Communicating with the Soul – For Your Optimal Holistic Wellness

You are above age 60 or nearing it, and starting to feel your body’s aging signals, limits and vulnerability. In turn, these are upsetting your mind and emotions, which then produce further physical problems. And, people with whom you interact and our media-driven culture contribute abrasive old-age stereotypes that erode your self-concept as a senior person.

Having myself faced these distressing issues in the two decades since my 60^th birthday, I’ve found ways to be inspired, positive and resilient about growing older. This uplifting quote by Albert Einstein has helped me, “Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.”

Among my numerous wellness and longevity hacks, one of the most valuable has been to communicate with my Soul – my spiritual essence and connection to Higher Power (Divinity) – when making critical life choices.

The Role of the Soul

Our wellness is holistic. The body and mind are fused – like a coin’s two sides. And, I believe theyare contained within the larger energy field of our Soul.

So, what is the role of my Soul? My physical body and brain-mind may make claims to my identity as an individual, an entity sperate from the rest of the world. But I consider the Soul as our more complete and whole self-concept – connecting me to other people as in a collective consciousness, and indeed to all life forms, including our living Earth and the Cosmos.

In exploring how to tap into the power and wisdom of my Higher Self and Interconnected Self at the Soul level, I made an awesome and practical discovery. From the study of esoteric spiritual practices, I realized the Soul is the portal to Higher Power – or I Am Presence, God, Divinity, The Creator or Universal Intelligence.

The body-mind system gives me information, which may or may not be complete, unbiased and useful. But if I sense what’s on the portal’s other side, I can benefit from the awesome insights and empowering guidance of inspiration – via the language of the Soul, or intuition. And as we age, we seniors need all the advantages we can get!

To recognize the difference between information and inspiration, I’ve learned to practice my versions of mindful meditation. This enables me to go beyond what is contained in my past-programmed mind, and tap into the inner-knowing and collective wisdom from beyond my personal experience, the world of words, and my smaller self.

I confess that it’s taken me many years of awareness and practice to rely on Soul-quality messages. But gradually, I’ve learned to distinguish between my two inner voices:

• Soul – higher-consciousness knowing that inspires, encourages and supports what is best for me. 
• Ego – ordinary-consciousness thoughts laced with negative advice that constrains my life’s inner harmony and outer effectiveness.

In initiating, listening and following the Soul’s voice, I’ve gained sufficient clarity and certainty to enable me to make better life choices.

Benefiting From the Soul’s Voice

After a lifetime of thinking about and relying on our mind-emotions-body system in conventional ways, Boomers and older seniors may find it difficult to change by accepting and applying the Soul as a valid source of guidance for better living.

Trusting the Soul voice may not seem normal – based on looking around at “most people who I know and are part of my culture don’t believe in it, and nor have I for most of my long life.” But I invite you to ponder if it might be natural – as in going within and sensing that “it feels profound and useful from a higher consciousness and spiritual perspective.”

Based on my experience, here are the three reasons I believe in working with the Soul to enrich my quality of life as a senior:

• The Soul is recognized as a core human spiritual dimension by all the world’s major religions and spiritual traditions – as a component of life along with the physical body. Viewed in the light of higher consciousness – where everything is united in the Oneness of Universal Energy – we are in a relationship with the Soul. and can have a conversation with it.

I was raised Jewish and still feel it nurturing my spiritual life. Judaism’s concept of the immaterial and immortal Soul involves building a relationship with God. Where this exists, it enables personal communication with Divinity, through articulated prayer and inner listening.

• Psychology, as a science (and as such objective), has had little interest in the Soul, and has left it to philosophy and religion. But it does recognize the Soul’s opposite – the thinking mind or Ego. Overall, the Ego functions to protect the sensitive self from the harsh and at times devastating impact of feeling unloved, diminished and impermanent (death). Although the Ego pretends to be the individual’s human self, identity and personality, it’s simply not! With sufficient personal awareness, one realizes that our true nature is not the Ego but the Soul.

• I believe the Soul can guide one’s life, especially in the final senior stage, based on my personal experience. In 2020, at age 77, I was diagnosed with colin cancer. I accepted my medical team’s prescribed medical treatments – chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. But having studied and practiced holistic health for nearly 20 years, I also embraced alternative and natural healing modalities, especially concerning emotional-and-spiritual wellness.

Several professionals recommended I examine and enhance all my relationships – including my cancer tumor, physical body, brain-mind-emotions cluster, family and friends, deceased parents, life mission, Nature and the Soul. So, for six months I engaged in meditative conversations with them. Among the most fruitful were the conversations I had with my Soul. To the questions I posed, the answers I received were rational or emotional, conventional or provocative, valuable or amusing.

Overall, communicating with my Soul helped me regain my total wellness, avoid falling victim to cancer again, develop a multidimensional healing strategy, and later share it with other seniors who have received the gift that is cancer – the opportunity to become more awakened, aware and alive. I call my coaching approach Adventurous Aging, and offer it to seniors who desire to strengthen their life’s wellness, joy, love, purpose, connections, fulfillment and peace.

The Communication Process with the Soul

Here is what I’ve experienced and learned about preparing for, conversing with, and applying the Soul’s messages. This process – natural, joyful and peaceful to me in my challenge-filled senior years – has 11 steps:

1. Surrender to the process. To relate intimately to your Soul, it’s necessary to trust this process as valid and functional. Sweep away any doubts, so they don’t get in the way. Open yourself to the power and possibilities of this spiritual method. Prepare yourself for a new approach to interacting with the invisible world and the spiritual Source via the Soul.

