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# 2021-07-12 - Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore | |
I picked up a cheap copy from the local thrift store. I enjoyed the | |
creativity and depth of the writing, and i received much food for | |
thought. What follows are excerpts from the book with square | |
brackets around my commentary. | |
# Introduction | |
It is impossible to define precisely what the soul is. Definition is | |
an intellectual enterprise anyway; the soul prefers to imagine. We | |
know intuitively that soul has to do with genuineness and depth, as | |
when we say music has soul or a remarkable person is soulful. | |
Tradition teaches that soul lies midway between understanding and | |
unconsciousness, and that its instrument is neither the mind nor the | |
body, but imagination. Fulfilling work, rewarding relationships, | |
personal power, and relief from symptoms are all gifts of the soul. | |
What I am going to present in this book, then, is a program for | |
bringing soul back into life. | |
We yearn excessively for entertainment, power, intimacy, sexual | |
fulfillment, and material things, and we think we can find these | |
things if we discover the right relationship or job, the right church | |
or therapy. But without soul, whatever we find will be unsatisfying, | |
for what we truly long for is the soul in each of these areas. | |
In these pages we will consider important differences between care | |
and cure. We will look at several common issues in everyday life | |
that offer the opportunity for soul-making, once we stop thinking of | |
them as problems to be solved. | |
As you read this book, it might be a good idea to abandon any ideas | |
you may have about living successfully and properly, and about | |
understanding yourself. The human soul is not meant to be | |
understood. Rather, you might take a more relaxed position and | |
reflect on the way your life has taken shape. | |
# Chapter 1, Honoring Symptoms as a Voice of the Soul | |
"Soul" is not a thing, but a quality or a dimension of experiencing | |
life and ourselves. It has to do with depth, value, relatedness, | |
heart, and personal substance. I do not use the word here as an | |
object of religious belief or as something to do with immortality. | |
When we say that someone or something has soul, we know what we mean, | |
but it is difficult to specify exactly what that meaning is. | |
Care of the soul begins with observance of how the soul manifests | |
itself and how it operates. We can't care for the soul unless we are | |
familiar with its ways. | |
Observance is a word from religion and ritual. It means to watch out | |
for but also to keep and honor, as in the observance of a holiday. | |
The "serv" in observance originally referred to tending sheep. | |
Observing the soul, we keep an eye on its sheep, on whatever is | |
wandering and grazing--the latest addiction, a striking dream, or a | |
troubling mood. | |
When people observe the ways in which the soul is manifesting itself, | |
they are enriched rather than impoverished. When you regard the soul | |
with an open mind, you begin to find the messages that lie within the | |
illness, the corrections that can be found in remorse and other | |
uncomfortable feelings, and the necessary changes required by | |
depression and anxiety. | |
Observance of the soul can be deceptively simple. You take back what | |
has been disowned. You work with what is, rather than what you wish | |
there were. | |
The basic intention in any caring, physical or psychological, is to | |
alleviate suffering. But in relation to the symptom itself, | |
observance means first of all listening and looking carefully at what | |
is being revealed in the suffering. An intent to heal can get in the | |
way of seeing. By doing less, more is accomplished. | |
It is not easy to observe closely, to take the time and to make the | |
subtle moves that allow the soul to reveal itself further. You have | |
to rely on every bit of learning, every scrap of sense, and all kinds | |
of reading, in order to bring intelligence and imagination to the | |
work. Yet at the same time, this action-through-nonaction has to be | |
simple, flexible, and receptive. | |
To feel and imagine may not sound like much. But in care of the soul | |
there is trust that nature heals, that much can be accomplished by | |
not-doing. The assumption is that being follows imagination. If we | |
can see the story we are in when we fall into our various compulsive | |
behaviors and moods, then we might know how to move through them more | |
freely and with less distress. | |
Modern interventional therapy sometimes tries to solve specific | |
problems and can therefore be carried out on a short-term basis. But | |
care of the soul never ends. | |
Taking an interest in the soul is a way of loving it. The ultimate | |
cure ... comes from love and not from logic. It has often been noted | |
that most, if not all problems brought to therapists are issues of | |
