Heathen Souls in Action Series
Winifred Hodge Rose
This is always the challenge: finding the time! Our lives are full of tasks and responsibilities, especially when we have a young family, or elders to care for, in addition to all our other daily work. We need time to relax and rest, time with our loved ones and friends, time to spend on personal things and perhaps on volunteer work as well. So, where to find time for soul-work, on top of all this? I have some suggestions for you to consider. All of them build on the skills of awareness, soul-communication, and imagination, that we’ve been emphasizing all along here. These are suggestions for integrating Heathen soul-learning into daily life, for you to pick through and apply if they are helpful, and ignore if they are not.
Selecting a soul to work with: There is no need for you to work with the specific order of souls that I’ve laid out in this series, if you are drawn to a different order. Read through all of the material, and notice which souls seem to call to you the most strongly as you read. Then go back, read about and think about them some more, and decide where you want to start.
Soul-Work during your day / active time. Once you’ve selected a soul to start working with, begin considering the relevant exercises. If you are working from the soul lore website you might find it helpful to print out that soul’s exercises and keep them in a handy place so it’s easy to find and review them. One convenient option is to use a 3-ring binder as your Daybook, and put copies of the study exercises, plus the pages you write as you journal, into the binder, one section per soul, so you have everything together. Alternatively, you could copy the exercises into an e-file, and write your responses below each exercise. Either option allows you to expand and rearrange your material as you begin to discern your own soul-patterns and connections.
It’s handy to write reminder-notes about the specific exercise you’re working on right now, on your phone or tablet, or an index card that you post somewhere you will notice it often. If you find any quiet moments during the day, you can use these notes to refresh your mind about what you are trying to keep in your awareness that day. You may also be able to carry a small reminder-token in pocket or purse, either associated with a specific exercise you are doing, or as a general reminder to briefly return your focus to whatever soul-exercise you are working on, whenever you touch the token.
If you have some control over your time while you are working, you can set a reminder-signal on your phone or watch, reminding you at certain times to refresh your memory and awareness of the soul-work you’re currently doing. All of these suggestions are small, brief things, but they add up over time into a habit of soul-awareness that will enrich and enlighten your life.
Liminal space-time. Try to extend, by just a few minutes each day, the time you spend awake in bed, in the dark, not doing anything. The space-time as you are heading into sleep at night, and the space-time when you are waking up in the morning, can be among the most valuable of your soul-practice opportunities, if you use them rightly. Allow yourself 10 minutes or so, before you have to get up in the morning, to review your dreams and your mood as you awaken, listen to your body, make space for thoughts and insights to arise. Open your awareness to the soul you are currently working with, and tune in to its perceptions, needs, and wishes for the day (or your time of activity) that lies ahead.
Before you fall asleep at night, gently go over the events and experiences of your day, and perceive how the soul you were working with was involved and impacted. I say ‘gently’ because this isn’t the time to get worked up over things or engage your analytical mind too deeply; then you’ll find it hard to sleep. Instead, just open your awareness to the soul you’re working with, and enter into a quiet perception of what the day was like for that soul, without judgement or analysis. As you head into sleep, maintain that gentle awareness of your soul, a sense of quiet, undemanding companionship.
Falling asleep and awakening are valuable times for quiet, non-judgmental awareness and attunement with our souls; I hope you make the most of it! I might also note that the same procedure and attitude of gentle awareness and sharing is a lovely way to close the day with your children at bedtime, with your spouse or partner, or anyone you are caring for, such as an elderly or ill person.
Writing in your Daybook. If you’re not into essay-type writing, or don’t have time, try just jotting notes, phrases, keywords to help you remember your insights. You can also write poems, draw pictures or graphics, or note the name of a song, music, poem, story, or film that is evocative of what you are learning about your soul. Another shorthand when you are exploring how the soul has expressed itself during your life, is to note and refer to phases in your life, like your grade in school or year in college, the year you got married, the time you held that job you hated. If you have these cues to the mood and state you were in at that time, you won’t need to write and analyze all the details, you can just use the time-period or the significant event as a shorthand, as you consider the role of your soul in these events. All of these ideas will help you keep track of your insights, without too much writing, so that you can build on this knowledge as you proceed with getting to know your souls.
These are all ideas for general practices. Following are suggestions for two specific practices, Awareness and Communication, that combine soul-awareness with daily activities that you would be doing in any case, so as to maximize your opportunities for soul-work during your busy days.
Awareness
We’ll start with awareness of time, and how your own awareness fills your time. Spend some time, however many days you need, becoming more aware of how your inner thoughts, emotions, self-talk, etc., fill your time and your inner space all day long, and even your dreams. If you’re like most of us, there’s a running stream of inner chatter constantly going on, filling up your thought-space. There tends to be lots of repetition in these thoughts, and they’re often not all that valuable or worthwhile, in comparison to other possibilities. This mental activity is also a lot more energy-intensive and tiring than we may realize, and the payoff for that degree of energy outlay tends to be pretty low.
