Let’s play a listening game! Pause for a minute and pay attention to your immediate surroundings. Generally, the most distinctive and loudest clicks and roars dominate. Ignore the most noticeable noises and listen more deeply to find quiet and subtle sounds. Expand your awareness and hear the sounds coming from a greater distance. After a few moments, contract your focus and concentrate on the gurgling and rustling within your body.
The listening game provides a framework for exploring how to hear the soul. At the same time, we must nuance the comparison. Rather than ignoring distracting thoughts, we want to eliminate them. Before expanding and contracting our awareness, we must quiet the mind. In addition, we need to we raise our vibrational level to be on the same wavelength as the soul.
This post describes three practices that help you hear the voice of your soul. These include:
- a tool to eliminate, from your awareness, external voices that you have internalized
- activities that quiet the mind and
- a way to raise your vibrational level
Eliminating External Voices
Jim Self, the founder of Mastering Alchemy, developed an excellent tool for removing the thoughts of others that dominate your inner hearing. (For an expanded discussion of this concept, go to the May 2018 post, “Whose Voice Is That? Identifying the Source of Your Thoughts.”) Self calls this process “Exploding Roses.” [i] You begin by removing the energy of the thought. Then you clear-out the energetics associated with the thought, including the energy of the person who introduced the thought into your consciousness. Finally, you call back your energy. The rose tool consists of the following steps:
- Picture a rose 14” in front of your third eye (the point between your eyebrows)
- Direct the rose to draw out of your energy field the thought that does not belong to you
- Explode the rose like fireworks
- Put up another rose 14” in front of your third eye
- Direct the rose to draw out of your energy field the energy of the person associated with that thought
- Explode the rose
- Repeat the process of putting up a rose, drawing out energy related to the thought and then exploding the rose. For example, you might direct the rose to draw out the color, sound and/or texture associated with the thought.
- Put up a rose, direct it to clean-out the place in your body where you feel the energy of that thought/person
- Explode the rose
- Put up another rose
- Direct the rose to draw your energy back from the energy field of the person associated with the thought you have just removed
- Explode the rose
- Take a deep breath and notice how you feel
When I explode roses, my inner space expands. Greater spaciousness allows more room for the soul to enter my consciousness. I also experience quiet, clarity and peace. Quiet is needed to hear the soft whispers of the soul. Clarity and peace are high-frequency states that align with the dimension of the soul.
Quieting the Mind
In addition to removing external voices, we must quiet the mind. When the mind is quiet, we can more easily expand and contract our awareness. Both seemingly opposite perspectives provide access to your deepest essence because the soul dwells in the realm of Oneness/Wholeness where both poles of duality co-exist. There are numerous ways to quiet the mind and generally people find that some methods are more effective than others. Three of my favorite approaches are engaging in creative endeavors, spending time in nature and practicing mindfulness.
Creative endeavors quiet the mind as they place us in the terrain of the unknown. We enter a venue where the mind’s knowledge and experience are limitations rather than assets. Creative interests include cooking, building models, writing, painting, photography, sculpting, performing arts such as dance, music and theater and many more pursuits that move us beyond the mind’s expertise.
Another way to quiet the mind is by spending time in nature. This approach includes gardening, hiking, skiing, fishing, camping and other outdoor activities that engage the body along with the senses. Being in nature has the added benefits of expanding our awareness and grounding our energy.
Practicing mindfulness is the most well-researched of the approaches to quieting the mind. This practice involves “focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations.” [ii] One way to develop or expand mindful awareness is to link your practice to an action that is already part of your day. For example, as you brush your teeth, purposely focus on the sensations of the toothbrush on your teeth and gums or consciously notice the taste of the toothpaste. Acknowledge and accept the feelings and thoughts that arise and gently return your awareness to your physical sensations. Once that habit is well-established, add another mindful moment to your day. Over time, the mind becomes more willing to stay in the present moment rather than flitting to the past and the future. When the mind stands still in present time, it grows quiet.
Activating and Maintaining High-Frequency Emotions
Finally, when we want to access the realm of soul, we must activate and maintain high-frequency emotions because soul consciousness is incompatible with low-frequency feelings such as anger, frustration, guilt, boredom, disappointment, worry, irritation, etc. High-frequency emotions include peacefulness, love, gratitude and joy, to name just a few. Consciously activating such feelings is like building a muscle that grows stronger with regular use. Returning to the example of brushing your teeth, as you pay attention to the physical sensations, you might also recall something that makes your life more wonderful and allow appreciation to flow through your entire being, raising your vibration as you quiet your mind.
Once you have cleared away distractions, quieted your mind and raised your vibration, invite your soul to reveal itself. Then pay attention! Even sitting in companionable silence strengthens the relationship between you and your soul. Gradually you will hear your soul speak.
The HeartMath Institute has developed a technique to activate a high-vibrational state called heart/mind coherence. For more information go to the HeartMath website at https://www.heartmath.com/quick-coherence-technique/.
[i] Self, J. (2017). Exploding Roses. A Course in Mastering Alchemy: Level One. Mastering Alchemy website. https://masteringalchemy.com/content/fundamental-tools-10-exploding-roses
[ii] Google. (n.d.). Mindfulness. https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+mindfulness&oq=what+is+mindfulness&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.4880j1j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Listen photo by karith on Flickr.com
Catherine Grytting's Weblog 
Cathy Thank you for the rose exercise. I have been using breathing techniques and physical exercise to deal with some dark forces in my community.Clearly more fortifications are in order. Carey🌺
Sent from my Sprint Samsung Galaxy S8+.
This is so interesting, Catherine. I especially like what you say about how low-frequency emotions have to be weeded out to have access to that Soul realm. So true in my experience. I’ve noticed you haven’t blogged in a while. Hope all is well.