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[00:00:00] This episode begins our second season of podcasts here at Grow in the Light. This year, we will focus on the different aspects of soulful alignment, body, spirit, heart, and mind, and how these four unique parts of our being are essential for our growth and our restoration of wholeness. In this episode, Kayleigh William and I discuss the interconnectedness of these four aspects of the soul, how we each have a natural center of gravity, and how we can expand our awareness and better open the doors to our soul in these four unique ways.
We also discuss growth points, what they are, and how they can help us tame our perfectionism and find acceptance and joy in embracing our humanness. I'm so glad you're here to join with us in this conversation about the soulful approach to our alignment
Welcome back to Grow in the Light. This is your host, Emily, and actually not, because we have a unique episode today where Kaylee is going to be the host and is going to interview me. We've had so many beautiful conversations between us about soulful alignment and the soulful approach. This is the heart of Grow in the Light.
And the best way that I can share what is inside of me is through conversation, and Kaylee is a master at having wonderful conversations with me- Yeah ... and pulling out from my soul the things that are in my soul. So we're gonna talk about that together today. Kaylee, tell me about it from your perspective.
Yeah, I totally agree that we have had so many layers and layers of conversation around this concept of our whole souls being aligned. And so to try to share the introductory Soulful Alignment 101 with our friends, uh, is so happy to me, because it's brought me so much understanding about myself and about how I walk through life.
And, um, so to be able to, to offer this little offering to other people is very exciting to me, and there's gonna be so much goodness. And I love what you said about the expectation of this is just 101. This is just a first conversation of many that we'll have to unpack this together in layers that we can understand.
I want to preface this with, um, last year in May, a friend gave me a beautiful flowering plant. It was a fuchsia plant, and it was gorgeous, and I loved it. It hung from my patio, and it was just beautiful. That's the door I come in and out of most often when it's warm. I would see it all the time, and it just enriched my life so much.
The problem is that here in Ohio, it rains a lot, so this plant that was out there got a lot of water, lots and lots of water, and it got oversaturated. And I didn't realize that this was happening. Um, and eventually it stopped producing new blooms, and then the leaves started shriveling, and I literally took this plant into my local nursery, and I'm like, "What's wrong, and how do I save it?"
And the guy picked it up and said, "I can just tell by picking this up its root, it's, have just gotten too wet. Its roots haven't been able to grow because there's been too much water." And it was a beautiful lesson for me about the need to not get oversaturated, that we need to have times where we are [00:04:00] fed and filled and times where we pendulate back, that's the neuro term for it, and we rest, and we have stillness to let our souls absorb and apply and practice before we try and learn something new and do something new.
That if we're doing it too much, too fast, too long- Then we get inundated, just like my poor little plant that ended up dying because it got too much of a good thing. So the goal of this discussion today is to just present the elements of soulful alignment, and to let the spirit teach each of our listeners where they are and what they need to know about this information.
Elder Bednar is a great mentor to me, and I love that in every one of his conference talks, he tells you what he's gonna talk about, and then he says, "I invite the Spirit of the Lord to be here, to be the teacher as we discuss this topic." And I feel like with what I'm saying right now, I'm gonna invoke Elder Bednar's counsel and say, we're gonna talk about soulful alignment, and I invoke the Spirit of the Lord to teach each listener what it is that the Lord wants you to learn about your soul, and what it means for you to connect in joy and wholeness with Him, with them, and with yourself, and with others in this soulful way.
That's so beautifully said. And as a listener, I hope everybody can feel an opening of their own soul, even though we're at the very beginning of this to even understand what our soul is. I hope you're opening that part of your soul to feel that spirit that can teach you what you personally need to know.
So that being said, as we're trying to open our souls, what are we opening? What are the elements of the s- what makes up the soul? Okay. The origin of this, it comes from New Testament, the Gospels teaching. One example is in Luke 10:27, where it's talking about the law and what the greatest commandment is, and it says the, the first great commandment is to love God with your heart, might, mind, and strength.
And I interpret that as our strength is our physical body, and our might, or sometimes it says our soul, is our spirit, right? We're taught in Doctrine and Covenants 88:15 that the body and the spirit are the soul of man. There's lots of linguistic words that we're trying to use to describe these four aspects, but the might or the soul that scripture views is what we refer to as the spirit.
