SKYE stephenson

What is your soul food?  I don’t mean the food that feeds your body. I am referring to what nourishes your soul. Now is a good time to consider this question, with the start of a New Year, chronologically speaking.

What a year 2021 was for all of us, just about the entire human race. Due to the global pandemic, we were presented with a stark situation that probed us to consider who we are at a soul level: what is most important for us and what are values and ethics. But this article is not about masks (or no masks), vaccines (or not) – I would not venture into such treacherous territory here. It is about the call to nurture ourselves, no matter what is going on around us.

I am guessing you probably have pondered this question in some way during 2021. Like: “Now that I am not able to be as busy outside of the house and socially as I had been: how do I fill my time and find meaning in my daily life? Or like: “Now that my life has changed as a result of the global pandemic, how have I changed and, more importantly, how would I like to change?”

I would like to share a bit of my journey into this terrain. As you may (or may not) be aware, I requested from the Shopper a six-month hiatus from writing this column to focus on a writing project that has been spinning around in my soul for a very long time now. I felt the need to focus exclusively on this project as much as possible to nourish my soul and take advantage of the quietude the pandemic has brought some of us.

I want to thank the Shopper staff, and especially Michelle Green, for supporting me in this way.  And I especially want to thank Molly McMillian for agreeing to write the monthly healing articles during this period. Her articles have been powerful and meaningful. She has bravely touched upon some deep topics relevant to many members of our community.

During the six months I was not writing my monthly column, I was able to advance significantly in the writing of the manuscript, such that I now have a full draft ready to send to a copy editor for comments. I am hoping that in 2022 I can continue polishing this manuscript. My great dream is to get it published.

One of my greatest teachers, who is most known as Naisha Ahsian but more recently went by the name of Samaya, suddenly retired in 2021 – withdrawing rapidly from her teachings and offerings to nourish her own soul. I understand she left Sedona for a self-sufficient homestead elsewhere in the country.

Just before she did so, she said something quite enlightening to me. She said that doing spirit and soul work often involves eliminating rather than adding. In other words, instead of trying to do more and more activities and learn more and more about different topics, we should strive instead to eliminate as much as we can and focus on what is the most important and significant for us at a soul level.

Of course, the food our soul most longs for will differ for each of us, as it should. For some, it may be tending loved ones or caretaking their bodies or practicing with their musical instruments or woodworking. Or something as potent and simple as simply trying to beam out love to all who pass you by.

So, I hope that you can find and then feed your soul what it most longs for in 2022. This work is another kind of healing, a soul healing that while it may not halt a physical pandemic can contribute nonetheless to another kind of much needed collective healing, which is soul healing.

Published in The Monadnock Shopper News, January 5-January 11, 2022