Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
and you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
you are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
where you are. You must let it find you.~ David Wagoner (Lost, Traveling Light)
Your soul is not only your true nature, it is your true place in nature. We’re all born to occupy, serve and nurture our place within the ecosystem of the universe. But these days we have come to perceive existence as something to consume and use, rather than to truly Be in and appreciate.
A few years ago I had an experience in the Australian outback. On a walk, I found a beautiful stone lodged into the earth. After picking it up and admiring it for a bit, I put it back down and continued walking. The Aborigine that was with me laughed, shook his head in disbelief and exclaimed, “It’s strange! Usually white man always wants to own everything he sees and touches.” Unless the stone had significant spiritual value to me, I realized that the stone was only beautiful when in its own setting. Away from the Outback, the sand dunes, the sun, the stone simply becomes a “thing.”
Similarly, we belong not only to a spiritual realm, but a physical realm. Did you know that we all have at least one soul place in the physical world? A soul place is a special site or spot where we experience unique feelings of belonging, empowerment and energetic rejuvenation.
Many eco-centered cultures knew of soul places. The Australian aborigines, for instance, believe that each person has one place in the natural world where they most belong; a place that is as much part of him as he is part of it. In finding that place, we also find our true selves.
What Are Power Places?
Indigenous cultures and shamans have known for thousands of years that there are special places in nature that have a sacred personal connection to us. Unlike our modern disconnected cultures, their awareness of the Spirit realm allowed them to create ceremonies that were specifically aimed at initiating them into spiritual maturity through nature-based practices.
Here in Australia for example, the aborigines have a cultural tradition called the “Walkabout.” A walkabout occurs when an aboriginal youth wanders through the bush completely alone for weeks, sometimes months. As the youth wanders, they avoid all human interaction, going in search for a place they feel at home.
Another example can be found within the indigenous people of the Sahara, the Tuareg. Saharan women who are pregnant occasionally wander into the nearby desert with the intention of finding, or being found by, a sacred site. This sacred site will be the place of birthing their children. These women report not feeling alone or scared because they feel a great depth of relationship with the other-than-humans living there.
Soul places aren’t only personal – they can also be collective. Examples of collective soul places include Bear Butte in Wyoming and Uluru in Australia. There are also human-made power places such as the Great Pyramids in Egypt, the megalithic temple of Stonehenge, and the mind-boggling subterranean passageways at Chavín de Huantar.
How to Find Your Individual Sanctuary
Most shamans have special places in nature that hold personal significance to them. These places might be locations where they enter the Spirit realm, or places where they first experienced their callings or spirit guides. A power, or soul place can be anywhere: it doesn’t have to be in a far away exotic land.
Your power/soul place, for instance, could be a physical place a dear one passed away. Your soul place could be near a river or park, or a childhood home filled with memories. Your soul place could even be the restaurant where your partner proposed to you. Our power places can be virtually anywhere.
So how do you find your power place? The most important thing to look out for is a place that allows you to experience deep emotions. Pay attention to any place that feels intimate to you, a place that allows you to experience timeless moments of Presence. These places will facilitate your ability to go beyond your five senses and touch something deeper. The place where these moments of transcendence occur leave a strong mark in our souls.
10 Signs You’ve Found Your Soul Place
When you’re in your soul place, you may feel/think the following way:
- If it’s a new place, you’ll feel a sense of familiarity.
- Colors may look brighter, almost like a surrealist painting (this happened to me in my first encounter with my soul place).
- You’ll feel a greater sense of harmony and ease.
- You might intuitively sense that “you’re finally home and can rest now.”
- The outer terrain synchronizes with your interior landscape – it’s almost as though they’ve been waiting for each other.
- Even if there’s external chaos in this place, you’ll still feel internally peaceful.
- You’ll feel inspired and have bursts of creative thought.
- You’ll feel a new sense of freedom and joy.
- You’ll feel introspective and will get to know yourself in deeper ways.
- You’ll feel recharged and energized.
