BLOG POST - FEBRUARY 2018.

SYMBOLISM AND SOULCRAFT WORK- A REFLECTION ON DEEP THERAPY

“There is a skin or hide between ourselves and our inner being. And in the West that skin is very thick. Inside us there is a sea and that sea is our inner life, your spiritual life, and your sexual impulses – everything you have gotten from the memory stores of evolution. Then there is the outside world made of buildings and automobiles. And these two worlds can’t rub against each other. It is too painful. Therefore, you develop a hide exactly like a cow develops a hide. You do not want to rub her guts against the barn” (Robert Bly)

Today is Australia Day and I am reflecting how many of my wise teachers like Robert Bly, Joseph Campbell, Jorge Rosner, James Hillman, Michael Meade and so many more have influenced me with their books and speeches at many of the meetings I attended. So, where are they now? What is kept in my soul are memories and how they have guided me in my own journey.

So, I went to the ideas place that is reflected on the symbolism that all wisdom keeps and transfers throughout centuries to all cultures. The multitude of early people in the world intuitively felt and produced symbolic images in many ways. Just recall the Christmas Island sculptures that were somehow placed all around the island as if calling the spirits or gods to enable the people to live there. Australian indigenous people painted the wandjinas and Mexican Aztecs built pyramids and so on. Many other cultures around the world symbolised their soul and spirit. All art forms can be understood as a symbolic representation of SOUL.

SYMBOL – A DEFINITION.

Joseph Campbell, the mythologist, defines symbol as: “A symbol, like everything else, shows a double aspect. We must distinguish, therefore, the ‘sense’ and the ‘meaning’ of the symbol. It seems perfectly clear to me that all the great and small symbolical systems of the past functioned simultaneously on three levels. The Corporeal or waking consciousness, the Spiritual or dreaming and the Ineffable of the Unknowable. The terms “meaning” can refer only to the first two, but these, today, are in the charge of science – which is the province of signs and not symbols. The ineffable, the absolutely unknowable can be only sensed (intuited) This is the province of art which is not necessarily an “expression” but also a quest for and formulation of, experience evoking, energy-waking images. A symbol, therefore, is a visual image representing an idea – a deeper indicator of a universal truth.”

Symbols have multiple meanings while signs have only one. Human cultures use symbols to express their specific ideologies and beliefs that represent aspects of their specific culture. Therefore, the meanings of symbols are culturally learned. Their complexity and deep meanings are the source of the soul energy.

Dr. James Hillman, in his book THE FORCE OF CHARACTER (1999), writes about the way we understand soul as character. That which lasts beyond the body and mind and how science has taken charge of the two (biology & psychology) and left behind the third(soul). He states:

“Modern psychology, regardless of school, understands the assimilation of events into a "me" to be a function of character. The schools of psychology use other words for character, such as "personality," "ego," "self," "behavioural organization," "integrative structure," "identity," "temperament." These substitute terms fail to characterize the styles of assimilation that are the hallmarks of individuality. We each respond to the world differently, handling our lives in a particular style. The word "character" implies a bundle of traits and qualities, habits and patterns; it requires descriptive language such as we find in character references, letters of recommendation, primary school report cards, scripts and novels, performance criticism, obituaries, etc. So, "ego," "self," "identity" are bare abstractions, telling us nothing of the human being they supposedly inhabit and govern. At best, these words refer to the unifying sameness of people while neglecting their unique differences.

It is refreshing to discover that some of the oldest and most basic ideas of philosophy--Same and Different, Form and Matter--are actually at work in our daily lives, even in our bodies. I find it a delight that these old-fashioned woolly principles are immediately practical and can be discussed as bodily facts. Why must we be exhorted to build character and strengthen character when character is already a given, the staying power that keeps us who we are and holds our bodies to their form? Imagine the body as an ancient philosopher, the body as a place of wisdom--an idea already announced in the book titles of two medical specialists, Walter Cannon and Sherwin Nuland.

Cannon in the 1930s and Nuland in the 1990s both say the body's physiology knows what it is doing. There is a wisdom at work. The idea of character makes more understandable this governing wisdom. Moreover, if we regard character as more than a collection of traits or an accumulation of habits, virtues, and vices, but rather as an active force, then character may be the forming principle in the body's aging. Aging then becomes a revelation of the body's wisdom."

