You feel lonely, empty, disconnected, and numb.
No one would suspect it on the surface. But these feelings of aimlessness, purposelessness, and worthlessness eat away at you every single day.
The truth is that on a core level, you feel lost. You feel cut off from your authentic self. You’re a lone wolf who’s isolated even when around other people.
This sense of heaviness and restlessness within your heart doesn’t go away, and you don’t know how to feel whole again.
To make matters worse, the state of society and the world overwhelms you with feelings of anxiety, dread, and hopelessness, and your sensitivity feels more like a curse than a gift.
Can you relate to these feelings?
If you can, please know that you’ve finally found two people who understand you.
We’ve both felt the depths of isolation, powerlessness, and frustration that come with not knowing one’s path or purpose, and feeling like an outsider in this world.
What you’re experiencing isn’t a sign that there’s something wrong with you. Instead, what you’re feeling is a normal reaction to an abnormal world.
In the words of philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
Through the years, we’ve discovered that these feelings of being lost, alone, disconnected, and without a purpose aren’t a personal defect, but a deep crisis that many are going through.
This shared crisis is known as Self-Alienation or Soul Loss – and it’s an invitation to come home to the deeper truth of your nature.
Table of contents
What is Soul Loss (Self-Alienation)? Why is it Responsible For Suffering?
Soul loss can be observed today as a psychological phenomenon in the everyday lives of human beings around us. Loss of soul appears in the form of a sudden onset of apathy and listlessness; the joy has gone out of life, initiative is crippled, one feels empty, everything seems pointless. – Marie Von Franz
In essence, Soul Loss is self-alienation – that horrible feeling that you’re disconnected from yourself, others, and life itself.
The result is feeling endlessly lost, stuck, lonely, and without a clear sense of direction.
On a deep level, Soul Loss is what happens when you lose connection to the wise, wild, and vital core essence of your being – your Soul.
This core wound of separation happens due to the traumas we experience throughout life and societal conditioning that teaches us to live in a state of robotic autopilot.
These traumas and layers of conditioning (that result in the creation of our ‘dark’ Shadow Self) are like thick clouds that obscure the sunlight of our inner Self or Soul. Our Soul is still there, but we struggle to feel or access its warmth and wisdom. This is why many people describe Soul Loss as the feeling of going through a Dark Night of the Soul or a life crisis.
Soul Loss, the Planet, and Why You Feel Lost
Soul Loss isn’t just responsible for our sense of emptiness, loneliness, and numbness, but also for the destruction of our planet.
When we lose touch with our Souls and experience Self-alienation, we lose touch with the Soul of the world (the Anima Mundi) of which we are inextricably linked. Having this sacred connection severed means that we use, abuse, and destroy nature and each other.
Ancient shamanic, religious, and spiritual traditions have spoken about the phenomenon of Soul Loss since the beginning of time.
Take the words of Jesus, for example, who once said,
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
When we experience Soul Loss, no matter how much we achieve or do externally, it never truly makes us feel happy, fulfilled, or at peace.
A tree that is cut off from its roots withers, and the same symbolic idea applies to our relationship with our Souls. Your Soul is your taproot and connection to the Divine. Without that felt sense of connection, life loses its meaning, vitality, and color.
The Path Home – Soul Work
Soul is unborn, eternal, ever-existing and primeval. – Bhagavad Gita
Despite the pain and suffering that accompany Soul Loss, you can never totally lose touch with your Soul. It’s just buried and obscured under the thick fog of false beliefs, core wounds, and layers of your Shadow Self.
The path back home to your Soul is one of deep introspective inner work – one of Soul Work. Any practice that helps you to remove the blockages that obscure the Light of your Soul is a form of Soul Work – most commonly, this includes paths such as self-love, inner child work, shadow work, and more.
Gradually, Soul Work helps us to experience a more ensouled life, which is the goal of all our Soul Work: to find a sense of home in ourselves and the world, a place and purpose in existence.
If Soul Loss is the venom, Soul Work is the medicine that helps us to experience the healing power of Ensoulment.
What is Ensoulment?
Ensoulment means living in alignment with your Soul. It is the process by which you undertake the work of becoming a truly soulful being, where you invite your Soul back into every corner of your life.
Ensoulment means feeling whole, guided, and alive again. It’s about finding the unique gifts and potential of your Soul and actualizing it in this world to make a positive difference, no matter how big or small.
When we’re living an ensouled life, we’re living a whole and integrated life, a life of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment.
Your Compass and Map – How the Journey Works
Overcoming self-alienation, coming home to your Soul, and living an ensouled life takes time. It’s a path that requires commitment. It’s a practice that asks you to look deep within yourself willingly.
We call this practice Soul Work.
