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 Soul Loss – and it’s an invitation to come home to the deeper truth of your nature.
What is Soul Loss? 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
Soul Loss 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 Souls. 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.
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, 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 and Ensoulment
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.
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
Coming home to your Soul and living an ensouled life isn’t a quick fix. It’s a way of life that requires commitment. It’s a path and practice that asks you to willingly look deep within yourself.
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
We approach Soul Work 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.
This alchemical form of Soul Work is divided into seven stages of inner transformation:
- Calcination (Calcinatio, the fire) – Burning away the illusions.
- Dissolution (Solutio, the water) – Dissolving blocks. Processing emotions.
- Coagulation (Coagulatio, the earth) – Getting grounded. Setting boundaries.
- Sublimation (Sublimatio, the air) – Taking a higher perspective.
- Mortification (Mortifactio, the shadow) – Facing the shadow and letting go.
- Separation (Separatio, the sword) – Discerning the truth. Cutting through the fog.
- Conjunction (Coniunctio, the gold) – Integrating wisdom and embodying a transformed self.
All of our work on this website mirrors one or more of these alchemical processes. We also help you explore these paths of transformation more in-depth in our powerful Alchemical Soul Work Workbook.
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 journey of Ensoulment.
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 Alchemical Soulwork Workbook, our complete guided journey for transforming inner blocks and finding clarity.
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
Sometimes, things get very clear to me in very painful ways. I can only speak of my life. I am no authority when it comes to another’s. The feeling of being all alone in the midst of friends and that everything is superficial and ultimately meaningless is no stranger to me. This is what I can share in that regard: I am thankful that in my life there are these guiding moments of extraordinary clarity which then show me truth, if often in painful ways. In one of those moments, among friends, I was asked: “What do you really want?”, in the philosophical sense. This is of course one of THE questions and answering it is no easy task as everybody who was ever challenged by it knows well. So, thinking for a short moment about how to express my true feeling in a way everybody can understand I said: “I just want to be left alone.” It was coming from so deep within me that it startled me much more than everybody else around. It was a message that did not lack in clarity and even though I am no stranger to introspection it was disconcerting to actually hear it spelled out. In other moments of clarity, when I truly see myself for who I am, realizing how little I care about anything, and, above all, that I do not care nearly enough about the one person who is very close to me, I feel a deep sadness and it brings tears to my eyes. Still, those moments of truth, however painful, are precious to me. They happen to instill a sense of meaning by showing me, that there is room and reason to grow. My hope is that everybody in need has those healing moments and if not, my advice would be to try and actively work towards them. In doing that, never forget to not trust in square culture and orthodox society that it will help and show you the path. Cultures primary aim is to cultivate functioning people not whole ones.
Thank you for your work Lonerwolf!
I lost my identity And put in exaustion in1987 and just now breaking generational curse against my family and I’m just now able to afford and have this taking care and hoping everything else works out graciously and it turns out great and do fine and regenerate through everything so. It’s in my prayers that I don’t take a nose dive but a plumber upwards to see the path that is better for me and be appreciate of every turn but have more control and on everything else to be a divine in this era and have better a life
Thank you Stacey for sharing. It takes immense courage to want to break old patterns, especially ancestral ones. Keep up the good work! 😊