Sometimes our power places can also be imagined places within our minds. If you’ve ever entered altered states of consciousness and pierced the veil of reality, you’ll realize that there’s no distinction between each of the different layers of reality. In other words, the places within our minds exists in the world just as much as the places within the world exist within our minds.
Your Soul Is Not Only Yours, It’s Also the World’s
Today, wherever you stand,
Be the soul of that place. ~ Rumi (The Essential Rumi)
The universe cannot be completely itself until you become completely yourself. Your soul is IN and OF the world, like a ripple in a river, a wave in the ocean, or a flaming twig in a fire.
The world’s greatest flames all found their sacred places: Moses on Mount Sinai, Jesus in the desert, Muhammad in a cave outside Mecca, Buddha under the bodhi tree.
Your place of power is more than a sanctuary. It is a place (or places) in the universe where you feel at home, where you feel that forces, beyond your control and that which you do not fully understand, support you in your quest toward self-fulfillment.
Where is your Soul Place? Let me know in the comments.
I am British Caribbean mixed and I have always felt drawn to Italy, no idea why, but the food, the language, the people, the cities, all of it makes me feel this intense magnetic pull that I cannot shake. Who knows, maybe I lived there in a past life as I believe in that sort of thing.
When I was about 7, my mother remarried a man from Death Valley, California. His stories enchanted me so much, I vowed to move to the desert when I grew up. For the next several years, I researched and spent hours reading about creosote bushes, Native American tribes, how to tell the difference between a Cardura and a Saguaro, how mountains and mesas and plateaus rose from the ground, and of course all about Death Valley on Encarta Encyclopedia (this was a LONG time ago) and any book about the American Southwest I could find at the library (internet was still in it’s infant stage). My parents were severely against me moving out west (“It’s too hot!” my mother would say despite the fact we tolerated the miserable Alabama swamp weather). Yet almost every dream at night was filled with dry heat, dust, wind, prickly pears, and a bright blue open sky flanked by the tall colorful plateaus of Chaco Canyon or the asphalt pass between Cleghorn and the Sheephole Wilderness.
I was 22 when I visited New Mexico, my first state other than eastern Texas, across the Mississippi River. My first stop was El Paso, then Alamogordo, NM to visitmy then boyfriend stationed at Holloman. Neither of those places are remotely comely or worth visiting. One of the days he had off, we drove an hour and a half to Las Cruces, and after laying eyes on the Organ Mountain range, I felt like my soul had swollen like a balloon, left my body, and was going to explode above me. All the air was sucked out of my lungs. The colors became bright and warm, and I got this surge of adrenaline for reasons unknown.
He and I broke up and I never saw him again, but once I graduated nursing school, I immediately jumped at the opportunity to move to New Mexico. I’ve lived here for almost 5 years, and my friends keep asking if I’m ever coming home. The problem is, Alabama never really felt like a home, but the desert and the sand and the mountains and heat and bugs and rocks and fragrant creosote bushes and cacti and adobe houses and pueblos and protected and preserved open land that sprawls for miles under a bright sun in an open sky is where I belong.
I took a long solo road trip from Cruces through Tucson to Saguaro National Park to Phoenix, then west to Joshua Tree, winding north through Mojave Wilderness to Vegas. From there, I ventured to Death Valley, and somewhere in the Mesquite Sand Dunes, I felt like a piece of myself I had lost or never really owned to begin with, reunited inside of me. As I drove back to Phoenix, I stopped in Sedona to meditate in a Vortex, and on Airport Mesa, a man started speaking to me as if he knew my plights and anxieties and fears, and his words of comfort and spiritual intuition washed over me like a cool ocean wave. I felt a large part of my depression slip away that night.