Once you become aware of yourself doing this, consider shifting some of this time and inner-space over to soul-work. Any time you are working on auto-pilot, like vacuuming, washing dishes, folding laundry, going for a walk or jog, waiting in line or in slow traffic, riding the bus, taking a shower, falling asleep or waking up, keeping an eye on the kids or elders in your care, you can shift some of your awareness over to soul-working. You can’t do deep, emotional pondering like this, but you can maintain simple awareness and communication with whichever soul you are currently working on. In a number of the exercises in my soul lore study guides, I suggested you seek some kind of symbol or token to use as a cue and shorthand for a specific awareness exercise. This is the time-space for you to make use of that awareness-key.
Here is an example of what I mean. Most of my awareness-keys are inner sensations, ways that my body, parts of my body, my senses, or soul-bodies feel when I am tuning in to a specific soul. I often feel a pleasant, relaxed heaviness, rootedness, and warmth or coolness when I am tuned in; my inner senses become more alert and also more appreciative of what I am sensing. The inner space I am experiencing expands and brightens, and there is a sense of pleasant anticipation.
So, when I get a chance I call up these keys, starting with the initial sensation-key and then expanding into the fuller experience. The result is my everyday awareness expanding into and welcoming the soul I am working with. I like to envision this awareness-activity like a flower, that opens into a full blossom of awareness and experience when the opportunity arises, and closes into a bud of promise when I need my full attention for my Midgard activities. I have a soul-garden full of these blossoms and buds, and it gives me great joy to be in this garden!
Having worked on this for years, I’m able to reach this state very quickly, and able to do so while having part of my awareness still on the outer-world activity or situation that I am auto-piloting. I don’t do any heavy-duty soul-working in this state, since I need to keep connected with the outer world and be ready to return to it at a moment’s notice. I just spend time and feeling on attuning to the soul I’m working with, getting to know it better in a non-verbal, holistic-sensing way. I’m learning to feel at home with it and within it, enjoying our shared space.
This kind of activity is very worth our time and energy, in and of itself, even though we may only spend a few minutes at a time on it, slipping into and out of this tuned-in state as opportunities arise in our daily life. It’s also excellent training and foundation for more intense soul-work, when we are able to place our full attention on that; we need less time and effort to enter into the right state of awareness, and can get straight to work. And thirdly, this is a lovely relaxation exercise, any time you want to take a little while to relax and refresh. This soul-awareness requires some practice at first, but I find that it is something we learn very rapidly, perhaps because it is so rewarding and enjoyable. There is a great return on investment of only small amounts of time and energy; time that otherwise would pretty much go to waste.
So, this is my suggestion related to awareness: be aware of your constant stream of consciousness and inner chatter, and look for opportunities where you can interrupt that stream and slip into and out of soul-awareness, even when you need to keep some of your attention on auto-pilot in the outer world. Use a cue or key, whatever works for you: a rune, a tune, a feeling, a line of poetry, a token you carry in your pocket, a mental image, that you associate with the soul you want to attune to. This awareness activity is so enjoyable and rewarding, such a worthwhile expenditure of your life-energy, that it’s not hard to turn it, first, into a habit, and then into an important part of your life and spiritual practice. And the only time you need for this, is time snatched from the constant, not very useful, repetitive ruminations and churning of your surface mind! Ideally, as time goes on, you spend less and less of your precious life-time on mental chatter, and more time on soul-attunement.
Soulful Communication
Here, we’re thinking about souls and getting to know our souls, about the responsibilities and the needs of our daily life, and about how to find time for it all. If we try to do everything we need or want to do as single-purpose activities, we’ll never find time or energy for it all. Ideally, we want to meet several different needs with one activity, during one period of time, that satisfies multiple purposes. We can do this with soul-work, applying the abilities of our souls to our daily activities in ways that both use and grow our soul-power, and at the same time enhance the usefulness and success of our activities. Here, I’m going to focus on one important example: communication, not only with our own souls, but with the souls of other people close to us, as well.
All of our relationships require communication; it is the primary basis for any relationship. All of the exercises in the soul lore study guides promote communication between our conscious mind and our souls. They do require time and effort, so let’s see whether the exercises can be combined with things we need and want to do in our everyday life, as well. Communication is a major element of our outer life as well as our inner life, and the quality of our communication matters a great deal. When we become aware of how our souls and other people’s souls are involved when we communicate with each other, our interactions deepen and become more satisfying, more clear and effective, and produce fewer misunderstandings and misfires.