This is the eternal part of us that's lived forever, this eternally connected, wise part of us that sees beyond the mortal body. So body and spirit, and then heart and mind. Those are usually identified pretty clearly as heart and mind, and those exist in connection, in polarity, in opposite, kind of, to one another.
Our thinking, rational mind and our feeling, relational, emotional heart. So the four aspects of the soul that we focus on are body, spirit, heart, and mind. So then that leads me to, 'cause as you're talking I hear you say, you know, [00:08:00] there's, there's the feelings part of things and there's the thinking part of things.
So can you break down each one? Why, why do we need to have a specific awareness to each one, and how can we identify them? This is just like the body of Christ. Like, the arms do a different thing than the nose does, and then the feet do, and the, the liver does. We have different parts that specialize in different abilities.
And if we're gonna start with the body, this is our part that takes in the senses, the data from our mortal world that we see, we hear, we touch, we smell. Like, all of those things that our senses do externally, as well as our internal senses, right? Of balance, of interoception, of proprioception, where we are in space.
It helps us be grounded and present physically in our bodies. I know where I am right now because this is where I'm sensing and feeling my mortal body in this chair, in this room, in this condo in Ohio. And your physical body is there in your house, at your desk in California, right? Our physical bodies clue us into where our own hereness is in space.
So I am here right now in this mortal body. Mm-hmm. Our body is also what gives us the strength to do what we need to do. What we eat and how we exercise, our movement and our sleep and our hydration, all of those are needful elements of nourishing our body so that it can fuel us in our mortal health and our mortal experience that we choose to have.
So that's the body. Does that part make sense? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay, and then our spirit. Our spirit has existed before we were embodied in our mother's womb, right? This is the part of us that existed before. And we can have implicit memories, things that come where, like, I resonate with that. I know that from before.
It's a little bit clouded or a little bit veiled, but there's part of us that we know truth, and we connect with that. And as we learn in our narratives about our existence, this helps us understand that identity, our existence before, our existence that will come after this mortal sphere. But our spirit helps us be in the now.
To understand past, present, and future and hold the now, and it's the part of us that zooms back and sees the eternal perspective, that thinks celestial, that reminds us about how all of this fits into the bigger picture, and then allows us to zoom forward and focus our consciousness, our conscious awareness, on the present moment, what we need to think and feel, and partnering with the divine.
Those things that we can't see but that are nonetheless real are sensed by this spirit part of us that focuses on, "I am now. Th- this is where I am, and this is how it fits into my eternal existence." And that's the spirit part of our soul Okay. I love that. And I, uh, like already I feel this desire to connect the different elements.
So keep going with the others because I, I feel already a hunger. I [00:12:00] love it. Okay, so just to review. Our body is the I am here, right? Our spirit is the I am now. And then the heart space that we go to is the I trust. This is the part that feels emotions so deeply, and that is so tuned in with the skill of fostering and maintaining relationships with other people.
This is a very collective connecting point of our lives, that we exist beyond ourselves. You and I have a connection, right? The listeners are gonna have a connection with us and what we're talking about. Yeah. We have connections to our families. We have connections to those people that we worship with.
It is not good for man to be alone. We are collective beings, and this is the contact point is in the heart, and sometimes that is really hard. We will talk here and there a lot about attachment theory, and the, the patterns and the connection that we make about attaching into the collective can really influence the stories we tell, how we feel, how we think, how we trust.
And that's all part of being aware and understanding our own heart, our own needs for connection, our own gifts that we have in connecting with others, and this part that connects with all of the many emotions that we feel in this human experience. I also want to emphasize that the heart is the place that speaks the language of music.
When you turn on a song, you are going to feel it in a different way than you hear words. I can read you a poem, and I can sing you a song, and it's going to have a different impact, and that is because music connects and opens the door of our heart so much. Each of these different aspects of the soul have a different language that we're speaking, and I just wanna emphasize how powerful music can be at opening and expanding our heart and our connections, our relationships.
So that is the heart. We grow in being able to say, "I trust." I trust the emotions of my mortal experience, and I trust the people and the relationships. That connect me in my mortal world. That's the heart space. I love the idea of, of trusting that the feelings that we have, 'cause sometimes they feel so out of our control, especially as women- Yes
during certain times of the month. So big. Right? But that, the, the, of putting that word of trust on there is part of opening the soul like that. Whether it's trusting, okay, my reaction to this has a purpose, but also my outward reaching to those around me and the feelings that I have, or my response, this emotional response to music.
