Tuning in to Your Soul

The Eternal Part of You

Art by June Bird Ngale

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YOUR IRREDUCIBLE YOU-NESS

Do you have a soul? Is there even such a thing? If so, what is it exactly? Where does it live, how does it move, and what does it need? How do you grow more of it? And is it really, as some of the wisest humans who ever lived have insisted, the most valuable thing in the universe?

I invite you to sit with these questions. Meditate on the soul, dream about the soul, and turn the soul over in your imagination as if you were exploring a luminous treasure.

To start the inquiry, I’ll tell you about a woman I met who had arrived at a devastating answer to these questions.

She told me she firmly believes she is no more than the sum total of the influences of all the people she has ever known. The way she talked about herself was as if she were a machine, a passive assemblage of other people’s programming.

She lives her life as if she has no essential core, but is merely what others have shaped her into: a reflection of her parents’ and teachers’ and friends’ and enemies’ expectations of her: a mirror that has forgotten it also generates its own light.

I understood the cultural currents that had carried her to this diminished self-concept. And I agree that each of us is partly a creation of forces beyond our control. Most people have no idea how thoroughly they are shaped by the zeitgeist, by ancestral patterns, by the collective unconscious, by advertising and propaganda and the relentless pressure of consensus reality.

But I am quite sure that each of us also has an essential core, a diamond nature and irreducible YOU-ness that isn’t entirely manufactured by outside forces.

I believe our souls are ancient entities that exist both outside of time and space and very much inside it. They are both eternal and urgently present, both transcendent and gloriously incarnate in this particular body at this particular moment in history.

So I will ask you to do you and me a favor. Even if you’ve been taught that consciousness is merely the result of brain chemistry and the soul is a metaphor at best and a hallucination at worst: Imagine, just for now, that you do have a soul—not as an article of religious faith but as an experiential reality you can actually feel.

Relax the frenzied activity of what the Zen Buddhists call the monkey mind. And try to feel the quality of that deep, indivisible part of you.

This part of you knows itself and loves itself with clarity and grace. It’s so utterly unique that no other soul in the history of this planet has ever been quite like it, and no other soul ever will be. It’s the gorgeous, humming center of you, quietly broadcasting its singular frequency beneath all the noise and distraction and performance and anxiety.

This essential core is NOT merely a creation of your parents. Does NOT measure its worth against anyone else’s. Is NOT a slave to other people’s opinions of who you should be.

It’s who you were before you were born into this body, and who you will be after you leave it. It’s the part of you that chose this particular incarnation, with its particular set of challenges and gifts, and decided to arrive at this precise moment in history to do your singular work.

Your soul can never be completely understood. It will always be partly mystery. And yet it’s your sweetest, most reliable source: the wellspring of your authentic creativity and your deepest compassion. No matter how lost you may become in the maze of conditioning and fear and self-doubt, your soul will always be there at your center, emanating its signal, inviting you to remember, ready to guide you home.

In this era of manufactured confusion and artificial intelligence and deepfake everything, that authentic signal is more precious than ever. It’s the one thing that can’t be corrupted. It holds the blueprint of your most luminous becoming, and it loves you with an unconditional devotion that asks nothing except that you trust the wild, beautiful truth of who you really are.

So tune in. Its tender guidance has never been more available to you—or more necessary.

Art by Howard G. Charing

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Can we go even further?

You might feel moved to explore the nature of the soul with rare companions who take the soul seriously. They won’t flinch when the conversation goes deep.

Of course, you don’t want to get into the trap of debating the soul’s existence with people who snicker and reach reflexively for their skepticism. Conversations like those are useless. Save your energy for something more alive.

You may also decide that the fact you have encountered this essay means that now is an excellent time to go out in active search of experiences that will expand and deepen your soul. How might you attune yourself to the synchronicities and encounters and recognitions that will teach you more about what your soul is and why it matters?

Below are some navigational hints.

Anything or anyone you find truly beautiful will lead you toward soul. And by beautiful I don’t mean pretty packaging or pleasing surfaces. I mean beautiful in the older, stranger sense: glowing with intelligence and intensity and mystery and depth. Beautiful as in made by hand, close to the earth, energizing to your body, and impossible to reduce to a price tag.

Anything that awakens your reverence will lead you to soul. Anyone who is acutely alive to the flow of life, who spills over with vitality and genuine responsiveness, will lead you there, too.

Feelings of gratitude will lead you there. So will adventures that catch you off guard. Unpredictability stirs the soul, and surprising truths. Deeply felt traditions with real roots can awaken or feed the soul.

But you know more than I do about what will lead you, specifically, to soul. You have your own particular hungers and your own telltale signals. You know those moments when some mystery in you suddenly leans forward, alert and awake.

