Spirituality

4 keys to aligning with your Soul

“Trust your intuition”…”Just be your true self”…”Get more grounded”…”Stop giving your power away”… Have you ever been given this advice? Or imparted it upon others yourself? Have you discovered that all of the above is easier said than done?

Have you been thinking: yes, following my truth sounds great…but HOW exactly am I supposed to do that? And what does “your truth” even mean?

Knowing what to do, reading all the trendy books, trying every energy work modality under the sun, and consuming “spiritual” content online like it is your day job does not necessarily result in you experiencing inner alignment and deep connection with your Soul.

Reason being: consuming information does not equal receiving transformation.

 

The missing link?

There is none, because Soul alignment is an ongoing process, not a step-by-step formula. There are no ultimate blueprints or foolproof systems here. This is an uncharted territory without a one-size-fits-all map. Your journey through it is bound to be nonlinear, because Soul realm is beyond the jurisdiction of the laws of logic (e.g. space and time). You just cannot figure it out – it is not meant to be understood or mastered, it is meant to be experienced and explored.

No agenda. No end goal. Plenty of space, curiosity, devotion, and an open mind.

And guess what, it is exactly this multidimensional, mysterial, ungraspable nature of the Soul alignment process that makes it magical.

 

Although there are no shortcuts when it comes to aligning with your Soul, here are 4 keys that can help you along the way. Each of them unlocks a door leading you deeper into the Soul realm and bringing you closer to your truest essence.

Here they are…

 

 

Key number 1: Connect with your essence

The most important leap you will ever make on your Soul path is this one: from self-abandonment to self-communion. Self-abandonment is the default state for many people; it is so deeply ingrained in our way of being that we often do not realize that we are doing it.

Some of the common signs of abandoning yourself are: people pleasing as a way of life, pursuing goals and dreams that were imposed upon you and not self-chosen, conforming, settling for less than what you deserve, not expressing your truth, stifling your creativity, procrastinating on big life decisions, dimming your light in order to fit in. You can easily spot self-abandonment tendencies in your daily reality as well: just observe your day and notice how much of what you do is consciously chosen and how much is happening on autopilot, how often you go against your truth because of fear, how much you ignore your inner impulses and override your intuition.

 

The journey from self-abandonment to self-communion is a gradual perspective shift: you start by directing your attention inwards more and more, focusing on your very own self. You start engaging – communing – with the core of you. Some call it “listening to your heart” or even “trusting your gut feeling”. No matter what you name it (and where it lives in your body), the point is to get started and to become intentional about developing an ongoing dialogue with yourself and the way in which inner guidance shows up for you.

Your true essence cannot reveal itself unless you start actively pursuing this connection. Like any relationship, it needs to be built and nurtured.

Spend more time building a dialogue with your Soul. When you start showing up for your Soul essence, your Soul essence start showing up for you.

 

Some questions to explore during self-communion time:

What are your values? What are you really about? What matters to you the most in life? What is the red thread running through your life?

Connect with your Soul through asking open-ended questions, and forego the mind’s attempts to answer them. Instead, simply live with these questions – let them simmer somewhere on the background, and soon enough you will become a living answer to them.

 

 

Key number 2: Practice alignment in small steps

Soul alignment sounds like something big, important, massive – and in many ways it is. But it is not about that grand finale with angels singing and rose petals falling from the sky – it is about the quality of your day-to-day living. It is not only about what you do with your life (like pursuing your life purpose), it is also about how you live your life day in and day out.

Which is great news, because this means that through making powerful Soul-aligned small choices every day and shifting the way you show up in your reality you can experience Soul alignment on a daily basis. Small moments of self-communion to add up, and eventually create a baseline of a deeply connected, centered state.

 

Start using your free will – your ability to choose – on a daily basis. Evaluate your choices from the angle of: does this bring me closer to my Soul? Does this reflect my values? Which choice would make me proud of myself?