Soul Work is the deepest form of inner work there is, encompassing the mind, heart, and soul. It incorporates the four pillars of:
- Grounding your body-mind,
- Practicing self-love,
- Healing your inner child, and
- Integrating your shadow self
One of our favorite ways to approach Soul Work is through the ancient framework of spiritual alchemy, which is divided into three levels: nigredo (the darkening, or crisis), albedo (the whitening, or awakening), and rubedo (the reddening, or integration).
Spiritual alchemy is the ancient path of transformation. It teaches us the power of redemption and that even our greatest pain can be transmuted into a source of power, purpose, and potential.
Ultimately, spiritual alchemy is the art of transforming the ‘lead’ of your inner darkness – your wounds, traumas, and shadows – into the ‘gold’ of wisdom, compassion, and purpose.
Your First Step on the Path
If something within your heart and soul says “yes” to what we’ve shared here, we welcome you to join us on this inner journey.
You don’t have to walk this path alone anymore. Sign up for our free newsletter to get weekly soul-centered guidance and support for your unique path of healing and wholeness:
Ready to dive deep right away? Explore the Soul Work Compass Course – our complete guided journey for finding more clarity, direction, and purpose in life.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “I am finding out so much about myself and having so many realisations about my life that tie in to the course material … I already know it is what I’ve needed for so long.” – Jen N.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “I really love the depth this course offers through what appears to be such a simple path.” – Elisa F.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “I felt like I really dove into finding my true authentic self and my true purpose.” – Stephanie M
Thank you for being here, kindred soul. We are honored to accompany you on your path of healing and transformation.
With love always,
Aletheia Luna & Mateo Sol
Psychospiritual Writers, Guides, and Educators
I do feel lost in a sense. Being more inverted from the grass roots to on display. As tension mounts and we all feel the pain and suffering in the world.
I feel ambivalent mixed and alienated in my own Country. Displaced, uprooted on edge with all the constant changes happening. Instant recession! Wars! etc.,
But happy by staying grounded close to home and within reach of personal comforts for my age group. For example warm blankets hot tea/coffee and simple foods which are fairly low on protein (meat) and high on vegetables, fruit, plus ice cream for sweet treat, With plenty of dark chocolate and sherbet sweets for later on.
The hard part is stepping outside of the ingrained old familiar territory of our social and private life. Old negative archetype and familiar boundaries are no longer achieving the required levels of support for the hierarchy of needs. As past things are disappearing rapidly and can no longer serve our needs. Millenials are craving every darn thing ASAP. They want the career, the employment and the money in the bank. Their energies are some what wasted in the wrong way on the wrong things. These lost soul energies slow the process down making it hard to stop and let go of all that is negative useless and wasteful and to just seek reconciliation to Source/God as the true parameter and reconnection to make for true reality and not an artificial matrix.
Thanks for sharing, John. With millennials, I think with time they’ll mature. As a millennial myself, I know the plight of instant gratification seeking, but also recognize positive qualities in this group like becoming more socially and environmentally aware, which previous generations weren’t.
This is exactly what I needed to read today, I’ve been going crazy with this feeling lately. The constant pull between my soul’s voice saying, “embrace the in-between, it’s okay” and my brain (society’s conditioning voice) saying, “Do something! Figure out your life! You should be doing this, and this. Why aren’t you doing any of these things?” …then the negative self-talk and shame spiral ensues. Ugh!
Reading this pulled me out of this hell-loop and helped me recalibrate and reminded me which voice to listen to. I’m always so deeply grateful for your emails, they arrive like an answer to a prayer.
I’m so grateful to read this, Claire, and that you’ve managed to recalibrate. Thank you for sharing this 🙏 💜
I have been lost many times throughout my life. In this crazy world we live in it is easy to get pulled into the programing all around us everywhere. Pulling us away from our true selves our true center our peace. I try to remember that I am a spiritual being living out a physical existence. I am one with GOD I am sovereign and I am free is a mantra I have used to help me remember my journey. We are never alone.
Well said Michael. It helps so much to have a mantra like this to carry with us 🐺
I don’t think there is any human being who isn’t lost in some way, due to our limited nature as human beings. It’s just some people are more lost than others, and some far less. All I can offer as advice, from my own limited life experience, is that the same solutions that didn’t work, likely won’t solve things if you just do it over and over. That’s different from when a solution works, but does so very slowly and in tiny signs of progress, so you have to be alert when that happens. Though people are stuck in old problems, because people are stuck within old ways. As long as you don’t change the old ways, people are stuck in old problems. Simple as that. What might get you out of a funk simply might be in just trying to experiment with random solutions you won’t usually try or consider, which ironically might do far more than just repeating what won’t work. Progress reports are simple. Ask, “What works?” “What doesn’t work?” Then ask, “What should I do about it?” But most people don’t ask that. They think, “I have to repeat this solution a hundred, thousand, million, or more times for it to work!”
Thanks for offering this advice Anonymous – I like these pragmatic questions, they’re valuable to contemplate. 🐺
I feel I’m stuck in my life. Practically, I know what I am supposed to do but that doesn’t make sense to me. I feel disconnected and lost and I don’t know wether I am on right path or not. I want to get out of this but still not getting the way that can make sense or make me do something.
