Transitional
Soul Manifestos 2024/25 - #07 in a series
Soul Manifestos 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 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 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. You can find the full series as it grows HERE.
Soul Manifestos 2024/25
#07 : Transitional
“In the transitional zone / between earth and sea, / soul and spirit flow / through rock pools and reefs / seaweeds, lightly rooted, / are fed by the daily ebb and flow, / ripped by storm tides / soul flows out to sea / and spirit fixes tight to land; / the sky is always silver / once the storm is through.”
Transitional, poem by Steve Thorp, from PoetryMix 2, Raw Mixture, 2019
If we could pull back from cultural certainty, we might experience the ebbs and flows of the world; the natural currents, rhythms and connections that underpin everything we are and everything we do. And we might begin to understand that these fundamental, inexorable forces – which have been there before humans emerged and will be there when we are gone – are utterly separate from the concerns of human beings.
That’s not to say that human concerns are unimportant. They are important to humans; and they are important to the non-human world in as much as we have affected the wellbeing and integrity of the planet and its non-human lifeforms. And they are important in that understanding our ‘nature’ – as evolved relational lifeforms with a capacity for deep communication and understanding – might (or might not) help us get through the next tricky bit of the human journey.
We owe it to ourselves to focus on what we can do together in the wider contexts and frameworks that the world presents us with — both in ‘natural’ and ‘manufactured’ form:
Natural: we live in a world we evolved to live upon. We are animals that learned to fly and make meaning — but animals still. We live embedded in our lands and the natural phenomena of Earth. Whenever we are in our natural ‘ecosystems’, we have the invitation to ‘lean into’ the Earth – to be reminded of our natural inheritance; to be part of these deep patterns and systems.
Manufactured: we live in a global civilisation created by humans – for better and for worse. Some of us are privileged to live in parts of the world where the better has come to outweigh the bad. However, we all have to live within the context of the consequences that humankind has created in recent decades – the climate emergency being the foremost, but not the only challenge we face.
In this transitional zone, imagination and creativity ebbs and flows. If we are lucky, we get to live soulful lives with plenty of love and, yes, grief – the essential ingredients for learning how to live within our limitations. These two – love and grief – require us to embrace vulnerability, hesitation and uncertainty. These are the tools of a well-lived life leading, paradoxically, to joy and engagement. They ask us to be gently curious; to examine and value the lives and motivations of others; lead us to the heart of our compassionate nature.
The task is not personal growth, but the sustenance of curiosity and mutual learning – what Nora Bateson calls ‘symmathesy’.2 Sometimes wounding and trauma get in the way of learning and healing might be needed, though suffering leads to compassion and wisdom too.
There is more than one kind of trauma, of course. The collective traumas of the Holocaust, colonialist exploitation and genocide and those we face in our ‘climate minds’ or ‘ecological selves’ sit alongside the personal traumas some of us suffer in our personal histories.
That’s not to underplay the effects of personal trauma, but it might be important to recognise that facing suffering with compassion and gentleness and finding meaning in vulnerability, hesitation, uncertainty, grief and love, can sometimes get us through. Together. Maybe this is all that can get us through.
All these traumas and teachings are enmeshed in much broader contexts. How it plays in my life is not the way it will play in yours. Coming to know ourselves well enough to live with the personal and collective traumas we face is a soulful life practice. Healing and searching might be clearly necessary for some of us, as we learn to overcome the internalised and external obstacles in our current lives and our historical experiences. However healing paths can become addictive and circular, keeping us exploring the endless depths of wounding that lie in the cultural labyrinths of our self.
At some time, we have to settle, and face up. To accept that this is who I am. That these are the things I do in the world; these are the things that have happened to me; that these are the contexts and ecosystems I am embedded within. That all this matters. And to understand the simple wisdoms of love, mutuality, presence and care.
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.
Symmathesy (n) is an entity of transcontextual mutual learning. Other forms: Symmathesize (v), symmathetic (adj)
Symmathesy is Nora Bateson’s term for “mutual learning in a system”. Find a short essay on this that she wrote as part o Unpsychology Magazine 8: An Anthology of Warm Data (Raw Mixture Publishing, 2022) at:
