Soul Loss
So far, in my Soul Series, we have learned about the Dark Night of the Soul and our Shadow Self. This week, we're learning about soul loss. This isn't an easy topic, but it is a necessary one.
In our day and age, a mysterious phenomenon known as Soul Loss happens in people of all ages, genders, races, and backgrounds. Soul Loss has been around for millennia and is understood as the result of an inner fragmentation caused by my unawareness, a traumatic experience, or an intense shock to the mind and body. People who have experienced Soul Loss, as I have, often emerge stronger than before with newfound knowledge about themselves and a stronger will to help others.
When we experience Soul Loss, a part of our Soul - or living essence, hides (or shuts away), hindering us from living as whole human beings. Often times fundamental aspects of our psyches are wholly repressed. It's like the body going into a coma after an intense shock to the brain. The body shuts down, a bit like a computer going into sleep mode, and then it repairs itself. It won't come back until it feels safe and secure. This happens so that our Soul can survive the experience.
But don't despair; Soul Loss is temporary, and with the proper work, we can retrieve these elements and reintegrate them into our lives.
What is Soul Loss?
We experience Soul Loss not only when we experience trauma such as being raped or the death of a family member but also when we begin feeling weakness, fatigue, depression, anxiety, and emptiness. We just know something is missing from our life - but we can't figure out exactly what that is. To understand Soul Loss as a loss, or disconnection, from the most vital parts of who we are, is known in psychology as dissociation or removing your Soul from reality.
One example is that I decided not to take dance classes during my first year of college (for context, this happened in the summer of 2016). Throughout that year (excluding factors like stress, diet, etc.), my anxiety and depression worsened over time until I ended up being in a 10-day dark phase (now I know it was due to medication withdrawals and changes). But that year, I also knew something was missing from my life. And that was dance. So three days after I got new meds (which worked very well for maybe the first year), I got my butt back into dance classes and was much happier. I always used dance to express myself when I didn't have the words, so I choreographed a dance about the phase I was going through. It's called "This House Is Empty Now."
The Psychology Behind Soul Loss
Think of your Soul or consciousness as an intense ball of energy. Anything that reduces this energy will result in listlessness, moroseness, and depression. If we create an imbalance within the psyche, we allow individual parts of the personality (i.e., shadow self) to come forth and escape the control of the conscious mind. It is imperative that we go to great lengths to keep our Soul happy. Some ways of doing that are doing what we love, whether it is dancing, acting, playing sports, etc. Also, we must lower the stress in our life by being organized in school and work and taking the time to meditate for at least ten minutes twice a day. This will allow us to remain as calm and centered as possible for as long as possible.
Signs You Might Be Experiencing Soul Loss
There are myriad symptoms pertaining to Soul Loss, from physical to psychological to spiritual. The loss of energy we feel when we lose a part of our Soul prevents us from living healthy, fulfilling, and creative lives. Sometimes this can last for a lifetime, resulting in the development of a self-destructive person we often refer to as a lost cause.
To become whole again, we must first identify the symptoms of Soul Loss within us. Here is a list of the most common symptoms:
Memories and parts of your life have been blocked out.
You experience strong periods of depression.
Parts within yourself feel missing or broken.
You experience a general numbness to life.
Constant feelings of fear or anxiety plague you.
You go through long periods of insomnia.
You feel lost or incomplete.
You feel like a 'different person' after a shocking or traumatic life event.
You feel stuck or incapable of overcoming a certain issue in your life.
You feel disappointed with life.
You feel as though there are multiple "selves" within you.
You try to escape by turning to alcohol, drugs, sex, television, or excessive busyness.
You feel unworthy of being loved.
You are experiencing a dark night of the Soul.
You want to find your purpose and meaning in life.
You feel like your daily life is meaningless and task-driven.
You avoid feeling vulnerable and keep others at a distance.
You long for wholeness and a sense of belonging.
You sometimes feel that you're not in control of yourself.
You constantly feel mentally or physically fatigued for no medical reason.