Like, there is just this vulnerability in that emotional part of our soul that feels scary in some circumstances, but also feels so open in other circumstances, you know? And I- Totally ... that's just a beautiful, beautiful imagery about the heart part of our soul. That's beautiful. And we're gonna talk about this more, but I kinda just wanna foreshadow it a little bit.
That you are right that those emotions of the heart can be so intense and almost flood us, take control, right? Yeah, yeah. But as we are aligned and as we are in tune to a body and a spirit and a mind that are helping to hold this heart in those big emotions- She's not gonna go [00:16:00] awry, right? Because she has her three buddies around her that are helping to hold her up in the intensity of the emotion that she's feeling.
And it almost allows us to experience mortality with deeper intensity and emotion because the body, and the spirit, and the mind are there as backup to help stabilize and bring wholeness to this intense experience. And that's just like the mind space that we'll talk about now. Our brains can get so bossy, and if the brain is the only executive function that we have going on, we can get stuck in stories and thinking errors really, really fast.
But if we have body, and spirit, and heart to brace it and frame it, and to help give wise counsel to brain, then brain can be functioning so well and so intensely in what it's processing, but it doesn't get swept away. And that there are other checks and balances in the soul to keep the strengths of our mind, of our human brain, as strengths instead of letting them become weakness.
So to introduce that, I sometimes use brain and mind interchangeably, which is not always accurate, but sometimes for simplicity's sake it's helpful. Our mind is bigger than our brain. Our brain is the organ that is ensconced in our mortal bodies that processes all of this data, that does this logical reasoning and processing of the information.
So the brain is a very important organ, and things the brain does, and understanding our mortal brain, is so important. And the data from the brain fuels the mind, and the mind is what thinks and processes through language our rational thinking, our experience. It's what takes the data and makes meaning of it, and it's the storytelling part of us.
We love to have closure in the mind. We need to know and be certain. And so sometimes we have thinking errors that we fill in the parts of the story that we don't have with what we claim to be true because we need closure, right? Mm-hmm. And so we fill in some of the data that we don't necessarily have.
And this is why growing in our mind space, coming to accept I don't have all the data, and we're just gonna hold that space open right now. Instead of making something up so that I can feel closure, I'm just gonna hold open the reality of- What data I have, what's real, and what is not yet, what is just a familiar story I'm telling myself so that I can feel closure.
And that's the advantage that having body, and spirit, and heart helps brain hold that space so that mind can hold open those possibilities. This is the part of us that needs to accept what is. Sometimes we live in what we want to be true, the stories we tell, instead of loving what is. And our mind can really help us come to a place of understanding what is, understanding the true data, and filtering through that what is true and what is not true.
Mind is an exceptional resource. As mind and spirit work together in this what is true and what is not true, th- there's a beautiful dynamic. And I want listeners to understand that even though we're talking about body, spirit, heart, and mind, and it sounds like [00:20:00] these are four different circles or four different boxes, they overlap so much, and they work together so much.
I just emphasize that mind and spirit work together so intricately. So much of the inspiration, and understanding, and teaching, and insight that comes is going to come through mind and spirit. And at the same time, when you think about how you feel The inspiration of the spirit of the Lord, of the Holy Ghost in your soul, it's going to be in a heart-body kind of way, right?
How do you feel the spirit? How would you describe it? Oh, it totally depends on the context. Um, like we mentioned before about music, how it sort of has this way of speaking a language that can feel physical for me. Music can be, like I feel my muscles relaxing or even getting energized, depending on the song.
And I feel like I'm seeing in my own application how you're talking about how these things can overlap so much, where the spirit can be... I'm like, "Oh, is this in my body or is this in my mind?" Well, does it matter? Yeah. And the goal of this soulful approach is not to be in one box or the other, but to be in this circle, this giant circle in the center where all four parts, all four aspects of the soul are feeding into it, but we are existing in that center part of the soul where everything is overlapping in that space.
You've been in coaching where I've done this both in our group coaching classes and in individual coaching, where I'm like, "Let's slow this down." How would you describe how you're feeling that in your body? Yeah. Because so often we get disembodied when we're having these experiences, and just say, "Oh, I feel a tingly-ness in my chest.
