The Unlived Life
Image by Anahata Giri: Outworn Garments
Our modern culture does little to help individuals trust the wild guidance of their soul and find the unique and wondrous life of their own, the one that is truly worth living. Yet, more and more people are turning to the deeper questions of what gives life meaning. As we do this, we may painfully discover that we have been living from old, conditioned scripts, following values or goals absorbed from parents, family or society, goals that no longer fit a deeper inner life that wants to emerge. We may feel mired and trapped in the treadmill of a life that feels incomplete. An unfulfilled, unlived life may lie dormant within us.
The door to this unlived life can open in different ways. Sometimes a significant life event pierces the status quo or stuckness that we are feeling. The loss of a relationship or job, health crisis, the death of a loved one, or the intense surfacing of old core wounds may plunge us into turmoil and longing for purpose or fulfilment. Or perhaps there is no crisis, but a persistent, nagging feeling that there is something more you are meant to do or be in your life. Midlife can provoke a profound life review and this can bring longing for a different life to the surface. There can be a lack of fulfilment even after decades of a satisfying career, a loving and fulfilling role as a parent or other satisfying roles. It is as though we have outgrown our own skin - a sign that the soul is beckoning in a deeper life.
The unlived life includes our secret desires, abandoned dreams, neglected passions, unfulfilling relationships, unknown talents and the adventures we turned away from. However, the unlived life is more than this. The unlived life is a potential that revolves around an unknown self, the unmet soul-self. Our own soul holds an exquisitely unique and mythical story that shows each one of us who we are at our deepest essence. Michael Meade, in his podcast Living Myth (1), teaches that our soul holds our own unique genius. When we do not know our own soul’s essence or unique genius, then our soul gifts and offerings lie buried and kept from the world. This is a loss for the world, as dancer Martha Graham describes:
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.”
- Martha Graham
The channel to the deep underlying “urges that motivate you,” can be kept open through three broad approaches: self-investigation, heart-based practice and soul-inquiry. To summarise: we face how the conditioned self led us to this point of deep dissatisfaction; we see how we are not living in a way that is whole-hearted; and we turn to the soul-self to discover the unique life path or personal myth waiting to be explored, one that reveals our hidden joys, passions, abilities and soul gifts.
Self-investigation begins with honest and courageous acknowledgement of deep dissatisfaction. It takes courage to move through habits of avoidance, suppression, resistance and denial. Perhaps we feel huge responsibility and pressure to continue with our current unfulfilling life path, for the sake of family, security, certainty, self-image, the mortgage, finances, career enhancement and so on. Or perhaps we simply do not know what else to turn to. The cage we are in may feel easier than taking steps towards a freer life.
To live in full appreciation of life and to reach our own authentic potential are deep and compelling human urges. Maslow, in his hierarchy of needs, summarises these urges as self-actualisation. We are likely to have profound pain if we are not living true to ourselves. We can turn to the pain with tenderness - and with the support of a good listener if it feels too much to hold on our own. When our life feels like it no longer fits, emotional and somatic responses include variations of three core emotions: anger, such as frustration, resentment, irritability, rage and high levels of stress; fear including terror, anxiety, sleep disturbance and physical tension; and sadness including grief, heaviness, lack of motivation and despair. These emotions are powerful messengers.
As we begin to emotionally process the pain of the unlived life, the deep feelings of the heart can become a bridge to a more true life. The heart may have shut down to cope with the dissatisfaction of life. As we face the way we have not been living wholeheartedly, our hearts can come alive again. This includes feeling the depth of our longing, however painful and disturbing this is. It is the depth of our heart’s longing that creates the motivation and momentum for the challenging and enlivening journey of following the soul into a more true life.
Another key way to build the bridge from the unlived life to a fully lived life, is to understand how we came to be in this place of life dissatisfaction. Understanding the conditioned messages that we have absorbed from family and culture, not only helps us understand how we became stuck but also understand what prevents us from turning to a soul-led life.
One way to uncover these negative, unconscious or conscious internalised beliefs is to use stream of consciousness writing, where we write freely without stopping, without censorship. This practice bypasses the everyday, strategic, overly analytical and often critical mind, to access deeper underlying, intuitive knowing. This practice can be done 5-30 minutes at a time and works best when done over several sessions, or as an ongoing practice. Usually this is done without a prompt, but to uncover conditioned life beliefs, try writing from the perspective of yourself at all stages of life, including childhood and now, using the following prompts: I must…I must not…I am…I am not…
Most people usually write familiar answers at first, but writing on these prompts over days or weeks is likely to bring core internalised negative beliefs to the surface. People report finding themselves writing something with huge impact that they consciously had little idea about. After a few days, or a few weeks, of doing this practice, review your writing and see if you can find the 3-5 core beliefs or messages that have profoundly influenced the way you live your life. For myself, this practice channelled the beliefs “I must hide” and “ I am invisible”. These core beliefs can also underly our inner protectors or parts that formed to keep us safe - you can read my article Working with Inner Protectors to explore this more. Recognising core beliefs can be a key to unlock the prison of living an incomplete life.
We also turn to the heart to help us step into a more wholehearted life. Using the same stream of consciousness practice, the prompt here is: what do I really care about? Again, at first you will write all the usual, predictable answers, but as you give yourself over to this practice, going into a kind of liminal space as your pen moves across paper, you may find yourself writing something new and potent.
Alongside heart-based inquiry, turning to the soul can give us profound, luminous messages about the story, meaning and purpose that our soul holds. The soul carries the key to our deepest identity and authenticity. The pursuit of this soul-self is at the heart of the Wild Soul Immersion that I offer. For an introduction to the soul path you can read my article The Golden Thread of Soul. An in-depth and wildly inspiring exploration of soul-based practice is described in Bill Plotkin’s book Soulcraft (2), which includes practices such as self-designed ceremony; dream exploration; soul art; sacred wound work; nature wandering and so on. It can also be helpful to find a soul guide to help you navigate the challenging and liberating terrain of the soul.
This is a challenging time as for a while you will bridge two worlds: the life you have lived until now and the unlived life that your soul is beckoning in. In his poem All True Vows, David Whyte (3) describes well both the predicament of being between worlds and also the potential revelation of this predicament. I will finish here with the first half of this poem, to give you heart for the courageous journey of deeper and deeper truth-telling about who you are and what is yours to be and do.
All the true vows
are secret vows
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.
There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.
Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don't turn your face away.
Hold to your own truth
at the centre of the image
you were born with.
Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen
nor the one life that waits
beyond all the others.
- David Whyte
Anahata Giri
October 2024
Footnotes:
(1) Michael Meade, Living Myth Podcast, any episode.
(2) Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft, New World Library, 2003.
(3) David Whyte, All True Vows, from The House of Belonging.