What is the soul?

No back to basics series on energy healing would be complete without the soul. But unlike everything else in this series, the soul is genuinely, completely spiritual — so all I can offer here are the ideas that have helped me on my own healing and spiritual journey. In a lot of ways, energy healing invites us to become comfortable with that edge, that unknown — to find our way in the dark, to create our realities by clearing our subconscious and unconscious, and having a look at how we truly operate. But when it comes to the soul, and our journey beyond this body, beyond this life, nobody really knows. And that's actually wonderful. Here are three perspectives on soul that have helped me.

One: my soul wants to learn and grow

It helps to imagine there's an intention in me, in all of us, that wants to explore this experience of being in a body — that wants to learn, wants to grow, wants to move dense energy into a lighter, freer form. That impulse to learn and grow can be at odds with what's comfortable. If you fully listen to your soul, I can guarantee you're not going to have a very comfortable life. And that's great — because we're here to transcend our egos, to really explore, and to grow into all that we can be.

Two: the soul has a history beyond this body

This is genuinely an imagination — nobody can know it for certain — but it's mine, and it's helped me. I picture that in the realm of undifferentiated energy, everything operates from a place of love, and as that energy chooses to incarnate into this human experience, it takes on something personal — an energetic quality that goes beyond this one physical life. This is where your soul might have had other lifetimes, a curriculum it wanted to learn, an intention for incarnating here. Different religions have different theories for how this works, and I think it's beautiful that we have different stories, and that we simply don't know. For me, I like to imagine my soul has themes it's been learning across time. Looking at my life so far, it might have been designed to let me explore self-expression, shining bright, and the balance between autonomy and intimacy — themes that may go beyond just this one lifetime.

Three: my soul chose this body, this time, this place

My soul chose a female body, in a time when technology has exploded, in a time when women are largely seen as equal to men — different, but equal — in a very liberal country, the Netherlands, and then moved to Canada, also very liberal. The changes in culture, the changes in language, have all been real challenges for me. I like to imagine my soul set up exactly the right challenges, because as humans, we learn from challenges. For me, that meant learning to express myself, to shine bright, to stand up tall and say what I stand for, what I believe, how my mind works — and it let me place some of the harder relationships I've experienced into a context where they were the perfect school, the perfect design, the perfect portal for what I came here to learn.

The question I keep coming back to

As you say yes to these lessons, as you let your soul guide the curriculum, something in it starts to feel like magic — you get closer to your purpose, and the closer you get to your purpose, the bigger the game you get to play. The question that's been the most helpful for me, and that I come back to again and again, is simple: say your soul chose this experience — what is it the perfect lesson for?

A recent example

The challenge of making this whole 25-video series has been a perfect lesson for me — to work well with my husband, to let him support me, to get precise with my words, to stand up and say things publicly that I'd been cagey about for years. That shift in perspective makes it so much easier for your soul and your ego to work together.

Say your soul chose this experience — what is it the perfect lesson for?