I feel a racing in my heart. I feel an expansiveness in my whole, like, chest and shoulders and belly." Or like you said, "I feel a relaxing of my muscles." Mm. Being able to identify the sensations internally that we're feeling in our body helps those experiences with the spirit be more whole souled, right?
Mm-hmm. It helps us understand them better. And then as we say, "Okay, let's put some words to it. I'm feeling expanded. I'm feeling hopeful. I'm feeling whole," this is a linguistic aspect of the mind. And so we're bringing that dimension into the soul of how we're experiencing- Some of the other aspects that may have been more dominant.
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So as I'm thinking, I'm ... This image came to my mind of one of my kiddos who's really into telling me a story, and he's super animated, and he is just giving me all the details. Meanwhile, his physical body is doing the potty dance. Full on, like, holding it. But he's so into it. I can see in his face, his whole brain is in with me and engaged in this description of whatever it was he was, but his body is screaming, and he is
So my question is, do we have a part of our soul that is stronger versus another? You know, there's a right hand dominant, left hand dominant. Is there a soul dominant way? Because I saw it in my kid, and I'm wondering if that's a normal thing. Totally. It totally can be. I call it a center of gravity. If you were to imagine this four-circle Venn diagram of body, spirit, heart, and mind overlapping in the center kind of thing.
We do this visually in coaching and in classes. We can set that out so all those circles look equal, but then I can say, [00:24:00] "Where do you function most of the time?" And intuitively, most people are gonna know- My center of gravity, for me, it's more in mind and spirit. If I naturally just gravitate to something, I'm gonna function more in my mind and my spirit than in my body and my heart.
It sounds like your kiddo there was totally in mind in his narrative self and totally not tuning into his body, right? Yeah. Sometimes we can get centered in spirit, or sometimes we can get so centered in heart and emotion that we're not necessarily inviting in the rational thinking or the spiritual long-term perspective of that.
Have you felt that? Where would you say your center of gravity? I think I'm very similar to you, and I find my body... Now that I... I mean, since we've started these conversations of the whole soul, I am noticing more. My body's like, "Hello. When was the last time you stretched out your back?" Going back to your plant analogy from before, right?
Rather than my body being saturated with all this engagement, my body is starved of that water. And so when I give it a little bit, I feel those roots just like, ah, you know, soaking it up. Like, finally here's this drink. And it feels good to, to turn my awareness into that part of my soul and nourish it and give it what it needs.
And I feel it flourishing. And so it is a very fascinating exercise to try to engage in those weaker, quote, unquote, "weaker" parts of my soul. I have an example of the first time that I feel like the spirit was trying to awaken me to this reality, and this was probably a decade ago. I was in a season where I was really struggling.
I was stagnant. I was stuck. And I needed healing in a certain way. And as my mind and spirit focused center of gravity, I kept reading and studying and taking it to the Lord in prayer and then like, "What do I need to do or to understand to fix and heal this?" And the answer came so clearly. I remember where I was in my bedroom, standing up against my bed when the answer came, "Emily, you need more music in your life.
And not only music, you need cello music." And I thought, that is the most interesting answer. And so I researched it, and that is when I very first found Steven Sharp Nelson, who then was just joining with Jon Schmidt to do The Piano Guys, the beautiful music they do. I started listening to him. His album that he had, that was Tender Mercy.
And when I would listen to that, I would feel the resonance of those cello tones literally making my physical heart- Vibrate. I could feel the resonance of the cello in my heart. And this music and this physical resonance was the balance. I understand this now. I didn't understand it then. But this was the body and the heart that was needing fed.
Just like you said, it was needing fed. I was giving my, my flowering plants so much water that it couldn't have air and it couldn't have sunlight. And it- that's what it needed. And, and so the Lord was saying, "Honey, stop with the water already. You need air for those roots to grow, and you need sunlight for those roots to grow."
It's beautiful and frustrating at the same time. This is still a lesson that I'm working on implementing fully. I understand it more. When I get to that struggle point, I'm like, "Okay, what [00:28:00] do I need more of? I need to listen to less podcasts and more playlists," right? And I notice when I'm getting deficient, when my roots are too wet and I need some of that music in the heart space.
And I also have needed physical body to help compensate for this mind, spirit, natural strength I have. And this is where I have never been a regular, go to the gym, get the dopamine hit from doing my workout person. Never, ever. But the past few months, the Spirit has said, "This is the part of your soul that is deficient.