Hello again!
I have been struggling with feeling lost so much since long ago. It comes when so much fears and desires get into a big conflict in my head. Especially when I feel out of control, with my own aims and sense of direction, a guilt.
For more concrete examples; When I fail to meet my promise that I will not touch an energy/time draining activity like social media etc, but I find myself using them for hours without noticing, and forgetting about my daily duties (Routine: physical exercises, prayers, studies, deep meditation…). This makes me feel like a failure, and unable to control my life, and in past days, I used to react to this feeling by escaping it and diving deeper into more distracting activities like walking into endless and useless Youtube videos. Nowadays, I find it more healthy as you mentioned, since it alarms me that I need to bring necessary changes by renewing my discipline plan.
Actually, I recall a phrase that I used to say to describe this unpleasant state: “I feel like I am wasting myself.”
Thanks Haytam. Not sure if you wanted my feedback or comments at all, but I appreciate you reading and sharing how feeling lost appears for you 😀
Oh wow Haytam I feel the same way, I feel that I am wasting my life. I need to stay focused on what I need to do in my life and to do it. Not spending day after day continuing to do the same thing and knowing I am wasting my life away but still continuing to do the same negative thing over and over and then feeling guilty and frustrated with myself. I too have watched endless youtube videos ending up staying up all night only to sleep a couple of hours and then feeling like crap and then instead of going to bed the next evening at a reasonable time doing the same thing all over again. I have been repeating a negative action over and over for years. I told myself when I retired I was going to stop, well It has been 5 years since I retired and nothing has changed except for me to feel more depressed,lonely,and frustrated. Tonight I am going to turn the computer off and go to bed at a reasonable hour and when I wake up tomorrow stick with detoxing so that I can go on a vacation and not be tied to having to stay here a slave to my addictions. I have to be strong and change my situation so that I can travel and enjoy my life. Life is precious and I feel like I am wasting mine. I have to be strong and change my situation if I want to be happy and live, not just exist.
At the moment I find difficulty in saying “Why Feeling Lost is Normal”
As too many things are happening at once. Old age has it’s merits and it’s flaws or reproach which combined with suddenly dealing with body bits wanting to play up and still say I am healthy and can focus without worry on the points in hand. As I feel swamped by every thing at this time, and that alone can place one feeling lost from too much happening and not getting done.
So this week I honed this open ended topic down to two points !) I am to a certain extent what my intention faith and love has built over the years and thus need to dwell in some degree in self acceptance. Though with help from Sol and Luna this may need some vital modification in the next two years.
2) That trust is a precious gift bestowed upon those that feel and know they are sufficiently part of our lives and we love them. One other point was going to be on Self Sovereignty but I think this is more for me to dive into self discovery, when time permits.❤
Thanks for sharing John 😄
Thanks, this article was extremely good. Feeling lost now feels more positive and helpful now that I have read this. Personally I am lost because my old way of living was destroying me, I was ignoring so many of my feelings and wishes to “get a job and fit in.”
After leaving it, I fight the voices in my head that call me useless for not job hunting everyday and focus on improving the skills I enjoy instead
Thank you for sharing that, Lala. I’m glad you feel better about this extremely normal and natural experience in life. 💗
Sometimes feeling lost is a an exciting thing!
It’s even more exciting when several people are lost with you. And then we can sing the song on YouTube, “Living, in the land, of the lost! Lost! Lost! Lost!”
LoL
😆 Love this!
I’m writing because it brings concrete ideas out. Something as simple as thanking you for all the light and guidance, so consistently – these are sincere words.
Less easy to say is how lost I’ve been, even when I thought I knew what I was doing. The problem I have is a creative slump – a depression – unlike other times when I had a drive to put things out. Now I see the motives better than I did then: the egotism, the self-delusion, the little king on his throne reinforced in passing by friends, some of whom offered realistic assessments that passed right over me. The friends moved on while I stayed in the same place. People don’t reach out to me anymore. I used to be a good confidant. Now I’m that person still lost in his own world except that reports through performance are no longer issued. Finding a partner would be a relief and a healthy challenge, but I am not depending on anyone to save me. Contacting the High Self – and thus true compassion, love, and safety – is the only process that I think can greet these core issues and effectively change them.
Thank you for sharing here Foundling. What you offer in these words shines a light on how potent (and also painful) having others around us can be. They bless us with their uncomfortable assessments of our behavior and how we’re deluding ourselves (if they’re perceptive and genuinely caring friends/family members). Even if their perceptions of us are false, they still hold up a mirror and show us where we still have ego-centered reactivity and attachment. Connecting with the Higher Self (what I’m starting to see as the loving inner parent or light of the Soul), is the only true safe space I’ve found – that warm field of consciousness that only wants the best for us. May you befriend it and find what you’re looking for ❤