Little by little, reclaim your power to choose what is aligned for you. That’s how you build sovereignty – and with that, alignment becomes much easier.

 

 

Key number 3: Let go of everything that is untrue

Soul alignment is not a point on the horizon that requires you to become someone else in order for you to reach it, and Soul essence is not a new persona you take on.

It is quite the opposite: Soul alignment means shedding layers of everything that is NOT aligned such that alignment can have space to unfold, Soul essence is that which is left after everything that is NOT truly you is no more.

Therefore, the path of alignment is a process of perpetual unveiling – you are peeling yourself as if you were an onion, taking all the veils away, the veils that you have covered yourself with because you thought they were needed to keep you safe and loved.

 

The veils come off gradually. Some of them fall off gently, without any effort on your part, while others need to be ripped off with incorruptible resolve, making you feel like your very skin is getting separated from your body. And yet, no matter how painful, this unveiling is liberating. Each and every round will leave you feeling lighter, and more alive. As you drop what is untrue and inauthentic, you create space for the real deal you to emerge. It is there, underneath the layers – has been all along. This is a remembrance, a reclamation.

 

On a related note. Being aligned with your Soul does not mean having no ego left. This is a spiritual misconception. It is not possible, and it is not even necessary.

Instead of vilifying the less than pretty aspects of yourself, embrace them. Darkness is not a thing of its own, it is just the absence of light. So starting bringing light – meaning, awareness, compassion and understanding – to the dark corners of your inner world.

 

Engage in some honest self-inquiry:

What are you holding onto that is no longer true? What identities are you trying to protect? What pretenses do you uphold? In what ways are you lying to yourself, and what is the truth underneath?

Pondering on this is not easy, but it is absolutely necessary – this is your Soul’s redemption, and your Heart’s homecoming to its truth.

 

 

Key number 4: Deepen your trust

The fascinating thing about trust? It is a choice. Yes, like that.

This goes against everything we got trained to believe in – that trust needs to be earned, that trusting others makes us vulnerable to attack and betrayal, that we have to control life instead of relaxing into it. This way of thinking has turned trust into a commodity; but what it essentially is is a sacred resource. A resource we can replenish, as trust comes from the Soul realm.

 

Trust is the willingness to hold yourself in highest regard, and the ability to get energetically invested in the best-case scenario (as opposed to the gloom and doom scenario your mind so readily concocts). Trust is the focus you hold, the inner state you intentionally craft and consciously maintain.

Every waking moment, you can choose to indulge the autopilot mode of second-guessing your guidance and expecting life to let you down and mess up your plans…or you can actively pursue unwavering faith in yourself and choose to expect the best. When you live in trust, you do not simply stop having doubts, but you treat them differently. Instead of rolling with them, you notice all the questions that arise and observe layers of your mind’s analysis…foregoing the temptation to go down the rabbit hole of doubt.

This way of living requires some discipline at first, and this discipline comes from your willingness to change and do things differently. When discipline is wrapped in love, it turns into devotion – to your purpose, to your Soul, to your brightest path.

 

Practice trust through giving life the benefit of the doubt. Replay the best-case scenario instead of recounting all the ways in which things can go wrong. Look for the evidence of what is going well instead of what is wrong. Allow yourself to be surprised – because you get in life exactly that what you expect to get. So, how about expecting miracles from now on?

 

 

 

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by Violetta Pleshakova

Violetta Pleshakova is a paradigm shifter, leadership mentor, entrepreneur, inspirational speaker and writer on a mission to help rising leaders and change makers amplify their impact in the world - through teaching them how to leverage their uniqueness and pursue their passions in a way that is authentic and aligned with who they truly are. Violetta holds a PhD in cultural studies, and has been leading personal development programs on three continents, with participants from over 30 countries, for nearly a decade. As a true citizen of the world, she divides her time between Berlin, Johannesburg, Amsterdam, Moscow, and Southern France.


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