love. It makes sense then that the cure is also love. | |
Taking an interest in one's own soul requires a certain amount of | |
space for reflection and appreciation. | |
Often care of the soul means not taking sides when there is a | |
conflict at a deep level. It may be necessary to stretch the heart | |
wide enough to embrace contradiction and paradox. | |
Our effective "trick" in caring for the soul is to look with special | |
attention and openness at what the individual rejects, and then to | |
speak favorably for that rejected element. We tend to divide | |
experience into two parts, usually the good and the bad. But there | |
may be all kinds of suspicious things going on in this splitting. We | |
may simply have never considered the value in certain things that we | |
reject. Or by branding certain experiences [as] negative we may be | |
protecting ourselves from some unknown fears. We are all filled with | |
biases and ideas that have snuck into us without our knowing it. | |
Much soul can be lost in such splitting, so that care of the soul can | |
go a long way simply by recovering some of this material that has | |
been cut off. | |
# Chapter 2, The Myth of Family and Childhood | |
[The soul] feeds on the details of life, on its variety, its quirks, | |
and its idiosyncrasies. With all of these felt details, [family] | |
life etches itself into memory and personality. A family is a | |
microcosm, reflecting the nature of the world, which runs on both | |
virtue and evil. In other words, the dynamics of actual family life | |
reveal the soul's complexity and unpredictability, and any attempts | |
to place a veil of simplistic sentimentality over the family image | |
will break down. At a deep level, however, family is most truly | |
family in its complexity, including its failures and weaknesses. | |
When we encounter the family from the point of view of the soul, | |
accepting its shadows and its failures to meet our idealistic | |
expectations, we are faced with mysteries that resist our moralism | |
and sentimentality. We are taken down to the earth, where principles | |
give way to life in all its beauty and horror. | |
We are so affected by the scientific tone in education and in the | |
media that without thinking, we have become anthropologists and | |
sociologists in our own families. The soul of the family evaporates | |
into the thin air of this kind of reduction. It takes extreme | |
diligence and concentration to think differently about the family: to | |
appreciate its shadows as well as its virtue and to simply allow | |
stories to be told without slipping into interpretations, analysis, | |
and conclusions. | |
Usually when we make every effort not to be like our mother or | |
father, there's some particular quality that we want to avoid, having | |
known it too well as a son or daughter. But repression tends to make | |
a wide swath; it's not very precise in its work of ridding the | |
personality of some unwanted quality. David tried not to be his | |
father. Not wanting to have many intimate relationships, he had none. | |
Not wanting to wander around the country aimlessly, he couldn't move | |
far from home. Not wanting to be like his father, he had little | |
trace of fathering of any kind in his own life. | |
# Chapter 3, Self-love and its Myth: Narcissus and Narcissism | |
In this early episode we see Narcissus before he has attained | |
self-knowledge. He presents an image of narcissism that has not yet | |
found its mystery. Here we see the symptoms of a self-absorption and | |
containment that allow no connections of the heart. It is hard as a | |
rock and repels all approaches of love. Obsessive but not genuine, | |
self-love leaves no room for intimacy with another. The echoing | |
aspect of Narcissism--the feeling that everything in the world is | |
only a reflection of oneself--doesn't want to give away power. To | |
respond to another or to an object in the outside world would | |
endanger the fragile sense of power which that tight, defensive | |
insistence on oneself maintains. Like all symptomatic behavior, | |
Narcissism reveals, in the very things it insists on, exactly what it | |
lacks. The Narcissistic person asks over and over, "Am I doing all | |
right?" The message is, "No matter what I do or how much I try to | |
force it, I can't get to the place where I feel that I'm doing okay." | |
In other words, the Narcissist's *display* of self-love is in itself | |
a sign that [they] can't find a way to adequately love [themself]. | |
The story of Narcissus makes it clear that one of the dangers of | |
Narcissism is its inflexibility and rigidity. Suppleness is an | |
extremely important quality of the soul. In Greek mythology, the | |
flexibility of gods and goddesses is one of their primary traits. | |
They may fight each other, but they recognize each other's validity. | |
Polytheism... as a psychological model... means that psychologically | |
we have many different claims made on us from a deep place. It is | |
