Can soul’s journey be turned off?

@Gyldenloev 

The short answer is no, you can't turn off the Soul's Journey as far as I can tell.  I play a long term save with lots of households and sims and I like it, but the Soul's Journey is something you can essentially ignore if you want to.  It has 2 sections, a living sim section and a ghost section which are more or less independent.  Most of the sims that I've played thus far since have completed the living section without me doing anything special.  I haven't played a ghost yet so idk about that section.  I just play like I always have.  Soul's Journey doesn't intrude into my normal play for the most part.  The only time I tried the bucket list was with the first sim to check out what it is/does.  After that, it completed for the rest of the sims by just completing milestones and aspirations.  Tbh, I was sort of surprised how easy it was but since I play the way I do with born in game sims with lots of reward traits, lots of skills maxed and aspirations completed, I see no difference in the sims really since most of them are advanced with a bunch of skills, reward traits, etc.  So, IOW, I don't think you need to worry about it and go ahead and get the pack if you want it.  The world is absolutely worth it and the new play features are fun imo.  

Hope this helps.

@Gyldenloev For another viewpoint from someone who doesn’t max their Sims - 

Bucket list goals can be auto-generated over time, but it happens slowly. Maybe one every week or two on average? And related to characteristics of the Sim or something they’ve been doing. Plus you have the ability to clear the bucket list if for some reason you really don’t want something on there.

Yes, doing things like completing wants and aspirations also advance it, but I play with wants & fears off and my Sims don’t tend to complete more than one or two aspirations in their lifetime.

As for the bonuses for advancing stages of the soul’s journey - I didn’t notice the performance bonuses much either. It’s more about unlocking socials and new abilities. Sure, there’s an increase in satisfaction points - but I rarely spend satisfaction points. There’s increased skill gain - that might be your main concern if you think your sims gain skills too fast already - but I don’t think it was by a huge amount? Plus it’s after achieving level 2 of the soul’s journey, which doesn’t happen that quickly when you’re not actively trying to fill it and aren’t speed running aspirations. Finally there’s the work performance bonus - which doesn’t remove promotion requirements, just advances that performance bar faster. I don’t know about you, but my Sims frequently max that before completing their promotion requirements anyway.

I do play on normal lifespan though, so my Sims have a finite time span - whether because I allow them to die of old age, or because I send them out of the active household to “retire” because they’ve reached elder and I’m not ready for them to die (I do play with aging off for inactive played Sims).

It still progresses when your sim completes aspiration tiers which irritates me.