Soulmaking for broken times
Soul Manifestos 2024 - #03 in a new series
Soul Manifestos 2024 - a new series
Introduction
In 2014, I published a book of short poetic essays, Soul Manifestos and Pieces of Joy1. The book, illustrated by my longtime collaborator (and daughter) Ruth Thorp, is currently out of print but has continued to be well received over several editions. We are hoping to re-publish it this year, in an anniversary edition with a new end-piece essay to acknowledge the changes in context over the past decade.
These pieces are written in a similar style to the original small essays in the book – short, poetic and personal – and their content also mirrors the concerns that Unpsychology has been addressing in the past decade. You can find the Series Introduction and first ‘chapter’ in this new series HERE.
Soul Manifestos 2024
#03 : Soulmaking for broken times
‘Soul’ is a powerful word. The moment we utter it — this rounded, soft little evocation— we are flooded with meaning. In speaking it, if we are not careful, we place ourselves in one camp or another. The materialists who say that there is no ‘seat of the soul’ in the physical body. The spiritual and religious folk who claim that being human is to have experiences of a self beyond our self – a mystery inviting faith, ritual and worship.
This, however, accepts the premise of a polarity that demands that we take sides...
There are mysteries: phenomena to be inquired into as future knowledge unfolds. For spiritual folk, these mysteries testify to the existence something beyond the here-and-now — proof of different ‘realms’ and energies beyond the scientific ‘method’. Something ‘sacred’. I feel drawn to track something more existential than these narrow, sterile materialist vs non-dual polarities allow. To steer from naive constructions that claim to integrate science and spirit using magical misreadings of ‘quantum’ physics and related ideas. Deepak Chopra has a lot to answer for…
The word ’soul’, however, might be the closest we have in our language for a particular experience of ’self’ — one that holds mystery and integrity; is authentic and connected. One that feels like ‘me in the world’. When something is ‘soulful’ we don’t mistake this experience for anything else. And when we are trapped within the opposite experience — that is, when ‘soul’ is said to be lost or missing — then life is as bad as it gets. Then we are in the psychological and spiritual wasteland, irrespective of outer circumstances.
Nevertheless, the circumstances many face in these broken times are difficult and terrible. And people can still be ‘soulful’ as they face hardship, seeking new ways of living with each other and the Earth – though this is not a given. Perhaps, though, this task is what soul-making is about — the ways we can live authentic lives in times that are decidedly messed up? And maybe ‘soul making’ must also be about influencing circumstances as best we can – to alleviate suffering and make good the conditions for thriving collective living.
What, though, is a ‘soul’ to be made? A thing? Something tangible or mythical?
These are the questions that James Hillman asked and set out to answer. They are intractable questions in times where science and religion seem embattled, and world-views fundamentally divided. And yet Hillman writes, in the first line of his masterpiece, The Soul’s Code: “There is more in a human life than our theories of it allow”.2
What more is there? Well, there is – according to Hillman – fate, calling, character, story and “a reason I am alive” that speaks: “…to the feeling that there is a reason my unique person is here and that there are things I must attend to beyond the daily round and that give the daily round its reason, feeling that the world somehow wants me to be here, that I am answerable to an innate image, which I am filling out in my biography”.
Soul, in this reading, is the innate image of each one of us. We might think of the nurturance and growth of the original ‘acorn’ of our self — this mythical seed of potential and motivation — as a first strand of soul-making.
There has to be more – we know this now. Soul – authentic living – is about connection, being human, being animal, being in the ecology we evolved to exist within, and living with all that this existential mystery implies. However, we are in grave danger of losing something integral and essential: our place in a complex, evolved and ever-changing ecology of earth and mind. Over centuries of colonialism and relentless fossil-fuelled growth, expansion and exploitation, the thread of life is fraying.
So, ‘soul’, even as it might be experienced as ‘innate image’, must also be embedded within and interdependent with a ‘deeply interwoven’ mesh that holds us all, as Timothy Morton puts it. This mesh, though isn’t just for holding or framing, but allows for much more complexity, imperfection, unpredictability and change: “‘Mesh’ can mean both the holes in a network, and the threading between them. It suggests both hardness and delicacy … By extension, ‘mesh’ can mean ‘a complex situation or series of events in which a person is entangled”3
What our theories have allowed, over recent years, are stories of life that have become, on the one hand, increasingly and reductively biochemical and linear; on the other, caught up with Gods and gods whose word and authority (interpreted through self-appointed priests, clerics, mediums and channellers) justifies any action — including the soul-breaking exploitation of Earth, its lifeforms and peoples, and the appropriation of mystery into a literal adherence to spiritual tenets.
