Finding Your Soulpod

Dec. 22, 2010 — -- As my spiritual journey deepened, friends fell away. As I shed one identity after another, I no longer identified with the people attached to them. It was as though the bridge between us had simply collapsed. Old ways of interacting seemed inauthentic, scripted, staged. We weren't walking down the same path anymore.

At first this suited me fine. With the quest for truth to keep me company, I didn't long for contact to fill me up or distract me from reality. My romance with my own soul engaged me more than most social experiences. Although there were some utterly lonely phases, I came to love my "soulitude" -- undistracted time alone with my soul-self- because it was here that I met myself. It was in the heart of soulitude that I worked through many of my emotional obstructions and excavated the callings that lived within me. In its absence, I felt pulled back to old ways of being, and found it difficult to cultivate new possibilities. In an often overwhelming world, soulitude is essential to our efforts to clarify and transform.

What was interesting about my time alone was that I actually felt somewhat connected to all of humanity. The call to expand pulled me out of an isolated self-sense and reminded me that we are all part of the same interconnected web of connectiveness. Through these eyes, there were no strangers. We were all inextricably linked on the dance floor of sacred imagination.

After some time, I began to long for new friends to spend time with. Letting your soul be your pilot often means that you fly solo until you are ready for deeper connection. My time alone had been the perfect grist for my expansion, but now I needed real human contact. I had so many discoveries to share, and longed for people who could resonate with who I had become.

This is the nature of the self-creation journey. We move back and forth between polarities -- alone and connected, receptive and assertive, detached and attached -- until we find a way to integrate everything in a sacred balance. Now that I knew how to be alone, I needed to bring human sharing and intimacy back into the equation.

I began looking for my next "soulpod" everywhere. Our soulpod is that person or group of people whom our soul finds the most resonance with at any given moment -- people of "soulnificance." It can include anyone that appears on our path to inform and catalyze our expansion -- our family of origin, significant figures, strangers with a lesson. How long they stay depends on the lesson. It could be a moment, a decade, a lifetime…

At first, my soulpod was very difficult to find. When I was less individuated, it had been easier to make friends. The more amorphous we are, the easier it is to find someone to have a drink with. But now I didn't want to just have a drink. I wanted to be met in the deep within. I wanted to connect with people walking the same soul beat -- less ego, more essence, true to path.