Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within

As Rumi told God: “Nibble at me, don't gulp me down.”

Or as Ghandi more simply put it: Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.

Read this list of permissions. Check the ones that make you want to pump your fist and shout, “Yes, I do!” Skip the ones that make your eyes go wide or your stomach jump. As you read, you may think of some new ones. Add them at the end.

Category 1: Soul Questions that Support BECOMING

What do I need to let go of right now? What do I need to release? What am I finished with? What is finished with me? What will happen when I let go? Am I afraid to let go? Why am I afraid? What's holding me back?

grace before you eat. (If you don't have it, get a copy of A Grateful Heart: Daily Blessings for the Evening Meal from Buddha to the Beatles, edited by M. J. Ryan, and choose a grace from it every night.)

Rainer Maria Rilke said this most eloquently in Letters to a Young Poet, which he wrote in 1929 to encourage a nineteen-year old writer: I would like to beg you, dear sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very fo

“Why?” is another tough question to stop asking because it's the one thing we all want to know. Why didn't I get the job? Why did the cancer come back? Why am I broke? Why did he do that to me? Why did she leave me? Why is this happening to me? All of these questions can be distilled down to “Why me?” And “why me” isn't very helpful. It's really a

rush it would be a form of self-bullying, a way of saying I'm not worth it. It's saying, “Let me rush through what I know is important so I can get to what I've accepted as being important.”