Soul-making might be a theory (or story) that could be so much more than this. It might allow for the human self to be regarded and experienced with complexity; through the inherently social make-up of the human species and the love, altruism and cooperation that represents the evolved best in all of us. Through the inherently ecological embedding of the human species in the world we live in and share with the other-than-human. And for each one of us, through the original acorn (Hillman’s simple metaphor) of individuality that carries our potential , mythology, story and truth.
Next time in this series: Soul Manifestos #04 - The Crucible of Context
Soul Manifestos and Pieces of Joy written by Steve Thorp and illustrated by Ruth Thorp is a collection of small, poetic essays written against the backdrop of conflict in modern culture, politics, economics, ecology and psychology. The small manifestos are written for wonder, wisdom, joy, love, and openness - and for the common good. They describe an alternative and grounded response to the material world, a way in which we might live our lives with depth and soul. It was first published in 2014 by Raw Mixture Publishing.
The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, by James Hillman, Grand Central Publishing, 1996: “There is more in a human life than our theories of it allow. Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember this ‘something’ as a signal moment in childhood when an urge out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an annunciation. This is what I must do, this is what I’ve got to have. This is who I am”.
The Mesh is Timothy Morton’s idea of the interdependent, interconnected ecology that all living things exist within: “(1) Life forms constitute a mesh that is infinite and beyond concept – unthinkable as such. This is not just because the mesh is too ‘large’ but also because it is also infinitesimally small. Dif- ferentiation goes down to the genomic level. There is no human-flavoured DNA, no daffodil-flavoured DNA…Most of the terms I considered were compromised by references to the Internet – ‘network’, for example. Either that, or they were compromised by vitalism, the belief in a living substance. Web is a little bit too vitalist, and a little bit Internet-ish, so I guess it loses on both counts. ‘Mesh’ can mean both the holes in a network, and the threading between them. It suggests both hardness and delicacy. It has uses in biology, mathematics and engineering, and in weaving and computing – think stockings and graphic design, metals and fabrics. It has antecedents in mask and mass, suggesting both density and deception. By extension, ‘mesh’ can mean ‘a complex situation or series of events in which a person is entangled; a concatenation of con- straining or restricting forces or circumstances; a snare’. In other words, it’s perfect.”. From Thinking Ecology: The Mesh, The Strange Stranger, and the Beautiful Soul in Collapse, Volume 6, 2012, also available on Academia HERE. He also has a series of videos on the Mesh (and other topics) at https://www.youtube.com/@EcologywithoutNature/videos
Thank you this, Steve - wrestling to find the words for something that‘s not materialism, not religiosity, not New Age hoo ha. It really strikes a chord.
James Hillman and Thomas Moore both wrote extensively about the soul similar to what you have presented. The Soul's code in particular talks about how our early life experiences hone and shape our gifts that the acorn(our soul) has to share with humanity. I think one example was a famous bullfighter who was bullied as a child and very frightened and as he grew he developed courage to face adversaries....not that I see some poor bull who has been provoked into attacking a fighter as an adversary but the principle being the choices to utilise our early experiences, to craft them into an art piece of a life that is unique to us... and with time and perspective starting to feel gratitude for perhaps the hypervigilance to others emotions or the people pleasing .....for the skills developed so early on that they are finely honed. It's great to hang a conceptual framework over our lives for fit - but really the real contributions we give each other through our stories, our disclosure of our personal vulnerabilities and our struggles especially as your title suggests "broken times".
There is an austerity of human connection when we linger in the abstract, the practice, the theory - perhaps we are afraid of judgement - our own or others, perhaps we just have got familiar with the intellect and emotions are a warzone, perhaps we feel better if we can think we have the answer.... who knows... but I didn't feel nourished by this piece in my own broken times, there felt to be no personal hand outstretched over the internet saying - I'm fucking freaked out by the break down of our society... it's completely normal and here's how I am coping by... maybe writing abstract intellectual treatises - I could then feel connected with your humanness rather than your intellect.
Seems like my soul is provocative, impatient and irritated and interested in waking people up to feeling shit not just talking about it from a distance...( the acceptable form of drug taking of the modern world...thinking.) That's not quite so pretty perfect and neat and tidy where we are all dancing around with daisies in our hair. Soul is messy, the blood and shit of childbirth, raw vitality not safe or pretty at all