There is in each of us an ongoing story. It contains our meaning and our destiny. And it goes on inevitably whether we pay attention to it or not. This is our “Soul Story” … There is an ongoing drama that we do not control and into which we are drawn. And our deepest meaning is to stay with that story. Though we do not know its final outcome, nor even what will come tomorrow, there is nonetheless a great joy and a peace in knowing we are with our story.
This is our soul’s journey. This is what it means to “live one’s soul".
This is what life is all about.
Al Kreinheder
What is your Soul Story?
In one of my favorite movies Waking the Dead there is a heartbreaking scene where the lovers are reunited for only a short time. Their lives have taken such very different paths that it seems impossible to be together.
“Why can’t we be together?” he asks.
“I think I know” she says, “so few people get what they want and the ones that do aren’t really the lucky ones anyway.”
“Who are?”
“The ones who do what they’re meant to do.”
Our Soul Story is doing what we are meant to do and sometimes as this heartbreaking moment reveals it’s painfully hard. Not always because it needs to be but simply because of all the resistances we have built up against living our story. Sometimes love stories end with heartache simply to wake us up; to initiate us into a higher consciousness. Sometimes the only difference between a tragic love story and a romantic comedy is in the romantic comedy the ego has let go of its preconceived idea of how one’s life should unfold. An open heart is the only way to navigate our way through the unknown terrain of our heart’s desire, and sometimes the only way to open our hearts is to, “…be willing to give up the life we’ve planned,” as the famous mythologist Joseph Campbell so eloquently says, “so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
Caterpillars become gossamer butterflies. Acorns become mighty oaks. Our Soul Story is contained in our own invisible DNA that is constantly guiding us towards wholeness. Like caterpillars wrapped in gooey cocoons we can’t always feel the invisible push of our Soul’s Story unless we take the time to listen. When we allow ourselves to be transformed by understanding that the fairy tale world, the Once Upon a Time World is right here now just waiting for us to step inside ourselves for even only a brief moment then we can begin to understand that nothing on the outside can ever really transform us.
Sometimes we fear our destinies because our egos tell our hearts that our destiny is not as fabulous as what it has in store for us. There is a powerful moment in the movie A Field of Dreams when Ray whose farm has been magically transformed into a Major League playing field travels to find a Dr Archibald Graham. Moonlight Graham, as he was called, 50 years ago almost had his moment in the big league, and while Dr. Graham still wishes he could have had that chance he turns down Ray’s offer to make his wish come true down.
“Fifty years ago, for five minutes, you came this close. It would kill some men to get that close to their dream and not touch it. They’d consider it a tragedy.”
“Son, if I’d only gotten to be doctor for five minutes…now that would have been a tragedy.”
Ray and Terence on their way back home to the farm pick up a hitchhiker who is now magically a young Moonlight Graham and who for a moment gets to live his dream of being a Major League ballplayer. But when he steps out of the magical field to save Ray’s daughter from choking on a hot dog his youth and his dream are gone once again. It’s a painful moment, but powerful because Dr Graham is one of the “lucky ones” who always understood his Soul Story was to be a healer. And as Terence so wisely says to Ray in an earlier scene we understand what a difference it has made…
“I don’t know why in the hell we were supposed to come here,” Ray says to Terence, confused as to why they were sent to find Dr Graham if they couldn’t help make his wish a reality.
“Maybe,” Terence says, “it’s to find out if one inning can change the world.”
“Think it did?”
“It did for these people. If he’d gotten a hit, he might have stayed in baseball.”
We begin living our Soul Story when we are finally ready to surrender to where the Universe wants us to go. Allowing our lives to unfold without trying to control the outcome can be terrifying and scary, glorious and beautiful and yet the only way to discover our soul’s true calling…
