Meeting Soul Through Descent

“Something deep in the human soul awakens as things fall apart. Something in the soul knows that everything in this world can become lost. And something in the soul knows how to survive periods of devastation, disorientation and loss. Descent and falling is the way of the soul from its beginning.”

~Michael Meade

Sometimes when we’re in the midst of loss, devastation and disorientation it can be hard to see a greater meaning at play. And I don’t say this to bypass the real impact of these times. The ways in which they impact our nervous system and can also bring up old, unhealed trauma or wounding. The ways in which we might find ourselves getting stuck in our survival strategies of fight, flight and/or freeze.

In my experience there can be a both/and, in which our soul path is involved too. I was recently watching a recording called From Sorrow to Soul: Finding Meaning in a Time of Loss. One of the speakers, Jeffrey Kiehl, who's a Jungian Analyst said something I felt deeply.

“Grief is a doorway to finding soul.”

I’ve always experience my own soul through feeling deeply. The more embodied and connected I became, the more I felt my soul emerge in the everyday. The last few years thrust me into a descent, in which I lost that connection to my soul, specifically after my mom’s death.

I’ve been starting to sense soul in moments again. Especially as I work with my nervous system, to be with some of the material that has risen to the surface. Or perhaps I’ve met in the descent. I sense a truth in descent being an initiation into deeper embodiment of soul. Something we cannot access through the bypassing of emotional pain with good vibes only. There’s an expansion of the ability to hold in the mystery of life.

I believe the not knowing of what happens after death, is part of the great mystery of life. I wonder about the ways in which we seek to know, in our culture of optimizing and biohacking. The valuing of logic and science above all other ways of knowing. I believe there’s a different kind of knowing than that of the mind. That there’s a soul knowing.

I don’t think it’s as defined as mind knowing or logical sense. Soul knowing is more of an inner sense. And I feel the connection to meeting ourselves in the depths of our challenges and human struggles, as a doorway into the soul. Or maybe, it’s more that the soul enters during these times, as Thomas Moore expresses:

“Soul enters life from below, through the cracks, finding an opening into life.”