Getting Spiritually Honest

Who are you?

What’s your soul story? Watterson continues: In my experience, there is a story the ego is telling me about who I am and what is happening in my life that is filled with fear. And the voice of fear is usually loud and very close – right all up in my face. And then there’s another story that the voice of the soul is ceaselessly recounting to me beneath all that surface noise. These two stories are told in two different kinds of time: chronos and kairos. Chronos, or chronological time, is linear, sequential “clock time”: this is where the ego lives and thrives. We often want time to unfold in this way, one event following the next and arriving just when we want it to arrive. Kairos, on the other hand, is non-linear, sacred time – the right or opportune moment. Kairos is the sacred time needed for us to meet with not only what fulfills us but also what fulfills a need in the world. Kairos works on our soul’s timing, not the laminated timetable the ego has set up for our life. Kairos–time allows things to unfold naturally; nothing is forced or contrived into being out of fear. If we can let go of the stories that have been defining and confining us in linear time, we can align our identity with a deeper truth – with the soul-story beneath the surface drama of who we are according to the ego. We can dive beneath the wreck we fear we’ve made of our lives to hear the story our soul is living out. Listening to my soul-story allows me to release the idea that life is something happening to me. I lift a veil between me and the Divine every time I remember the truth that I am the author of my own narrative. I am empowered to choose which story I am going to live.

Who are you?

Claim your sacred body. For me, it was only by winning back my body – by daring to really be present to all I was feeling in my body – that I finally began to connect to what is eternal in me. The body then wasn’t an obstacle but, in a way, the goal. I had to find a way to love the places that are darkest and most human in me. I had to find a way to redeem what I still felt was unworthy, the parts of me that my love had yet to reach. After a revelation at a sacred site of the Black Madonna in Europe, I realized that being spiritual for me is intricately tied to my view of the body. Rather than transcending the body, denying or ignoring it, I found that I had to accept the body as sacred. Only then could I hear the voice of unfaltering love inside me – the voice of my soul. I lift a veil between me and the Divine every time I claim my body as sacred by daring to come home to it again and again. Being at home in my body means having the courage to never discount or abandon the truth of my physical experience. It means listening when my body is speaking and having the audacity to voice the wisdom it contains.

Who are you?

What is your soul voice? In those moments when fear eclipses what we want most for our lives, it is crucial to be able to connect to the still, calm voice that has a tight grasp on our greatest potential. It takes discipline, spiritual sweat, and divine pluck to connect to the unassuming voice of the truth inside us. It takes audacity and courage. This is what the practice of loving ourselves looks like: we do whatever we have to do to hear our soul’s voice and believe it. We believe it so much that we make our life about that encounter. Then no matter what comes our way, no matter what bliss or hardships, we have the love of our life with us every step of the way. The veil that lifts is this: there will never be a voice outside of you that is wiser than your soul-voice or holds more authority over what is best for you. You need guidance and support not to follow someone else’s truth but to remain loyal to your own. The voice that will guide you to your highest potential is within you.

Who are you?

What is your divine worth? This is the most important truth I have to tell you: You do not deserve love. We are worthy of love just as we are. And we are worthy of what our heart desires. The volcanic rock our worth rests on is the truth that we don’t earn love. A veil lifts with the understanding that we are worthy of love simply because we exist. Worth isn’t earned, it’s claimed. This is what we have to recognize: our divine worth as human beings not for what we can do or say or provide or heal but just for the truth of it. We can give up trying to prove our worth. That’s a burden we were never meant to carry. We don’t become worthy of love at some point; love is a gift that comes with being. We recognize that it was always ours to claim.

Who are you?

Your inner mystic. Call it what you want – the Superman Complex, the Peter Parker syndrome – hiding a huge aspect of who we are, of being one thing yet pretending to be another, is a divided life. Keeping our divinity in the dark is taxing. I think we’re done. It’s too much of a hassle. It’s time to stop investing in the limits we’ve identified with and start believing in the impossible, the ineffable, that lives in and through us all the time. It’s time to come out of the spiritual closet. We need to let our own mystery breathe. It’s time to unlock the chains we have placed on the most magical aspect of our being and let our inner mystic go for a walk around the neighborhood in broad daylight. The mystical is not elusive, or exclusive to the spiritual elite. We all have encounters with the sacred. We just have to cultivate the eye that can perceive them. We have to see what’s already here, interwoven with what we claim is human and mundane. We have to take inventory of the magic that conspires to love us in and through our ordinary lives. I think that so many of us still fear being fully present in the body because it means owning just how powerful we are. The responsibility is overwhelming. We then enter a place where we are held accountable for what we really know. We have an immediate sense of what is true for us. Real courage is simply surrendering to that. Knowing the self means knowing the soul. Lift the veil that shrouds your strangeness. Dare to see how powerful you are, and that true power comes from within.

Who are you?

What is your soul work? Finding soul-work can feel like walking forward while wearing a blindfold. The key is to trust what your soul-voice is telling you. It plays a sacred game of hot and cold as you get nearer or farther from the work that will truly reveal you. Soul-work is not something you can identify from your ego’s sense of being impressed. An increased sense of feeling important is a distraction, a red flag. All that matters is that your work humbles you and reminds you that the evolution of the soul is never-ending. All that matters is that you feel that incomparable exalted state of knowing that you have done what you came here to do. Soul-work is only inwardly recognizable. It is the work that expands your capacity to love. It is the work that asks you to become more love in order to complete it. The funny part is that it’s all so simple. What we are meant to do is who we are. Nothing more. Our soul-work is merely an extension of our own essence. It just takes such an effort for so many of us to get that naked. To simply let what we do be who we are. This is the veil that lifts: our soul-work in the world is not ultimately about what it earns us in dollars or brand names or quantifiable things. Rather, it allows us to feel the invaluable sense of happiness and fulfillment that comes from knowing we have made our own unique contribution to the world. We receive the most when we give the love we are here to share. Soul-work is not something we have to go out and search for; it’s getting the sacred chance to reveal exactly who we are. Love.

Who are you?

Your spiritual community. If you tell me your story – that you long for love; that you’re numb and lonely; that you lost your child; that you ache to have a child; that you’ve been abused; that you dream; that you cry at night wondering where the brave, little tom-girl is hiding; that you know there’s another way to live; that you know there’s more – my soul will root for you and want your freedom even more than my own. No matter how briefly I know or encounter you, if you are getting spiritually naked and showing the real you, I will want every possible blessing to come your way. The truth is, we want to love and support each other no matter our differences. The truth is, we know deep down that we’re on the same sacred team and that our work right now is to love each other into wearing our wings. Why is it so important to have spiritual community? You can never really forget who you are or what you came here to do if a dedicated group of ladyloves or soul-friends who are with you on your pilgrimage, to unveil your own love to you. The final veil lifts as the desire for all of us to remember the language of the heart, a language of the soul embodied. We can release the weight of thinking we are on our own. Your soul is with you, is you . . . you are not separate from it. And we are not separate from each other. We are all connected. We are never alone.

Who are you?

"These seven truths of empowerment, embodiment, inner wisdom, self worth, true power, meaningful work and spiritual community helped me to lift the veils of fear and self doubt to reveal my own spiritual voice,” says Watterson. “I have found what I set out to know: a direct experience of the Divine. Whether I’m seated before a lighted candle, calm and serene in my apartment, or I’m plowing my way through a crowded street in downtown New York City, I can feel and know what is divine, what is true for me. And this is what I want most for you; to hear and feel the limitless love of the truth inside you, to know and trust the voice of your own soul so much that you let it guide you from within."