Homecoming Part 7
September 14, 2026
Long before we have words to explain our deepest selves, our souls already show us what they love and need.
There are qualities, experiences, images, and sensations that seem to belong to us from the beginning. We did not choose them. When we encounter them, something in us responds—as though a forgotten chord has been struck. They seem strangely familiar—almost like home. And we want more of them, like home. Like a kitten lapping up milk, we take them in because they seem like lost parts of our souls that are essential to our being. Then we find they were not missing; we were disconnected from them.
At first, we have no vocabulary for these magnetic attractions, but they draw us to them. They seem beyond preferences or conditioning by parents or culture. They were part of our soul from the beginning. We may not always be able to describe them, but we have these strong soul attractions throughout our lives.
How do we discover our individual soul attractions?
Notice what you are deeply curious about and continually drawn toward. These are the qualities and experiences that you find yourself noticing, seeking, and diving into above all others. For instance, certain colors may give you a feeling on the soul level, of being nearer to your true self. I most resonate with the colors blue and aqua. All the colors are wonderful, and each elicits a particular feeling.
I remember the extra-large box of Crayola crayons we had as children, with row after row of colors and even a built-in crayon sharpener. I would pick a color from the box, scribble the color on a blank page, and take in the feeling it awakened in me. Each color, even each variation of any of them, gives me a particular sensation. It is true for me today as well. Browns make me feel earthy, and reds make me feel energized. Greens make me feel full, free, and happy.
But the colors of blue and aqua are different—my eyes have always gone to directly to those colors because they evoke a different kind of feeling: they make my soul feel profoundly at home—the way they evoke light, spaciousness, and infinity—the sky and sea—and more importantly, the deep serenity and tranquility I find only in being one with myself and my Divine home—something I have always known. The things of the soul, all of us have always known.
On the Enneagram of Soul, this oneness is found at the Soul Point of Nine: Sacred Loving Peace and the Essential Aspect of Living Daylight—the very point of my soul child—my essence—my soul. Blue and aqua somehow give outward form to something inward that my soul recognizes.
We each have colors, material items, and experiences that are innate parts of the soul. When we experience them, our soul leaps toward them as their enchantment or hypnotic power begs us to reclaim more of its home. It is amazing to find how such special soul colors, experiences, and even people correspond to the dimension we find at our Soul Point on the Enneagram.
Another example is a part of nature—water. Though water is an archetypal symbol, for some of us it represents a tremendously important part of our soul’s internal landscape. Its fluidity, transparency, and different forms—liquid, snow, ice, rivers, lakes, oceans… deep, shallow, still, and running—can represent a state of our individual soul.
As a boy, whenever our family drove the causeway across Mobile Bay and beyond, we traveled over a high bridge made of steel. Invariably, as we crossed the bridge, I could not resist the urge to look down from my window to see, in between the passing steel beams, the bay waters a hundred feet or more below us. Sometimes the bay was murky; other times it reflected the blue sky—sometimes it was choppy, and other times it had large, smooth swells. But every time, it was unmistakably deep and mysterious.
From my window, I imagined the many fish swimming beneath us, and I wondered how deep the waters were. I imagined the horror of a car falling into the depths below. Deep water stirred something in me—something about the mysterious depths beneath the surface—depths that could float ships, and that could also swallow us. My soul is still drawn to the ocean from beaches, bridges, ships, planes, and cliffsides, and I wonder how deep the water is below. For me, the ocean itself represents vastness, and its unseen depths represent the unfathomable soul.
Then there are experiences that we find helplessly drawn to. One of them for me is the soul's need for an animal—specifically a dog. I “received” my first dog when I was five. Sparkle was our next-door neighbor's dog and lived there with two of her offspring, Rebel and Duke. Sparkle lumbered over to our house every day, and I was intrigued by her. In a new neighborhood, I needed a friend, and she was a good one—she was in my thoughts when I first woke up and at nighttime. She liked our family so much that the neighbors told my parents, “Sparkle is obviously no longer ours; she is yours. Please consider her as your own.”
And she was ours until she passed away when I was seventeen. Did my soul know from my first visit with Sparkle that she would represent something deep within me—something my soul journey couldn't do without? Even today, for me, living without a precious dog is living in a soul unfulfilled in a massive way.
Such soul dimensions as described above are easily passed over and unnoticed in daily life, but if we stop to notice that to which our attention flows, the landscape of our soul is revealed. And every day as this occurs, hear the thought, “You belong here—this is who you really are.” Then we know more and more of what homecoming really means.
Spiritual Practice and Inquiry
What are some of the attractions you have that you consider essential to your soul—your essence? You might place them in a collage or a painting. Might you simply put these on a list and place it somewhere your eyes will be easily drawn?
Prayer
Dear God,
Grant me a homecoming in every present moment.
Amen
