THE SOULCRAFT WAY
INTRODUCTION
This blog is a reflection for everyone interested in seeking
the meaning and the WAY of the SOUL. Bill Plotking’s book mentions the word
“Soulcraft”. This is a description of what I call “Soulwork”. I found that very
few people really know about the part of us called The Soul. Therefore, I am
offering here a summary of Bill’s book: Soulcraft:
Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche. New World Library. Kindle Edition.
So, what is this phenomenon called SOUL? We can easily
identify with our body and our mind, but the soul is an enigma for many. Here
is a definition of what Bill is describing as SOUL and then followed by his
process of working with the craft that helps us to discover our soul.
SOUL.
“The Soul is a person’s unique purpose or identity, a
mythopoetic identity, something much deeper than personality or
social-vocational role, an identity revealed and expressed through symbol and
metaphor, image and dream, archetype and myth. Some other ways to say this: Soul
is the ecological niche, or place, a person was born to occupy but may or may
not ever discover or consciously embody”.
Plotkin, Bill. Wild Mind: A Field
Guide to the Human Psyche (p. 13). New World Library. Kindle Edition.
SOUL POETRY, MUSIC, CHANTING, AND THE BARDIC TRADITION
Given that the soul prefers to speak in images and symbols,
poetry — our own and others — is a natural pathway to soul. Poetry, “soul
speech,” brings together the linguistic, linear part of the psyche with the
imaginal, holistic part, enlisting the thinking mind in the service of soul,
image, and feeling. By immersing ourselves in the rich symbols of verse, we
enhance the ego’s ability to converse with soul. The subject matter and style
of some poets resonate more with the spiritual descent than do others. David Whyte, Rainer Maria Rilke, Mary Oliver,
Jelaluddin Rumi, T. S. Eliot, and others, are extraordinarily soulful. The soul
is enlivened and emboldened by poetry such as theirs.
The wound is the place where the
Light enters you.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and
rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.
When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.
Stop acting so small. You are the
universe in ecstatic motion. RUMI
Poetry, dreams, nature, and soul weave through one another.
Dreams are the poems of our souls. Soul is our deepest human nature, the under-dream
stream of our lives. Wild nature is the ongoing dream of the earth, and our
souls are essential components of that dream. Our individual night dreams are
strands of the earth’s dream, just as our bodies are part of earth’s body.
Nature offers herself to our senses in images, and poetry conveys those images.
Immersion in nature is as effective a way as any to uncover and recover the soul.
Soul-resonant poets are visionaries, people who have recovered their soul’s
desires and strive to make those desires visible to others. Each one of us has
this visionary capacity to sing the song of our souls.
BODY PRACTICES
There are several body practices, found in cultures the
world over, that alter consciousness by shifting the body’s physiological
state. These, too, can serve as pathways to soul. Consciousness-altering
breathing techniques — from ancient practices such as yogic pranayama to modern
disciplines like holotropic breathwork as developed by the transpersonal
psychiatrist Stanislav Grof — act literally to inspire us. As we breathe in
fully and rapidly, our biochemistry shifts, and we take in and join with the
essence of the world. By altering the depth and rhythm of our breath, we can
alter our relationship to the world and to ourselves. In addition to their use
of breathing techniques, the many schools of yoga offer a great variety of
physical postures (asanas) and movement (vinyasa) that not only stretch our
bodies but also alter consciousness, thereby providing a doorway to soul.
FASTING
Fasting, as part of a vision quest or not, is another
ancient and common method for altering consciousness. Literally emptying ourselves,
we become a more receptive vessel for the gifts of soul. There are at least
three ways that fasting works its magic on us. First, fasting (with or without water) for three days or more
profoundly affects our nervous system and thus our consciousness. Most people
report by the third day an astonishing clarity of perception, thought, feeling,
and imagination. For many, hunger disappears, and a refined physical energy and
alertness arise. Second, frequent
hunger pangs remind our wandering minds to refocus attention on soulful intent.
Third, as we grow weaker physically,
our ego defences weaken as well. It becomes more difficult to maintain those
everyday boundaries separating us from the vast mysteries within and without,
the mysteries through which the soul might speak.
