Interview with Dr. Gabriella Kortsch, Author of Rewiring the Soul: Finding the Possible Self

Joyce: Who is this book written for?

Gabriella: Rewiring the Soul is written for anybody who suffers and I guess that means just about all of us! It is written for anybody who has not yet experienced enduring happiness and inner well-being; anybody who is reaching for inner peace; anybody whose life is not as they would wish it to be.

Joyce: What can a reader expect to gain by reading this book? What makes it different from most other transformational or self-help books out there?

Gabriella: So many wonderful teachers tell us about working on our spiritual selves. So many other wonderful teachers show us how to work on our psycho-emotional selves. But very few actually integrate the two. And Rewiring the Soul is my response to that challenge. Rewiring the Soul brings together the need to take your daily life in hand with the need to put your spiritual life in order as well. By daily life I mean your personal life, your professional life, the way you do or do not love yourself and all that such an attitude entails: conscious awareness, healthy boundaries, meaning in your life, recognizing you always have a choice, and taking responsibility for all your choices, etc., and by spiritual life I mean the inner connection to your eternal self.

If you have learned how to meditate, or do yoga, or whatever it is that you do, have you also learned how to observe yourself in the middle of an argument with your rebellious teenage son or your angry partner and hence choose to react differently because you have learned to love yourself enough to do so? If you have learned how to communicate more effectively with your children, spouse, friends, colleagues or employees, have you also learned how to be mindful and connect to yourself in meaningful ways to achieve that spiritual balance in your life?

While Rewiring the Soul is about so much more than that, those previous examples give an idea of what my book is about and how it does so in such a way that our psychological and spiritual selves nurture each other.

In a nutshell: neither the spiritual nor the psychological or emotional dimensions of your life will work if you neglect:
• your inner connection to the eternal self while you seek happiness in the outer world
• your happiness in the outer world while you seek the connection to the inner eternal self
It was Gandhi who said “If everyone will sweep in front of their own door, soon the entire world will be clean”. In Rewiring the Soul ‘sweeping in front of your own door’ means bringing yourself to the utmost point of inner and outer growth, creating progress in body, mind, and soul. This literally means that you have already begun to change the world because of how you are changing yourself.

Joyce: There are exercises in the book. Do you think readers will feel it’s too much to add to a possibly “full plate”?

Gabriella: Not at all. This book does not mean hard work, or spending a lot of time doing specific things. It simply means that as you read – if you so desire - you begin to incorporate small changes into your daily life. And so it begins. And the quality of your life changes…

Joyce: How did you come to write this book?

Gabriella: For years the essential content of Rewiring the Soul was like a small, recurring voice in my head; it was always there, and simply would not leave me alone. I had dozens of excuses for not writing it: I was working on my Ph.D. in psychology, I was teaching at a state university, I had three sons, later I was occupied with moving back to Spain, I was setting up my private practice, I had a monthly newsletter to write in English and Spanish, I had a weekly one-hour radio show to broadcast, I had a daily blog post to write, I facilitated numerous workshops and gave frequent speeches, and apart from all of this busy activity and work, sometimes I even had a life. In short, I told myself the book would simply have to wait. But just as a splinter under your skin eventually needs to be seen to, I ultimately realized that the only way I was going to be able to honor the more and more loudly clamoring voice in my head – and heart - was to sit down and write the book.

And you know, that goes to meaning. We all need meaning in our lives, and although I had many things that gave much significance to my life already, the inner urging and excitement I felt each time I thought about Rewiring the Soul compelled me to write the book. Rumi puts it beautifully: When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

Gabriella Kortsch, Ph.D. (Psychology), author of Rewiring the Soul, is a practicing psychotherapist who works with an international clientele in Marbella, Spain using an integral focus on body, mind and soul. She has published a newsletter in English and Spanish since 2004, facilitates monthly workshops and broadcast a weekly radio show both locally in Spain, as well as on the internet for seven years. Prior to her work in private practice she was Director of Sales & Marketing at several luxury beach properties in Spain and Mexico and was married to a diplomat. She has three sons.
Blog: http://www.rewiringthesoul.com/
Website: http://www.advancedpersonaltherapy.com/
Connect with her on Twitter / Facebook / LinkedIn / YouTube

Do You Feel Empty or Full?

Perhaps you have certain feelings or longings that are vague, or sharp. These are callings from your soul, drawing attention to areas of you that need to be filled.

