Cognitive scientist and philosopher John Vervaeke said: “We are in a meaning crisis because we have lost the ability to connect deeply with reality in a participatory way.”
Welcome to The Soul Podcast, I’m Stacey Wheeler.
In our last episode we explored the ancient roots of soul sickness — that profound sense that a part of our vital essence has gone missing after trauma, shock, or ongoing imbalance. Today we bring that understanding into our modern world and ask why so many of us feel this emptiness even when life is full of activity, connection, and achievement. We’ll look at how soul sickness manifests today, why this old wisdom feels so relevant to the challenges we face right now, and how recognizing it can bring both compassion and clarity.
I often hear from people — and I’ve felt it myself — that strange mixture of being constantly stimulated yet somehow starved. We scroll, we achieve, we connect through screens, we chase experiences, and still there’s a quiet ache. A sense that something essential is missing. Motivation feels fragile. Joy is fleeting. We accomplish things but don’t feel fully alive in the process. Days blend together in a haze of tasks and notifications, and at the end of each day we wonder why we feel so hollow. The next day we get out of bed and start all over again, with the same result. If any of this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. This is soul sickness showing up in the particular conditions of our time.
In the ancient traditions we discussed last time, soul loss happens when a part of our vital essence departs for protection. And we're all on this spectrum somewhere -all but the most advanced of us. We all must be aware of and constantly be working to turn back the effects of Soul Sickness and the meaning crisis.
In the modern world, those protective departures happen constantly, often in ways that feel completely normal. We adapt to relentless pace, digital overload, economic pressure, comparison culture, and messages that value productivity over presence. Some of us suffer from massive injuries to our soul, while most of us are suffering from a thousand continuous mild strikes. Because we've adapted our reflexes to manage the mild strikes -and essentially ignore them- we often use the same tool to manage the more painful violations of our soul: we shove them down and deny them the light of full awareness. As life goes on, we learn to push through grief, minimize our needs, and perform versions of ourselves that fit the expectations around us. Over time these adaptations create a kind of quiet fragmentation. We function, but the deeper current of aliveness feels dimmed.
Does this sound familiar? Does your aliveness feel dimmed?
This can show up in many familiar forms.
Chronic burnout that no amount of rest or vacation seems to fix.
A persistent low-grade anxiety or emotional numbness that therapy or medication can ease but not fully resolve.
The loneliness epidemic, even when we’re surrounded by people or “connected” online.
The sense that life is happening to us rather than flowing through us with purpose and vitality.
Many of us carry unresolved trauma — personal or collective — that has never been truly witnessed or reintegrated. We also live inside larger historical wounds. Generational patterns of loss, displacement, and cultural disconnection leave their mark on the soul in ways that are hard to name but deeply felt.
One of the strongest contributors is the disenchantment, which the American psychologist and philosopher, Richard Tarnas writes about. He describes this as the shift where the world began to feel more like a machine to be managed than a living, meaningful cosmos filled with purpose and relationship. As human beings we've stepped into greater freedom and control over our lives, which has brought incredible gifts like scientific progress, individual rights, and personal choice. But in the process, we’ve often lost the felt sense that we belong to something larger. The universe started to feel more like cold matter than a sacred web, and we began to feel like isolated observers rather than active participants. Individualism has led to a feeling of isolation.
That shift has left many of us with a profound sense of alienation and meaninglessness — a soul-level emptiness that no amount of achievement or comfort seems to fill. It’s a very human struggle: we gained independence, but at the cost of deeper connection. This feeling is often especially sharp in cities, where the constant hum of human activity and concrete landscapes can make the natural world feel distant and the sense of aliveness harder to touch. Yet the longing remains the same wherever we live — a quiet call from the soul to come back into relationship with something larger than ourselves.
Thomas Moore captures something important here when he writes that care of the soul requires ongoing attention to every aspect of life, and that we cannot care for the soul if we do not know how to suffer. In a culture that often treats suffering as something to eliminate quickly rather than tend, we miss the opportunity to listen to what the soul is asking of us. The emptiness itself becomes a messenger.
This is why the meaning crisis many people feel today feels so widespread. We have more information, more comfort, and more choices than ever before, yet rates of anxiety, depression, disconnection, and a quiet despair about life’s purpose continue to rise. We’ve gained autonomy and material progress, but we’ve often lost a participatory sense of belonging — to each other, to nature, to something sacred and meaningful beyond the individual self. The soul, which thrives on depth, relationship, mystery, and beauty, finds itself starved in environments designed for speed, efficiency, and surface-level engagement.
None of this is meant to shame our modern life or suggest we abandon its gifts. It’s an invitation to notice. When we name what’s happening as soul sickness rather than just personal failure or chemical imbalance, we open a more compassionate path. We begin to ask different questions. Not only “What’s wrong with me?” but “What has my soul been trying to protect or reclaim all this time?”
In the final episode of this series — available now for SoulCircle members — we’ll move into hope and practice. We’ll explore gentle, accessible ways to call the soul back home, including tools drawn from both ancient wisdom and modern understanding that anyone can begin to use right away. We will also look at some of the more advanced ways people are using to cure their soul sickness and return home -to themselves.
For now, I invite you to sit with this reflection: In what areas of your life do you feel most alive and connected, and where does life feel flat or automatic? What small shift toward presence, beauty, or deeper relationship might your soul be quietly asking for today?
Thank you for walking this path with me. If today’s exploration touched something in you, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Until next time, tend your soul gently.
