Spiritual Practices Part 5

July 25, 2026

Spiritual Practices Part 5: Soul-Searching: Taking Off the Goggles of the Ego

We live in the world we give our attention to.

Not long ago, I was invited to put on a pair of virtual reality goggles. In a friend’s living room, I suddenly found myself in Norway. I stood beneath the Northern Lights, raced over ice, ran with reindeer, and floated through icy fjords.

At one point, I was standing high on a cliff above deep water. My body believed what it saw. I nearly lost my balance, and for a moment I felt the terror of falling hundreds of feet into the fjord below. But of course, if I had fallen, I would not have plunged into the icy depths of Norway. I would have fallen onto a carpeted floor in someone’s home. I was in two worlds at once. But one world possessed me. It was the world I had given my attention to. It became my real world—until I took off the goggles.

In the spiritual life, we also live between two worlds: the world of the unchecked ego and the world of the soul. The egoic world often feels immediate, convincing, and urgent. It tells us what to fear, what to defend, what to desire, what to resent, and how to protect ourselves. Many of us live for years, even a lifetime, inside our fixations without realizing we are wearing goggles.

Yet there is another world within us— the world of the soul. This world is quieter. It does not shout for our attention. It waits beneath the noise. It is the place in us where love, truth, compassion, courage, humility, and wisdom have their home.

Today, we reflect on a spiritual practice that helps us remove the goggles of the unchecked ego and return to the soul's deeper reality. I call this practice souling.

Souling is a combination of the words "soul" and "living". It means living from the soul. It means speaking, acting, listening, choosing, and responding from the deeper energies of who we truly are. It means bringing the qualities of the soul into our ordinary encounters—with ourselves, with those we love, with strangers, with the suffering, and with all living things around us.

Souling begins with a simple but essential truth: we are already connected to our soul. The soul is not something we have to invent. It is not a spiritual decoration added to the personality. It is our deepest and truest nature. But we must learn to inhabit it consciously.

Just as we become familiar with the traits of our personality, we can become familiar with the qualities of our soul. We can learn the feel of compassion arising before judgment. We can notice the quiet strength beneath fear. We can sense the presence of love before defensiveness takes over. We can pause long enough for the soul to speak before the ego reacts.

When the soul begins to support the personality, we do not lose our personality. We become more fully ourselves. Our humor, intelligence, enthusiasm, tenderness, strength, and particular way of being remain—but they are no longer ruled by unchecked ego energy. They are illuminated from within. I call this union of soul and personality our soulality. Soulality is the personality infused with soul-consciousness. It is not a denial of our humanity. It is our humanity made more whole.

This shift does not happen once and for all. Souling is a lifetime practice. It is the daily work of returning to our depths. It is the practice of asking, again and again: Am I reacting from ego, or responding from soul? Am I seeing this person through fear, or through love? Am I defending an image of myself, or living from my deeper truth? Am I wearing the goggles of the ego, or am I awake to the soul?

The profound wonder of souling is that as we become more conscious of our own soul, we become more able to recognize the souls of others. We begin to see beneath behavior, beneath opinion, beneath personality, beneath wound and defense. We begin to sense the sacred depth in another person—even when that person may not yet be conscious of it in themselves. This does not mean we become naïve. We do not view everyone as perfect, or as angels… We see reality and underneath it. It does not mean we excuse harm or lose discernment. It means we learn to see more deeply. We learn to honor the soul while still recognizing the ego’s distortions.

Souling can be practiced anywhere: in a conversation, in traffic, in prayer, in grief, in conflict, in silence, at the grocery store, in the hospital room, at the dinner table, or while walking beneath the trees. It is the practice of remembering the deeper world while living in this one.

And it extends beyond the people we know. Souling connects us to all life in our immediate sphere and beyond it—to those across the globe, to the wounded earth, to children, animals, forests, rivers, and all beings who share this sacred home with us. But we cannot see these souls clearly while we are still wearing the goggles of an unreal reality.

So, the invitation to this spiritual practice is simple, though it lasts a lifetime:

Take off the goggles.

Look from the unobstructed eye of the soul.

Live from there.

Inquiry

What benefits are there for you in wearing the goggles of your ego? 

Prayer

Dear God, Grant that I may have the courage to see reality as it really is, to give my attention to it, and to live from there with a heart of love.

Amen