not possible, nor is it desirable, to get all of these impulses | |
together under a single focus. Rather than strive for unity of | |
personality, the idea of polytheism suggests living within | |
multiplicity. ... poly means "several," not "any." In a polytheistic | |
morality we allow ourselves to express the tensions that arise from | |
different moral claims. When you find tolerance in yourself for the | |
competing demands of the soul, life becomes more complicated, but | |
also more interesting. | |
A neurotic narcissism won't allow the tie needed to stop, reflect, | |
and see the many emotions, memories, wishes, fantasies, desires, and | |
fears that make up the materials of the soul. As a result, the | |
Narcissistic person becomes fixed on a single idea of who [they are], | |
and other possibilities are automatically rejected. | |
We can see Narcissism as an opportunity rather than as a problem: not | |
a personal defect, but the soul trying to find its otherness. | |
Narcissism is less a single focus on ego and more a manifestation of | |
the need for a paradoxical sense of self, one that includes both the | |
ego and the non-ego. | |
The ego needs to be loved, requires attention, and wants exposure. | |
That is part of its nature. | |
The Narcissistic person simply does not know how profound and | |
interesting [their] nature is. In [their] Narcissism [they are] | |
condemned to carry the weight of life's responsibilities on [their] | |
own shoulders. But once [they discover] that there are other figures | |
who surround the "I" personality, [they] can let [those figures] do | |
some of the work of life. Narcissism may look like an indulgent | |
pleasure, but behind the façade of satisfaction lies an oppressive | |
burden. The Narcissistic person tries very hard to be loved, but | |
[they never succeed] because [they] don't realize yet that [they have | |
to love themself] as other before [they themself] can be loved. | |
The secret in healing Narcissism is not to heal it at all, but to | |
listen to it. Narcissism is a signal that the soul is not being | |
loved sufficiently. | |
Unless we deal with the shadow of love, our experience of it will be | |
incomplete. A sentimental philosophy of love, embracing only the | |
romantic and the positive, fails at the first sign of | |
shadow--thoughts of separation, the loss of faith and hope in the | |
relationship, or unexpected changes in the partners' values. Such a | |
partial view also presents impossible ideals and expectations. By | |
nature love feels inadequate, but this inadequacy rounds out the wide | |
range of love's emotions. Love finds its soul in its feelings of | |
incompleteness, impossibility, and imperfection. | |
Love is elicited [for clients, patients, and students] in therapy, in | |
medicine, and in education by the caring conversation, the intimate | |
confessions, and by the listening alone. Listening to another and | |
caring for their welfare can be such a comforting experience that the | |
magic aureole of love descends when no one is looking. | |
Love takes us out of life and away from the plans we have made for | |
our lives. Love may seem to offer some benefits for the ego and for | |
life, but soul is fed by love's intimacy with death. The loss of | |
will and control one feels in love may be highly nutritious for the | |
soul. ... [Love's] fulfillment is death--more an ending of what life | |
has been up to this point than the beginning of what we expect to | |
happen. | |
One of the strongest needs of the soul is for community, but | |
community from the soul point of view is a little different from its | |
social forms. Soul yearns for attention, for variety in personality, | |
for intimacy and particularity. So it is these qualities in | |
community that the soul seeks out, and not like-mindedness and | |
uniformity. | |
Loneliness can be the result of an attitude that community is | |
something into which one is received. Many people wait for members | |
of a community to invite them in, and until that happens they are | |
lonely. There may be something of the child here who expects to be | |
taken care of by the family. But a community is not a family. It is | |
a group of people held together by feelings of belonging, and these | |
feelings are not a birthright. "Belonging" is an active verb, | |
something we do positively. | |
# Chapter 5, Jealousy and Envy: Healing Poisons | |
In Greek tragedy the gods and goddesses address us directly. At the | |
opening of Euripedes' play about Hippolytus, Aphrodite confesses, "I | |
stir up trouble for any who ignore me, or belittle me, and who do it | |
out of stubborn pride." Here we find a Freudian observation from the | |
fifth century B.C.--repress sexuality and you are in for trouble. We | |
learn from the goddesses mouth that the deepest point in our | |
sexuality can be disturbed when we--our consciousness and | |
intentionality--do not give it the response it requires. | |
Jealousy feels overwhelming because it is more than a surface | |