You thirst for authenticity and complete acceptance of yourself.
To be healthy, you must recover the vital lost parts of yourself by learning how to live a life of balance, authenticity, and self-compassion. To slowly reintegrate the missing elements of your Soul through the practice of Involution is to live a life of mindfulness and body alignment.
There are seven paths of Involution. The key is to figure out which pathways we exist in the most and the least. Discovering this will help you see what you must work on the most. Here is a list and a brief explanation of those paths.
Self-awareness
Self-awareness is the ability to observe thoughts, feelings, and actions daily. A self-aware person has the ability to introspect and the ability to be aware of their thoughts, feelings, personality, and behavior. A self-aware person can identify what they are feeling but maybe not why they feel the way they do. A lack of self-awareness is an animalistic behavior, or behaving without thinking - commonly called reacting.
Self-exploration
Self-exploration is the study of oneself and is the process of investigating and analyzing our inner thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and ideals. Once we become aware of our internal processes (thinking, feeling, reacting, and decision-making), it is beneficial to ask why we function the way we do. Self-exploration is often a complex process that involves a lot of inner observation and personalized research. If you are a self-exploring person, you explore how you think, feel, and behave and gain knowledge and understanding of yourself through examination (i.e., self-help books, courses, tests (such as the Myers-Briggs personality test), and meditation.
Self-discovery
Once you have done some self-exploration, a degree of self-discovery is possible. Self-discovery is the process of gaining knowledge or understanding of yourself, whether it's entirely new information to you or some pieces of an already existing puzzle. A self-discovering person has attained insight into what, how, and why you feel, think, and behave the way you do. People who live at this level tend to discover the underlying mechanisms and truths upholding many of their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors toward themselves and the people around them.
Self-understanding
Self-discovery leads to self-understanding or knowing what, how, and why you do what you do. A self-understanding person has a: thorough knowledge of your strengths, weaknesses, attitudes, beliefs, motives, defenses, and reactions. People who live at this level have a well-rounded understanding of the origins and reasons behind many of their feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.
Self-love
Self-love or self-compassion comes from finally understanding and accepting why you react the way you do to specific stimuli. Individuals who practice self-love realize that they are imperfect in different ways but cease to criticize and punish themselves for these imperfections. If you are a Self-Loving person, you: accept all parts of yourself, stop punishing yourself for your imperfections, develop self-esteem and self-forgiveness, show self-nurturing behaviors, and respect your needs and desires.
Self-transformation
Once we have become self-aware, done some self-exploration to discover some things about ourselves, and finally come to an understanding about ourselves to be self-compassionate, we have come to experience a genuine inner self-transformation. Self-Transformation can be understood as the transcendence of our previous limiting and destructive identities or ego selves. The self-transforming person: experiences changes in how they live life, perceive themselves and other people, and experience increased harmony with the world, other people, and themselves.
Self-mastery
The final goal of the involution process is to attain self-mastery. In essence, the self-master is an observer of his or her thoughts and feelings, letting them come and go without identifying with or reacting to them. The self-master knows that nothing is permanent in this cruel world and that negative emotions have no business being in our life. After all, the self-master realizes he is not his momentary thoughts or feelings. In this way, the self-master transcends himself, living his life with peace, wisdom, and spiritual wholeness. Self-mastery is not to be confused with "being in control," as these imply a reaction to thoughts and feelings by avoidance or repression. The self-master is not affected by anything and doesn't feel the need to control, repress or restrain. Self-Mastery is rare and includes the ability to simply observe feelings and emotions without identifying with them, the ability to realize that we are not our thoughts and emotions, the ability to stop reacting out of hatred, anger, embarrassment, jealousy, and other harmful emotions, and the ability to live life with peace and wisdom.
And that completes this month's post on Soul Loss. Stay tuned for next month's final installment in my Soul series. I hope you liked this post. If you did, don't forget to give this post a like/comment, follow me on all my social media (links below), and I'll see you next week. Sending you all the light and love in this world.