 SOULCRAFT.

Humans differ from other living beings in having a soul capable of reflecting on itself, thereby providing it with intellectual and moral capacities associated with spiritual beings. Once the existence of soul in the other-than-human world was rejected, it was difficult to sustain any acceptance of soul in the human world. Such was the situation throughout the nineteenth century and throughout the industrial civilization in the twentieth century. Then, in our psychological studies, we began to realize that nothing made much sense without the presence of soul. Acceptance of the soul dimension of the natural world was begun in the studies of C. G. Jung. He saw the need for restoring the human soul in its integral presence with the vital powers of the earth. Further, in our association with indigenous peoples, we began to appreciate the profound sense of realism they manifested in their ritual communion of the human soul with the deeper powers of the universe. In these earlier cultures, the universe was experienced primarily as a presence to be communed with and instructed by, not a collection of natural resources to be used for utilitarian purposes. The winds, the mountains, the soaring birds, the wildlife roaming the forests, the stars splashed across the heavens in the dark of night: these were all communicating the deepest experiences that humans would ever know. The inner life of humans, the joy and exaltation we experience in celebrating our place in the great community of existence, these depended on our experience of a universe that provides us with both our physical and our spiritual nourishment. All this was recognized as the world of soul.

In our modern world of scientific insight and technological skills, we have thought that we could do without these spirit powers of the universe. Although we know more about the universe, we have less intimate presence to the universe than any people ever had. The indigenous peoples of Australia, with fewer life possessions and less life security than any other people we have ever known, are more profoundly in communion with the world about them than we, in the industrial world, are in communion with the North American continent.

We are threatened, as never before, by natural elements such as the atmosphere, the water, the soil, and various living forms that we have abused. We are threatened by the enemies we have made with the very efforts that we have made toward national security. Not knowing how to relate to the natural world, we are uncertain in our relations with the human world. We are now finding that without the assistance of the invisible world we become confused and even frightened in times of crisis. We do not know how to call for assistance in these moments of difficulty or how to ask for healing beyond the ordinary medical procedures. We are lacking in people who are sufficiently skilled in guiding us through our individual or community crises. We have never spent days and nights fasting on a mountaintop crying for a vision to guide, strengthen, and protect us throughout our lives. (Bill Plotkin. SOULCRAFT: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche. New World Library. Kindle Edition.

THE CALL TO SOULCRAFT.

There are several experiential qualities that accompany the call. Joseph Campbell, as quoted earlier, notes four of them. First, if it is a true call, you will know that responding to it is, in fact, not an avoidance of responsibility, but rather a facing of something difficult, something unknown and frightening that summons you. Far from looking to you like an opportunity for escape, a call feels more like a compelling need to walk into the mouth of a whale, or out into the night and into a storm. You have a profound sense that something essential is waiting for you amid a wilderness and your one true life depends on your being willing and able to find it. Second, Campbell reminds us of a paradox at the heart of the call: this strange thing that calls to you somehow feels “profoundly familiar to the unconscious—though unknown, surprising, and even frightening to the conscious personality.” It has the character of déjà vu, but it is even more disorienting; you know you belong to it even though you have never before encountered it and can’t really explain anything about it. Third, you have an astonishing and inexplicable sense that the chapter of life you had been living is suddenly over, whether you wanted that ending or not, and usually you have not. What formerly was meaningful becomes “strangely emptied of value.” Fourth, the call is almost always unexpected, and unwanted. Yet you feel summoned by destiny, as if your own future has grabbed you by the collar and is tugging you forward, as if you have been volunteered by life to a task you hadn’t sought. You feel as if your “spiritual centre of gravity” has been transferred “from within the pale of society to a zone unknown.”

To conclude the final part of this reflection is a call to the modern “contemporary” psychotherapists to come back to the deep aspects of soul that is represented in the symbolic story. Art, Dance, theatre, meditation, exploring nature and work in groups or alone on the centre of our being.

Gestalt Art Therapy Centre is one place where you can explore art and  soul!

COSMIC UNITY