Pay close attention to those signals. Write about them. Make a list of the experiences, the people, the landscapes, the works of art, and the conversations that have awakened the deepest stirrings in you. Let that list become a kind of map.

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Now here are three questions with tentative answers to open your imagination further.

Question 1: Was there a time, once upon a time, when star-crossed romance wounded your capacity for love? Left a scar across the very place in you that most wants to give and receive tenderness?

Answer: Yes. Almost certainly yes. But there has never been a better moment than now to begin healing that wound.

Question 2: Is it possible you are finally willing to relinquish your long-held addiction to a certain tragic magic? That exquisite, melancholy story you’ve been telling yourself, beautiful in its way but also keeping you smaller and sadder than you need to be?

Answer: Yes. Your urge to genuinely love your life is growing stronger than your attachment to ancient sorrow. Your need for clarity is quietly overwhelming the melodrama that once felt essential but is now, if you’re honest, becoming increasingly beside the point.

Question 3: Has there ever been a better time than right now to perform quietly courageous acts—small, steady, unglamorous acts of integrity—that turn you away from the seductions of shallowness and toward the deeper allure of the soul?

Answer: You already know the answer. You’ve known it for a while.

Art by Wassily Kandinsky

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If you’d like to read more of my thoughts about the soul, check out this essay (plus an audio reading), excerpted from my book ASTROLOGY IS REAL: tinyurl.com/AstrologyForTheSoul

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Listen to the conversation between me and the brilliant author and activist adrienne maree brown: endoftheworldshow.org/episodes/witch-school-chapter-22-rob-brezsney

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LOVE POEM FOR YOUR SOUL

Your voice is moonlight on the wetland mud. Your lips are blossoms of cool fire. Your hair is a chant offered to the goddess of arias. Your navel? The answers the stars give to the clouds.

Your nearness is the hush before rain, charged with the promise of green. The air trembles, remembering your breath. If I speak your name, the clouds part like silk torn by sunlight. Even the still stones along the path seem to turn their faces toward your warmth.

The tilt of your head is a question the high sky can’t refuse. Even my doubts kneel down like tall grasses. I am reckless with wonder. I am willing to be altered.

When you turn toward me, the world becomes a book of mirrors, each page reflecting what can’t be spoken. The arc of your shoulders carries the weight of ten thousand wishes made by strangers at wells. Your anger is summer lightning that never reaches ground, beautiful and brief as the violet hour.

I study the architecture of your patience. It’s a temple built from driftwood and spider silk, improbable and lasting. Your sorrows move like schools of silver fish through dark water, visible only when they turn. Your hope tastes of honey drawn from flowers that bloom only in dreams.

When you speak my name, it becomes a new constellation. Your presence is the moment between thunder and rain when the air grows dense with possibility. I dare to stand in the weather of you. I dare to learn the language your shadow writes across the wall at dusk.

Your nearness folds the worlds together. Time loses its steps around you; the hours turn to translucent birds circling an unseen altar. The hush between heartbeats becomes a doorway through which dawn spills again and again, unminded of the clock’s insistence.

I could believe you were dream dreaming itself — a shimmer between what’s born and what’s eternal. If I listen rightly, I become the echo that finds you wherever the infinite hides its face.

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I’ve published three main books, with lots more to come.

Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: tinyurl.com/PronoiaBookshop

