Chances are, you go for a physical check-up every year. But what about a spiritual check-up? From time to time, it makes sense to take a pause -- and evaluate yourself and the world around you to be sure you're living a life that is both addressing your spiritual needs and caring for your soul. There may be no better time to do this than right now, as many of us are sheltering in place as we trudge through the coldest winter in recent memory.

I like to think of the body as our figurative home, as important as the roof over our heads. Our spirit, the fanciful part of ourselves that dreams, imagines and creates, lives in the well-lit attic. But our soul, the deepest part of our inner being, resides in the dimly lit basement. Like any basement, it also includes the foundation, the one on which our lives are built.

The late-spiritual leader Ram Dass pointed out that we often ignore the soul because we are entranced by the nonstop stream of thoughts entering our head. These thoughts engage the ego and until we stop long enough to break away from them, we don't recognize the soul. That's to our detriment, because to find true contentment in life we must satisfy this innermost part of ourselves. In Ram Dass's words:

The soul contains love, compassion, wisdom, peace and joy, but most people identify with the mind. You're not an ego. You're a soul.

Moore may be best known his landmark book Care of the Soul. But it was in another of his many books, A Life at Work, the Joy of Discovering What You Were Born to Do, that I came across a passage that talked to the key components of a soul-centered life. I counted six in all, and they serve as helpful reminders to the kind of things a spiritually minded person should want in their own life. Moore reminds us:

The quest for a lifework (the task of a person's life) entails creating a soulful style of living. That means living from a deep place...with an eye toward individual choice rather than unconsciously going with the crowd.

Remember the words "individual choice." It's up to you to determine what your soul is yearning for. Below you'll find Moore's words verbatim in bold text; my thoughts follow. As you read the list, consider what you might want to add or subtract from your own life. You may find that while you are satisfying some components of a soulful life, a few are missing.

A different version of this story appeared in my book Wake Up Call: Daily Insights for the Spiritually Curious which just celebrated its one-year anniversary.