Becoming whole is a lifelong process. It is finding and embracing the new self and forgetting what you learned to be. In my book, Remember Who You Are, I describe the seven stages of seeking and claiming your Spirit Self. In this article, I provide an overview of the stages of claiming your spirit self and questions to help you build a map that will reveal where you are on the journey of finding your true self — and discover where you want to go next. Moments of unexpected grace — falling in love, acting from instinctive certainty rather than fear — are reminders. We reconnect with our essence, too, when our senses are moved by the natural world around us. Without practice, the treasures we find in exploring will lose their light and promise. With practice, the spiritual can intertwine with the everyday, changing our sense of the world and ourselves in fundamental ways. At the end of most stories about a sacred journey, the voyager returns with hard-earned wisdom and many gifts for his or her community. We may find ourselves in the same external circumstances where work and relationships are concerned but standing on different soil, seeing everything through new eyes. Acknowledging this, we learn to accept the inevitability of lapsing into old responses and our previously limited perspective. We develop more patience and empathy, more humor about our human fragility, and greater tolerance for the journey of finding our way back. That, after all, is life. 2. Create your own definition of spirit. Pay attention to what makes sense to you. 3. Ask yourself what it means to you to remember who you are. What qualities do you consider to be a part of your soul self? 4. Look at pictures of yourself as a child that reflect what you interpret to be your essential qualities. Describe what you see in your activities, body, or eyes that recalls these fundamental spirit qualities. 5. Familiar childhood stories teach that we must leave home to find home; the happy ending requires us to heal ourselves and find our own internal truth. Sleeping Beauty wakes up, Pinocchio becomes a real boy, and Dorothy returns to Kansas, discovering that what she sought was in the place she left. Remember a journey you took in which you had to leave your outer life to discover a part of your inner self. Meditate on that journey. The late Angeles Arrien once told me about a Native American folk tale that claims each person is born into this world with a special song that is his or hers alone. My hope is that articles and books such as this; publications like mbg; and practices including yoga, meditation, and attempting to live and love in a complete, authentic way will guide us each to our unique song and will inspire us to bring its music into this world. Related reads:
