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 tragically, in the 21st century, our species has come to perceive existence as something to consume and use, rather than to truly forge a relationship with and appreciate.
Finding your Soul Place, while an unusual and largely forgotten avenue of self-discovery, can help us reconnect with the living earth, and therefore ourselves.
Table of contents
- Lessons From the Magical Australian Outback
- What is a Soul Place?
- What We Can Learn From Indigenous Cultures
- Examples of Collective Soul Places
- How to Find Your Soul Place
- 11 Signs You’ve Found Your Soul Place
- Do I Have to Find My Soul Place to Be at Peace?
- Your Soul Is Not Only Yours; It’s Also Part of the World’s Soul
Lessons From the Magical Australian Outback
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 Aboriginal man that was with me laughed, shook his head in disbelief, and exclaimed, “It’s strange! Usually, white man always wanna own everything he sees and touches.”
I pondered his words and realized that something (a stone in this case) only retains its beauty and value when in its own setting.
Away from the Outback, the sand dunes, and the sun, the stone simply becomes a “thing” to be hoarded and left to gather dust on a bookshelf.
Just like this rock, we too have places and spaces that most resonate and ‘fit’ us.
And when we’re put in foreign settings that don’t match our energy or essence, we inevitably feel out of place.
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What is a Soul Place?
The concept of having a special ‘Soul Place’ in this world is not new.
We see mentions of this fascinating concept from ancient shamanic cultures who believed in power places to modern psychologists such as Bill Plotkin.
In essence, a Soul Place (or power place) is a special site or spot where we experience unique feelings of belonging, empowerment, expansion, and energetic rejuvenation.
We all have at least one Soul Place in this world.
As I mentioned before, 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 us as we are part of it.
In finding that place, we also find and reconnect with the soul within us.
What We Can Learn From Indigenous Cultures
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
– David Wagoner (Lost, Traveling Light)
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.
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 ecologically 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 of a place they feel at home.
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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 would then be the place for birthing their child.
While this rite of passage sounds terrifying to the Western mind, these women report not feeling alone or scared because they feel a great depth of relationship and bone-deep kinship with the land.
Examples of Collective Soul Places
While a Soul Place might sound personal, it isn’t. Soul Places can also be shared by collective groups of people.
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.
Soul Places can also be formed through religious and spiritual beliefs. Majestic examples include the Great Mosque of Mecca, Saint Peter’s Basilica, the Golden Temple, and the Shrine of Baháʼu’lláh.
How to Find Your Soul Place
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.
However, as exotic and mysterious as a Soul Place might sound, it doesn’t have to be.
Soul Places can be simple, humble, local, and even largely unknown (or ignored) to others.
Your Power/Soul Place, for instance, could be a local park, hidden creek, or back-alley bookstore.
Your Soul Place could be near an ocean or woodland, or a childhood home filled with memories.
Your Soul Place could even be the restaurant where your partner proposed to you or a chapel you happened to stumble into on one rainy day.
Our power places can be virtually anywhere!
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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 or divine to you; a place that allows you to experience timeless moments of beauty and hyper-awareness.
These holy places will facilitate your ability to go inwards and touch something deeper. You may experience moments of awe, gratitude, joy, and interconnectedness with life.
Whatever the case, your Soul Place will be a whimsical friend of your soul.
11 Signs You’ve Found Your Soul Place
Many people wonder how to identify a Soul Place. Is it a space where you feel cozy, like a nook of your house? Do you have any mystical experiences?
Here are some signs that may help you to confirm that you’ve found your Soul Place:
- 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 inner and outer harmony.
- You might intuitively sense that “you’re finally home and can rest now.”
- You can tune into the interconnectedness of life.
- A sense of awe, wonder, peace, and joy bubbles up inside of you.
- You’ll feel inspired and have spontaneous creative thoughts/ideas.
- You’ll feel a sense of freedom.
- You’ll feel introspective and contemplative.