When you want to work with a soul lore exercise, consider how you could use that work as a basis for quality time with those who are close to you, including children and grandchildren, parents and grandparents, as well as spouse, other family members and close friends. There’s no need at all to get into Heathenry and technical soul lore for this, no need for complicated explanations and introductions. People like to talk about what is meaningful to them, and especially they like to be sincerely listened-to. All we need to do is lead into the topic and devise a question or two, relating to the exercise we’re doing in an appropriate way for the person we’re talking to, to start the ball rolling.
Here’s an example. Exercise 6-1 from soul lore Study Guide 6, on Mod and Hugr as motivating forces, involves looking for threads that run through our Werold, our lifetime, to see how those threads have influenced our actions and choices. An example I used for this exercise was my longing for a home of my own, and how that influenced many directions and outcomes during my Werold. Once you’ve noticed one of these threads of influence in your life, one that you feel comfortable sharing with people close to you, you can bring it up in conversation: “I’ve been noticing lately how much influence {this thing} has had in my life, that I didn’t completely realize until now. {Give some examples.} Have you ever noticed anything like that?” This type of question is often especially interesting to explore with siblings, if you have a good relationship with them, because of the early-life roots and family culture you share.
As you get further into the conversation, you can exercise your soul-lore muscles by keeping part of your awareness on perceiving how your and the other person’s souls are involved, both with the conversation itself, and with the topic of the conversation. This requires empathy and mindfulness, really tuning into the presences taking part in the conversation: all the interacting souls. It is an excellent activity, both for growing your awareness of your own souls, and for enhancing and deepening your relationship with the other person and their souls. This definitely counts as quality time, for all concerned!
Here’s another example. Exercises relating to Ghost and Mod ask you to explore things you really love to do, things that motivate you and get your energy moving. This is another good conversation-starter, including with children. The leading questions for the conversation can include things like: “What’s your very favorite thing to do? What do you especially like about that thing? How does it make you feel: excited, calm, powerful, intrigued, etc.;” and other leading questions. Give examples of your own; build the energy of the conversation by bringing your own Ghost and Mod to the fore of your awareness, and picking up on the energies of the Ghost and Mod of the other person or people.
Another example, also great to do with children or adults: “If you could go to, or create, the perfect place for you to live, what would it be like? What things would be there, such as friends, animals, nature, otherworldly beings, favorite objects, vehicles, clothing, objects of beauty, food, whatever?” They don’t need the explanation that they’re talking about ‘soul habitat’, unless you think they’d be interested in that idea. But you can stretch your awareness to try to understand which of their souls is talking about its ‘dream-space’, thus learning more about souls in general, and about the person you’re talking to, specifically. And as you take part in the conversation, describing a favorite habitat of your own, you’re working on the soul lore exercises, too.
Another idea relates to the exercises exploring your Hama-covering, discussed in “Exploring Hama, Lich-Hama, and Ellor-Hama”. Kids and adults can have fun and gain insights as they discuss how they’d like to ‘dress up’ in different creative ways, or how they’ve always felt there was a part of themselves that felt like an animal, or some historical figure like a knight, or other Hama-related explorations of self-image, images they have of others, and feelings about these images.
The overall idea here is to meet two purposes at once: increase your awareness of souls and how they work in our lives, and enhance quality time and relationship connections with people whom you are close to—something you would want to do anyway, soul lore aside. Not to mention, this tends to improve the conversational, listening, and imaginative skills of everyone involved, also a worthwhile outcome! These conversations might not take very much time, maybe just a few minutes, but the ‘return on investment’ of a little time for a large benefit is very high. You can bring up such conversations while riding together in the car, over the dinner-table, hanging out with the kids, whenever. And of course, these are great conversation-starters with Heathen friends, as well.
Daily Experiences
After you’ve spent some time on the preceding activities and built up your awareness skills, you can make it a habit to keep an ongoing part of your awareness on the souls of yourself and the people you are interacting with. There’s a lot you can learn about Hugr and Mod in your workplace; about Hugr and Sefa at a family reunion or an anniversary night out. How do people think, form opinions, express themselves, make choices and decisions? Which souls are at work there? Getting to know the souls of your kids, parents, spouse, siblings, friends, is deeply meaningful and enriches your life together. Understanding how souls interact with each other in public spaces, work spaces, neighborhoods, school, etc. teaches us a great deal, and enables us and our own souls to navigate these complex social spaces in more effective ways. As we proceed with this, we can teach and set a good example for our children and others whom we influence.
What we’re doing here is integrating soul lore with daily life, with our Werold that we weave, day by day. It does take effort to start the ball rolling, but it can be done, and done in a time-efficient way. Channel the enthusiasm and energies of your souls, to help you find ways that fit into your own life-circumstances, your own relationships and responsibilities, your own wishes for a well-shaped life. As we do this, we are benefiting not only ourselves, but those around us as well. Life is better for us all, when we have awareness and respect for the nature and powers of our own souls, and for the souls of those around us.
Expanded version posted May 2021.