June 2021

I love you!

This month’s newsletter is a bit different than usual, because my literary assistant Elissa gave birth to a baby boy! She is taking some time off to care for her new baby, and for the next three months—June, July and August—I will share some previously unpublished essays from my collection Choosing Beauty. Elissa will also not be monitoring my emails during this time, so if you’d like to reach me, please write to me at:

Alexandra Stoddard
87 Water Street
Stonington, CT 06378

I will see you again in September for my usual newsletter!

Love & Live Happy,

One of the 54 books my aunt had shipped to me in New Hampshire when I was a camp counselor, before she took me around the world, was by Albert Schweitzer—The Search for Meaning. He wrote about a disease in Central Africa called sleeping sickness: “The most serious danger of this illness is it coming in and catching people unaware. There is also a sleeping sickness of the soul.” This is when we don’t nourish and support all the values that cultivate our character and encourage our excellence. Our soul is longing to see beauty and find meaning in life-affirming actions and a sense of hope and enthusiasm for the original ways we can express our deeper purpose and place in the world.

Ignoring the essential needs of the soul is contrary to everything we are searching for in our perplexing material age.

Our soul animates our thoughts and actions. It guides and awakens us to our truth and our inner light. Choose beauty. Close your eyes to see a rose in full flower. Value the vital necessity of being alone to reflect, to study, to meditate and wonder.

The soul is what connects us. We are together in the spirit realm that is energetically active in each one of us. We are spiritual beings temporarily in a physical body. The soul is infinitely mysterious but at the same time can be understood: Your soul and my soul are both higher expressions of our individuality. We have an obligation to honor the privilege of being awake to the divine consciousness within us, with free will. I choose beauty as my most intuitive connection with my soul’s journey.

At my workshops, I’ve asked hundreds of people if they believe in the soul, and I’m amazed how confused they become. Many people have tuned out the soul because they don’t believe in its everlasting nature, only in its being present when we are alive. I hear lots of God-talk, never Soul-talk, or they simply believe the soul doesn’t exist.

Our soul is as individual as our DNA. We are as unique as every fragile, beautiful, fleeting snowflake that falls from the infinite sky. We learn by listening, opening our hearts to hear someone’s truth. Whenever we enter into a true dialogue, we each contribute to a deeper understanding of ourselves and how similar we are in our yearning. With trust, we enter and expand on our safe space of specific interconnection.

We are spiritual and physical, meeting in different lives and places, learning from our soul and our connections to all those who have entered into our lives since the beginning of the soul’s evolution. When we have little epiphanies, when we touch the highest ends of resonance within us, we will experience harmony, confident that our basic values and the principles we live by are our foundation.

If you love something, you take care of it. Before the pandemic, I went on vacation and left a ficus tree, four gardenia plants, white cyclamen, and pink geraniums that require attention in my absence. Tino, a friend who co-owns our local flower shop a few blocks away from where I live, has an amazing green thumb. He has a key to the cottage and does his magic while I’m away, caring for my plants and even putting an ice cube in my orchids.

I value my need to have something growing and beautiful where I spend my time. No exceptions. In Maryland, the hotel where I stay has been freshly renovated in a modern, sterile, minimalist style that doesn’t feed my soul. While I was there, I bought two small hearty white cyclamen and walked back to the hotel with a smile because I had accomplished my mission to be among nature and with things that grow in soil.

Our soul thrives when we take appropriate pleasure in whatever we do. When I wrote Grace Notes: A Daily Meditation, I turned the word chores into grace notes. In order to maintain a richly rewarding, productive life, we will have to work hard and have the necessary discipline to become good at whatever we do.

One of the great gifts we can pass on to the next generation is how we take pleasure in and relish all aspects of our life. Whenever we do anything well, we will experience a pleasurable feeling in our soul. I love to do my own research because I’m always learning new insights.

Engage your soul when you do the dishes. My sink overlooks the garden. I use this ritual as a time of gratitude and reflection. I see the rainbow in the soap bubbles as I admire the hand-painted flowers on the pottery plate. When properly understood, this can be a grace-filled, useful experience. Whatever is helpful and necessary can be made more pleasurable when we turn it into a mindful teaching moment. Take pleasure in pausing to admire the beauty and sensuality of the small, ordinary activities that can engage the soul when we are not merely rushing through to get something done.  Being nostalgic, remembering where you discovered this pretty plate on a family trip to Portugal, brings a breath of beauty when you’re fully present.

Accomplishing genuine simplicity is simple, but not easy. In order to live less stressful, less frustrating, less disappointing lives, we have to focus on the quality of our experiences. Einstein’s genius taught us simple, but not too simple. Be careful what you give up. You never know what will become useful or necessary.

Each of us learns from our own experiences, not secondhand from others. While there are lonely people who need more to do, most of us are “whelmed.” In order to get caught up, we have to give up sleep or leisure, both necessary for our overall wellness. Through trial and error, we learn how much we can stretch ourselves, without feeling hollow inside or getting sick because our immune system has become compromised.

The balance between doing and being is crucial.

Treating our body with reverence is our sacred duty. Each of us inherits a unique body that is our earthly home, housing our soul in this lifetime. The one person responsible for promoting and sustaining your radiant health potential is you.

Good health, body and soul, is sacred. While many people are born with a predisposition to abnormalities in their physiology or compromised immune systems, we all can take the reins to lead the way to well-being throughout the seasons of our lives. Your soul will help you maintain your discipline, focus, and resolve.

You know best. Pay attention to cause and effect, and be responsible for your well-being. Your body responds to the choices you make about your nutrition, the amount of exercise you require to increase your energy as you enhance your mood.

By communicating honestly with your soul, you can greatly improve your health spiritually and physically. Treat your body as your deity. Pay caring, tender attention to how you feel, to the textures of your emotions, to your attitude, your habits, and temperament. Caring for your body is caring for your soul.