Welcome to the Soul’s Code family

A TIP SHEET FOR ARTICLES AND SUBMISSIONS

Welcome to the Soul’s Code family of writers, columnists and commentators.

Soul’s Code is a community site. Like PBS, we rely on your support. But unlike PBS, we’re not asking for your extra dollars (as if anyone has those lying around these days). Instead, the contribution we seek is a piece of your life experience.

We publish self-help stories and first-person narratives in the broad category of psychology, self-exploration and mind-body health and wellness. While Soul’s Code staff write guides like the slideshows in the site’s right-hand column, the site’s main column offers a mix of content by both professional therapists and practitioners, alongside accounts by lay people on a spiritual path.

In either category, there are 100 ways to express yourself on Soul’s Code. Types of stories include:

Soul’s Code offers dozens of story categories, including: Peak Experiences, Prescriptions to Problems (see below) and Mind-Body Toolkit. For a full list, roll your cursor over the Navigation Tab at the top of our banner called, Departments — or scroll down the right column of the Soul’s Code home page to read the menu in a panel called DEPARTMENTS.

This is a grass-roots online property: we do not promote any particular personality, like Oprah’s site; and we are not a marketing vehicle set up to promote a single product like The Secret. Soul’s Code is a platform which we created for professional practitioners and people on a spiritual path to share alike. Our only creed: Everyone’s a guru

We don’t look like a blog, and we don’t read like one, either. We enrich our stories with the same journalistic writing standards that you enjoy in your favorite national magazines.


“How to” advice columns:

More than 75 Soul’s Code contributors have written myriad stories offering advice like how to:

  • boost your lymphatic system to avoid swine flu
  • mix wine with an ayurvedic diet
  • go spiritual to let go of a beloved pet
  • use “intention” to find the ideal man
  • silence your mind in a mad, mad world
  • use techniques from depth-psychology to deal with a depressed person, or an angry person
  • and how to Work the pole to connect with my soul (as in, pole-dancing!)

When you ask yourself, “How can my personal or professional experience translate into a tactile way to advance others with their inner evolution?”, the key is to avoid writing in the third-person, generalities and in a preachy tone from a 30,000-foot view. Address the reader as “you,” and illustrate your suggestions with real-life cases or anecdotes drawn from your own life or practice.

In our series, Forgiving the Unforgivable, Tom Hudgens traveled to death row of a Texas super-max prison to forgive a man who raped and murdered his sister. Tom didn’t simply give readers top-line advice like, “Forgive those who have wronged you. I did, and it set me free.”

Instead, Tom amplified and detailed that simple principle by drilling down into this riveting scene:

I asked about opportunities he’s had to help people. He struggled to answer this; the struggle, I believe, was to answer without pride. He then told me about an inmate who had killed many people and was being taunted by another inmate. The first inmate showed John Black a ’shank’ that he intended to use to kill the guy taunting him. John Black talked him out of it, and got him to hand in the knife.


Finally, I took John Black’s hands in mine. ‘John,’ I said. ‘I forgive you for your crimes of raping and killing my sister. From what I can see today, you are a good, honest, intelligent, thoughtful man.’

‘To me,’ I went on, ”forgiveness’ means I can accept what happened, that you did what you did, and that today, in this moment, I can wish you well, that I feel compassion towards you. And I hope that you can someday forgive yourself.’

That gem offers readers a “take-away,” a Buddhist approach of compassion that Tom used as a bridge to his former worst enemy.


Every journey deserves a journal:

Soul’s Code places a high value on first-person accounts by giving them prime “real estate” on the home page of the site. Aspirational and inspirational narratives about techniques or trips that produced an expansive state are displayed under the PEAK EXPERIENCES navigation tab. Confessional accounts like “Cassandra’s” case study about adultery, “Monogamy, what is it good for?”, are displayed under the PRESCRIPTIONS TO PROBLEMS NavTab.

These are the very highs and lows in life that provoke spiritual exploration in the first place, so go for a “grounded” voice. Both types of pieces want to have a resolution at the end that reflects a change in your psyche or situation. Things to avoid: self-indulgence, “inside baseball,” and self-promotional “brochureware” that can undermine the authenticity of your message.

Yours, with gratitude,  Soul’s Coders

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