And if you're gonna grow, you have to grow in balance." I go to the gym for an hour five times a week now, and I love it. Because I've been doing this for a few months now, my soul craves it. And when I wake up in the morning, it's like, "How am I gonna get my workout before I do the other thing?" I want to encourage listeners that the more you give your conscious attention and your agency focus to developing those areas that have been underdeveloped in you, just by nature, by habit, by upbringing, as we emphasize more those things where we have been deficient, your soul is gonna do what you just described and like, "Oh- Like, this is what I need and it feels so good.
And maybe not at first, but as you keep doing it by choice, your soul is going to thank you for the different kind of growth that is possible because you are nourishing body and spirit, heart and mind. Okay, so since we've discovered or explained that we have our center of gravity, which is usually a little tilted like our Mother Earth is, right?
We're usually a little wonky. That's a beautiful connection. I've never thought of that. So knowing that, being aware of that, loving that, accepting that, how can we start with feeling the different parts of our soul? This is where we just have to practice it, and it's gonna feel so clunky and awkward in some ways.
But it's so powerful to just give airtime for our conscious awareness to each of those different perspectives. I love that. Acknowledging sticking points for ourselves is a really pr- important part of this process. Yeah. Whether it be a self-consciousness, whether it be noticing our weakness, we're going to find it.
That's kind of the point. We want to find what needs to be nourished, right? Yeah. And so to not let that be a negative thing, but a beautiful opportunity. And I love to point out, it's, it's not necessarily strength and weakness. Yeah. It's what I have learned and where my growth point is. Yeah. We use the phrase growth point so much here in my coaching and my teaching, because I think it's so powerful.
We're not broken and we're not weak as much as we are living things that have growth points. Yeah. This is where the growth is taking place. My clunkiness and self-consciousness and insecurity about the movement of my body is a growth point for me. So to show up that way at the gym today was growing in confidence in my growth point.
And whatever that is, just like you said, as we engage in this growth work, we're gonna come face to face really quickly with where our growth points are in each of these aspects of WHISL. And wherever that is, we can just jump in and love on it just like a grandma, right? And just, "Oh, I just love you, and there you are and I'm just gonna hug you and pour [00:32:00] out so much grace, and keep showing up with you," because that how we're gonna grow.
Mm-hmm. So with that in mind, like knowing that we're a little lopsided, like we said, that we have these growth points, these opportunities, and they're beautiful. Is this something we look at as an eventuality, or can we experience that balance at any time? How do we know when we are balanced? Give us an idea of, of expectations in that regard.
I wanna answer that first with it's going to be unique to every person. We can point out some, some common road signs, and it's also going to be something you just have to learn what it feels like for you. If you've been a mom that's tried to potty train a child, it's that same experience of you can't really describe to someone what it feels like-
when you've gotta go. But you know when you know it in your own body. I ... That may not be the best example, but it's, it's a very body-based answer to that, is that you will start to feel the sensations in your body- Of what alignment feels like. You are going to feel a peace, a relaxed sensation. You're going to feel a stillness more.
Alignment is equanimity, and that's a, a seed that will plant of the meaning of that word and how significant that word is. But you'll learn what this equanimity or this place of balance and peace feels like to you. If you've ever done, like, a skateboard or snowboard or, or stood on something, you can feel what balance feels like.
If you're leaning too far one way or too far the other way, and what it feels like when you're balanced. Mm-hmm. You just come to know that in your body. You also come to know that in your spirit, because you will feel the influence of the Holy Ghost. You will feel light and truth. You will feel being taught from on high.
You will feel an awareness and a clarity beyond your own. That's what it feels like in the spirit when our souls are aligned. And what it feels like in heart when we are aligned, if we tune into that, to shine our flashlight of metaphor we use a lot. If we shine our flashlight on the heart part, we are going to flow more easily in our relationships.
We are going to be able to hold a space for grace for others as they show up in their human-ness. Does it mean we're always gonna be patient and have an unlimited resource of tolerance? No. But we are connective and actively flowing in those relationships. Our ability to understand our own emotions of saying, "Ooh, I'm feeling lonely about this," or, "Ooh, I'm feeling jealous about that."
