GROUNDWORK (Adapted from SOULCRAFT)

By Bill Plotkin, Ph.D.

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Adapted from: SOULCRAFT: Crossing Into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche By Bill Plotkin, Ph.D.

We tend to think of the spiritual path as a journey that heads in one direction only: upward to spirit, to the non-dual, to the One. In the Western world, we often forget that our spiritual aspirations go downward toward soul as well as upward toward spirit. Soul and spirit, although closely related, are distinct, and the methods for approaching them quite different, as are the goals of those methods.

From Chapter 2 “Groundwork: A Briefing to the Descent to Soul”

"Spirituality is that sphere of experience that lies beyond the commonplace world of our surface lives and that opens our awareness to the ultimate and core realities of existence. There are two realms of spirituality. They are distinct yet complementary. Together they form a whole. Either alone is incomplete.

"One realm of spirituality turns upward toward the light, aids us in transcending our (ego’s) insistence that the world be just a certain way and not any other, helps us to disidentify from the commotion of the strategic mind so we can reclaim the inner quiet, peace, and wholeness of our true nature, and assists us in cultivating the blissful experience of being fully present in the moment and one with all of creation.

"Soulcraft is an exploration of the other realm of spirituality, which leads not upward toward God but downward toward the dark center of our individual selves and into the fruitful mysteries of nature. This journey of descent prepares us to live in the world with its harsh need to change us, as David Whyte says, and shows us where and how to make our stand, firmly and uniquely. On this half of the spiritual journey, we do not rise toward heaven but fall toward the center of our longing. Although equally sacred and perhaps even more ancient than the journey of ascent, this second spiritual realm may be unfamiliar to people of Western cultures."

In this article, I want to differentiate the path to soul (descent) from the path to spirit (ascent) and BOTH from what psychotherapy does (middle-world healing and the development of the ego/personality). There are THREE realms of human development, NOT one, NOT two. Buddhists, for example, don't see this. Even the American Buddhists who have embraced psychotherapy (e.g. Jack Kornfeld and John Tarrant) distinguish only two realms: the ascent and the healing of the personality. Most students and practitioners of shamanism with whom I am familiar do not distinguish or address all three realms. Nor do most psychotherapists. The depth psychologists understand the difference between soul work and ego-healing, but almost never address the upward path to enlightenment. Most transpersonal psychologists and theorists address only spirit and ego. Ken Wilber, for example, doesn't seem to have the first clue about soul.

I believe that distinguishing these three realms of growth is central to our conduct of our exploration of the frontiers of consciousness; also to the survival of humanity and the planet's ecology:

James Hillman tells us We've Had a 100 Years of Psychotherapy — And the World's Getting Worse. He's right. Therapy is not resulting in people who are whole enough and adult enough to do something constructive about the rapidly accelerating devastation of the world. Psychotherapy, as it has been practiced, does not create actively engaged citizens who are able to take responsibility for making this a better world. Rather, in addition to healing our wounded egos and enhancing our capacities for intimacy and empathy, it tends to create people who are better adapted to our insane society, sometimes self-involved narcissists who are attempting to "heal themselves" ad nauseum. Meanwhile the world is going to hell by way of war, pesticides, suicide economies, species extinction, genocide, and moral bankruptcy. The modern world has become a society of uninitiated, unengaged adolescents.

Likewise, upward path practices (such as mindfulness meditation) help us "curb our dangerous impulses" as the Dalai Lama wrote in a recent NY Times editorial. He says that "destructive emotions like anger, fear and hatred are giving rise to devastating problems throughout the world." He's right. No question about it. (I spent my early career as a psychologist studying EEG biofeedback and meditation in research labs. I've been a meditator for over 30 years.)

But meditation does not help us to sink our roots into the DEEPER impulses, emotions, and images of the soul. There we will find, in addition to our deepest individual desires and passions and grief, pockets of a KIND of fear and a KIND of anger that can motivate us to actively embody in the world what our souls most deeply desire. Doing so creates a healthy, balanced, joyous, and sustainable world. Meditation practice, alone, won't do that. It does create exceptional people like the Dalai Lama who can keep from wanting to kill others (e.g., Chinese politicians and military leaders) when he hears the next round of sad news about his people. It creates "calmer, happier and more loving" people, in his words. This is obviously a good thing but does nothing directly to stop the killers or even to build an alternative society. (Unless, that is, most all world LEADERS begin to meditate regularly, but, let's be real, that's not going to happen before the current gang of leaders have destroyed the world.)

To paraphrase Hillman, we've had 2500 years of Buddhist mindfulness meditation, and the world's getting worse. Why would we WANT to "achieve a state of inner peace" while witnessing, for example, genocide and environmental devastation?

For personal and societal transformation, we need the soul's wildness and passions and unique desires AS WELL AS the healing of our egos and the equanimity of the peaceful mind.

I believe that "global mind change" will require, as an essential component, a contemporary, Western, nature-based path to soul initiation — a modern version of what the nature-based people have always had. This will allow us to balance the upward and the downward spiritual paths. It will support us in "growing down" as well as growing up: graduating from personality healing and polishing . . . to maturing into a soul-rooted ego, a true adult, an engaged cultural change agent. In other words: fully human.

Article Based on SOULCRAFT: Crossing Into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche by Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., New World Library, $14.95, Trade Paperback, Available September 2003, www.newworldlibrary.com, Toll-free-Ordering: 1-800-972-6657 Ext. 52