Each one of us has a very unique soul path, a soul's way, and we have no idea at each step of the way how that is going to look and how it is going to unfold. Not truly. In this episode I draw on some examples of people who have taken truly remarkable twists and turns in their soul's journey and how to be open to yours unfolding just the way it should do.
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Hi, welcome to this episode of the Radiant Soul Podcast. I'm your host, Shirley. Just thought I'd introduce myself again, I don't know why. Today I wanna talk about Soul's path and how that looks because I'm inspired, like this is very vague, right? But I'm inspired from watching the Chef's Table on Netflix and I've been slowly watching my way through it, like, and just really absorbing the journeys of the chefs involved.
And one thing that really came to my attention was that there was like, you would never know what their journey was gonna be and in many of the cases, they kind of had like a, a sort of existential crisis moment or a point where their like purpose and their, what they thought they were here to do wasn't what they were here to do, and was in actual fact something completely different.
And one of the most beautiful stories was there was an Italian chef and oh my goodness, I've completely forgotten his name. I should have done a bit of research before I just started recording this. But his dad was a butcher. He's from a long line of butchers and he, it was like assumed he would go into butchery and he went as a kid to the farms where his dad would buy the meat from, like, you know, choose the animals to slaughter.
And he fell in love with the animals. And then he really realized that. . You can care for the animals. You can save the animals. And that's like a, that's a vet, right? And his dream was to become a vet. His dream was to be like, to go and study veterinary medicine and to become a vet and, and look after and love these animals cuz he felt such deep love and regard for all these animals, especially, you know, the, the cows in the fields and what the, his dad slaughtered basically, and essentially sold in the shop.
and he went to, he got, he got his dream to go to veterinary school and off he went to, to one of the big cities to learn. And while he was there, after his first year, unfortunately, his father died and his mother had already previously passed away and, She had had cancer and his father had ploughed all of the family money into kind of helping cure her or treat her.
And then his father died kind of quite suddenly. And so he was basically left as the man of the family, the one that had to support the other children and had to basically return back home having not completed his veterinary training and to become a butcher. And this was like a really, awful sad moment for him.
Like he actually was really struggling with the fact that he was planning to save animals lives and then suddenly he's finding himself literally, you know, chopping up dead animals. And his soul journey was, was one of like really having to come to terms with this. And what helped was, when he was father was dying he had said to his son, If you're struggling, go speak to this guy. This is the guy that selects my meat for me. He will help you and teach you. And so, so the guy goes to him and, and then the first thing he does is take him out to the land to show him the calves, to show him the animals, to, to, to reintroduce him back to the animals.
And while they're learning and while he's, you know, chopping these calfs apart, you know, and, and butchering them. He turns to him and says, You know, one of the things I'm really struggling with is that I am just dealing with death. Right? I am chopping up death and the death of the animal.
And the friend of the family, the man who was sort of guiding him, mentoring took him into the field and showed him the lives of the, these animals. I mean, they literally, you know, were just grass fed, really happy. Well reared, I mean, we are not talking industrially raised animals here. We're talking like beautifully raised, very, harmoniously with the environment, raised animals and, and he, he showed this guy that to be a butcher isn't, Isn't to sort of deal with death, but it's to celebrate the life.
It's to deal and, and, and chop up life, right? It's, you have a life in your hands. And, and so to be a butcher is to honor the life of that animal. And then this guy basically just discovers this, this joy of honoring the animal, honoring the life of this animal. And he, you know, he really starts like, You know, doing butchery better and really enjoying it.
And then he just discovers that people only really want the steaks. They only really want the sort of parts of the animal that they deem like higher. And he had grown up as a butcher's son, like always selling those parts as a butcher's son. Like those parts are always sold. But he had grown up with his grandmother always cooking the parts that no one wanted.
Like the hooves, the tongue, the ears, the cheeks, the, the offal. And he had had this like real love of these flavors and these meats. And so what he ended up doing was opening his own restaurant and teaching people about the other parts of the animal so that no part of the animal was, was left to waste.
No part of the animal was not honored. And so he really, you know, his sole purpose was to really bring the life and, and the honoring of the life back to this animal, back to the process, you know, of, of the life it has led, which has been led to be slaughtered for food, , in the food he prepared, in the food he butchered in, in a way he taught people.
