Embodying Soul: A Return to Wholeness
Part 1: First Line of Defense: Chapters 1 & 2
Dear Reader: One thing that is hard to note when you’re viewing a chapter at a time rather than holding the book in your hands is the organizational structure. In the case of “Embodying Soul,” the structure is a strong metaphor for the movement to wholeness in and of itself.
And that metaphor is this: Each Part or Section is a function of human skin:
Defense/Growth/Healing/Absorption/Secretion/Regulation/Sensation.
I chose this structure because a lot of this book has to do with my actual skin, and it has to do with being comfortable in my skin. In addition, I think of our titles and roles as nothing more than “skins” that are meant to be shed. And finally, because I have embodied my emotions in the forms of snakes in this book.
I also think Embodying Soul will make more sense if I occasionally share a couple of chapters together, as this book alternates between scenes from the Soul Realm, where you meet my soul, named Serene Voyager, or Séri for short, and scenes from the Earth Realm, starring yours truly, Keri.
You’ll be introduced to both Séri in the Soul Realm and Keri in the Earth Realm in the two chapters that follow here in their separate homes. Spoiler alert: they eventually “meet” when I, Keri, learn to embody my soul.
We’re both glad to see you here!
Part 1: First Line of Defense
Human skin is the first line of defense against the dangers of the outside world, shielding us from disease-causing agents and the injuries that could occur through daily living. Also thanks to our skin our messy interior — our emotions — can remain safely hidden from view.
Chapter 1: Travel Suitcase
I feel like I am floating in a void of blissful amnesia, not yet knowing who or where I am. Out of habit, I pull my lungs toward the center of my body to draw a breath, but find it is unnecessary. The energy swirls in and out of me effortlessly.
To my left, a field appears, shrouded in blackness, outlined with only the light of the distant stars but pulsing with life, like a seeded spring garden.
To my right is the outline of a park bench as would be found in the Earth Realm. But upon closer inspection, I note that the park bench is not of the Earth Realm at all, for it is made from the branches and twigs of a giant redwood tree magically braided into vine and floral patterns that form the bench’s seat and back.
My surroundings begin to feel familiar and comforting. I emerge from the ether of obscurity, aware now that I am in the Soul Realm, the space to which every soul returns between human embodiments to experience needed healing, reflection, and guidance.
A suitcase materializes from the void and floats down onto the bench. It is a hard-shell one, dandelion yellow, with a smooth, glossy covering adorned with tiny stuffed bears, freshly painted in luminescent pastels. One bear has a rainbow stitched across its belly, another has a heart, and a third holds flowers in its furry blue fingers. Intuitively, I know this is my suitcase for my journey to the Earth Realm.
I locate a metal latch on the suitcase, flip it up, peer inside, and see that it is empty except for memories, which waft out one after another: the enticing aroma of cotton, sea air, fresh coconut milk, and ripe papaya.
Now with the appearance of my travel suitcase I remember how the Soul Realm is like a well-organized human airport, where, having just gotten off one flight, souls can choose where to venture to next, a ticket in hand representing only a suggestion. But unlike in an airport no soul is subject to schedules or pressures. Every soul, before the next human embodiment, chooses its own activities and pacing. The suitcase reminds me not to proceed to the next life in the Earth Realm without being fully prepared. Before I leave on my next trip, I will pack my suitcase with items found only in the Soul Realm, special tools that are essential to a conscious, fulfilling life in the Earth Realm.
As I wait, my silhouette begins to closely resemble inhabitants of the Earth Realm as the Age of Pisces gives way to the Age of Aquarius — a time of great possibility and momentous change for the world. Soon I take on a vaguely female shape, which sways with swaths of fire and smoke. Whether these are the remaining embers of my most recent past life, the first sparks of my future life, or a little of both, I cannot say.
While I have form, I do not yet have substance. But it won’t be long before I am once again wrapped inside the confines of human skin — both the physical skin with its many miraculous functions for the human body, allowing for protection, growth, absorption, excretion, regulation, and sensation, as well as the metaphorical skins inclusive of roles, duties, and titles.
