The Urging of Your Soul

Healing Conversations - Reflections Series

Dear Friends, I greet you in peace and hope you are as well as possible in these times. I’m trying something a little different for this month’s Reflection post—adding an audio version (just below the photo). Please let me know if you find it helpful.

A saying of the Prophet Muhammad counsels, “Die before you die.” My friend and colleague, Dr. Omid Safi, is a respected Islamic scholar with a gentle mystic’s soul. He explains the “two deaths” in the teaching of the Prophet this way: the first is the death of the ego, surrendering the small self to the Divine, the second is the death of the body. Everyone, he points out, will encounter the second, but not everyone will experience the first. For those who do, a more luminous and fulfilling human life lies in between. Safi writes, “‘Die before you die’ means this: live the way that you would if you had two hours to live. Live in love, live in gratitude. Tell, show, be in love.... Leave nothing unsaid, undone.”⁠

Is there something pulling at you? Perhaps a vision of how you are called to live that feels beyond your capacity or stirs up resistance—yet is something you know in your bones is yours to do, to be. How would you shape your life if you had only a few years left in this body? How would you live if you were not afraid? And what is holding you back?

As I come to these questions repeatedly in my own life, I find that most of what holds me back is myself. It’s so easy to get seduced by the million competing demands for our time and attention. It takes discipline to call ourselves into purpose, again and again and again, until at last it becomes our habitation. In this way, the companionship of death can become an ally of the soul, summoning us to the fullness of our gifts.

Purpose is not the same as goals or outcomes, or even vocation. Purpose is the larger quality of Being our life is aimed toward, it’s a direction not a destination. Goals and vocation are some of the tangible ways purpose is expressed; they should be aligned with our purpose, but they are the means rather than the ends. Purpose doesn’t have an end. It’s not something we complete and check off our list, but something larger than we are that we give ourselves to, something we live into day by day. Purpose belongs to the soul rather than the ego. It’s greater than our small self can manage, and thus may create fear or resistance. (Ask me how I know!) The soul’s intention for our life is often beyond what we might imagine for ourselves—requiring surrender, commitment, and trust.

As you contemplate your own purpose, you may wish to ask: What are your special gifts and capacities? What can you see from the vantage point of your experiences and social context? What are your core values? What is the urging in your heart for how to express and serve and make a difference? What brings you joy? Recall the most challenging things you have gone through, and notice what qualities or learnings you developed as a result. It may be our struggles and hardships that become the greatest source of our insight, and lead us to the unique contribution we offer the world.

Nelson Mandela counseled, “There is no passion to be found in playing small—in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” We can make our lives an offering to Life; stretch beyond the margins of our comfort zone and be willing to put everything we are and have been through in service to the urgent calling of these times.

**

This post is adapted from my forthcoming book, Soul Medicine for a Fractured World: Healing, Justice, and the Path of Wholeness. (Orbis Books, Nov. 2025)

Photo above is an Earth Altar by Laura Loescher. Please visit her website for more.