ABOUT
A quiet companion
who once walked the road.
I grew up in a tradition where questions were tolerated but rarely welcomed. For a long time, I kept mine quiet until they became too loud to ignore.
My search led me far from where I started: into mysticism, contemplative practice, depth psychology, Indigenous teachings, and the wisdom threaded through spiritual traditions I hadn't grown up with. Along the way, teachers such as Wayne Teasdale, Carl Jung, Thomas Moore, Ram Dass, Thomas Merton, and many other mystics became companions on the journey. It was never their answers I was after, it was how they stayed with the questions.
What I found wasn't a new set of certainties. It was a different way of listening to my own experience, to the sacred, and to what life was actually asking of me.
I know what it is to be spiritually homeless.
To have outgrown one way of believing without knowing yet what comes next. To still feel a longing for something sacred without having words for what to call it.
To stand somewhere between what once made sense and what it beginning to emerge. For a long time, I thought I needed to find another map. Eventually, I realized I was learning to walk without one.
That in-between place became less something to escape and more a place of discovery.
It taught me that spirituality doesn’t have to be a fixed set of answers. It can be a living relationship with mystery, with the sacred, with the natural world, with our own inner life, and with the questions that continue to shape us.
That experience is at the heart of Where the Soul Lands.
Ordained interspiritual minister
Spiritual companion
LINDA SANTOS
What Interspirituality Means
You may notice the word "interspiritual" in my title and wonder what it means.
Interspirituality isn't a religion, and it isn't an attempt to blend every religion into one. For me, it’s an openness to the wisdom found across spiritual and contemplative traditions, while honoring the particular path each person is walking.
It doesn't ask you to abandon a tradition you belong to, or adopt one you don't. It simply trusts that the sacred isn't owned by any single path, and that a person can be nourished by more than one well.
My path has been shaped by contemplative traditions, mysticism, nature, and wisdom from many traditions. I’ve learned to receive what nourishes, question what no longer fits, and remain curious what I have yet to understand.
There is freedom in that. And there is humility, too. I don’t need to have all the answers. And neither do you.
MY PATH
The road that brought me here.
My path to this work didn't begin in a seminary. It began in spreadsheets.
I spent thirty years in the corporate world, building a career in accounting — steady, structured, and, for a long time, deeply satisfying. That life taught me discipline, clarity, and how to hold complexity without losing the thread. Those skills haven't disappeared. They've simply found a new home.
Long before I was ordained, I owned Avila Beach Spa Retreat, a day spa built around the belief that caring for the body is caring for the whole person. We offered organic skincare, massage, and yoga — practices that invited people to slow down and come back into their own skin. I trained and became certified in each of those modalities myself. Running that space taught me something I now carry into every session I hold: People don’t always need another answer. Sometimes they need a place where they can exhale.
Those two chapters of my life — the structure of the corporate world and the holistic heart of the spa might seem like an unlikely pairing.
But looking back, I can see the thread. Both taught me how to be present. One taught me to hold complexity. The other taught me how to slow down enough to listen.
Eventually, life asked something more of me.
After thirty years building a career, I felt a quieter call to give back to my community in a way that draws on everything I've learned, not despite my past, but because of it.
That call led me to One Spirit Learning Alliance, where I completed my training and was ordained as an interspiritual minister. It's also what has brought me to the Haden Institute, where I'm currently completing their Spiritual Direction program, deepening my ability to sit with people in the questions that don't have easy answers.
I am, in many ways, still doing the same work I always have done: helping people find steadiness inside complexity. It just looks different now. Less spreadsheet, more silence. Less transaction, more transformation.
WHAT I HOLD CLOSE
Values that shape this space.
Every person is met as they are, without need to perform or explain themselves first.
Hospitality
Spaciousness
There is room here for slowness, for not knowing, and for the long unfolding.
Reverence
Your story, your questions, your silence all are received as sacred.
Belonging
You do not need to arrive sorted or certain to belong in this conversation.
Honesty
Gentle, but real. We tend to what is true, even when truth arrives quietly.
Hope
A quiet, grounded hope - the kind that walks with you rather than ahead of you.
MY APPROACH
Listening as a practice.
I draw from contemplative spirituality, the wisdom of many traditions, and the simple discipline of paying attention. I hold no fixed map for your life - only a deep respect for the one already unfolding within you.
Sessions are gentle, unhurried, and shaped around your pace. You are welcome to bring whatever you carry.
"We do not have to climb to reach the sacred.
We have only to listen, gently, where we already stand."
A GENTLE INVITATION
Begin the conversation.
If something here resonates, you are warmly invited to reach out.
A discovery call is simply a quiet first conversation.