phenomenon. Whenever it appears, issues and values are being sorted | |
out deep in the soul, and all we can do is try not to identify with | |
the emotions and simply let the struggle work itself out. | |
Erotic creativity is the making of a world, jealousy is the | |
preservation of the hearth and interiority. Jealousy serves the soul | |
by pressing for limits and reflection. | |
Our task is to care for the soul, but it is also true that the soul | |
cares for us. So the phrase "care of the soul" can be heard in two | |
ways. In one sense, we do our best to honor whatever the soul | |
presents to us; in the other, the soul is the subject who does the | |
caring. Even in its pathology, and maybe especially then, the soul | |
cares for us by offering a way out of a narrow secularism. Its | |
suffering can only be relieved by the re-establishment of a | |
particular mythical sensibility. Therefore, its suffering initiates | |
a move toward invisible spirituality. | |
# Chapter 6, The Soul and Power | |
In the soul, power doesn't work the same way as it does in the ego | |
and will. The power of the soul, in contrast, is more like a great | |
reservoir or, in traditional imagery, like the force of water in a | |
fast-rushing river. It is natural, not manipulative, and stems from | |
an unknown source. Our role with this kind of power is to be an | |
attentive observer noticing how the soul wants to thrust itself into | |
life. It is also our task to find artful means of articulating and | |
structuring that power, taking full responsibility for it, but | |
trusting too that the soul has intentions and necessities that we may | |
understand only partially. | |
What is the source of this soul power, and how can we tap into it? It | |
comes first of all from living close to the heart, and not at odds | |
with it. Therefore, paradoxically, soul power may emerge from | |
failure, depression, and loss. The general rule is that the soul | |
appears in the gaps and holes of experience. Other sources of | |
deep-rooted power are simply concrete peculiarities of personality, | |
or body, or circumstance. | |
But the soul practices a different kind of math and logic. It | |
presents images that are not immediately intelligible to the | |
reasoning mind. It insinuates, offers fleeting impressions, | |
persuades more with desire than with reasonableness. In order to tap | |
into the soul's power, one has to be conversant with its style, and | |
watchful. The soul's indications are many, but they are usually | |
extremely subtle. | |
The soul doesn't necessarily benefit from long, hard work, or from | |
fairness of any kind. Its effects are achieved more with magic than | |
effort. | |
In general, we keep our power when we protect the power of others. | |
The word violence comes from the Latin word vis, meaning "life | |
force." Its very roots suggest that in violence the thrust of life | |
is making itself visible. | |
"Repression of the life force" is a diagnosis I believe would fit | |
most of the emotional problems people present in therapy. | |
If violence is the repressed life force showing itself | |
symptomatically, then the care for violence is care of the soul's | |
power. Socrates and Jesus, two teachers of virtue and love, were | |
executed because of the unsettling threatening power of their souls, | |
which was revealed in their personal lives and in their words. | |
# Chapter 7, Gifts of Depression | |
Care of the soul requires our appreciation of those ways it presents | |
itself. Faced with depression, we might ask ourselves, "What is it | |
doing here? Does it have some necessary role to play?" | |
Depression grants the gift of experience not as a literal fact but as | |
an attitude toward yourself. You get a sense of having lived through | |
something, of being older and wiser. | |
# Chapter 8, The Body's Poetics of Illness | |
It isn't easy for us, so imbued with modern categories of thought, to | |
remember our own biases in this matter. Of course the heart is a | |
pump. That is a fact. Our problem is that we can't see through the | |
thought structures that give value to fact and at the same time treat | |
poetic reflection as nonessential. In a sense, that point of view is | |
itself a failure of heart. We think with our heads and no longer | |
with our hearts. | |
Symptom is close to symbol. Etymologically a symbol is two things | |
"thrown together," whereas a symptom is things that "fall together," | |
as if by accident. We think that symptoms appear out of nowhere, and | |
we rarely make the move of "throwing together" the two things: | |
illness and image. Science prefers interpretations that are | |
univocal. One reading is all that is desired. Poetry, on the other | |
hand, never wants to stop interpreting. It doesn't seek an end to | |
meaning. | |
Rather than blame, we could respond. Listening to the messages of | |
the body is not the same as blaming the patient. | |
When we bring imagination to the body, we can't expect | |
dictionary-type explanations and clear solutions to problems. A | |