You could see the love in his eyes. You could see that he honored every single part of the journey that these animals had taken. He honored every single breath they had taken, and he celebrated that, and he didn't let any of that go to waste. And so it's like this really beautiful example of, of a soul having everything lead up to its purpose, right? Not, he didn't really know what his purpose was. He really believed his purpose was to save animals, was to go and be a vet, and he really believed that that was his calling and it felt like the biggest blow when his calling didn't come to fruition.
Right? He, you know, he talked about it and it was like one of the saddest parts of his life, but then what came of it was this unfolding and, and so what I wanna discuss here is that we never really know what our path is. We never really know what our purpose is, all we can do is be open to the gifts In each moment.
All we can do is be open to our own journey unfolding and it will unfold, right? It will absolutely unfold if we are open to it and we desire that it will unfold for us and we have no idea what twists and turns that we take along the way that life gives us and presents to us how they basically form this like patchwork of life experience.
There was another one I watched - a Thai chef and she ended up becoming a cook in Thailand, but like none of the food was Thai. And she, she was working in some of the best restaurants, but like none of the food was Thai and, and she didn't have the ability to learn Thai food and no one was really like fully embracing Thai food. They were almost like sort of everything was industrialized and, but she had to go to London to train in how to cook authentic Thai food. And then she brought that knowledge back and she was able then to source the ingredients to, to open up with the family, like to the farmers, and have those experiences and questions and, and find those suppliers that were doing the ethical, organic, you know, artisanal ways of producing food, and she was able then to bring that back.
But her journey, you know, she had many points where she felt completely lost on that journey. And when she was in this Thai restaurant in London, And she's the only Thai person there and yet she had less knowledge of her own culture than anyone else. Right. And that was a really low moment for her. And so we don't know what our journeys are. We don't know what experiences, how they all layer on each other, how they all add to us.
It's like my own journey, right? I, I did art at university. I studied art. I really wanted to be an artist. That was where my passion was. And, I came out of university sort of feeling very disillusioned, really, and didn't have a clue how to make money as an artist who had been told all along that you would be a starving artist, that you, there's no money being an artist that you know, to be an artist is, is your emotional , pathetic or whatever.
All these like ridiculous stories that I was told. So when I finished my degree and felt very disillusioned by the world. It was like, well, I only have one choice, right? And I ended up going into just doing administration work, right? And it wasn't till I was accidentally put on a shopping trip with this woman who had cured herself with homeopathy and had become a homeopath herself from multiple sclerosis, And, and listening to her and having these conversations with her on the bus ride into the shops and, and all these experiences.
And I was, I was listening to her and I was fascinated by this. This ability to heal oneself with a different form of medicine, right? A different way of looking at life, a different way of being, a holistic way of connecting everything. And that made so much more sense to me. And so I just happened to be driving one day and I stopped at the petrol station and there was literally a book on homeopathy for two, do like 2 99, #2. 99.
It's, it was in. And I bought it and I started reading it and I started like buying some of the remedies and trying them. And then people would say, Oh, I've got this thing. And I'd sort of look it up and I'd, I'd give them a remedy and I'd, I would see a difference, right? They would be like, Oh my God, what did you do? It was amazing.
And so I ended up studying homeopathy. Three years into that course, I was suddenly like, Oh, I don't wanna be a homeopath. I just, I really just was fascinated by homeopathy and by energy medicine and by the, the holistic view of like, wellbeing and soul medicine and the journey, right? And so I actually stopped for a little while.
I actually stopped studying, and then I went back to it like three, four months later. And I realized like, Oh my God, yeah, I really want to be a homeopath. But that journey then ended, I graduated from homeopathy school. I had my qualification. I, I started treating patients and then I became very exhausted.
And I remember thinking, Oh my God, I don't wanna actually be a homeopath, but I'm still really interested in this story. But I wanted to do art. I wanted to have my art make that same impact. Right. And I be, I became really aware. It wasn't necessarily the pill that was curing people, but it was the energetic story, the transmission that was having that effect, right, That was having that effect where people were suddenly like waking up and having those moments of, of healing because they were awake and conscious all of a sudden, and they had received the medicine, The reflection of the story.
