’s house. When you are invited to assist them. 

Pillar 4 – Get Grounded And Stay Grounded

This is first about staying firmly in your body (see pillar 2) and then maintaining a solid connection into this reality, while still allowing interaction with your intuition and remaining open for miracles. 

It’s a balancing act of sorts. 

I think of this as a moving meditation – staying really present to this now moment. 

Now is actually the only time you ever have.

The past is done and dusted. 

The future has not arrived, nor is it promised to any of us. 

So be really present whatever you are engaged with right now. 

As a side bonus, you may find whatever-it-is is a whole lot more enjoyable when it is the thing you are doing, not something you are just getting through to get to the next thing. 

Pillar 5 – Release Your Expectations

The ego likes to dress up in spiritual clothes and loves to spin the tale that awakening means Life becomes rainbows, icing, fairies and unicorns. 

Yes, living awakened definitely has some really magical moments, but Life remains Life and will continue to present challenges and setbacks. 

The difference is, because you’re doing your healing work, you have more resources and better tools to cope with Life being Life. 

I find it challenging at times to simply release expectations. 

In those moments, I find it helpful to invite in curiosity about where Life’s latest strange twist is taking me. 

Pillar 6 – Stay In Your Lane

It is very easy to get distracted by the lessons others are going through, especially those you love best – friends, and family, partners.

You can so clearly see what “they need to do”, and it’s tempting to intervene to get them a fast tidy outcome.  If this is sounding familiar, I’m repeating it because it is SO important.

That unfortunately is a fool’s errand.  Only they can fix themselves.

And only when they are good and ready.

Perhaps, like me, you’ve tried this before, and it’s ended badly.

Why is that? –

Attempting to assist them without invitation, steals their “response-ability” and growth opportunity, erodes their confidence in themselves and makes them dependent on you.

Assisting without being asked also sends a message that

1. 1. You know better than they do, and
   2. You don’t believe they are capable of handling it themselves – yikes!

It’s this unspoken message that will ruin your relationship.

So stay in your lane.

Absolutely provide support when asked to, in the way requested without overstepping.

Listen, if they need to vent.

Share ideas, if they ask about what options/solutions you see.

Baby sit their kids, if that’s what they ask for.

Hold a healing session, if that’s what they request (with fair energy exchange of course).

But firmly, lovingly draw the line at “please make it go away for me” or “just do it for me”.

If you have been taking their response-abilities from them, they may have a strong emotional reaction.  Compassionately, explain why you will no longer be doing that.

It helps to have had a pre-emptive conversation with anyone with whom you have held this pattern of taking on their “response-abilities” in the past, so you can point back to that earlier, less fraught conversation.

The pre-emptive conversation also allows them to be prepared that the pattern is changing.  It won’t stop them from testing whether you are serious, but at least they are not blindsided.

You’ll both be better for it in the long term.

Stay in your lane.

Pillar 7 – Honor Your Life Plan And The Life Plans Of Others

This world is like a 1 room school house.  There are people learning their spiritual ABCs and 123s mixed in with ones learning to read and do math, with people writing their PhD dissertations. 

Each one is doing exactly what is needed for their experience. None is better than the others, just at different stages of the learning process. 

It serves nothing to compare what levels we are at, as all levels are perfect at each stage.

It might appear great to wave a wand over one learning the ABCs and jump them up a few levels – in theory. 

In practice, it would be disconcerting and set them back, because they did not get to properly prepare for the new level.

I actually tried this with my younger sister (4 years separates us).  I was learning multiplication tables, and figured why not share it with her? 

Answer turned out to be because she was still learning her numbers and didn’t have a mental framework to hang that learning on as of yet.  Trying to do this led to a frustrating experience for both of us and left us both feeling not very good about ourselves. 

Pillar 8 – Trust Your Intuition 

Hopefully you are one of the ones, who already does this.  If you are not, there’s good news.  Trust can be grown.  In fact, it’s the only way trust is built, step-wise.  So how to begin building? 

Baby steps are great.  Start by trusting on small matters.  Decisions you have to make, but that you don’t care too much about or affect your entire life.

Try asking your intuition about taking route a or route b to the store. Or what will be optimal to eat or prepare for dinner?  Before working your way up into larger matters like is it the optimal moment to book your plane ticket, or register for a course?

That said, this is also the moment to release your expectations around immediate outcomes and get curious about the optimal outcome. We are inviting the logical mind to step out of the driver’s seat for a moment, and learn to trust the intuitive mind for a while.

When I was early in the building up trust part of my journey, I muscle tested the route I would take turn by turn.  Is it optimal to go left or right here to get to the grocery store? 

Sometimes this would mean a less direct route or that I arrived “late” to where ever I was going.  I’m an on-time or early kinda girl, so this chaffed a bit. Because shouldn’t optimal include on time?

After a few of these piled up, I began to notice a pattern emerge. 

Doing this took me past accidents, people being arrested, and the like.  I concluded that this was not coincidence, but rather a sign that my loving presence was helpful to these situations, even if my physical assistance was not needed. 

I also noticed, that even when I arrived “late” to my destination, I was oddly always perfectly on time. It was consistently the case that similar delays that happened for the person I was meeting or at the place I was going.  And it worked out perfectly despite the “delay”.  BTW-I’d always communicate that there was a delay and an ETA.  I’m not going to leave someone cooling their heels without understanding what to expect.

And as I continued on with this practice, I started to release my need to understand why it was optimal.

So start with something small, engage your curiosity around the outcome, then rinse and repeat with something bigger… 

Pillar 9 – Ask For Help

School, society and even parents train us to be self-sufficient – 

“Do your own work”

“Group work is cheating”

“Eyes on your own paper”

In the west, Self sufficiency is generally seen as a good thing. 

Self sufficiency, like anything good, when taken to the extreme – can go bad and cause great misery. 

Your spiritual counsel/guides/angels/god squad are there to help you, but you have to ask, literally or through your diligent searching. 

Often times, we ask for too much too soon, like requesting the grand vision of our mission here before we begin on it.  Much less overwhelming, to treat this guidance as a spiritual GPS and smply ask, What is my next step?  And then go out and do whatever simple, mundane thing arrived as the answer.

If you are struggling or stuck, there are neither demerits for requesting help nor brownie points for flailing until you figure it out all by yourself.  So engaging another healer when you are stuck, just gets you unstuck faster.

Have some compassion for yourself and ask for help.

So I hope you’ve enjoyed these 9 foundation stones. 

Please let me know which ones come most naturally for you and which you find the most challenging.