An invitation to the soul journey
‘I have been dissolved and shaken, Worn other people’s faces…’
May Sarton
These two lines from May Sarton’s poem ‘Now I become myself’ paint a powerful picture of what happens to many of us as we make our way through the first half of life. We do not arrive on this earth with a perfect, fully formed soul, but are born with what Parker Palmer calls ‘a seed of selfhood’ within us. And it is in those early years of life that this seed begins to unfold. We are already engaged in the lifelong journey of birthing our soul.
It is not long, however, before we discover that the world is not always hospitable to the soul. Gradually, we become aware that those around us do not always see us as we see ourselves. They do not always value what we value. They do not always approve of how we are in the world. What feels good or natural to us may seem unacceptable to them. And sometimes, when we behave in ways that they do not like, their acceptance and love are withdrawn. We see it in their facial expression. We hear it in their tone of voice, in their words. We sense it in their body language and in their actions.
And so we come to believe that in order to be seen as having worth as a person, we have to meet certain conditions, conditions that are imposed on us by others. The psychologist Carl Rogers calls them ‘conditions of worth’. In our search for loving acceptance, we learn to be the self that others want, expect or need us to be, the self that others think we must or should be. Overwhelmed by the power of their voices, our emerging self is chipped away, little by little. And our still vulnerable soul retreats into the shadows of our being. We begin to wear other people’s faces instead of our own. It happens in our families, in our schools, in our churches and in our societies. Our wings are clipped before we have time to discover that we can fly.
It is at this point that another self is being born. Some call it ‘the ego’, ‘the false self’ or ‘the conditioned self’. I prefer to call it the survival self. For it is in a sense the self we create in order to ensure our survival. It is the mask we wear in a sometimes hostile world to secure the acceptance and love of those around us. In a sense, we become two selves – an inner self known only to ourselves and an outer self that is visible to others. Slowly but surely, we start to build a wall between our inner and outer lives. We begin to lose touch with who we are at the very core of our being. And in so doing, we find ourselves living 'a divided life' as Palmer puts it.
The tragedy is that, if this deeper self stays hidden behind the wall for too long, we may lose sight of it altogether. We may come to forget that we are wearing a mask, that the person we allow others to see is not the person we really are. We may even forget that there is a wall. In the effort to survive, we become who we are not and fail to become all that we have the potential to be. We sacrifice the life that is ours to live for the life that others choose for us. This is what it is to live a soulless life and it can cost us dear to do so.
There is, however, a way back from this loss of soul, no matter how profound it is. For we can break down the dividing wall that we have built within us, no matter how high it is or how long it has been there. We can reclaim what has been lost along the way, no matter how how many years it takes. We can let go of living life on the surface and learn to plumb its depths, no matter how fearful of doing so we may be. And it is when the pain of the loss of soul becomes more than we can bear, when it becomes greater than the fear that holds the wall in place, that the soul journey begins in earnest.
Accepting the invitation
‘And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?’
Jalāl ad-Dīn Rumi
When I have been wrestling with what troubles me, I am often aware that at the heart of my struggle is a deep longing to become more fully myself, to discover and live out the truth of who I am. It is a longing which has grown over the years to the point that it has become an imperative, a fundamental need that will not be denied. It is a yearning to reach within myself to what lies buried and forgotten, to recover what was lost, to release what has not yet come to be. It is at heart a deep-rooted desire to come home to my self, to live ‘the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ of who I am.
Rumi was a 13th century Sufi mystic and poet and it is extraordinary that his voice still reaches out to us so powerfully after so many years. My hope is that when his words whisper their invitation in your ear, you will listen. Perhaps you will not heed them the first time the whisper comes or even the first few times, for most of us need to hear it many times before the song of soul seeps into our being. When it does come and it will, my hope is that you will accept its invitation, that you will take the road less travelled that awaits you. For there is nothing more important, more freeing and more joyful than the search for the song you are meant to sing. And it will make all the difference.
Bibliography
Parker Palmer (2004) A Hidden Wholeness: The journey towards an undivided life. Jossey-Bass
May Sarton (1933) Collected poems 1930 - 1993. W. W. Norton & Co. From the poem
'Santos: New Mexico'
©Copyright Kaitlyn Steele 2026
Kaitlyn Steele
Beautifully written Kaitlyn. What you write stirred my soul reassuring me that my current experience of the dark nights of the soul will eventually lead to enlightenment, to being my true Self. 🙏🏽