I’ve traveled back to all of those places many times since, and I find a small piece of myself in the most unlikely places–the quiet between Kofa and Twentynine Palms; on a cliff in Valley of Fire; in the sand blowing by Roy’s in Amboy; between the boulders in Texas Canyon; in a field of Joshua Trees; nestled between the Superstition Mountains; om the cliff above the Secret Mountain Wilderness surrounded by the red rocks; on the side of the road between the Wildernesses of Cleghorn and Sheephole; growing inside a giant monolithic Saguaro; at the peak of Shiprock; between the satellites of the VLA; in the waters of Salt Creek Canyon; on the plateaus of Chaco Canyon; in the glittery gypsum in White Sands; in the pink-orange glow of the Organs at sunset; and most profoundly, at night gazing east from the highest hill in the Rio Grande Valley down into the sparkling lights of Las Cruces.
I have a feeling there’s more of me to find.
I believe with all my heart, I found my soul place. Two weeks ago, at midnight I had the thought (second time, I ignored it before) to search houses for sale in a small mountain community less than an hour away. Why, I have no idea. But I did, and it was, the perfect house. Again, we were not looking for another house. It has a creek running through the front yard. My husband drove us to see it. It’s perfect, absolutely perfect. We reached out to see the house, no one called us. We went again and this time found out it’s pending to a buyer. But in the week from actually being there to today, I have dreamed of this house. I can SEE us there, I HEAR the creek. It FEELS like home. The first day, I was going to open the gate, my husband asked what was doing? But it felt so natural. But someone else is buying it. I’m so confused. Why was I drawn there?
My soul place is on Vancouver Island. I feel so connected to the land. When I’m there I feel inner peace and a sense of belonging. The mountains, the ocean and the forests make me feel at ease. I’m stress free and so refreshed the moment I’m there. Since my first trip to Van Island, I know that’s where I’m meant to be. It’s so special to me in many ways and I call it my happy place. I love beautiful British Columbia. One day I will call that place home.
I have it in my heart to always be in America, although I live in Europe. It’s like my soul calls out for it
I believe my soul place was Iceland. When I visited two years ago, something about the nature of it all, the waterfalls, the glaciers, the northern lights, connected with me. I felt like I had to touch the soft black sand on the beach or a piece of ice chipped off from a glacier to feel connected. Seeing the northern lights (faintly although) in person, something just resonated with me. Despite the fact that I was dumped (we dated 7 years!) while on the trip, it never soured my memory of Iceland. It was almost like losing that long relationship paled into comparison with the connection I made there. Anytime I see something about Iceland or scenery that looks similar, my heart just rings with joy and familiarity. I’ve traveled to other wonderful places but NOTHING can replace the connection I made in Iceland. I’m curious to understand this connection more (as I also felt connected to other Nordic countries too).
I also feel deeply connected to Nordic countries, as if I lived there, but I never had and don’t even have relatives there. I feel deeply connected to Norway specifically ♥
I was always drawn to Africa and finally got there in 2017. I had a couple of extremely special moments on my trip. One was watching the Sunset beside the ocean at our campground in Tsitsikamma National Park, and the second was on a beach watching the stars near Mozambique. I felt this profound and overwhelming love, and both times I was overcome with tears of joy. I don’t remember feeling such happiness, contentment and connection. I never felt like I could describe the feeling properly, and now I know why. It was incredible ♥️
Zion, Utah. Words can not describe what I experienced or how I felt but my soul knew it was finally home.
I am being overwhelming drawn to the Steppes and to Turkey, the Khazars civilization and to the the Kiev Rus. I am Ashkenazi. I lived in Western European for a few years in my 20s. I felt so at home. I have no previous introduction to the Steppes, the Khazars or Turkey only that ai need to be there. My grandmother’s people were from Russia and were Russian Jews. Things are so familiar to me like the Russian language. I took German in Manheim and it was second nature. I am a strong empath. I just can’t stop the pulling on my soul. I love the food. I have never been exposed to the Turkish culture or Khazars or the Steppes or the Kiev Rus but it feels like it is a part of me
This brought tears to my eyes. One day i will sit and write to you and Luna.. I want to tell you about my spiritual awakening and journey and how Lonerwolf has been huge for my twin flame and I. But for now I was guided to comment about how this “soul place ” article resonated with me. I have a soul place.. i use to call it “home” it is a spot by a “creek ” in Van Buren County, Arkansas,