Long before the Soul Merge workshop and the ignition of Soul contact, my Soul was preparing the way for me to encounter and recognize the path I was meant to follow in this life. Upon reflection, I can recognize the signs and clues that appeared, like glowing footlights marking my way. These included events, coincidences, and synchronicities charged with a meaning not always mentally noted, but that scintillated with a frisson of excitement, curiosity, or attraction. For example, months before the workshop, I had noticed a very small announcement in the local newspaper about the opening of a spiritually focussed center and some of its upcoming events. Thirty-six years later, I can still see that notice in the paper as if a light illuminated it, and I can still feel the flash of excitement that shot through me when I read it. I felt compelled to apply to attend the Soul Merge workshop.
My soul was attentive to me, whispering in my ear, sending me signs, amplifying intuitions and feelings that attuned me to the direction and choices my soul desired me to make. Perhaps the most momentous experience occurred just days before the workshop was to begin. As part of the preparation for the workshop, participants were asked to do specific clearing exercises around the theme of one’s inner male-female polarity and relationship. (I understand now that a level of male-female integration is a prerequisite for soul integration.) During a heart-focussed meditation one morning, my soul communicated to me very clear instructions in words I could easily hear—not at all something I was accustomed to experiencing! Following those instructions, I opened my heart to my inner male aspect and a passionate dialog ensued between my inner male and female. Powerful energies surged through me as my male and female began negotiating their differences and coming to new terms of reconciliation with one another. The potency of the process swept me along in an irresistible dynamic to which I wanted only to surrender. Hours after it had begun, the inner dialog and reckoning finalized with my soul’s voice once again speaking to me, this time with an announcement. It told me that I had just undergone a significant shift and that a new name for myself was available that represented this deeper male/female union that was unfolding. “Alana Marie” was the name I was given, which I first officially adopted and used on that first day of the Soul Merge workshop.
How did I know that my soul was speaking to me? The mind might question, but the heart knows. My heart recognized the fiery but gentle presence of my soul, and trusted it instinctively. Usually, the soul communicates with subtle impulses and intuitive feelings. But I learned that my soul can vividly get my attention when it wants to convey its message with conviction and clarity. There was no mistaking or denying the direction I was being taken. I felt only an open-minded and open-hearted willingness to embrace the adventure that was before me. My soul had prepared me, brought me to the doorway, and opened it for me with fiery will and passion. I stepped onto my spiritual path with wonder, with joyful surrender, flooded with a sense of the sacred.
