For some people the word “soul” smacks of an old top-down religion and may even have traumatic cellular memory associations, because for sure in our collective past people demonstrating soulful qualities and healing gifts were persecuted most horribly by those in power. For me, soul is what makes sense of life, that which gives life meaning, depth, dimension and purpose and living in a world without soul would be an intolerable impoverishment. Surely our current global crisis is a culmination of many centuries of history, engineered by those who seek to rule supreme over a soul-less and mechanistic universe? In other words, the suppression of soul, and now its liberation, are movements taking place in the individual mind (psychological), in our collective systems and body politic (political) and in our human story of our relationship with Life, the Universe, the Cosmos and the Creative Source (spiritual). The soul lifts us out of linear time and “little mind” and connects us to all these multi-dimensions.
Now is such an amazing time to be alive because we are seeing the return of this mystery we call the soul to secular life. And when the mystery of soul comes knocking on the door we each find our own meanings for our experiences and then perhaps discover ways to share our perspectives and understandings.
I’m going to share a little of my story and I hope one day I’ll hear your story too. If there is ever a beginning to anything, I stumbled upon soul back in 1982 as a budding Gestalt therapist and poet. Gestalt was one of the popular experiential therapies from the 60’s through the 90’s; it’s a whole person, emotionally powerful, dynamic, dialogic practice which focuses on being here now, with awareness, and going with the flow of arising experience. Marvellous! It also uses play and imagination to dive past the limits of the rational and egoic mind into the creative potential of the Now. It’s a powerful vehicle for opening to soul and bringing light into the shadows. Only we didn’t talk about it in those terms then, so it was very confusing for me to suddenly find myself swimming in this multi-dimensional ocean and in a new territory where I didn’t know the rules or have the language or directions home.
I was compelled to make sense of my experience and set off on a journey of discovery; the soul journey. Looking back today I would say I was starting to discover my deeper self, my authentic self, my intuitive yin self, but back then the absolute joy and compelling excitement of inner discoveries was matched by how much more scary and crazy making it became to participate in the world. Even my closest friends didn’t understand me and from the soul’s point of view so many aspects of the way we live seemed absurd!
I’ve been very drawn to the stories of the early pioneers who rode the currents of the oceans in their canoes, to discover paradises like Hawaii and Aoteroa – New Zealand, because for me, soul discovery was like landing on an exotic island every now and then, between the heroic effort of journeying and learning to name every flower, build my own fire and harvest my own food. Is this archetypal myth of the First People laid down in our genes? For many years soul exploration felt to me like being a lone pioneer into virgin territory, mapping and excavating, all the while nervously scanning the horizon for the arrival of my tribe.
Life mysteriously opens into a deeper dimension and we drop the limiting outer garments of “little me” and step through the doorway into a boundless self which merges with collective mind. When we step from personality to soul, we step into a new space and a new time, in which past and future are dimly available and all time is Now and eternal. This is the sense of spiritual freedom which seekers and mystics taste and which visits us in magnificent moments with an unexpected kiss of divinity.
So whilst the personality thinks, plans and works things out in a logical fashion; the soul feels, senses, listens, receives. To access the soul we use yin mind or the feminine, we relax, open, become present and receptive, sit in reverie, write poems, paint pictures, we delight in sensual pleasure, move, dance, flow. We become transfixed by the colour of a flower in the sun, by the dappled light through trees, or by diamonds on the back of the river. We connect and love; all here, all One.
The greatest moments of life are the moments outside time, the soulful moments. When I was younger I read a lot of poetry because poems communicated directly to my soul. When, aged 19, I read T.S. Eliot’s long poem, Four Quartets, I really couldn’t have told you what any of it meant yet I was hugely excited, because within the soul impoverished world of my family and education, the poem spoke to me of these other dimensions and inner landscapes I would later discover. Here are a few lines from the third quartet: The Dry Salvages.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
Rose Diamond
If you are interested in exploring a soulful life in more depth you may enjoy my, A Soulful Life e-book
www.awholenewworld.net/ebooksbuy.htm And my full length semi-autobiographical book: Migration to the Heartland: A Soul Journey in Aotearoa www.awholenewworld.net/books.htm.
