Have you ever really felt like you could see someone’s soul?
Have you ever felt that someone could see yours?
It hasn’t happened to me often...a couple of times. There are many people who I believe I can see their essence. I can see who they really are underneath the pile of posturing and attitude that they pass off as personality. I can see them as who I think they might be when you peel back the insecurity and fronts. That isn’t too hard. Many people have a hard outside, but are much softer on the inside...
But if you are really lucky in your life, you will see and be seen on a soul level. Without your consent, permission or control, another soul will just walk up to you one day...maybe in a hotel lobby or a restaurant or a city street and your entire being is just standing there and they see you. And you see them.
The good parts, the bad parts, the wounded parts, the light, the dark, the pain, the suffering, the love, the joy, the rapture, the passion. Even though you try to tamp it down, they just know and so do you.
Remember the Little Mermaid movie? Where the Sea Witch takes her voice, where she begins to sing and the Sea Witch reaches into her soul and pulls out her voice and takes it. It kinda feels like that except it is not a Sea witch, it is just another soul on the path, without agenda, or idea or knowledge of what is happening in the moment...it is just unfolding and both people are willing to stay present enough to allow it to all just pour out. No one is trying to take anything from anyone...they are just standing still and allowing their soul's expression while someone actually slows down to watch.
I feel like I have had a couple of these experiences in my life. But never as powerful as recently. Never as completely unexpected and completely undoing. It is the kind of feeling where you feel as if you are laid bare but you don’t care. It is all ok. All your stuff, the good, the bad, the beautiful, the not so beautiful is right there...for this other person to see. The fact that you are defenseless and open is totally and completely ok. It is good. It is fine. It is what is supposed to be happening because it is...
What I have found is that it takes a lot of courage to see someone’s soul. And even more to allow yours to be seen. I have also found that it is not a volitional act. I think you can set an intention to show up in life, to be present and authentic. And those are prerequisites to being vulnerable enough to see and be seen on a soul level...but when it happens to you...you are suspended in time, forever frozen in that fleeting moment that changes everything while you are standing in a hotel lobby or your living room, or a grocery store or in line grabbing a cup of coffee. You are nailed to the spot where your soul and that of another alights each other in a daring clash between something short of love and something greater than kismet.
The thing about soul seeing is that you have to want to do it, to actually be seen. The willingness to show up in your most vulnerable version of yourself with no apologies, defenses lowered. Anyone could hurt you, anyone could reject you. But you don’t care. You are willing to stay open because being open is the most authentic thing you can do...and your need to protect this most precious version of yourself has finally worn out its welcome and can be suspended if only for a moment.
Soul seeing is not something you can manufacture or sell or buy or even comprehend. You will just know when that moment happens when you stare into the eyes of another soul and see deeply into them.
I believe that these rare and precious moments are misunderstood and often misappropriated...however, they can be life altering if you are brave enough to hold your own with honesty and willingness to risk all that you think you know for something that appears in the eyes of another.
I am pretty sure this is the point of life. Seeing that the beauty you see in me, is a reflection of the beauty that exists in you. Staring into the eyes of another and allowing that person to exist without your need to alter them at all. They are perfect just as they are and they speak to you in a voice that is so familiar and so foreign at the same time...and a part of you will forever be nailed to that moment in time when you are transformed completely all because someone else looked deeply into your eyes and said (only with their eyes), "you are amazing, just the way you are."
