Marrow by Elizabeth Lesser Page B

without apology exactly who you are.
    I live for those moments. I’ve gone to great lengths to experience them—to make contact with my true self. I don’t necessarily recommend everything I’ve done. I’ve tried some weird therapies and chancy adventures—all-night ceremonies, dubious teachers, exotic healings. All to find what isn’t even lost. All to uncover what is barely beneath the surface. All to reveal what seems uniquely mine, and yet is part of the same fabric of what is uniquely yours.
    And why, you may ask, spend precious time searching for something as elusive as a soul? Why not leave it where it hides—near to us, yet so difficult to find and sometimes dangerous to follow? There are two reasons: First, you search for the soul for the sake of your own life—for purpose, for meaning, for strength, for freedom and peace and love. Second, you search for your soul for the sake of everyone else. You do it for your family, your children, your coworkers, the whole world. The world needs your originality, your ideas, your humor, your creations. All of this is alive and well within you, hiding somewhere near you, beneath the layers, down, down, down, into the soul.

WHAT IS THE SOUL?
    IT’S ONE THING TO WRITE about the marrow of the bones—there’s a lot of research out there to back me up when I’m describing bones and blood and stem cells. It’s another thing to write about the marrow of the self. The marrow of the bones is home to your stem cells. The marrow of yourself is home to your soul, although there are no clinical studies I can quote to prove this. There are traditions and ceremonies, poetry and music, mystical conjecture and luminous experience. But any discussion of the soul is subjective. I offer you here my own definition. It may differ from yours. That’s OK with me. I have no argument with multiple ways of defining the soul or spirit or God. The more the merrier.
    What is the soul? In the deepest part of each of us, we are one and the same. My essence and your essence are the same liquid light, poured from the great ocean into the small vessel of an individual body with its singular personality and purpose. Words alone cannot describe our essential, eternal, spiritual nature. But words are what I have. Musicians can sing of the spirit, and artists can paint its incandescence. I only have words. I use the word “soul” to describe how eternal essence is bent like refracted light through the prism of our human nature. Soul is essence filtered through genetics and gender and ancestry and upbringing and the times in which we live.
    Your soul here on earth is uniquely yours. It is different from my soul, although eventually all streams lead back to the great ocean. Some people call that ocean God, some call it spirit, some don’t call it anything—they just experience it as a vastness, or a question mark, or an abiding sense of love and light. In the vastness our distinctions and differences melt into Oneness, but while we are here, we are meant to express the uniqueness of who we are, each one of us a snowflake fallen from the essence down to earth. We are meant to take pleasure in our individuality, even as we remember our essential unity. The soul is the bridge between pure essence and human individuality.
    When the soul bridge is in place, we can go back and forth between essence and ego, unity and diversity. We remember how we all come from the same place, but have different purposes while here. We realize how spectacular a chance we’ve been given to bring heaven to earth. When our egos get puffed up, or when our rational minds dominate, or our emotions and senses overwhelm, the soul retreats. The bridge draws up; we are stranded in separateness.
    But the soul can be wooed back. Sit tall and still. Close your eyes, drop your shoulders, soften your belly. Breathe. Now, tell your overwrought mind, shhhhh. Breathe, shhhhh, wait.