What Is The Soul Of A Place?

 

 

 

Wher­ever you stand

Be the soul of that place.

–Rumi

On Sat­ur­day, I am return­ing to a place imbued with a great deal of soul for me. It is a place where my soul feels at home. Hav­ing trav­eled there over 20 times in the past, I’ve not been back in eight years, and am return­ing now in response to a long­ing of my soul to recon­nect with this land and its people.

That I should feel so at home in this place is a bit of a shock to me. It could not be more for­eign to my West­ern sen­si­bil­i­ties. For most of my adult life, this place, now called The Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, was known as The Soviet Union. Amer­i­cans were taught it was the home of the “evil empire,” a mor­tal threat to moth­er­hood, apple pie and the our way of life.

In the­ory at least, this place seemed like an unlikely can­di­date for a soul con­nec­tion. Yet there it was, a con­front to all I had expected to find. The Russ­ian peo­ple and their cul­ture housed a soul­ful­ness that fed me in ways I didn’t even know I was hun­gry for.

Some­thing about Rus­sia touches me in ways for which I strug­gle to find words. Per­haps it helps me rec­og­nize a deeper truth about myself that tran­scends logic and explanation.

I can­not explain the tears that flow at the sight of old Russ­ian women sweep­ing the side­walks or wit­ness­ing the “Babushkas” mop­ping the floors of the Ortho­dox churches.

I can­not explain my facil­ity with its lan­guage, even though I speak and under­stand only a few util­i­tar­ian words. Rid­ing in the back seat of taxis, like a first grader just learn­ing to read, I’m obsessed with sound­ing out the let­ters on shop signs, com­pelled to read every­thing I encounter.

I instruct my stu­dents to write their name tags in Russ­ian instead of Eng­lish so I can prac­tice read­ing. I learn enough Russ­ian to cor­rect my inter­preter when I know she’s given my words a dif­fer­ent mean­ing than the one I intended. I even man­age to mimic a decent Russ­ian accent. I have a good ear that way.

I am con­sumed with the sounds of this coun­try where my soul feels so at home. Its music brings me to my knees. The Russ­ian song, “Joy”, радость, flat­tens me to the ground every time I hear it. Even though I don’t under­stand the words, the music stirs some­thing in me. Some ancient long­ing is acti­vated. I have no explanation.

As I wit­ness the Russ­ian peo­ple slowly emerg­ing from decades of oppres­sion, my own soul feels newly lib­er­ated. This is what a soul place will do. It opens some­thing you never even knew was closed. Like stum­bling upon a new room in a man­sion you’ve been liv­ing in your entire life, a soul place embraces and ampli­fies an inner long­ing, long ignored.

In the face of such new­ness, in a soul place, you’re met with a sense of famil­iar­ity. The outer ter­rain synchs up with an inte­rior land­scape that has been wait­ing to be met. Some­thing clicks, a piece falls into place.

The house I live in is such a place. Hav­ing moved to the San Fran­cisco Bay Area to be near my daugh­ters — def­i­nitely a soul call­ing — I spent sev­eral months search­ing for a place to live. Noth­ing was quite “it,” until I saw a photo of what would become my home on the inter­net. I was half a world away, work­ing in Tai­wan at the time, while scour­ing the inter­net for prop­er­ties in the Bay Area.

Some­thing about the photo beck­oned me to take a closer look. From half way around the world, I could feel an inner “yes,” even before step­ping one foot on the prop­erty. The minute I stepped inside, I knew I’d found my home.

Hav­ing wan­dered in my own per­sonal desert for awhile, I knew at that moment, I’d found the place I would live in for the rest of my life. The still, small voice within whis­pered, “You’re home. You can rest now.” And so it is. My home has indeed been a sanc­tu­ary for my soul. Even though I have taken a very cir­cuitous route to get here, the gypsy in me is finally at peace. She has come home.

“How long the road is. But how I’ve needed every turn of the road in order to learn what the road passes by.” 

–Dag Hammarskjold

A soul place can be any­where. It needn’t be in a far off exotic land, although there are many such places in the world con­sid­ered to be sacred, soul places. Your soul place might be in your own gar­den or a neigh­bor­hood park. It might be an island or a city, a spe­cial restau­rant, or by a pond.

A soul place is any­where you feel a greater sense of har­mony and ease. There might be many such soul­ful places on the planet that inspire you, and open you to a new sense of free­dom and joy.

Pay atten­tion to the places where, in spite of what­ever level of activ­ity is going on around you, you feel rested. In a soul place, you can breathe more deeply, set down your bur­dens, let go of cares and con­cerns that occupy the mind.

