The soul is a vastly beautiful energy that surrounds and permeates our body, mind, and heart. It is the droplet of Universal Spirit that is uniquely each of us as each individual human being exists. If you were reading the story of it all, you couldn't put the book down. And what an incredible story it is... just look down at the complexity of one of your hands. Unbelievably amazing! Think of your eyes, your liver, your brain... how it all works in a flow of atomic synchronicity.

Taking it all for granted is the poison of its demise. The soul wants to shake us up and help us to remember that we really don't know how we got here; we don't know what we are doing here, or at the end, where we are going. There is a grand mystery operating in our lives if we want to pay attention and not keep falling asleep.

We want to be happy. We don't want to feel negativity. And so we learn to focus on positive thoughts. We set our intentions and then sit back. We think we know "The Secret." The soul, however, is waiting for us to experience all of life. Whatever experience it takes to awaken us to greater consciousness is grist for the soul's mill. If we are only willing to mine the positive experiences and feelings, we have struck shallow dirt.

We are missing out on soul growth. The soul says, "come on, feel the full experience of living. What are you being asked to learn in each and every experience?" Negativity as such is just basic fear which is the absence of light. If we allow it to be in compassion, follow its course, then it transforms itself into a higher vibration of love.

If we are only willing to focus on the positive and turn our heads from negativity, then we run the risk of not exploring our soul work. Soul work means that we are clearing the fears that block us from living in our higher truth which is love, acceptance and compassion. It is the inner work that moves us into the empowered position for the process of co-creation. We have to "be" that which we desire and intend. Just uttering positive words with feeling will not create manifestation. Co-creation evolves from the deep translucence of our "being," not our doing.

In order to avoid stress related to the global economic situation, some people prefer not to think or talk about the distress. They believe that acknowledging the situation is entertaining fearful thoughts. Maintaining positive thoughts will bring positive results. That is true but only if we combine it with doing our own internal work of transforming fear to love.

Suppression of fear (and we all have a measure of it these days as we realize how out of control the global economic situation might be) is not helpful for our emotional health. Some seem to think that if you allow fear as an emotion, then you will generate more fear. But what we resist does persist. Allowing the emotion to be, allows it to be transformed. The fear moves into acceptance. An empowerment comes into being that moves us towards the intuited appropriate action to take, especially in times of crisis.

So how do we accomplish this soul work? In everyday life events the soul's vibration shows itself to us. If the state of the economy distresses us, it is helpful to remember that what is exterior to ourselves is but a mirror of our internal process. We might ask ourselves what old patterns and habits exist in us that smack of greed, fear of abundance, elitism. When do our actions suggest that we have forgotten that we are all connected as one soul? How can we each be more generous in deed or word to ourselves and to another; how can we learn to live more in gratitude for all of life whether we agree with parts of it or not? How can we expand our hearts beyond what we know now and be more loving and accepting?

Through the mystery of our daily emotional responses or reactions to our relationships and circumstances we can observe our soul knocking on our hearts to expand in greater love. We can observe when we react in fear and instead of withdrawing from that fear; we can move forward to ask what the soul wants us to learn from this experience that we deem to be negative. By doing so, we connect with our soul in knowing how to align our assets, financial and otherwise, with our state of being as we remember who we really are. We are love and we are safe. The more we heal our fears, the more we realize who we really are.

A problem-free life is not the aspiration of the soul. We wonder why we suffer but doesn't suffering serve a greater purpose when it focuses our attention on that which we do not want to experience? When we observe our lives we can see that our greatest growth occurs when we have stumbled and fallen. We can feel the soul vibrating in every relationship and event that we encounter in our daily lives simply because it provides the opportunity to bring us into this higher consciousness of love and connection.

This transformation that is upon all of us on Earth now is an opportunity for us to remember who we truly are. It was not created to be easy; it was created to challenge us to release old thinking and old patterns that no longer serve us. We can move through this shift into a new vibration by bringing our fears and "negative thinking" into greater awareness. We can hold the fears with compassion and lift them up to the light of love to be released. We can love ourselves for who we are and know that at our core we are the light of love.

We can learn from each other but we walk individually into the sea of universal consciousness. When we arrive we meet ourselves and we remember that we are already swimming in that pool of self-realization; we laugh with that knowing in our hearts. The enigma of the soul is continually drawing us, urging us to learn to expand beyond fear into a greater and deeper love.

Copyright © 2008 Andrea Avari, Ph.D.
Andrea is the author of "A Hit of Heaven: a soul's journey through illusion." She is currently finishing her second book on creating soulful relationships. Andrea will be presenting workshops in 2009. If you would like to be included in her mailing list for upcoming events, please (email her. Her website is AndreaAvari.com and additional articles are available at her blog.

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