I run my fingers gently along the rim of the suitcase, where my name is embossed in tiny letters, the name with which the constellations serenade: Serene Voyager, the name given to me to reflect my love of adventure and observant yet calm demeanor. Though here in the Soul Realm, I simply go by Sëri.
Chapter 2: Breaking Out of Identity Confinement
I was born in Fargo, North Dakota, in June of 1972, the only girl and the oldest of three siblings. Growing up, Tim, two years younger, Terry, eight years younger, and I always had a warm house to come home to after school, food on the table every night, new clothes every fall, and stockings full of presents at Christmas. Our family owned a lake cabin, where we learned to water ski and enjoyed evening campfires. We took family road trips around the country, and had plenty of family and friends to gather with on weekends and holidays.
The worst thing about my earliest years was probably disliking my younger brother Tim. However, a recurring dream helped me keep him in his place. In the dream, a witch would pop up from behind my bed in our shared bedroom, I’d call my brother over, we’d kneel, gaping at the witch, unsure of what she might do to us. She’d give us a lecture — I don’t remember about what — and then offer me a piece of hard candy and hit Tim over the head with a mallet before disappearing back behind the bed. It was a satisfying dream.
My dad was born and raised in a small city about an hour west of Fargo with three other siblings, two older and one younger. My mom was born and raised on a farm about an hour south of Fargo with four other siblings, one older and three younger. He was a city boy; she was a country girl. They met when she was going to nursing school in his city, where he was working as a grocer while attending college. They married when he was twenty and she was nineteen. I was born two years later.
Except for some apartment-hopping around eastern North Dakota when I was a baby, we made only one big move as a family, when I was five, to West Fargo, where my parents had purchased our first house. I remember seeing it for the first time, studying the simple yellow three-bedroom, one-level house from the window of the car, and feeling excitement about finally getting a bedroom — and my candy-giving witch — all to myself.
Remaining at this house while all three of us kids grew up and eventually graduated from West Fargo High School was an intentional contrast to how my dad had been raised. My dad’s dad had been a school superintendent and a strict, demanding parent who had a habit of drinking on the job, resulting in my dad’s family being forced to move at least seven times during his school years to various small towns in central North Dakota. In rural North Dakota in the 1950s and 1960s, his family had been able to move quietly from town to town and start over, without his dad’s reputation following them.
I can still hear pain in his voice when we talk about what it was like for him as a child to move to a place where he had no friends, where he was both the new kid and the superintendent’s kid. So my dad promised he would not drag us around, and he kept this promise, even when it meant turning down offers of more money or fancier titles, in turn giving us kids the opportunity to make lifelong friends.
My dad was in the car business. Though he’s never technically been a car salesman but rather worked in the Finance and Insurance Department, he took the stereotype of the “crooked” car salesman personally, and, as if to correct his own family karma, was determined to build a positive reputation in Fargo. While I don’t remember my dad sitting us down implicitly to teach us that a reputation is earned not given, we learned it through observing him. My parents, still married, now live just across the North Dakota state line in Minnesota, and my dad, though retired, has maintained his positive reputation among locals.
Growing up, I appreciated my dad’s sacrifice of opportunities to provide us with a stable home environment. He taught us the value of keeping your word and the virtue of building a reputation, which gave him a sense of security and belonging.
However, to me building a reputation has always felt like erecting walls of identity confinement.
Especially in a fairly small town like Fargo, once people have a belief about who you are it’s difficult to become anything else. Once you are an athlete, you are supposed to remain an athlete. If you are funny, you are expected to find humor in every situation. And if you are known as the good girl you have to stay that way, even when you really want to be invited to a party or be asked out by the popular boy.
So my dad’s early life seems almost romantic to me — minus the part related to his dad’s alcohol abuse. I’m attracted to the idea of slipping from town to town under the cover of night, showing up somewhere where no one would know anything about me or attempt to force me to conform. If I had always been the new kid at school, then I wouldn’t have felt so weird about not fitting in. Then, just about the time people were starting to label me as this or that, I could be heading off to a new town, enjoying the freedom anonymity afforded me.
At age twenty, the same age my parents were when they settled down to raise a family, I said good-bye to my family and friends, and moved away from Fargo, intent on seeking adventure and following dreams.
~
“Embodying Soul: A Return to Wholeness” is available for purchase here.
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