When Soul Begins to Lead
Speak to yourself in the voice you’ve always longed to hear.
Photo Image design by B. Littleton/Canva public domain 2025
A client recently shared something that has stayed with me:
“I’m wrestling with the question—am I willing to follow the pull of the Soul, not the Ego? Nothing else matters until I answer that, once and for all.”
I paused, then offered what I’ve come to know:
“Yes, well… after a while, the question changes. It softens from Am I willing? to Why wouldn’t I? and then, almost imperceptibly, it becomes I already am.”
We are already Soul. We don’t have to go searching for it like a missing sock or a misplaced childhood. If we are breathing, Soul is here. Soul is us.
But just because Soul is present doesn’t mean it’s easy to break free from old patterns of survival. If Soul were all we needed, we wouldn’t feel so torn, so entangled in layers of conditioning. We’ve inherited defenses, beliefs, and behaviors meant to keep us safe in a world that often asked us to hide our deepest truth. The journey back to Soul is rarely a straight line. It asks everything of us, gently but insistently. In listening to the client’s vulnerable clarity, I heard the question to mean more about how does one face what will be lost, if one enters this ancient calling towards new gains and unknown expansion.
Jung said that healing happens when we bring what is Unconscious into Consciousness. I experience this as a holy moment of choice. A flash of metacognition when we realize we can stay inside the architecture of ego, where intellect, performance, and identity shape reality, or we can make our way through veil after veil of importance we’ve draped over our lives, and slowly begin to prioritize Soul.
James Hillman noted that somewhere around sixty, the Ego begins surrendering its long-held terrain. It doesn’t always feel like success, but it does feel like a cycle has completed itself. We no longer wish to rehearse the same identity. We’ve done it. And it’s done with us.
What follows isn’t always neat. Sometimes it’s chaos. Sometimes it’s confusion or grief or the quiet terror of losing everything we thought made us who we are. But often, if we stay long enough in the clearing, Soul enters. And when Soul shows up, it brings a fierce truthfulness. A wild honesty. It has no patience for pretending. The Sacred Gaslighting of Self is over.
And even though this sounds like progress, like evolution, this is still Ego trying to make meaning of a process it cannot control. The truth is, when Soul begins to lead, we often feel incompetent. The tools that once worked—achievement, control, people pleasing, planning—no longer fit. And that scares us.
We want the transformation, yes. But we want to keep our reputation. We want to keep the self we’ve curated and stay comfortable while becoming whole.
But Soul says no.
It’s like saying, “I’ll drink this fifth of vodka, but I’ve done the inner work, so I won’t get drunk.”
The old logic will not work. The old self will not survive.
We read so much about Love, its strength, its grace, its capacity to carry us through the abyss. And yet when the small self is being asked to grow into the Big Self, Love feels oddly out of reach. We want it, we believe in it, and yet it gets demoted to something we’ll get to after the inbox is cleared and the car is detailed.
But Love doesn’t wait at the finish line. It hovers, like a hummingbird, just outside the corner of our awareness. It waits for quiet. For stillness. For kindness.
And maybe that’s where we begin.
With kindness.
Not grand gestures or sweeping declarations. But tiny, invisible, sacred acts of kindness. They are like breadcrumbs in the forest, familiar, safe, gentle. We pick them up as we go. A kind word at the checkout counter. Holding for a moment while looking into the eyes of a stranger, or the lover. A soft touch to our own tired chest. A breath of forgiveness whispered before sleep. These acts become scaffolding. They hold us steady as Soul enters.They remind us we are safe, even without those old layers of identity.
It is always possible to be kind to others, and to our surroundings like the tree outside your window, the animal that may share your home, the ocean you love, it begins with you. A daily, deliberate choice to be kind to yourself.
To speak to yourself in the voice you’ve always longed to hear.
To start and end the day with mercy.
To believe that this, too, is Love.
This is the way home to Soul. Not in big revelations or polished spiritual truths. But in kindness. In communion. In courage.
Already, you are walking the path.
Already, Soul is here.
Narrative essay written by Brenda Littleton
Tin Flea Press c. 2025
Photo Image design by B. Littleton/Canva public domain 2025