- You’ll feel recharged and energized.
- You feel expanded, less centered in the ego, and more connected with your deeper essence.
Sometimes our Soul 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 exist in the world just as much as the places within the world exist within our minds.
Do I Have to Find My Soul Place to Be at Peace?
No. You don’t have to find your Soul Place to be at peace.
The whole point of the spiritual awakening journey is to live from your inner Home, no matter where you are.
When our inner peace is based on an external condition (which can be taken away), then we suffer.
So the point of finding your Soul Place isn’t to reach a promised land or escape your current life. Instead, your Soul Place is a doorway to accessing:
- spiritual guidance and direction,
- spiritual healing,
- inspiration,
- relaxation,
- conscious expansion, and
- Oneness
Your Soul Place is a gateway of Soul retrieval – it is merely a tool that can assist you in bridging the gap between the ego and the Higher Self.
It’s important to mention this misconception about one’s Soul Place because many people use this pursuit to avoid developing qualities of present-moment mindfulness.
When we learn to live in the moment, any place can eventually become our Soul Place.
As Sufi mystic Rumi once wrote,
Today, wherever you stand,
– Rumi (The Essential Rumi)
Be the soul of that place.
Your Soul Is Not Only Yours; It’s Also Part of the World’s Soul
Your soul is IN and OF the world, like a ripple in a river, a wave in the ocean, or a twig on a tree.
The human mind tends to fragment existence. But the closer we look, the more we see how interconnected everything is – and how connected to It All we are.
The reality is that we are an integral part of the Whole, just as much as a mountain, tree, whale, or cloud is.
The human Soul and the world Soul (or ‘Anima Mundi’) are inextricably entwined.
As such, mystical experiences of belonging aren’t divorced from the world around us. We don’t have to ‘ascend’ or leave this body and planet. On the contrary, Home is rooted in this physical reality!
The world’s greatest souls all found their sacred places: Moses on Mount Sinai, Jesus in the desert, Muhammad in a cave outside Mecca, and Buddha under the bodhi tree.
Your place of power is more than a sanctuary.
It is a place (or many different places) in the universe where you feel at home – it is a doorway into greater self-awareness, internal evolution, clarity, awe, and joy.
Where is your Soul Place? Let me know in the comments.
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I lived in California most of my life. I visited and explored every park in the state. California is definitely beautiful. But, I just couldn’t find “home.” After retiring to North Idaho, mostly due to the cost of living, I started having moments of de ja vue. Felt very much at peace. I felt such a strong sense of belonging. I know now, after reading about how other people also experienced these feelings, I am home, at last.
My soul place is just my home, in the middle of the suburbs. I don’t need some expensive trip to feel at home, hahaha. There’s no place like home to me, after all. That also goes for about any mundane familiar place to me locally. My soul place has less to do with something that has a special awe, majesty, or beauty, but just places I have nostalgia, for. Feels like a fairly boring answer, but eh, I’m just a normally adventurous person, so it’s nice to have places to temperate my own daredevil tendencies. Maybe more exciting places matter to others, because that helps them get in touch with a part of themselves not there before, but to me, excitement, being busy, and being wild in my life is my default mode, so usually it’s familiar places that settle my restlessness, hahaha. Or maybe I’m one of those rare spiritual types who actually like living near in the city, since usually hippie types prefer natural areas, though city parks do that for me. I mean, I’ve visited the country from time to time, generally because my relatives live there, so I visit yearly. . . and that’s nice to… Read more »
It’s the beach, it has been always the beach. When you finally reach that point between the dunes where you can see the first glimpse of the water. It feels like i can finally breath!! Strange,… Cause breathing happens automatically. The feeling is stronger when i am alone, or not that much people around, if it’s to crowded. The feeling is blocked. A few years back I had some other experience, try to experience it again, but it didn’t happen with the same intensity. I can’t really describe it. A few weeks a go i was reading a part of the celestine prophecy, i think there was a clear discription of what i saw later on lonerwolf is called kenosis. I don’t think it was the same, i felt satisfied, happy and at peace. But those words don’t do the feeling justice. I felt really contentment. The beach is kind of a small retreat for me. To escape from the disturbing realities in society and be able to ease my mind for a moment. Since a few years i feel the urge to visit other beaches around the planet. And somehow i feel the urge to visit Iceland and the… Read more »
Last summer, I won a scholarship for Work and Travel in the USA. My sponsors wanted to meet in New York City. When I arrived in New York, I felt so different… The whole place felt very familiar and I felt at home like I’d lived there for thousand years. I even said in my mind: Gosh, I am finally home! I started crying from happiness, the emotions were so strong… I did not want to leave, I felt like I belonged in that place. I was so calm, I stopped worrying. Now, when I even see a picture from NY City, I feel so happy, like something is pushing me to go there again. I want to ask, is it possible that I meet my soul mate there, or is it because of something else? Do you think there is a way to figure it out or I just go there again and find it out by myself?
