In my recent articles about living a soul-full life I have taken an introductory stance. Today I want to leave the paved path and venture into rocky territory and the more intense and challenging aspects of soul-fullness.

Since very little cuts through so well and quickly to soul as great poetry here are brief soul-filled poems by two incredibly insightful poets, Rainer Maria Rilke and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

“Sometimes a man stands up during supper
And walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
Because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.
And another man, who remains inside his own house,
Dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
So that his children have to go far out into the world
Toward that same church, which he forgot.”
- Rilke

It is often sufficient for the waking of soul to simply read Rilke’s words, but I will add just a few. Intuitively we all recognize the truth in these two crucial and unavoidable choices. We can answer the call of the soul and walk out towards our destiny or we can die inside the dishes and leave the hard work of soul to our children. There seems to be no middle ground, though many of us struggle daily to find one. Our lives are soul-full or they are not.

Now two stanzas from an equally poignant piece (Holy Longing) by Goethe.

“Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
Because the Massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
What longs to be burned to death………….
And so long as you haven’t experienced
This: to die and so to grow,
You are only a troubled guest
On the dark earth.”

Soul seeks what is truly alive. It has no interest in that which is lukewarm and insipid. Soul begs us to burn and as Goethe states so clearly, until we learn this truth we remain a “troubled guest on the dark earth.”

The average person, the “Massman”, has little awareness of soul and its yearning for burning. He and she laugh when a soul-seeker voices her desire for a deeper and more meaningful existence. But we who want to know the hard edges and soft innards of this mystery, another poet called the “blessed catastrophe” (Hafiz), are not willing to settle for the soulless same-old, same-old. We listen for the seminal sound, during supper, that beckons us to stand up and walk out and keep walking towards a far away church or synagogue or temple or mountain or desert. And we are never the same again.

[Ed. note: Dr. Matthew Anderson is an author (The Prayer Diet), counselor and national columnist/expert on weight loss, motivation, self-management and relationships. To find tough-minded, outside-the-box guidance for taking charge of your life and/or your weight including Eating to Kill, click here.]

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