symbol is often defined and treated as though it were a superficial | |
matching of two things, as in dream books that tell you a snake is | |
always a reference to sex. More profoundly, though, a symbol is the | |
act of throwing together two incongruous things and living in the | |
tension that exists between them, watching the images that emerge | |
from that tension. In this approach to symbol, there is no stopping | |
point, no end to reflection, no single meaning, and no clear | |
instruction on what to do next. | |
Clarity is not one of the gifts of poetry. On the other hand, poetry | |
does provide depth, insight, wisdom, vision, language, and music. We | |
simply don't think about these qualities much when faced with illness. | |
Many people going to the doctor have their own "cognitive maps" of | |
their bodies, their own imagination of what their bodies look like | |
inside and what is going on at the moment in its illness. If we | |
weren't so insistent on univocal meanings, wanting only expert | |
opinions, which are as much fantasy as a patient's thoughts, about | |
what is going on, we might pay more attention to the patient's | |
imagination of the illness. Even hypochondria could be taken | |
seriously as a true expression of the soul's malaise. | |
Ferenczi is inviting us to shift the mythic base of our ideas about | |
body organs from performance to pleasure. | |
The word disease means "not having your elbows in a relaxed | |
position." "Ease" comes from the Latin ansatus, "having handles," or | |
"elbows akimbo"--a relaxed posture, or at least not at work. Disease | |
means no elbows, no elbow room. Ease is a form of pleasure, disease | |
a loss of pleasure. A specialist in disease should begin [their] | |
questions for diagnosis with issues of pleasure. Are you enjoying | |
life? Where is it not pleasurable? Are you fighting pleasure | |
somewhere or in some part of your body that is seeking pleasure? | |
We might imagine much of our current disease as the body asserting | |
itself in a context of cultural numbing. The stomach takes no | |
pleasure in frozen and powdered foods... | |
Modern medicine trusts the microscope to reveal the roots of illness, | |
but the microscope doesn't look far enough within. The Paracelsian | |
physician would take into account the invisible factors at work in | |
illness--emotions, thoughts, personal history, relationships, | |
longing, fear, desire, and so on. | |
Illness is to a large extent rooted in eternal causes. The Christian | |
doctrine of original sin and the Buddhist Four Noble Truths teach | |
that human life is wounded in its essence, and suffering is in the | |
nature of things. We are wounded simply by participating in human | |
life... To think the proper or natural state is to be without wounds | |
is an illusion. | |
Exercise could be more soulfully performed by emphasizing fantasy and | |
imagination. Usually we are told how much time to spend at a certain | |
exercise. [etc] ... Five hundred years ago Ficino gave somewhat | |
different advice for daily exercise. "You should walk as often as | |
possible among plants that have a wonderful aroma, spending a | |
considerable amount of time every day among such things." Emerson, a | |
great New England walker, wrote in his essay "Nature": "The greatest | |
delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an | |
occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and | |
unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them." In this Emersonian | |
exercise program, the soul is involved in the perception of an | |
intimacy between human personality and the world's communing body. | |
A soul-oriented yoga might go through its many postures and forms of | |
breathing while paying attention to the memories, emotions, and | |
images that arise in conjunction with physical motion and posture. | |
Inner images are as important to the soul in exercise as images from | |
nature and culture are to the person on a walk. | |
# Chapter 9, The Economics of Soul: Work, Money, Failure, and | |
# Creativity | |
Care of the soul requires ongoing attention to every aspect of life. | |
Essentially it is a cultivation of ordinary things in such a way that | |
soul is nurtured and fostered. One of the most unconscious of our | |
daily activities from the perspective of the soul is work and the | |
settings of work... I have found in my practice over the years that | |
the conditions of work have at least as much to do with disturbances | |
of soul as marriage and family. Yet it is tempting to make | |
adjustments in respect to problems at work without recognizing the | |
deep issues involved. | |
Surrounded by plastic ferns, we will be filled with plastic thoughts. | |
In many religious traditions, work is not set off from the precincts | |
of the sacred. In Christian and Zen monasteries, for instance, work | |
is as much a part of the monk's carefully designed life as are | |
prayer, meditation, and liturgy. | |
Sometimes we refer to work as an "occupation," an interesting word | |
