Extraordinary or onetime events can jolt us into listening to our soul, but minor events can, too.
However, the advice of the poet, “Pay attention to the soul,”1 is a call to listen to the soul continuously, not only in the face of a rare event or at the end of life, but as an ongoing and focused inner spiritual process.
When we deliberately silence the noises of life and listen, instead, to the inner voice of our soul, we can achieve the level of “a persons soul will teach him.”
Those who attain this exalted level may be completely different from one another in all respects, but they all have a kind of inner illumination that is visible even to others, and that shows they have been able to hear their soul.
The more we are able to listen to our soul, the more its voice will affect our lives and the way we understand the world.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz