Sometimes you feel that your soul hurts. It feels like that. Something isn't right, and you feel the penalty. You have gone against something in your grain, or you have ignored your grain altogether. You have sold out for something. It could be you sold out truth for ignorance. It could be denial that you bought.
This is like wearing shoes that are too tight. You don't feel the pinch in only one toe. The pain is not in isolation. The whole foot feels it. The whole body echoes it.
And when you pinch your soul, you feel it overall.
Sometimes it is hard to know when your soul aches or if it is your ego. Sometimes it is hard to know.
Now I will tell you that your soul cannot ache, but your awareness of having diminished your soul can signal that something is not quite right. Then it is you have a heart-glimpse of what you have overlooked, and you feel not the soul's joy but your hurt in having bypassed the soul and its joy.
You have not treated something quite right. You feel the way you might feel if you had a present for all your children except one. You somehow didn't notice until the moment arose.
All this is another way of saying to pay attention to all of yourself. The soul cannot ache, but it can long. It can long for you to catch up to it. It can yearn for you to hear it and let it sing.
It is not the world's picture of you that matters. It is your picture of yourself that matters. Your soul wants to be seen. It wants you to see it and give it a little homage.
When you skirt the surface of life, and that's all, you neglect your soul's longing. And you will feel a nudge here and there.
Your heart is a conduit for your soul.
When you deny yourself, your heart tells you. It implores you to pay attention to yourself.
When something in the outside world needles you, it has found its mate in you. The needling of the outside world is to remind you of that within you which needs attention. It is a kind of acupuncture. What are your sore points? Give them a little credence. Assuage them a little or a lot.
When you feel something within you unfulfilled, there is something within you unfulfilled. And it is not an outside desire, although you may think it is. You can deluge yourself with the fulfillment of outside desires and yet be deeply unfulfilled.
There is something within you that needs an allowance from you. Something within you clamors to be heard. And you are the only one who can hear it. No one can tell you. No one can rub it for you. It will be appeased by no one but you. You are the only one who can satisfy it. You are the only Human who can know what it is saying to you.
One way to begin to hear your soul's longing is to listen less to all the cries of the world that call you to them. The world is a big place, but the soul within you is bigger. Not louder, but bigger. Much more lasting. Much more faithful. More truthful. More innocent. It does not try to take you out of the world. Its only motive is to bring you closer to yourself, and therefore to all others and to greater service to Me, Who is, after all, your greater Self.