that means "to be taken and seized." In the past this word had | |
strong sexual connotations. [As does the word consummation, | |
sometimes used to describe sealing a business deal.] [Work] can | |
excite us, comfort us, and make us feel fulfilled, just as a lover | |
can. Soul and the erotic are always together. If our work doesn't | |
have an erotic tone to it, then it probably lacks soul as well. | |
Therefore, like a sacristan who reverences everything he tends, we | |
might want to buy tools of satisfying quality--well made, pleasing to | |
look at, and fitted to the hand--and cleansers that respect the | |
environment. A special table cloth might help ritualize a dinner, or | |
an office desk of special design or select woods could transform the | |
workplace into an arena that has imaginal depth. | |
When we think of work, we only consider function, and so the soul | |
elements are left to chance. Where there is no artfulness about | |
life, there is a weakening of the soul. | |
Work becomes Narcissistic when we cannot love ourselves through | |
objects in the world. This is one of the deeper implications of the | |
Narcissus myth: the flowering of life depends upon finding a | |
reflection of oneself in the world, and one's work is an important | |
place for that kind of reflection. In the language of Neoplatonism, | |
Narcissus discovers love when he finds that his nature is completed | |
in that part of his soul that is outside himself, in the soul of the | |
world. Read in this way the story suggests that we will never | |
achieve the flowering of ourselves, that lovable twin, which lives in | |
the world and as the world. Therefore, finding the right work is | |
like discovering your own soul in the world. | |
The lives of some people are shaped by the lure of money, while | |
others sense the temptation and take an ascetic route, in order to | |
avoid being tainted. Either way, money retains its powerful position | |
in the soul. | |
The experience of wealth is, after all, a subjective thing. Wealth | |
cannot be measured by a bank account because it is primarily what we | |
imagine it to be. | |
In religious orders, monks take a vow of poverty, but if you visit | |
monasteries you might be surprised how often you find beautifully | |
built and furnished buildings on prime real estate. The monks may | |
live simply but not always austerely, and they never have to worry | |
about food and shelter. Monastic poverty is sometimes defined not as | |
a scarcity of money and property but rather as "common ownership." | |
The purpose of the vow is the promote community by owning all things | |
in common. | |
What if, as a nation, a city, or a neighborhood, to say nothing of | |
the globe, we all took such a vow of poverty? We would not be | |
romanticizing deprivation, we would be striving toward a deep sense | |
of community by feeling ownership of common property. | |
Ideally, money corrupts us all not literally, but in the alchemical | |
sense. It takes us out of innocent idealism and brings us into the | |
deeper, more soulful places where power, prestige, and self worth are | |
hammered out through substantial involvement in the making of culture. | |
Perfection belongs to an imaginary world. By appreciating failure | |
with imagination, we reconnect it to success. Without the | |
connection, work falls into grand Narcissistic fantasies of success | |
and dismal feelings of failure. But as a mystery, failure is not | |
mine, it is an element in the work I am doing. | |
But if we were to bring our very idea of creativity down to earth it | |
would not have to be reserved for exceptional individuals or | |
identified with brilliance. In ordinary life creativity means making | |
something for the soul out of every experience. Sometimes we can | |
shape experience into meaningfulness playfully and inventively. At | |
other times, simply holding experience in memory and in reflection | |
allows it to incubate and reveal some of its imagination. | |
# Chapter 10, The Need For Myth, Ritual, and a Spiritual Life | |
In her extraordinary book, Ordinarily Sacred, Lynda Sexson teaches us | |
how to catch the appearance of the sacred in the most ordinary | |
objects and circumstances. She tells the story of an old man who | |
showed her a china cabinet filled with items related to his deceased | |
wife. This was a sacred box, she says, in the tradition of the Ark | |
of the Covenant and the Christian tabernacle. In this sense, a box | |
of special letters or other objects kept in the attic is a tabernacle, | |
a container of holy things. Emily Dickinson's forty-nine ribboned | |
packets of poems, carefully written and stored, are true holy | |
writings, preserved, appropriately, with ritual bindings. We all | |
create sacred books and boxes--a volume of dreams, a heart-felt | |
diary, a notebook of thoughts, a particularly meaningful album of | |
photos--and thus in a small but significant way can make the everyday | |