Astrology Is Real: tinyurl.com/BookshopAstrologyIsReal

The Televisionary Oracle: tinyurl.com/BookshopTelevisionaryOracle

Check out my LinkTree: linktr.ee/robbrezsny

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

For the Week of February 26

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Sufi mystics tell us that the heart has “seven levels of depth,” each one bearing progressively more profound wisdom. You access these depths by feeling deeper, not thinking harder. Let’s apply this perspective to you, Pisces. Right now, you’re being called to descend past surface emotions (irritation, worry, mild contentment) into the layers beneath: primal wonder, the wild joy you’re sometimes too cautious to express, and the sacred longing that can lead you to glory. This dive might feel risky. That’s good! It means you’re going deep enough. What you discover down there will reorganize everything above it for the better.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): In woodworking, “spalting” occurs when fungi colonize wood, creating dark lines and patterns that make the wood more valuable, not less. The decay creates beauty as long as it isn’t allowed to progress too far. Here’s the metaphorical moral of the story for you, Aries: What feels like a deteriorating situation might actually be spalting, Aries. Are you experiencing the breakdown of a routine, a certainty, or a plan? It could be creating a pattern that makes your story even more interesting and heroic. So keep in mind that an apparent decomposition may be transforming ordinary into extraordinary beauty. My advice is to play along with the spalting.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): I suspect you will soon be invited to explore novel feelings and unfamiliar states of awareness. As you wander in the psychological frontiers, you might experience mysterious phenomena like the following. 1. An overflow of reverence and awe. 2. Blissful surprise in the face of the sublime. 3. Sudden glimmers of eternity in fleeting moments. 4. A soft, golden resonance that arises when you hear arousing truths. 5. Amazingly useful questions that could tantalize and feed your imagination for months and even years to come.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): If I were your mentor, I’d lead you up an ascending trail to a high peak where your vision is clear and vast. If I were your leader, I’d give you a medal for all the ways you’ve been brave when no one was looking, then send you on an all-expenses-paid sabbatical to a beautiful sanctuary to rest and remember yourself. If I were your therapist, I’d guide you through a 90-minute meditation on your entire life story up until now. But since I’m just your companion for this brief oracle, I will instead advise you to slip out of any silken snares of comfort that dull your spirit, cast off perks and privileges that keep you small, and commune with influences that remind you of how deeply you treasure being alive.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Biologist Barbara McClintock won the Nobel Prize by developing what she called “a feeling for the organism.” She cultivated an intimate, almost empathic relationship with the corn plants she studied. She didn’t impose theories on her subjects. She listened to them until she could sense their hidden patterns from the inside. When you’re not lost in self-protection, you Cancerians excel at this quality of attention. Here’s what I see as your task in the coming weeks: Transfer your empathic genius away from people who drain you and toward projects, places, or problems that deserve your devotion and give you blessings in return.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Sufi writers describe heartbreak, grief, and longing as portals through which divine love enters. They say that a highly defended ego and a hardened heart can’t engage with such profound and potent love. In this view, suffering that makes the heart ache strips away illusions and fixations, allowing greater receptivity, humility, and tenderness toward all beings.​ I’m not expecting you to get blasted by an influx of poignancy in the near future, Leo, but I’m very sure you have experienced such blasts in the past. And now is an excellent time to process those old breakthroughs disguised as breakdowns. You are likely to finally be able to harvest the full power they offered you.

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VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): In traditional Balinese culture, Tri Hita Karana is a concept that means there are three causes of well-being: harmony with God, harmony with people, and harmony with nature. When one is out of balance, all suffer. I’m wondering if you would benefit from meditating on this theme now, Virgo. Have you been focused on one dimension at the expense of the others? Are you, perhaps, spiritually nourished but socially isolated? Or maybe you’re maintaining relationships but ignoring your body’s connection to the earth? Here’s your assignment: Do a Tri Hita Karana audit. Which harmony is most neglected? Add to your altar, call a friend, or go walk in the great outdoors—whichever one you’ve been shortchanging.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): You are a diplomat in the struggle between beauty and inelegance. Your aptitude for creating harmony is a great asset that others might underestimate or miss completely. I hope you will always trust your hunger for classiness even if others dismiss it as superficial. One of your key reasons for being here on earth is to keep insisting on loveliness in a world too quick to settle for ugliness. These qualities of yours are especially needed right now. Please be gracefully insistent on expressing them wherever you go.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): The bad news: You underestimate how much joy and pleasure you deserve—and how much you’re capable of experiencing. This artificially low expectation has sometimes cheated you out of your rightful share of bliss and fulfillment. The good news: Life is now ready to conspire with you to raise your happiness levels. I hope you will cooperate eagerly. The more intensely you insist on feeling good, the more cosmic assistance you will garner. Here’s a smart way to launch this holy campaign: Renounce a certain lackluster thrill that diverts you from more lavish excitements.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In classical music, a “rest” isn’t the absence of music. It’s a specific notation that creates space, tension, and meaning. The silence is as much a part of the composition as the sound. I suggest you think of your current pause this way, Sagittarius. You’re not waiting for your real life to resume. You’re in a rest, and the rest is an essential part of the process you’re following. It’s creating the conditions for what comes next. So instead of anxiously filling every moment with productivity or distraction, try honoring the pause. Be deliberately quiet. Let the silence accumulate. When the next movement begins, you’ll understand exactly why the rest was necessary.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Interesting temptations are wandering into your orbit. You may be surprised to find yourself drawn toward entertaining gambles and tricky adventures. How should you respond? Should you say “Yes! Now! I’m ready!”? Or is open-minded caution a wiser approach? Conditions are too slippery for me to arrive at definitive conclusions. What I can tell you is this: Merely considering and ruminating on these invitations will awaken uplifting and inspiring lessons. PS: To get the fullness of the blessings you want from other people, you must first give them to yourself.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The engineer Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) said he envisioned his inventions in intricate detail before building them. He didn’t need literal prototypes because his mental pictures were so vivid. I suspect you Aquarians now have extra access to this power. What scenarios are you dreaming of? What are you incubating in your imagination? I urge you to boldly trust your thought experiments. Your mental prototypes may be unusually accurate. The visions you’re testing internally are reconnaissance missions to futures that you have the power to build. Regard your imagination as a laboratory.

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