If you want to live a soulful life, you must be willing to recover your soul. You must be willing to be who you really are.

 

You must be willing to drop to a deeper level of existence, a level that is pleading to you through the worst of your days, asking you to listen to it. You must be willing to look for the legend that is trying to be told within your own life.

 

To live a soulful life, you must be willing to not fit in.

 

You must be willing to pull yourself away from the herd that is our mass culture, to turn off the messages thrown at you both in television shows and in the commercials between them. Their mandate is to tell you who you are, and who you want to be, and how to get there...which of course is to buy something that can never bring you to a soulful existence. They want you to be a consumer, and consumers don't have souls.

 

To live a soulful life, you must be willing to stand alone, up against what everyone and everything in our society tells you is right for you, and ask what your heart wants, what your very being desires. You have to be willing to love who you really love, not who you are supposed to love.

 

To live a soulful life, you must be willing to listen to who and what really turns you on, what calls you to your depths. These loves are really callings. They are the pearls of great price we must travel to the ends of the earth for.

 

If you want a soulful life, you must be willing to listen for that call, and follow it whatever the cost.

 

To live a soulful life, you must be willing to encounter obstacles. These very barriers are also the hand of God, preparing you to receive the bounty. You would not be wise enough to keep what you find otherwise.

 

To live a soulful life, you must be willing to make friends with your kind of people in whatever way you can.

 

To live a soulful life, you must be willing to make the 3AM witching hour your friend. The night terrors that come and magnify your every fear visit for a reason. Don't push them away. Listen to them. They can tell you things about your deepest self you won't hear in the daytime.

 

To live a soulful life, you must be willing to look at your choices carefully. To notice when you choose too much or not enough. When you want to go left but you go right. When you want to act but don't, or don't want to act but do. You must see when you sabotage your own soul's longings, and when you indulge to the point it harms you. You must look squarely at your addictions and notice what happens when they are denied. If you can do this, just look clearly and honestly you won't have to do much more.