And we don't get defensive, we don't get protective. Ego doesn't butt its nose in it. We're just able to recognize and have an awareness and hold a space for grace. That is a more soulfully aligned place, is that we can accept the reality of our emotion without getting defensive or protective or trying to numb or Mm-hmm
fight them. That's another sign. In our mind space, this place of equanimity and soulful alignment is acceptance. We're able to accept and be able to differentiate. Once again, that's another big powerful word that we talk about a lot, I hear, what it means to differentiate or tease out the difference, untangle the difference.
Our mind is great at untangling things when we have our soul that's holding this space for the brain to do [00:36:00] that. This is how this is different, and this is how it is the same, whether that's us and someone else, or whether that's the emotion of worry and uncertainty. Those can be really subtle, but we ... I just untangled that in a coaching session with someone, right?
The mind is able to do those things when the rest of the soul is showing up as a team to help with some of those skills. So you'll notice that you're able to do things more that you couldn't before, and that's kind of how we know that we're soulfully aligned. But you'll know it when you know it. I know that that's kind of a lame answer, but it's the best answer.
You'll just be like, "Oh, this is what Emily and Kaylee were talking about. I feel aligned today." And it's not a magic one spot that you hit the target and you're there for the whole rest of the day, right? It's a moving, living, breathing, flexing kind of thing that we'll cross it more than we'll stand in it, if that makes sense.
I love that because it gives room for the clunkiness. Yeah. It gives room, it gives room for, like, just starting with a little glimmer of, "Ooh, I think that might have been it." You know? Where, like, this feels good. Yeah. Is this it? And sort of the curios- the joyful curiosity that comes with growing in this way is that there isn't pressure outside because it's different for you, and you know it's different for you.
And so that it can be kind of a joyful process to discover what it feels like to arrive in this aligned place. When our souls are in line, God is there. He gathers all the parts together in us and with us. For me, I see it as this joyful curiosity to try it out, to test out different approaches and- Yes
see what feels good. Do you see how that joyful curiosity describes the approach of a child? Yeah. This is not a perfectionistic adult that wants to get it right the first time we try, or we're so unfair, right? We inner critic ourselves, right? Yeah. Joyful curiosity is just showing up and practice. Try it again.
Yeah. See what happens. What if I do this? What if I do this? Yeah. I wanna share with listeners another example that we just did recently in class, and this was inspired by my little grandson. Over Christmas when I was in Utah with my grandkids, I was singing this song with them, This Little Light of Mine, I'm Gonna Let It Shine.
And I have 19-month-old twin boy grandsons, and one of them totally had the music in his bones. And even though he's just learning to s- string words together, when we would come to the chorus part of I'm gonna let it shine, his little voice would say, "I let it shine." Boom, boom. And it was just so delightful to me that even in his young age, he felt this in his bones.
And his brain was putting together this music, and participating with his sister and I as we were singing it. It was just a whole soul experience for this little toddler. Yeah. And so I came back to class and I said, "Okay, ladies, we're gonna do a soulful alignment exercise with this song." And we listened to it four times and I said, "I want you to listen to it from your spirit.
Just focus on the door of your spirit. From a spirit perspective, we're gonna focus on the song." And we listened through it, and then we ... What did you notice? What did it feel like? What was your experience with that? "Okay, now we're gonna do it from a heart space. Open up your heart and let's listen to this from the [00:40:00] perspective of the heart."
And listened through the whole song, and then we narrated. "Okay, how was that different? What did you feel?" And then we did it from the mind space, right? Let's do this from the mind. How is it gonna be different? Listen to the whole song, focusing on an awareness in the mind. And then we did body. Get up and move, like, however you want to experience this song.
Experience this in your body, and then let's narrate it. How did that feel different? What was that experience like for you, Katie? I found it so fascinating how different parts, different lyrics, different elements stood out each time. From listening to it from the heart, something stood out. And then listening to it from the mind, I remember that one very clearly because it was like agency, was like I'm gonna choose to do this.
It was this, like, flex my biceps moment, you know? Like, yeah, I can. I'm g- I can choose to let my light shine, and that didn't stand out when I was focusing on spirit or heart. I think that's a beautiful exercise to just let your brain try to focus at all on one versus the other. Um- Yeah. Just relax into it with that curiosity.
