What does Your Soul have to Tell You?

The title would almost seem to imply that we are sitting having a conversation with our soul which is not what I mean.  However, if the soul is God within, this at minimum suggests a different path to hearing God.  Sometimes I have the experience, described elsewhere, of sitting on the banks of the River of God.  This is the experience for me of listening to my soul and its connection to eternal time, and all the rushes of humanity thru all time, humans grasping for survival, growth and joy.  It is a profound experience when I can sit on the banks of the River of God.  Usually I am dropped into this by some sort of reflective experience that connects me to a sense of the eternal human struggle: big crowds in timeless cities, some reminder of the various ways humans have gone about some basic task, or the timelessness of human rituals of love, childrearing, and death, or some reminder of the universality of human traits/behaviors across cultures and eras.  Sometimes I can get on the banks of the River of God from simply sitting quietly and alone somewhere where I can hear the indistinguishable sound of human voices at a distance: not close enough to make out words or even emotion, but just the babbling brook of human existence.

And if one believes in reincarnation the soul also holds the life wisdom of many lifetimes and so therefore holds the greatest truth we know.  Those who believe in reincarnation will say that some of the things the soul remembers are things like how we died, accounting for "irrational" fears of heights, water, things around the neck, etc.   But for the soul to serve us well it must remember more than what it fears, it must also bring us towards other familiar souls with a willingness to do it differently, to do it better than last time.   And it must bring us to this life with a goal and a purpose.  

If you believe in karma not as punishment for past failings, but as an attempt to live more wisely than last time, then the soul can come with a goal.  Examples of this: I remember dying in two different war;, I came to this life not only born to two pacifists (too guarantee my own intended path?) but with a determination to work for peace and disarmament.  I know someone who says she knew as a child she would be in a life threatening car accident...which she indeed was suffering a severe life altering brain injury.   She says she came to learn about power, and about the not-wielding of external worldly power but rather of self-directed power.  Another person I know has been chronically ill for several decades; she has struggled against not being able to "do" things in the world but finally realized she's been left with one always present endeavor: the focus on her spiritual life.   She realized with some surprise that if she had come to focus on the spiritual life she could not have set the table more perfectly.

If you think also of what it is like when you act in accord with your conscience, when you take action for what you deeply within you know to be right, even at great cost....this I think is also listening to what our soul has to tell us.  I have known many people in my life who were called to acts of civil disobedience, as have I been.  Quite commonly is the holding of the question: should I do this? and some spirit filled experience of answer - some inward prompting which will not quit.   This I think is the soul speaking to us, of the Truth it knows, as well as about our life's purpose.  This is an aligning of our outer actions with our inner knowing.