I have been feeling disconnected from nature and soul. I look at the trees and see nothing, hear nothing. Some days I’m lucky and I can feel the wind on my face, other days it is as if I’m walking through the fog of existence itself, stuck in the mud that is the pain of existence itself. At times certain people can feel like a home, but after a certain amount of time they become too much and I need to get away. I feel no great pull towards any location or place, nor person. Every place feels in some sense, empty.
My minds eye is dark. All I can see is darkness, beasts, and fighting in my minds eye. I don’t know if I need focus or training to control this darkness, but nature is not telling me much about what to do.
I live near a park that has always been my soul place. My actual home is a 10-minute walk and a place that feels connected to everything around it. There are wooded areas and wetlands that used to be industry and mining that are reclaimed and I feel their renewal and their scars. A friend of mine when first visiting my home came in and said “I can see how YOU ended up HERE.” I am in the middle of looking to move. The career advancement part of it makes me leap with joy, the physical move and selling my house aspect of it make me feel physically ill. Part of me wants to keep the house, even though I could not afford it. This is my place. I keep hoping I will find some other place that feels like home, but I feel like I was called here. Worse is the crazier it seems the more it feels true.
Holding tears back as I read this article and comment. I had always felt this pull to go North and had always had a desire to explore Montana. Never went and ended up in NC. In 2017 my boyfriend proposed. I came across a photo of a couple who eloped in Oregon and said oh my this is the place. We do it and took three weeks to explore. My soul had never felt anything so strong. Absolutely the most powerful and enlightening three weeks of my life. There were signs telling us to take the leap and move to make it home, but unfortunately we still don’t know how to get back to make it forever. How do you move across country without much of a dime? One day we will find out. I just know it.
I have a very strong feeling of being called back to my birthplace, which is in another country. I thought this was called my Soul Place, but after reading your article, I think that what I am feeling is maybe called something different. Can you tell me what an overwhelmingly strong feeling of being called back to ones birthplace is called?
Can you have more than one soul place? Or does it distinctly become obvious that ONE place is your soul place?
I have to add more to my comment. I always feel at home near water, the sea or a waterfall. Water, especially when moving fills me with energy! I feel like a battery charging back up the longer I say near. Even faster if I touch the water. The faster the water moves, the more energy I collect. I love it and feel like I am releasing the true me when I collect the water energy. Suddenly I feel younger, more joyful and want to laugh. I need to move, dance, jump, run or skip around like a child. I feel like a child again, carefree and safe. The sea feel different from a fresh water or a river. And so does a waterfall. The sea draws me in, makes me peaceful, yet nostalgic. I love watching and feeling the waves, walking on the beach, on sand where the sea meets land. I feel so at home there. And if the evening sun in summer, is bathing the sea in beautiful colours, then I am in awe, my senses flooded, peaceful, calm. While the bright sun in summer, earlier in the day, while sparkling like diamonds on the waves, makes… Read more »