THE POWER OF SOULCENTRIC RITUAL
Vision quests are
grand and complex rituals. Much of their transformative power arises simply
from the fact that they are rituals. Several features of rituals support the
encounter with soul. Rituals are bodily enactments in real time and space,
engaging us not only verbally, cognitively, imaginatively, and emotionally but
also through our bodies, by way of symbolically rich gestures. As ritual
participants, we are thoroughly active, not just listening, observing, or
imagining but also living our deepest questions and truths, embodying our
sacred symbols and life themes, and physically interacting with the archetypal
qualities of the earth and the universal human experience.
Immersion in the ritual process draws from us more than we
anticipate. The vision quester, for example, is not sitting in a room, feeling,
imagining, and thinking. He is out on the land, in the wind, heat, and cold,
exposed to the storm and the cries in the night. He is setting stones in the
four directions. He is dancing her prayers, singing her heart out, crying to
the earth and shouting at the sky for a vision, talking to the trees, the
hawks, the moon, and the mountain. He is dressed in sacred robes, tying prayers
into cloth bundles, adorning himself with flowers or thorns or mud, all in
accord with the counsel of nature and her own soul. He is out on the land and
fully embodied there. He is as fully present to his body and the breaking wave
of his life as he has ever been.
Rituals are rooted in deeply meaningful symbols and the
sacred objects that embody those symbols. The quester is in conversation with
the quadrated circle, the wounded heart, images of the butterfly or dragonfly,
the broken stick, the prayer arrow or God’s eye, the ancestor’s blessing, the
parent’s ashes, the family’s coat of arms, the religious icon, the wedding
ring, the medicine bag, the mask, the drum, the sacrificial fire. These symbols
arouse the deepest desires of his heart, his greatest griefs and fears, the archetypal
possibilities of the collective human unconscious, and his religious and
spiritual yearnings. Through numinous power absorbed and emanated, they uncover
sacred layers of his humanity. And they effectively awaken suppressed feeling,
often provoking a profound healing crisis.
SOLITUDE
Through the practice of solitude, you, too, will discover
the ways you are alienated from yourself and the world. You will come to grips
with one of the most profound and implacable facts of the human condition: that
in an essential way you are, in fact, alone. You were born alone and will die
alone. In solitude you will learn how to live as a mortal human. You will learn
to more deeply comfort yourself. You will learn how to move your attention from
one place to another, neither avoiding nor indulging in the painful places. As
a Wanderer, you must develop a relationship with your aloneness that is as
profound and sacred as any other relationship in your life. You will come to
belong to your aloneness as much as to any place, job, or community. “Solitudo”
is Latin for nature. In true solitude, you remember yourself as a part of
everything, a part of nature. You rediscover ease, inspiration, belonging, and
wisdom in your own company.
ARCHETYPES
Archetypal forms and patterns exist not only in the human
psyche but also in the outer world of nature. Wind, water, fire, mountain,
rain, rainbow, bird, bat, butterfly, fish, snake, bear: earth archetypes. In
the shamanic traditions, the apprentice learns his craft by using the refined
powers of his imagination to become the various animals and qualities of
nature, by merging with the earth archetypes and “re-membering” as he remembers
he has always been nature. Moving from one archetypal nature identity to
another: this is the genius of the shape-shifter within each of us. By becoming
earth, through her forms and forces, we regain our souls.
The earth archetypes illuminate the edges of our
understanding. We see the rainbow, and if we allow our imaginations to be
generous, we discover the possibility of realizing our fondest dreams, the
longing for treasure, the enchantment of the world, the thinness of the
shimmering veil that separates us from the sacred, or the bridge to this world
for the gods. We experience earth archetypes as significant, evocative,
emotionally captivating, enchanting. Why are different individuals drawn to
different elements of nature? Why those? Possibly these are the earth
archetypes to which our (unconscious) psyches already attribute meaning, that
resonate with the deepest possibilities within us. In its attempt to be made
manifest, the soul takes every opportunity to resonate with any element of
nature that stirs it. As we offer our attention to the world, we discover the
beings to which we are most drawn. Our fascination with a facet of nature is
how our souls say “Yes!” to an earth archetype that we, as individuals, especially
tune to. As we open ourselves to that element of wildness, we discover a
quality of our own soul that longs to be embodied in the world, sung to the
world, danced, cried, celebrated. The earth provides us with not only the means
to be physically born into this world but also the spiritual means to recognize
our deeper identities.