sacred. This kind of spirituality, so ordinary and close to home, is | |
especially nourishing to the soul. | |
Growing old is one of the ways the soul nudges itself into attention | |
to the spiritual aspect of life. The body's changes teach us about | |
fate, time, nature, mortality, and character. Aging forces us to | |
decide what is important in life. | |
Spirituality is seeded, germinates, sprouts, and blossoms in the | |
mundane. [Coincidentally, the word mundane means dirt or earth. An | |
appropriate place for seeds to sprout.] It is to be found and | |
nurtured in the smallest of daily activities... the spirituality that | |
feeds the soul and ultimately heals our psychological wounds may be | |
found in those sacred objects that dress themselves in the | |
accouterments of the ordinary. | |
A myth is a sacred story set in a time and place outside [of] | |
history, describing in fictional form the fundamental truths of | |
nature and human life. Mythology gives body to the invisible and | |
eternal factors that are always part of life but don't appear in a | |
literal, factual story. Myth reaches beyond the personal to express | |
an imagery reflective of archetypal issues that shape every human | |
life. | |
When we are trying to understand our problems and our suffering, we | |
look for a story that will be revealing. Our surface explanations | |
usually show their shortcomings; they don't satisfy. ... Our memories | |
of the family are a significant part of the mythology by which we | |
live. Mythological thinking doesn't look for literal causes but | |
rather for more insightful imagining. | |
# Chapter 11, Wedding Spirituality and Soul | |
In our spirituality, we reach for consciousness, awareness, and the | |
highest values; in our soulfulness, we endure the most pleasurable | |
and the most exhausting of human experiences and emotions. These two | |
directions make up the fundamental pulse of human life, and to an | |
extent, they have attraction to each other. | |
In the broadest sense, spirituality is an aspect of any attempt to | |
approach or attend to the invisible factors in life and to transcend | |
the personal, concrete, finite particulars of this world. Religion | |
stretches its gaze beyond this life to the time of creation... that | |
other time outside of our own reckoning... It also concerns itself | |
with... the highest values in this life. This spiritual point of | |
view is necessary for the soul, providing the breadth of vision, the | |
inspiration, and the sense of meaning it needs. Spirit, the | |
Platonists said, lifts us out of the confines of the human | |
dimensions, and in doing so nourishes the soul. | |
The intellect wants to know; the soul likes to be surprised. | |
The infinite inner space of a story, whether from religion or from | |
daily life, is its soul. If we deprive sacred stories of their | |
mystery, we are left with the brittle shell of fact, the literalism | |
of a single meaning. But when we allow a story its soul, we can | |
discover our own depths through it. Fundamentalism tends to idealize | |
and romanticize a story, winnowing out the darker elements of doubt, | |
hopelessness, and emptiness. It protects us from the hard work of | |
finding our own participation in meaning and developing our own | |
subtle values. The sacred teaching story, which has the potential of | |
deepening the mystery of our own identity, instead is used | |
defensively in fundamentalism, to spare us the anxiety of being an | |
individual with choice, responsibility, and a continually changing | |
sense of self. The tragedy of fundamentalism in any context is its | |
capacity to freeze life into a solid cube of meaning. | |
We all have fundamental stories about ourselves, tales we take | |
literally and believe in devotedly. These stories are usually so | |
familiar that it is difficult to see through them on our own. They | |
are so convincing and believable that they lead us to resolutions and | |
axioms that are very much like religious moral principles, except | |
that they have been developed individually. | |
Soul is always in process, having, as Heraclitus says, its own | |
principle of movement; so it is difficult to pin down with definition | |
or a fixed meaning. | |
Eventually, we might find that all emotions, all human activities, | |
and all spheres of life have deep roots in the mysteries of the soul, | |
and therefore are holy. | |
The intellect often demands proof that it is on solid ground. The | |
thought of the soul finds its grounding in a different way... It | |
enjoys the kind of discussion that is never complete, that ends with | |
a desire for further talk or reading. It is content with uncertainty | |
and wonder. Especially in ethical matters, it probes and questions | |
and continues to reflect even after decisions have been made. | |
Imagine a trust in yourself, or another person, or in life itself, | |
that doesn't need to be proved and demonstrated, that is able to | |
contain uncertainty. ... a real [test] of faith would be to decide | |
