The idea of the soul of unborn awareness may be repetitive. Because in my understanding, the soul is unborn awareness. I realize there’s some difference here from traditional Buddhist understanding. Buddhists don’t tend to use the language of soul or Self. But for me, the soul is absolutely central to my work as a spiritual director. So today, I want to talk about the slogan “Examine the nature of unborn awareness” through this lens. Take it or leave it, beloveds. There’s room on the road for all of us.

What is the soul? When I say soul, I mean the part of you that exists underneath all of the personality and projection and emotional reactions we often think define us. There’s something bigger under all that. And this something we’re born with connects us to the Divine, the Great Knowing, the Fullness of Being, whatever you want to call it. And our connection to this is everything.

Our problem, to put it broadly, is we forget who we are. We also misunderstand who we are, which is slightly different but the same basic problem. Both fray our connection to soul, to unborn awareness. Sometimes when we feel a yearning for reconnection, we go about it the wrong way because we seek it outside of ourselves. We try adding things. Really, we need to take things away. We need to figure out what keeps taking us away from the soul that already resides right at our center.

I can’t tell you what takes you away. It’s different for every person, and it often differs each day, though most of us have some pretty regular offenders. But once you start to notice when you move away from soul, from Self, from unborn awareness, you can get clues about how to get back home.

For monotheistic faiths, I find what moves us away is often a perceived disconnection to Divine Love. We think we don’t deserve it or have to earn it or have to go find it or maybe lost it. But in reality, Divine Love (what I and others call Original Blessing) is always right there. It never leaves, even though we do. But the good news is we can come back home. We can retrace our steps and get there anytime.

How do we know when we’ve tapped into soul? What does resting in Divine Love or unborn awareness feel like? Of course, it’s impossible to describe that experience but some words are: calming, harmonious, light, a deep sense of abiding Presence, a feeling that everything is one and everything is going to be okay. It’s the feeling we have- the way of being we inhabit- when we drop all the crazy stuff we do. We’re not worrying or bragging or reacting or freaking out. We just…are. And we feel complete.

And that’s because we are complete. We just forget. We lose connection to parts of ourselves, to our wholeness.

So, for me, to examine the nature of unborn awareness means to take time resting in this holy reconnection. It means just sitting in silence and letting the wholeness find us again.

Can you find some quiet moments to breathe deep and reconnect to your soul today?

This post belongs to the series “Living the Lojong,” where we’re walking through the 59 Buddhist lojong slogans. You can read my introductory post on “Examine the nature of unborn awareness” here.