#bill plotkin

"The essence of the human soul cannot

Soul has been demoted to a new-age spiritual fantasy or a missionary's booty, and nature has been treated, at best, as a postcard or a vacation backdrop or, more commonly, as a hardware store or refuse heap. Too many of us lack intimacy with the natural world and with our souls, and consequently we are doing untold damage to both.

“The gift you carry for others is not an attempt to save the world but to fully belong to it. It’s not possible to save the world by trying to save it. You need to find what is genuinely yours to offer the world before you can make it a better place.

“Who am I beneath my social persona? What is life about, beyond learning a skill, getting a job, establishing a primary relationship, or raising a family? What unique, mystical gift do I bring to the more-than-human community? What, for me, is the difference between sex and romance, between survival and living, between a social network and true community, between school and real learning, between a job and soulwork? What is death, poetry, dreaming, honor, consciousness, the universe, soul, spirit?What does it mean to be human?After many years of living these questions, after many expeditions of wandering through the terrible and majestic mysteries of nature and psyche, you, at long last, receive a glimpse or overhear a whisper of the greater, truer story of your individual life or of “the truth at the center of the image you were born with,” as poet David Whyte says. In many traditional cultures and spiritual paths, such a glimpse is called a vision, a soul calling, or the intuition of destiny —which never arrives in cultural terms, such as a job or social role, but rather embodied in mysterious, usually nature-based symbols, themes, or patterns. Then, if and when you make the unequivocal commitment to embody that vision in your world for the benefit of all beings, then and only then do you traverse through the passage of Soul Initiation (with or without a rite) and into true adulthood (the Wellspring).”

Wandering in nature is perhaps the most essential soulcraft practice for contemporary Westerners who have wandered so far from nature. . . . The Wanderer allows plenty of time to roam in wild nature, and roam alone. Maybe you start out on a trail, but if the landscape allows, it won't be long before you wander off the beaten track. Because you are stalking a surprise, you attend to the world of hunches and feelings and images as much as you do to the landscape. . . . You will get good at wandering, good at allowing your initial agenda to fall away as you pick up new tracks, scents, and possibilities. You will smile softly to yourself over the months and years of wanderings as you notice how you have changed, how you have slowed down inside. Through your wanderings, you cultivate a sensibility of wonder and surprise, rekindling the innocence that got buried in your adolescent rush to become somebody in particular. Now you seek to become nobody for a while, to disappear into the woods so that the person you really are might find you.

At least as far back as Freud, our egocentric society has placed excessive emphasis on emotional healing for the purpose of the adolescent ego’s comfort.

The transitional event of Soul Suppression is the start of the egocentric stage of Capitulation. Now that the individual’s social and emotional Secession from his family of origin has run its course, whatever societal rebellion he might have engaged in and whatever wild oats he might have sown, he now surrenders to the values, goals, and styles of the egocentric society. That society constantly broadcasts and embodies the message that life is about the pursuit of eternal youth, safety, security, and material possessions. The egocentric young “adult” capitulates to these goals. He settles down.