The Zone of Neutrality – Where the Soul Hides
- Brainz Magazine
- Oct 6
- 6 min read
Updated: Oct 7
Summer Jean is most known for her transformational work with trauma, major life transitions, grief, and deep healing of long-term suffering. She is the owner of Agami Karma Therapy and the online transformation program, Ascend.
Even when life seems fine on the surface, a quiet emptiness can take hold, leaving the heart uninspired and energy drained. This middle ground isn’t a flaw, it’s a signal. A call to reconnect with what truly matters. Recognizing it is the doorway to reawakening, courage, and living fully again.
“There is a place within us where emotions fade, desires dull, and dreams dissolve into shadows.” Life continues, bills still need to be paid, relationships require effort, but inside, the spark is gone. It isn’t depression, exactly. It isn’t joy either. It’s the hollow in-between, where passion hides and everything feels muted. I refer to this as the Zone of Neutrality.
In this zone, we no longer experience the high highs or the low lows. We simply function. “We live from the robotic shoulds and musts, while inside, our emotions whisper only one thing, meh.”
“In the depths of your soul, there is a sacred flame of awareness waiting to be ignited. The spiritual journey is about awakening that flame and allowing it to guide you.” – Paulo Coelho
Neutrality often follows long periods of emotional extremes, joy colliding with shame, fear, or guilt. Back and forth, a dance of three steps forward and five steps back, two steps forward and one step back. Over time, this contrast creates a gap, the distance between higher-frequency emotions such as happiness and lower ones like despair. We attach stories, judgments, and beliefs to explain why we feel the way we do, habitually blaming others for our hurts until eventually, the soul retreats into silence.
I often describe it to clients like this, imagine standing on a suspension bridge. On one side lies joy, creativity, and freedom, on the other side, fear, shame, and despair. After years of swinging back and forth, the bridge itself wears thin. To protect us, the psyche stops walking altogether and camps out in the middle. Safe, but stagnant. Living, but suspended.
A client once said to me, “I don’t feel sad, but I don’t feel alive either. It’s like I’m watching my life on mute.” She wasn’t alone in this. Many begin working with me, not because they’re drowning, but because they’re tired of treading water. The Zone of Neutrality isn’t always loud suffering, sometimes it’s quiet erosion.
The culprit? Our ego.
“You can either be a host to God or a hostage to ego, it’s your call” – Wayne Dyer
The ego is both the Great Protector and the Great Separator. From around 18 months old, it helps us say “I, me, mine,” carving out identity from our caregivers. Its job is survival to keep us safe, accepted, and loved. But left unchecked, it begins attaching false meanings to every experience.
“I failed once, therefore I must be a failure.” “I wasn’t chosen, therefore I must not be worthy.”
The ego clings to these as truth, gathering evidence to reinforce its case. What begins as protection becomes separation, not just from others, but from our own heart and soul. Carl Jung said, “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams, who looks inside, awakes.”
The problem is not the ego itself. The problem is our lack of awareness about how it operates. When the ego runs unchecked, it dictates our worth, value, and esteem. It disconnects us from higher emotions and leaves us stranded in the Zone of Neutrality.
This isn’t just an individual experience. Globally, more people report feelings of “flatness” or emotional exhaustion after years of collective upheavals, pandemics, wars, economic strain, and climate anxiety. The Zone of Neutrality has quietly become an epidemic.
So, how do we move out of it?
“First,” we need to see the ego for what it is, a survival mechanism. “The ego is not the enemy, it is the part of us that learned to keep us alive.” With compassion, we can begin to question its stories. Did failing at art in the seventh grade really mean “I am not creative”? Or is it simply proof that creativity takes practice? Finding different ways of looking at something makes it harder for our meaning maker (aka, our ego) to jump to a conclusion, make a core belief about it, and then decide who we are in relationship to that belief for self-preservation.
“Second,” we must reconnect with the heart and soul. Small acts of honesty with ourselves rebuild that bridge between feeling and meaning. Choosing a moment of joy, sunlight on the skin, a favorite song, or a deep breath reminds us that neutrality is not permanent. Learning to live in the present calms the inner narrative, allowing the nervous system to find a sense of balance. Follow the present moment bits that just feel good. These bits are the breadcrumbs to the nourishing emotions of gratitude, happiness, and love. However, if we are not mindful, we miss them and allow the ego to take over in its own egocentric narratives that are generally based in lack mindsets.
“Finally,” we must allow the full spectrum of emotions back in. One client reflected after months of work, “I’d rather feel heartbreak than feel nothing at all because at least it means my heart is alive.” Feeling deeply requires letting go of compensating behaviors and building capacity for stress, resilience, and healing. This means that we have to discover what our compensating behaviors are, which help keep us feeling better, as a way to ‘not feel bad’. Removing the behavior that compensates for our deeper wounds, shame, and pain allows us to feel these energies. For many, this requires building a capacity for stress, healing, and resiliency. So do that!
Vincent Van Gogh once said, “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?” Courage is what moves us out of neutrality. The Zone of Neutrality isn’t a failure. It’s a signal. It tells us we’ve been protecting ourselves too long, and the soul is ready to be invited back into the conversation.
“Don’t get lost in your pain. Know that one day your pain will become your cure.” – Rumi
“When the ego reconnects with the heart and soul, neutrality gives way to aliveness again.” And that’s when life stops feeling like survival and starts expanding into unlimited potential. Imagine your ego as your greatest ally, no longer running the show from imbalance or illusion, but working in harmony with awareness, mindfulness, and embodiment. You begin to let life lead you.
No longer stuck in the Zone of Neutrality, you are energetically turned back on. When challenges arise, the lows don’t pull you under because you’ve learned to befriend them, listen to their message, and respond from the soulful knowing of who you truly are. Living from this place changes the entire game of life.
When you rise from neutrality into alignment, life stops asking for survival, it eagerly invites participation. The unconscious ego bows to the awakened soul, the heart leads, and you remember: aliveness isn’t something to chase. It’s something you already are.
“Awakening is not changing who you are, but discarding who you are not.” – Ram Dass
Taking action: Doing this inner work is both profound and challenging, and rarely something we can do entirely alone. The ever-expanding world of “self-help” is worth celebrating, yet there are limits to how far the mind can take itself when the ego is the one leading the journey. Our blind spots, defenses, and protective patterns often keep us circling the same terrain, even as the soul quietly calls us forward.
The truth is, many parts of the ego fear the very expansion the heart longs for. It will rationalize, delay, or distract to avoid change, even when the soul is ready to awaken. That is why having guidance, a mirror, a witness, a compassionate guide can illuminate what we cannot yet see within ourselves.
If you feel that call, that quiet nudge toward something deeper, I invite you to take the next step. Visit my website to learn more or schedule a free consultation where we can explore together what it means to return home to yourself.
Read more from Summer Jean
Summer Jean, Integrative Sound Psychotherapist
Summer Jean, owner of Agami Karma Therapy, is a seasoned Integrative Sound Psychotherapist and mother of four, dedicated to empowering others to heal. Combining Western Psychology and Eastern Philosophy, she helps clients overcome trauma, fears, and major life transitions with a deeper sense of self. Helping those she works with to rewire unhealthy thinking patterns and break the habit of living out of balance. With over 20 years of experience and a distinguished speaking career in the medical, educational, and mental health fields, Summer’s work centers on ascending obstacles and fostering mind-body-soul balance. Passionate about spirituality and the human experience, she inspires others to create purposeful, empowered, soul-driven lives.
