When I was little, the very first habit that I learned was to brush my teeth. “If you don’t brush your teeth, you’ll get cavities” that was the message I heard. Often, I’d see a picture of a kid who is in pain, having one hand in the cheek, as a reminder of what could happen if I don’t take care of my teeth. It was puzzling to me that no other parts of our body got the same daily attention as our teeth.
“What if we took care of our souls in the same way we take care of our teeth, I pondered, but I heard no one around me talking about it.”
No one emphasized caring for what may be our most precious part: the soul. Back then, the soul was something people only mentioned after heartbreak or grief. However, it took long years for me to understand that the soul needs to be tended in the form of daily reminders, not just to be mend after heartbreaks and breakdowns.
In a beautiful poem, Rumi highlights the importance of daily practice/soul brushing:
“Submit to a daily practice, / Your loyalty to that is a ring on the door / Keep knocking, and the joy inside / Will eventually open a window / And look out to see who’s there”
Even Rumi, who lived in hundreds of years ago, points us toward daily practice. But many of us only turn to the soul in crisis. If everything seems “on track”, then why we do we need to take care of our souls daily? Because there is so much darkness around in this world, so much dust. And what happens when we don’t take care of our soul daily? The soul gathers dust, and one of the heaviest layers of that dust is cynicism.
For example, cynicism is one of the darkest cloud over all souls. I notice how older generations, shaped by dark times they’ve endured, often lean on cynicism as a coping mechanism. Cynicism creeps in quietly, covering the soul like a blanket, leaving no room for imagination. Cynicism blinds us to new possibilities, but perhaps its biggest danger is that it makes us forget our own worth.
We need to brush our souls to remember our worth. Without that, we settle for jobs that slowly kill us, or choose people who suffocate rather than lift us. As Jung said, we end up walking in shoes too small. But when we truly know our worth, it becomes easier to let go of those who drag us down, and to step away from the work and places that no longer serve us.
So, what helps to brush our souls and how can we do it? There is no exact prescription unfortunately. Whatever helps us to listen to the callings of our souls, to help us to bring our authentic self forward, to believe in the unimaginable. Whatever helps us to remember our worth, remember we are worthy of good things in life, and good people. For some people, this is connecting with nature, meditating, reading affirmations, journalling, dancing, art, or all of them.
One of the things that helps me is to feel awe. By feeling awe, I can connect with my soul, with my authentic self. One of the most influential characters of mid twentieth centuries, Nikos Kazantzakis’ Zorba says: “I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not knowledge, or virtue, or goodness, or victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing; Sacred awe!”
By practising awe, we bow to a higher power, to the universe, to God. We no longer crave security, comfort, we are being okay with the unknown. And more importantly, we brush away the dust off our souls. Whether it is through mother nature, who will remind us of our mortality, how little control we have, who will encourage us to trust something bigger. Or through art and music, which possess the immense capacity to move us to the depths of our soul.
Like awe, imagination is another way to shake the dust off. A great practice that will help us to be free from the hands of the cynicism and believe in life, is from the beautiful novel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, in which the White queen tells Alice: “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” To actively imagine the unimaginable is the ultimate medicine for the soul.
I admit when I don’t brush my soul, when I don’t have my daily reminders, I forget my path, my worth, and let my demons take over me. I find myself seeking attention from unavailable people, getting lost in the illusion and escaping from the reality. And doesn’t matter if I am in the most beautiful place in the world, and I have everything I wanted, if I don’t take care of my soul, I can feel something inside me withers.
By soul brushing, not only we can finally shed light to all darkness, but we can also cultivate that voice within who will support us when nothing seems to support us. So now more than ever, it is time to brush our souls daily, because if we don’t, sooner or later, something inside us will sicken and sour. And the pain of the unlived life is far more unbearable than any toothache.