A Buddhist nun asked my meditation group to describe our souls. We sat looking at her, a sea of blank faces struggling with the concept. Then she asked us to imagine that we, as human beings, were laid out in parts—the arms, legs, toes, noses, and so on. Was that "us," she asked? We could easily describe and see a leg, an arm, skin, teeth. So, was that a human being? Was that what made me different from you? Well, on one level, yes. My eyes and my legs are different from yours. But what about the bad jokes I tell? Where do those come from? What about the twinkle in your eye? What is that all about?

We squirmed. What is that all about? Where does it come from? What is this soul, anyway? It’s so much easier to live in the concrete world where we can categorize, label, describe, and be certain. But we all know the soul is there. If we took the soul out, we’d be lifeless...no twinkles, no tears, no bad jokes,...just legs, arms, and noses, covered with a new outfit, maybe a briefcase in hand, maybe beautiful hair, maybe fingers on the wheel of a red sports car. But no twinkles.

Once I had a partner complain to me that I never danced with him. He didn’t mean literally dance—he meant stop and listen to his soul. It was a plead to go deeper, past his skin and into his essence, past talking about what he did for a living, what he thought about the latest events in the news, past all that, and into the music of his heart.

Music of the heart is Simple Loving—connecting two people at the mysterious level underneath the outfit, briefcase, car, legs, and hair. Connecting at the poetry—the drama and magnificence—of each of us. It is not about the dulling of our existence or leading lives of quiet desperation, as Henry David Thoreau put it. If the soul is nourished, it takes us beyond the torpid ache that continually whispers, "There must be more than this." It reaches for the absolute height of our splendor, yet also allows for the depths of our despair. It is not shallow. It is both the mystery and the madness.

Simple Loving calls us to unearth the soul that we have masked with our outward lives. We’ve covered our souls with jobs, new cars, more clothes, tools, gadgets, and toys. Many of us have become so adept at masking that we’re hardly aware of our souls being in there: in a blur we go to college, get a job, earn money, rise up the corporate ladder, get married, buy a house, raise families, watch TV. Day after day we’re out of the house at seven-thirty, going to a meeting at three, convening for drinks at five, skiing on Saturday, fixing the car on Tuesday, meeting the deadline at the end of the week, taking the kids to soccer after school, reveling in the promotion, shopping to allay our tears, eating to feel nourished. Who’s in there? No time to think about it. As James Hillman, author of "The Soul’s Code," says, "We’re living in the shallows of meaninglessness. We are not put here on earth to simply do the daily rounds."

SoulfulLiving.com