Yeah. Joyful curiosity of my little 19-month-old grandson, right? Mm-hmm. Have that experience, and then let it teach you. Yeah. Every time he sang that song with us, it was teaching his brain a new skill. So as you do this with these exercises, it's teaching your soul to have awareness from this perspective.
It's opening up the door to your soul from the body, from the spirit, from the heart, from the mind. We are already equipped with these skills. Like, it's not something new you're trying to make yourself do. You're just remembering it. Oh, wow. You're just restoring it. We talk about restoration a lot here.
Yeah. Right? We're not trying to do something new. We're just trying to remember something that's already a part of who we are. We're returning to wholeness in this Soulful approach. Mm, I love that. C- because that, again, allows room for the learning. Yes. It's all about growth. Yeah. And I think that, to me, the joyful curiosity- connect so much with.
All right, so let's make a cute phrase. Joyful curiosity leads to delightful discovery. Ooh, I love that. Yes. Ex- Because that's joy. Yeah. That's joy. There's that depth of learning and changing, right? Seeing progress in yourself is joy. But you're allowing the joy to permeate into the process - Yes ... instead of the finish line.
And that delightful discovery is where growth happens. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Growth is such a joyful, expansive, delightful thing. Our natural tendency is to lean into our weakness and to see it as this ball and chain that we have to figure out how to disconnect from. Yeah, we gotta fix it. I gotta fix this problem, and that is not God's design.
He sent us here for joy, and joy is found in growth, and growth is found by being joyfully curious and finding delight in those discoveries along the way. Experimenting, yeah. Yeah. I think that's beautiful. So are there any other things that you would advise, or any other tips that you would give to somebody who's beginning this process of soulful alignment?
Just keep practicing. You won't do it perfectly, and that's the plan, right? This joyful curiosity, delightful discovery. I love that. And I also would really encourage to join [00:44:00] in a community effort to do this. Having this place where we can experiment with it together and talk about it together and learn from other people and watch them and hold space for them in their growth, and then trust them to hold space for us in our growth.
There's so much of it that is exponentially experienced because we're experiencing it in community with one another. Whether that's learning groups, whether that's a ministering sister or a real sister or a mom. However it is that we can share this, we grow better together. And I totally can testify of that because there have been so many countless conversations I've been part of in this community where, you know, as we're sitting here connecting with certain parts of our soul or whatever it is, someone will make a comment that adds a depth to my understanding that I never would've arrived to on my own- Mm-hmm
ever in a million years. Because of their unique experiences, their mind and heart go places mine can't go, but I can learn from them and go so much deeper in my own growth and progress because of the value they bring. And so often we feel hesitant to share our hard parts. Yeah. But when you have a trusted community, your hard parts are where you shine because of the growth and understanding you have, and that offering you bring because of the growth and understanding you have.
So I, yes, community is a powerful and essential element to growth and understanding. Kaylee, this has been such an amazing discussion, and I appreciate it so much. It helps me flow out in this collective my message to share with the world, and it has so much to do with this soulful alignment. How we learn to love God with our heart, might, mind, and strength, with this body, spirit, heart, and mind, right?
And as we are learning to open ourselves to God that way, we show up as a whole soul ourselves, and that feels so beautiful. I think that's what so many listeners are aching for is being able to show up in their lives congruent as a whole soul with who they really are, and to be seen and known and loved that way.
And as we show up in relationship with God in ourselves that way, it's so much more natural for us to flow into our relationships with our fellow men and women and children all around us in that whole soul way. And that is what brings joy. That is what builds Zion. That's what's gonna prepare this earth for the second coming of our Savior, is being whole-souled people.
Come join us. Come join our community with your whole soul. Yeah. Find belonging, find partnership, find solidarity, find sisterhood
One of the things I loved most about this conversation was Kaylee's insight that joyful curiosity leads to delightful discovery. I hope you discovered something delightful today about the beautiful parts of your own soul, something that nourishes you in your journey to become more aligned and feel the peace and power of living whole soul.
We would love to have you join us as part of our community. We gather for a free monthly gathering of light on the second Friday of each month at 1:00 PM Eastern. You can find a link to register for that gathering in the show notes. You can [00:48:00] also visit growinthelight.com to sign up to receive emails that contain links to new podcast episodes and inspiration and nourishment for your growth journey.
I encourage you to share this podcast episode, this little bit of light, with someone you know. This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. By doing that, we're working together to make this world a little bit brighter, one ray of light at a time.
