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Soul-search
Jeroen van Olst
from Spirituality.com
My journey to find my soul began when I
stepped out of my office for the last time and said goodbye to corporate
life.
After years of ruthless ambition and
neglect of my mental and physical health, I was now a professional
burnout. When I began my new life as a college professor, a whole series
of new and confusing problems appeared. I soon came face-to-face with my
past and made some shocking discoveries.
From my early childhood to my early teens,
my father's company frequently transferred him to different parts of the
world. In consequence I spent more time with my tutor's family than with
my own. The tutor was an unforgiving man, who, in order to educate me,
thought it necessary to exercise total control over me, and I lost my
initial free-spiritedness.
You would never have known the chaos and
insecurity that reigned inside of me.
As a teenager I was
happy-go-lucky, laughing away and making a joke of life—on the outside.
But you would never have known the chaos and insecurity that reigned
inside of me.
As an adult, the pattern basically stayed
the same. I was absorbed by an ambition I never really felt. I was driven
by the fear of not living up to the expectations of my professional and
social environment. I had to make a success of myself, no matter the cost.
On the outside I behaved like a
professional success, which for me involved egotistical ambition, clawing
my way up regardless of who I hurt along the way, and playing the game of
politics like no other. But on the inside I hated myself for not having
committed to my beliefs, the truths that came from deep within me. And it
broke my heart. This is because, to me, committing to your beliefs is
about loving yourself. This commitment gives you the peaceful satisfaction
of being yourself in the truest sense of the word. I knew this
intellectually, but I was far from truly understanding it.
What I needed to commit to were my core
beliefs about the soul. It is my belief that the soul originates from one
Source of infinite, all-encompassing love and wisdom. This Source can be
called God, the Divine Being, Light, Allah, the Great Architect of the
Universe. It doesn't really matter what we call it. I believe this Source
doesn't have a name, it just is and needs only to be felt. And, when the
Bible tells us that we are made in the image of God and that we are His
children, I believe it to be right.
We are inseparable from our Source.
Our soul may also be
called the connection—the direct telephone line with our Source, who
will always pick up and listen. After all, we are inseparable from our
Source; and we are loved because our Source is Love itself. And it will
answer us, regardless of what is happening in our lives.
Often, the uncertainty and fear of digging
deeper into myself would have made it easy to stop searching. But
realizing I wasn't yet spiritually secure, I had to do something about it.
It's an interesting fact that once you know something you can't
"un-know" it. You can't say, "I used to know how to walk,
but I forgot how to do it." Yet, knowledge will not be truly owned
until you do something with it, express it, put it into practice.
Something—the soul's Source—told me to
look within myself.
So I continued my search
for my soul. Something—the soul's Source—told me to look within
myself. I had been headed in the wrong direction with my life. I had been
uneasy, cranky, aggressive and paranoid. But I was happily surprised to
find that the more I started to speak and act as my soul directed, the
better and more whole I felt.
For example, in my corporate job I would
defend my point of view, even when I knew I was wrong—all for the good
of the company and my promotions. But as a professor, I would give the
opinions of others a second thought. Where I had simply given orders
before, I now tried to convince. Where I had been impatient, I now tried
to listen.
I was rewarded with a peace I had never
felt before. I started to live in harmony with myself. I did and said
things that were in harmony with my beliefs, my true essence.
And there it was.
I had found my soul.
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