THE ART OF BEING LOST
The art of being lost is not a matter of merely getting
lost, but rather being lost and enthusiastically surrendering to the unlimited
potential of it. In fact, using it to your advantage. The shift from being lost
to being found (in a new, unpredictable way) is a gradual and indirect one. The
way to encourage that shift is to first accept that you don’t know how to get
to the place you want to be and then opening fully to the place you are until
the old goals fall away and you discover more soulful goals emerging. Then you
are no longer lost, but you have benefited immensely from having been so.
Consider for example
being lost in the woods, something few people can imagine enjoying. Suddenly,
the world has shrunk; here you are, sitting beside a stream in a forest. You
don’t know which way home is. You call out. No one answers; or, only the
stream, the wind, and the ravens answer. Maybe you panic, maybe you don’t. It
sinks in that you are really lost. Gradually, you become aware that everything
you can count on now is right here, within reach, and there’s no guarantee
there will ever again be anything else. You could have spent your entire life
on a meditation cushion to get to this radical place of present-centeredness,
and now you are here courtesy of dislocation! Like a shipwrecked sailor on a
tropical island, this is your world. What will you do with it? You’ve lost
nearly everything you thought was important; the old goals are irrelevant, and
yet, here you are. Now what?
This is precisely where you must eventually arrive,
psycho-spiritually, for soul initiation: you must be willing to release your
previous agendas and embrace the soul’s passion as you find it here and now. By
arriving more fully in the present, through being lost and accepting it, your
life suddenly suffers a radical simplification. Old agendas, beliefs and
desires fall away. You quiet down inside and it becomes easier to hear the
voice of the soul.
CONFRONTING YOUR OWN DEATH
In order to bring
your soul into the world, you must continuously loosen your beliefs about who
you are. The realities of death will help with that loosening. Shadow work will
help as well; in the process of reclaiming your wholeness, you will find many
fragments of soul in the shadow, where the unconscious has hidden them to keep
you from accidentally stumbling upon dangerous secrets. Romance, too, if you
take it deep enough, will surely shatter the restrictive yet fragile shell of
the ego. Discovering the mysterious core of your consciousness will do the
same. And certainly, spirit has some things to say about your true identity.
When it’s over, you’ll want to be confident you made your life something truly
real.
You will, therefore, look Death in the face before IT comes
calling for you. You will reach your trembling hand into the dark shadow behind
you. You will say yes to the dying that is as much a part of romance as its
joys. You will discover what remains of consciousness after the mind is
quieted. And you will forge your own intimate relationship with the Divine.
Confronting your own mortality, intimately and bravely,
imagined or vicariously witnessed in graphic detail, is a powerful soulcraft
practice, possibly an essential one. The embodiment of soul that you seek is
not going to go far if you are living as if your ego is immortal. Put more
positively, your soul initiation will be rich to the extent you can ground
yourself in the sober but liberating awareness of limited time. (this very
moment may be your last). The confrontation with death is an unrivalled
perspective enhancer. In the company of death, most desires of adolescence and
the first adulthood fall away. What are the deepest longings that remain? What
are the surviving intentions with which you might enter your second adulthood?
The confrontation with death will empty you of everything but that kernel of
love in your heart and your sincerest questions.
As Carlos Castaneda was taught by his teacher, the Yaqui
sorcerer Don Juan: “ask death to be your ally, to remind you, especially at
times of difficult choices, what is important in the face of your mortality.
Imagine death as ever present, accompanying you everywhere just out of sight
behind your left shoulder”.
In these ways, make peace with your mortality. One day you
will find you are not so attached to your life being just one certain way. Then
you will be better prepared to converse with soul and its outrageous requests
for radical change.
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