The Essence of Soulful Living

Twenty-five years ago, Valerie launched Soulful Living. I’ve had the deep privilege of writing the Being Present column for much of that time. It was the first place my voice was given a home. That I’m still here says something about the wealth of what she has built—a place for those in need of giving as well as receiving.

In that span, I completed my Ph.D., moved towns, changed my name, buried people I loved. And along the way, I also lost pieces of myself emotionally and at times, pieces of my life entirely. Like me, I’m sure you have your own list of change, gain and loss. Many of those losses have nothing to do with a failing on our part. Some things in life are simply taken away, and we have to find our way back to ourselves again. A quarter century is long enough to get knocked down and get back up several times over.

There are so many places to lose ourselves. The first time I was aware that I had lost myself to another person, I was 21 years old. I noticed I’d been obsessing over a guy I was dating—when and whether he was going to call me. Calculating his work schedule so I’d be by the phone. Deciding when he should be calling based on what I deemed to be his availability. Upset when he didn’t call within those hours. I was aghast at myself! Who was this person?! I remember the voice in my head asking the question, “What is happening to me?”

That’s when the download came.

In only minutes, I had a visual model of the interweaving relationship of self, life, and other. It came as a series of circles interacting with each other to either produce wholeness or reduce wholeness. From there, MESHE, HESHE, MISON & ORBIT was born. And within it, I saw not only how I had gotten lost but the core principles that would lead me back to myself.

MESHE (mee-shee) is your relationship with yourself. HESHE (hee-shee) is your relationship with other—another person, place, thing. MISON (my-sahn) is your relationship with life itself. And ORBIT (or-bit) is what you tumble into when you’ve fallen out of relationship with self, life and other. Caught in endless recyclings of emotion or thought. Acting like someone you don’t know and don’t like. Unable to find yourself or your way out. That’s ORBIT.

Countless gifts were born from this awareness, and I’ve spent my life coming to know it on deeper and deeper levels. Not the least of which is understanding that we don’t always need to be found or stay found all the time. In fact, there are times when we need to be lost, when we have to get lost, in order to grow. So, the experience to get comfortable with, is being lost—because the question is never if we’ll lose ourselves. The question is whether we know the way back.

In my workshops, I teach MESHE Charting—a visual process where you literally draw your way back to yourself. You map what you like and love, the condition of your body and environment, how you express creatively, what your intuition is telling you, and what you know to be true. Five areas. Together they create a picture of your relationship with yourself in any given moment.

Simple. Playful. Even fun. (Really fun!)

Let’s do a little MESHE Charting. Take a moment now to think about what you Like and Love (L&L’s) see if you can come up with 10. Small, large, significant, insignificant. Grab a pencil and paper and place the page horizontal. Make a Circle in the center. From that Circle, create five connecting Petals around it, all large enough to draw images inside. Down the left side of the page, put a series of Circles, also large enough for images.

Now, focus on three of those L&L’s that are present in your life and three that are not. Draw into the Petals an image of the three that are present, giving each L&L its own Petal. Then, into the side Circles, draw in one each of those L&L’s that are not currently a part of your life. The next time you feel a little out of your center, check the Petals and Circles again. See what you can do to get all 6 of those onto the Petals of your MESHE Chart, then recheck how you feel about yourself and your life.

It’s easy to stop paying attention to what we actually like; to whom and what we actually love. And that’s just the beginning. We override our bodies with ideas, undue influences, simple oversights. We silence intuition because it’s inconvenient. We hand over our authority to someone else’s opinion of who we should be because the unknown can be so frightening to enter into all by ourselves. Then one day we wake up and don’t recognize ourselves in the life we are leading.

I titled my current workshop series For Anyone Who’s Ever Lost Themselves. That’s all of us. The way home is not through perfection or self-punishment. It’s through attention, curiosity, a willingness to look at what’s actually there. I’m preparing to teach this work online. That’s a big unknown for me! But I’m guided by my Love for this work—the vision of a workshop series and a companion weekly group that can be accessible to anyone ready to draw their way back.

Presence isn’t something you arrive at. It’s something you return to. Twenty-five years of writing about it, and I’m still returning. For me, that’s the essence of soulful living.

 

© Copyright 2025 KD Farris. All Rights Reserved.