whether to trust someone, knowing that betrayal is inevitable because | |
life and personality are never without shadow. The vulnerability | |
that faith demands could then be matched by an equal trust in | |
oneself, the feeling that one can survive the pain of betrayal. | |
# Chapter 12, Beauty and the Reanimation of Things | |
The soul exists beyond our personal circumstances and conceptions. | |
The Renaissance magus understood that our soul, the mystery we | |
glimpse when we look deeply into ourselves, is part of a larger soul, | |
the soul of the world... This world soul affects each individual | |
thing, whether natural or human-made. You have a soul, the tree in | |
front of your house has a soul, but so too does the car parked under | |
that tree. | |
The trouble with the modern explanation that we project life and | |
personality into things is that it lands us deeply in ego: "All life | |
and character comes from me, from how I understand and imagine | |
experience." It is quite a different approach to allow things | |
themselves to have vitality and personality. | |
In this sense, care of the soul is a step outside the paradigm of | |
modernism, into something entirely different. My own position | |
changes when I grant the world its soul. Then, as the things of the | |
world present themselves vividly, I watch and listen. I respect them | |
because I am not their creator and controller. They have as much | |
personality and independence as I do. | |
James Hillman and Robert Sardello, both of whom have written | |
extensively about the world soul in our own time, explain that | |
objects express themselves not in language but in their remarkable | |
individualism. | |
The attachment I am describing is not a sentimentalizing or | |
idealizing of things, but rather a sense of common life that extends | |
to objects. Without a felt connection to things we become numb to | |
the world and lose that important home and family. | |
If things have soul, then they can also suffer and become neurotic: | |
such is the nature of soul. Care of the soul therefore entails | |
looking out for things, noticing where and how they are suffering, | |
seeing their neuroses, and nursing them back to health. | |
In a world where soul is neglected, beauty is placed last on its | |
list. In the intellect-oriented curricula of our schools, for | |
instance, science and math are considered important studies, because | |
they allow further advances in technology. If there is a slash in | |
funding, the arts are first to go, even before athletics. The clear | |
implication is that the arts are dispensable: we can't life without | |
technology, but we can live without beauty. | |
In a symptomatic way vandalism--which favors schools, cemeteries, and | |
churches--paradoxically draws attention to the sacredness of things. | |
Frequently when we have lost a sense of the sacred, it reappears in | |
negative form. The work of dark angels is not altogether different | |
from those who wear white. Here, then, is another way to interpret | |
the abuse of things--as an underworld attempt to re-establish their | |
sacredness. | |
At different times in our history we have denied soul to classes of | |
beings we have wanted to control. Women, it was once said, have no | |
soul. Slaves, the theological defense of a cruel system declared, | |
have no soul. In our day we assume that things do not have soul, and | |
thus we can do to them what we will. | |
Religion and theology show us the mysteries and the rites that inform | |
every piece of ordinary modern life. Without education in these | |
fields we are mistakenly led to believe that the world is as secular | |
as it appears to our eighteenth-century Enlightenment eyes. As a | |
result of this secular philosophy, the divine is met only in our | |
profound social problems and in our personal psychological and | |
physical illnesses. In the face of drugs and crime, for instance, we | |
feel stupefied. Nothing we do seems to help. We can't understand | |
these problems because the negative spark of the divine is in | |
them--religion revealing itself from the dark side. | |
# Chapter 13, The Sacred Arts of Life | |
Having banished art to the museum, we fail to give it a place in | |
ordinary life. One of the most effective forms of repression is to | |
give a thing excessive honor. | |
Living artfully, therefore, might require something as simple as | |
pausing. A common symptom of modern life is that there is no time | |
for thought, or even for letting impressions of a day sink in. | |
Akin to pausing, and just as important in care of the soul, is taking | |
time. Taking time with things, we get to know them more intimately | |
and to feel more genuinely connected to them. | |
author: Moore, Thomas, 1940- | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Thomas_Moore_(spiritual_writer) | |
LOC: BL624 .M663 | |
tags: book,inspiration,non-fiction,spirit | |
title: Care of the Soul | |
# Tags | |
book | |
inspiration | |
non-fiction | |
spirit |