When you come to a soul place, it’s like being put on an oxy­gen tank, even your bones can breathe. Because your soul is respond­ing at a level that doesn’t involve the mind, all the tight and con­tracted places that have been “wait­ing to exhale” finally do. It’s like tak­ing off a pair of tight shoes, or loos­en­ing your tie.

When the needs of the soul are ignored, life begins to feel like a desert. We find our­selves feel­ing parched and dry, thirst­ing for some­thing we can’t quite name. A soul place is a drink of water for the thirsty soul.

We take vaca­tions to such kind of places, hop­ing to “get away from it all”. While the con­scious mind might not know it, what we’re really search­ing for is a way to get closer to ourselves.

In a soul place, we come to know our­selves in a new way, even if we only spend 15 min­utes sit­ting on a bench in a neigh­bor­hood park. New sen­sory path­ways are opened. We allow more of what nur­tures to flow in and what con­stricts to flow out.

Along the way, I have come across many places in the world and right in my own back­yard where my soul is invited to expand. While vis­it­ing India almost 15 years ago, I was asked to be a wit­ness at the wed­ding of two women I didn’t know under a full moon on the grounds of the Taj Mahal. How much more soul­ful can it get?

Well, it turns out plenty. On that same trip, a friend and I were invited to the home of a Mus­lim pedi-cab dri­ver, who’d been our guide dur­ing our stay in Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. One evening, he picked us up in a motor­ized pedi-cab, unlike the bicy­cle one he used to ferry tourists like around dur­ing the day. He drove us to his sim­ple home out­side town, where his wife was prepar­ing a typ­i­cal Indian meal, pre­pared in the out­side oven using dung pat­ties as fuel for cooking.

We met his fam­ily, and learned of their cus­toms first­hand when his wife abruptly backed out of the room, head down, when his elderly father entered. Accord­ing to Mus­lim cus­tom, we were told, women are not allowed to be in the same room as any man who is not their hus­band, son or brother.

This sim­ple, hum­ble, une­d­u­cated man, who lived in a small house with dirt floors, opened his home and his fam­ily to a cou­ple of strangers — Amer­i­can women yet — and offered us what lit­tle he had. The evening lasted only a few hours, yet the expe­ri­ence has stayed with me for nearly 15 years. My soul was marked by this expe­ri­ence. The very next month, I would visit Rus­sia for the first time and be received in the homes and lives of the Russ­ian peo­ple in the same, yet uniquely Russ­ian way.

Some soul places are inti­mate and very per­sonal, some­times cap­tured in tiny moments. We get a glimpse of some­thing tran­scen­dent and the place where those moments occur are indeli­bly marked on our souls. The hos­pice rooms where my mother and my ex-husband took their last breaths are such places for me. In those rooms, my heart and soul were cracked open and the bit­ter sweet­ness of loss and lib­er­a­tion were present at the moment of their deaths.

The exquis­ite art gallery, scene of my daughter’s wed­ding last fall, was another soul filled place for me. Walk­ing her down the aisle, two years after the death of her father, I felt his soul, his joy, walk­ing in step with mine.

Walk­ing the labyrinth at Grace Cathe­dral in San Fran­cisco, the burn­ing ghats of Varanasi,

scat­ter­ing a friend’s ashes at Inde­pen­dence Pass, near Aspen, Col­orado, all places and moments that invite my soul to expand and see some­thing beyond what the mor­tal eye can behold.

And the newest addi­tion to my list of soul­ful places: the Heart and Soul Cen­ter of Light, a Sci­ence of Mind (United Cen­ters For Spir­i­tual Liv­ing) church in Oak­land, CA., with the incred­i­ble Rev­erend Andri­ette Earl as its min­is­ter. I’ve never been a “reli­gious” per­son. Spir­i­tual, yes, reli­gious, no. But on a “soul scale” of 1–10, this place and this woman are a 20! If you are ever in Oak­land on a Wednes­day night or a Sun­day morn­ing, be sure to look this one up. This is not to be missed.

Just nam­ing these few places, I’m filled with grat­i­tude for a life lived with gen­er­ous doses of soul. Per­haps this is why I’m com­pelled to be writ­ing on this sub­ject. The soul­ful nature of life is where the rich­ness lies. I hope you won’t miss it in yours.

In your jour­ney to nur­ture your soul, don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. The soul’s gar­den beck­ons us to dig in, dig deep, and plant new seeds of cre­ativ­ity. As the gar­den grows, tend­ing it becomes the jour­ney of a life­time, one that will take you far and wide to places where your soul feels fed.

What are your soul places? I’d love to hear from you. 

 

 

Tagged as: Colorado, Culture, dr. judith rich, Grace Cathedral, Heart and Soul Center of Light, Metaphysics, Moscow, pedi-cab driver, Red Square, Russia, Russian Federation, Rx For The Soul, Soul, Taj Mahal, Varanasi