I’ve been observing how often I hear the term “beautiful soul” and I’ve been reflecting on that this morning.

I reckon we all have a beautiful soul. Seriously, have you ever met anyone that didn’t? It’s our human psyches that can mask it (through judgement), so we can’t always perceive it.

The further away from the truth of who we are, the more dysfunctional/destructive our behaviours. And the more discontent we feel in our daily lives.

To me, this is why we all need brain training. We need to learn how to discern what is nonsense and what is truth inside our own systems. And YOU and you alone can discover that, though of course having effective tools makes it much easier and expedites the process so we’re not spinning our wheels.

When we truly know the uniqueness of our beautiful soul – who we are and how we’re meant to serve the world in this lifetime – it’s easy to see through the mis-aligned behaviours we all sometimes have.

Here’s an example: I recently observed myself eat an entire pint of ice cream within a 24 hour period. This is a behaviour I have never done before. Naturally, as a scientist, I was fascinated by this.

I didn’t judge myself or think it was wrong or bad. I just noticed, ‘hmm, this isn’t typical behaviour. Something must be going on inside my system. I wonder what that is.’

I witness many thoughts come and go and experience no compulsion to act on them. What happened then that I simply could not resist the urge to eat that ice cream multiple times? In connecting with a friend that night, I shared my curiosity about the incident.

And here’s what I discovered: my willpower (an exhaustible resource) had been being directed elsewhere. Namely, suppressing the urge to reach out to someone I’ve recently met who I’ve been feeling very strongly drawn to.

In yoga the yamas & niyamas represent the ethical codes of conduct. These are ways we naturally behave when we’re in alignment with ourselves.

They basically say that to lead a blissful life we oughta avoid violence, lying, stealing, wasting energy, and greed. And embrace cleanliness, contentment, the friction of purification, self-study by continuously observing our habits, and surrendering to something greater than ourselves.

I live by these principles. So in this context, me eating ice cream was the clue that something was amiss… My system was just wanting to alert me to a craving for sweetness I had been unconsciously suppressing, and it had to come out in some form.

I know many people, however, who would judge themselves for this behaviour (my younger self included). When we sit in “the seat of the soul” (aka witness) and watch our little human go about its business living its life we can maintain a sense of curiosity and wonderment throughout all of it.

And from this perspective, we can also see how gorgeous our little humans are too, no matter what they are doing. ????