My journey took all sorts of twists and turns. I ended up moving to Canada. I wasn't actually able to practice homeopathy at that point, and so I didn't know what to do and I ended up going back and drawing and doing art. And it was like 12 years since I had done art. Right? 12 years without even picking up a pencil and putting it to paper.
I mean, and that journey led to me having a couple of Etsy shops and selling illustrations and having very, you know, great success. Basically doing illustrations of animals and, and exploring humanity and what it meant to be human in the bittersweet moments, but through illustrations and through these like, Little animals that would come to life on the page.
And I remember feeling very much like I was a channel for them. It was like I didn't know who I was gonna draw or paint. And then suddenly like I'd paint the eyes and it was like, Oh, hi there little animal. And it was these twists and turns that my life took all the way and it's brought me full circle right to, to where I am now teaching like soul medicine still.
It is the same as what I was doing back then as a homeopath. And. And what I was doing in art school, right? I was fascinated with this journey of coming home to oneself. Even my artwork back then was all about coming home to oneself and this sole journey. I was obsessed with Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, if you know that book, and I did a lot of artwork based around that, right?
Because it was always this soul journey that I've been interested in, but like if I'd have any point been stopped and said, What's your Soul purpose? I wouldn't have been able to pinpoint it. I would've thought it was something wrong. I would've thought it was something different, but not one of those twists and turns has been, has been detrimental to where I am now. Like each one has layered upon itself, layered upon itself, and who knows what's gonna happen next, right? Who knows where this is going next.
And I think that the more you sort of open up in consciousness to your soul journey as well, the more you end up being of service, the more you end up taking on this shepherding consciousness, right?
Because you start realizing that there is a bigger picture here and that you can be a vessel for that, and you can be an opening for that. Yeah. And allow that to flow through. And so who knows, you know, I have visions as in my future of, of great sort of acts of philanthropy, whether I will manage it or not, who knows?
Right? But each step in the way, you can't predict. You can't, you can't predict what the future holds, and you can't predict necessarily what your path and purpose is, but to be yourself, to show up. And then the more you do that, the more you start becoming of service, the more you start coming from a place of how can I serve, how can I be of service to the whole?
Because I am not individual. I am not separate. And this, this chef that I was watching in Italy, you know, he's his, his life. I mean, I remember just watching him at the beginning of the this show and the way it's filmed. It just shows him now. And he had such a vibrant life, such a, he was so at one with his soul, and so living a soulful, radiant life, you could see it.
It was oozing from like every pore of his being. And he was just so in hiselement, so thriving on that. And then it went back and told the story of actually like, you know, he actually ended up on a completely different path to the one he thought. And so it's like you, you'd never know, right? You never know.
And it's how much can you be open? How much can you allow yourself to open to the different path that's ahead of you? But allow what is here to be what's here. And they always say, you know, give 100% to the here and now, even if it's not what you think you want. Because it will ultimately always lead to what you want and always layer upon itself.
And without this experience here, you wouldn't be this person there. You know, I did six years working in administration in construction while I was studying homeopathy. And I was like, literally, You know, working 40 hour days for, sorry, 40 hour weeks in construction and then studying late at night and on weekends.
And, and what the construction gave me was this ability to communicate. Right, my job role involved talking to illiterate labourers who were just like, you know, cleaning the toilet or, you know, doing basic manual labor around the site, right up to the, like skilled carpenters. Then I was talking to directors and accountants and, and everyone in between, like there was, there was no, there was no one in any hierarchy that I wasn't involved with talking to in my job.
And so what it did was give me this real ability to communicate and to be able to meet people exactly where they're at. And so be able to, you know, read a pay slip for someone who couldn't read one minute or whose English isn't good and be able to communicate that. And then the next minute talk to the director of finance about accounting and things like that, you know?
And I was able to switch and be both of those. It really enabled me to be a better communicator and to be so much less judgemental, like to be so completely like the unprejudiced observer. And that was also a gift I got as a homeopath, right? I was taught how to be the unprejudiced observer and all of these skills and all of these different paths layered upon itself and layered upon in who I am today and how I show up.
And so don't judge any part of your journey, even if the now isn't what you want. Like don't judge it. You have no idea. Our souls just are so unique and choose such amazing, unique things in life that it's just a gift, right? It's an absolute gift.
I love you. Thank you so much for listening.
Have a great week. I love you. Bye.