• Relax the body. Prepare the body to effectively access and transcend the Ego mind, in order to converse directly with the Soul. Become aware of the chair or other surface you are sitting on. Consciously breath into your major body parts to deeply relax them. Gently put a smile on your face – to release the brain’s positive chemicals so you feel well being. Then breath normally.

• Quiet the mind. Called the monkey-mind for a good reason, silencing the constant chatter of our mind in general and the manipulative Ego in particular is necessary to hear what the Soul has to say. And the Soul always has something to say, even if it’s not always crystal clear and apparently relevant.

• Invite the Soul to speak. With a sincere and respectful heart, an invitation can can take the form of a specific question (“Should I move to Europe now?”), or a general request (“Tell me how to be at peace with my mother’s passing”). There is no limit to the number of your probing questions (including follow-up questions), and requests for guidance.

• Listen for the Soul’s voice. Do it patiently until you hear something; and if not, repeat the question or request. The Soul’s voice may take several forms – words (typically a few, but sometimes many), or symbolic sounds (such as a bell ringing, line of a song, and birds tweeting). At times, the voice may appear as a picture (a face of an old friend), or in a video format (replaying a friend’s wedding).

• Make sense of the message. In most instances, the messages I’ve received from my Soul are fairly clear and straightforward. But not always. It’s not simply the content you hear, but its meaning that makes the message relevant and useful. Especially if what you have heard or seen is in an abstract or metaphorical form, you’ll have to reflect on the message and ponder its deeper meaning.

• Check the authenticity of the message. In most cases, if you’ve done the previous steps in the process, you’re in a state of mind in which the voice you’ve heard is genuinely from the Soul. But there’s always a chance that the stress about what you are inquiring mixes with the Ego’s voice. Usually, one can rely on the message’s intent and style to assess whether its origin is the Soul or the Ego. The Soul typically shows up in a positive, loving and empowering form (“You’ll be able to ask your boss for that”). In contrast, the Ego tends to sound more negative, cautious and limiting (“Don’t dare trust them because they want to hurt you”). Another validating sign is receiving a distinctive physical confirmation – such as a tingling of the spine, or tears welling up behind the eyes.

• Capture the messages concretely. When the conversation with the Soul feels completed, I suggest you write down or enter into your preferred device what you just heard (or saw), and its interpretation and implications. This helps you not to forget or let time’s passing distort your memory regarding the message. This is especially true if you want to recall the message accurately and share with it with appropriate people (which is Step 10).

• Sit on it for a while. It can be valuable to let some time pass between hearing the message, and taking action based on it. This pause is particularly smart when you have multiple interpretations of meaning and alternative follow-up actions. This enables our creative and constructive thinking processes to incubate, and thus permits additional and different ideas to enter consciousness. It avoids a rush to judgment, especially when the issue is highly complicated, emotional and risky (such as filing for a divorce with young children involved). It’s possible to make a quick decision after hearing the Soul, and then feel it shifting and evolving over even a short time span.

1. Share it with appropriate persons. So far, you’ve probably been alone and private with the Soul’s message and your intended response. You may be satisfied and confident with your perspective and next actions. Especially with critical issues and high-stakes choices, it’s useful to express them to one or a few trusted family members and friends. On one level, you have the opportunity to hear how clear and certain you are while speaking, and on another level, you may benefit from their feedback concerning what you may not have considered and about which they have special expertise or keen intuition.

1. Take action. After your conversation with the Soul, you may now feel ready for what might be your first or final significant and possibly irrevocable action. In many cases, we can take action, review the initial results, and, if not to our liking, revise our next actions. And there’s usually the opportunity to have another conversation with the Soul!

In Conclusion

In my experience, obtaining the Soul’s input has given me greater competence, confidence and courage in making tough senior life choices. These have included where to live (city, section and dwelling), how to be healthy (cancer treatment, nutritious eating and sensible exercising), what life mission to follow (being of service to confused seniors), and what specific relationships to cultivate (longtime and new friends, local and online communities).

I know the choices I’ve made in my senior years have been better because I’ve benefited from: My full holistic wellbeing system with an acknowledged spiritual dimension, intuition as the language of the Soul, refection from a higher consciousness perspective, and an amble flow of creativity from Source.

The synergy of powerful Spiritual-energy and Soul-connected advantages gives me access to a superior choice process. Yet, I must confess, with a dose of humility: There’s no guarantee that reality will manifest as I expect. Indeed, I’m still learning how to interact with the invisible world, elevated consciousness, and Higher Power guidance. And allow these resources to work for me. As also I work for it – in sharing my talents and doing good for others.

Given the imperfect human world we inhabit, I feel I’ve done my best by engaging my Soul in critical life choices. So that the outcome, whether positive or even if seemingly negative, is for my best. Even when I’ve made a seemingly wrong choice (mistake) in the short run (moving to a certain large city), it turned out to be a powerful lesson learned in the longer run (clarifying that another city will meet my life’s priorities). Communicating with my Soul has proven to be an effective way to heal my damaged past, focus on the all-there-is present, develop greater discernment, and acquire vital maturity and wisdom.

Conversations with the Soul are an integral part of my Adventurous Aging Coaching for Seniors. To learn more about this transformative approach, see https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082105301582; to discuss this method with Larry, contact larryros@gmail.com.