At one time or another, you may feel one or more of the following:
-Depressed or at least that you could feel happier
-Desirous of more meaning in and for your life
-As though there is a void inside you and you don’t know how to fill it
-Disillusioned about life and relationships
-(Your own longing here)

Just as a desire (different from a wish) to do or be something means you have the capacity to achieve it, so does feeling a sense of longing mean your soul craves fulfillment and full expression. You, as so many do, may look to satisfy this longing from outside of yourself with more of something: money, material objects, sex, control, a perfect job, a perfect relationship, and so on. Perhaps you get these and discover you still feel empty. There’s a reason for this.

We’ve confused meeting our soul’s needs with solving what we call problems in our lives (more money, material objects, sex, control, a perfect job, a perfect relationship, and so on). Somewhere along the way, we’ve brainwashed ourselves (with the help of others who are also brainwashed in this way) that a proper life is problem-free, perfect. You are a soul having a physical experience, and you did not come here to have a problem-free, “perfect” experience. You came here to expand the depth of who you are; and to do this you must move through a depth of experiences and glean from them the value they hold for you so you can expand how you feel about your experience of being.

Your soul (your true nature) is a quality as much as it is an entity, so it (you) seeks experiences to enhance the quality of your life—the one you live inside your self. You can expand your understanding of this if you think of what the term Soul Food means: food that nourishes and pleases your physical and emotional senses, your sense of community, your memories. Soul Food provides a specific quality of experience. You go to a Soul Food restaurant deliberately to have such an experience. So does your soul enter a physical life for the same reason.

We confuse ourselves with the belief that life would be what it’s “supposed” to be if it were free of what troubles us. Yet, inside each trouble, problem, or issue is a message from our soul and the answer that will satisfy it. We rush to get rid of anything we label negative rather than look at it, which would help us discover more about ourselves in a way that would further nurture and feed our souls. This exploration and its positive results, rather than denial, is a primary reason life coaching is now such an integral part of our society’s evolution. Coaching doesn’t dwell on issues, but dives into them just long enough to find the root and pull it up painlessly. Trimming weeds never gets rid of them; you must deal with them from the root, give them a relatively quick yank from the soil. Not addressing troubling issues that hold our attention is a form of soul deprivation.

Let’s look at the feeling that your life isn’t as meaningful as you believe it can or should be. That emptiness is your soul’s message to discover what IS meaningful for you and to include it in your life. An empowering question to ask about this or anything you feel you lack within is, “Can you feel a desire for more meaning (or whatever) WITHOUT feeling disempowered?”

We tend to latch onto the feeling of disempowerment when facing issues. But are we ever truly disempowered? No. And, what do we avoid when we feel disempowered? We avoid experiencing more of what would fill us: more often than not, giving and receiving more love and care to ourselves and others. “I’m discontent so I HAVE to be rude (or some other negative expression of our discontented, fearful selves),” is how we justify certain behaviors that never bring our ultimately-desired results.

You cannot have light without shadow or darkness. You can shine light into shadows and darkness in order to see what’s really there. More often that not, what we find there is a BELIEF that we can’t deal with or won’t want to see what lurks there. A belief is not a solid thing, though it creates real experiences in our minds and oftentimes in our lives. What you entertain or thrash in your mind is what your brain believes is actually happening, and it responds with either good feelings or bad ones that create good experiences or bad ones, first at the inner then eventually the outer levels.

What can you do for this symptom of the soul? Be fully where you are rather than in a regretful past or anxious future. Choose to live each moment with an open mind and heart, trusting that you can adjust as needed, trusting that you are always empowered just by being. You can live your moments differently, deliberately, which can bring you through any situation with conscious awareness and the ability to see and use the soul value of it.

Denial is how you alienate yourself from your life and the fullness you might create in it. Denial keeps you from discovering your true nature and its strengths and beauties, then expressing these in your life. What does any level of suffering reveal to you? The answer will never be found in avoidance, only in a caring conversation with your soul self.

This approach not only can enrich your life and soul experience, but you can offer this to others as well. What will support you is to accept that you (and others) are in progress at all times. Let go of the belief that you are supposed be perfect. That isn’t what your soul seeks. Listen to your soul’s whispers and shouts for what needs filling, address these in the moment you’re in, and you’ll begin to feel emptiness being filled.

You are what you practice.
© Joyce Shafer

You are welcome to reprint this article as long as you use my complete bio.

Shift self-sabotaging behaviors & discover your authentic self through Your Personality Blueprint with Joyce Shafer (jls1422@yahoo.com), You Are More! Empowerment Coach, author of I Don’t Want to be Your Guru, but I Have Something to Say & other books/ebooks. Articles & Extras in her free weekly newsletter; more about Your Personality Blueprint profiles & coaching; get How to Have What You REALLY Want free when you subscribe at http://stateofappreciation.webs.com