How a Lost Soul Gets Found

A dear friend made a dramatic statement about another close friend of mine.  He said, “They are a lost soul.”  It has haunted me ever since.  What are the signs and symptoms of a lost soul?  How can an onlooker view someone’s life and conclude, “Yep, there is a lost soul.”

How does my precious friend get found?  Is my friend lost or taking brave steps to improve their life?  Let’s take the Lost Soul Quiz and find out.  Confirmed; they are a lost soul.  For them life is a maze riddled with confusion and depression.

So what exactly are we dealing with?

Urban Dictionary defines a lost soul as:

“Somebody who has no direction in his/her life.  A lost soul can have many acquaintances but never any real close friends. Often a lost soul will long for someone to understand him/her, and because it is hard to understand the mind of a lost soul, often one will think he/her is mentally unstable, especially in today’s culture and society.”

Urban dictionary closed its definition with the glaring statement, “Your lost soul will not take you anywhere in life.”

Yikes.  This could be a quite disheartening endeavor for my friend.  How does a lost soul become lost?  Do we all start out lost and some of us get found earlier than others?

Andrea Schulman at themindunleashed.org clarifies a lost soul blocks the unconditional love of the higher self which they are so desperately starving for.  Schulman identifies three symptoms of a lost soul.

• Defensiveness: a lost soul is ego driven, therefore, whether your advice be right or not they always know best and are always right.
• Closed-mindedness: Due to being closed off to the all-loving and all-accepting higher self, their love will only be given out to certain people who are behaving in a way their ego approves of.
• Repeating the same mistakes, over and over again: Because a lost soul has severed its ties with the love of the universe, they do not understand how to make choices based on self-love.  Ultimately, a lost soul has forgotten how to care for him or herself.  A lost soul will make repeated mistakes causing them a lifetime of personal grief.  Poor choices are a mere distraction from the pain of the emptiness they feel from being spiritually disconnected.

Schulman recommends loving the lost soul and hoping that might provide enough light to help the lost soul become found. That sounds nice, but ultimately it seems a lost soul would need to learn how to reconnect with their higher self.

Lissa Rankin, MD provides the 20 Diagnostic Signs that a person is suffering from soul loss.  Rankin describes ‘soul loss’ as the subtle disconnection from our meaning, direction, vitality, mission, purpose, identity, and genuine connection.  The result of ‘soul loss’ is a numbness and lack of meaning in our lives.  Rankin explains connecting to your soul to find peace and happiness right now is much simpler than we might think.

New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, partnered with Rankin to create ‘Medicine for the Soul: Reclaiming and Trusting Your True Self’.  The secret to soul health is the prescription to realize and believe that you are already enough.  When we succumb to workaholism, people-pleasing behaviors, materialism, anxiety, addictions, etc., we have severed the connection with our soul.  Because we are disconnected from our soul, we try to be perfect to matter.  This places us on a soul deadening cycle.  To rediscover and reconnect with your soul, one must subscribe to the belief that you are enough and that wholeness already exists within you.  This is a counter-cultural mindset.  What we need is not in the exterior, but in our interior?

Remen and Rankin claim that once you accept you are enough; you can rest in the following truths:

• You are one of a kind
• You are loved
• You belong just as you are
• Your life matters
• Your love matters
• Your service matters
• You do not have to be anyone else in order to have a rightful place in this world.

Remen shares she had worked for the wrong employer all along, she had not worked for her soul.  How many of us are working for the wrong employer?  How many of us work for the employer of acceptance, praise, approval, self-worth, attention, significance, etc?

The soul, our vibrant pilot light of meaning and purpose, is awaiting to reconnect with us.  Will you accept the challenge of being true to the reality that you are enough?  Will you drop the routine of seeking comfort and pledge to accept your soul, your higher self?  When will you start to believe that you are enough and that nothing outside of you is needed?  Your sense of worth and belonging is awaiting your acknowledgement…on the inside.  Embrace it and #igniteyoursoul this New Year!