Plotkin, Bill. _The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries_. Novato, California: New World Library, 2021. # Progressive Summary We live most of our lives in The Village. But at some point, we are called to venture out into Soul Canyon. This is the Descent of the Soul. Soul is defined as our unique eco-niche. In that sense, everything has a soul, even mountains and rainbows. In departing the Village, we leave behind all our social and vocational roles, and we enter the realm of mystics and myth. We get in touch with our larger ecological selves, and we make the transition from consumers to pollinators. Our old self dissolves and becomes reconfigured in a new mythopoetic identity. Five phases of the Descent to Soul: - Preparation - Dissolution - Soul Encounter - Metamorphosis - Enactment Our middleworld purpose consists of our social or vocational roles. After we discover our Soul Purpose during a Soul Initiation, these social or vocational roles become delivery systems for our Soul Purpose. They become means to an end. # Key Points - "To meaningfully address our current cultural and environmental collapses, the most essential initiative is to reclaim, redesign, and revitalize practices for the journey of soul initiation." - not everyone survives an initiation - this initiation is one of our choosing - if we don't change, we will commit ecocide - what is required is inscendence, not transcendence. This is a term coined by Thomas Berry. Transcendence often leads to spiritual bypass. - "there are no older or existing cultures with practices or worldviews that are unambiguously relevant to what we need to navigate our current planetary moment, none that are wholly adequate to enable us to face what we now must as a species." - "We must now collectively weave a cocoon for the metamorphosis of our own species." - We progress from Adolescents to Adults to Elders - We may have rites of passage that mark each transition, but the rites don't bring about the transformation. It's the development practices in each phase that helps us get ready for the next phase. - He defines soul as our unique eco-niche. By this definition, almost everything has a soul, even mountains and rainbows. - Our eco-niche is communicated to us through our myths and images, via our mythopoetic identity. ## Preparation There are three realms of preparation: developmental stage, cultivation of wholeness, and self-healing. ### Developmental stage To prepare for the Descent to Soul, we must attend to the foundations of human development. A particular developmental stage must be achieved before we can embark on the journey. Most people haven't reached this stage (this sounds a lot like Metamodernism.) One of the most important stages is eco-awakening. Before this, our Ego is at the center of our world. After Eco-awakening, we become rooted in an ecological community. After eco-awakening comes Confirmation, which signals the moment when we are ready to enter a world that is primarily mystical and mythic. ### Human wholeness There are 4 facets of human wholeness. North - the nurturing and generative adult - archetypes: Leader, King or Queen, spiritual or peaceful Warrior, mature and caring Mother and Father - Primary Function: Heart-centered Thinking - Inner protector: Loyal soldiers South - the wild indigenous one - archetypes: Pan, Artemis/Diana, the Green Man - Primary Function: Full-boded Feeling - Full-bodied feeling is important because it allows us to communicate with other indigenous beings. It is how we can tap into the "Thermodynamics of Emotion" - Inner protector: Wounded children East - the Innocent / Sage - archetypes: Fool, Trickster, Priest, Priestess, Guide to the Spirit - Primary Function: Full-presence Sensing - Inner protector: Escapists and Addicts West - Dark Muse - Beloved - archetypes: Anima / Animus, Magician, Wanderer, Hermit, Psychopomp, Guide to the Soul - Primary Function: Deep Imagination - Inner protector: Shadow selves Four timeless, cross- cultural practices for cultivating each of the facets (covered in his book Wild Mind): - voice dialogue - four directions circles on the land - dreamwork - deep-imagery journeys. > Because the four facets of the Self are innate resources existing in latent form within each of us, we can partially cultivate them simply by choosing to embody or enact them the best we can in any moment. Just conjure an archetypal image of one of your facets, feel its presence in your body, and then invite it to act through you. ### Self-healing Most symptoms or illnesses are the result of inner protectors, sub-personalities that emerged to protect us from harm. > Self-healing entails five steps: (1) becoming conscious of our inner protectors when they spring into action with their childhood survival strategies; (2) thanking them for attempting to protect us and for having protected us in the past; (3) letting them know we no longer need their strategies (but only if this is actually true); (4) telling them about our more mature strategies, if we have developed them, for engaging the world (not merely for protecting ourselves); and (5) using those more mature strategies. To do these things is to love our inner protectors. By doing these things, we heal ourselves. > One principle of human development is that the later our life stage, the more inner resources we need to succeed at our developmental challenges and tasks. Each successive stage asks more of us. A corollary is this: The later our stage, the deeper the healing or Self-healing that’s needed. ## Dissolution > The goal of Dissolution is precisely to be torn apart, to be dismembered so that we can be subsequently reconfigured in a never-before-seen pattern — as an initiated person with a particular mythopoetic role to embody for our more-than-human community. The Ego is a passenger on this journey, and must submit to Mystery. It cannot remain in control. This is hard for most males to allow. ### Metaphor of the Caterpillar The caterpillar is used as a powerful metaphor. A caterpillar goes through 4-7 instars or moltings, depending on the species. This would correspond to the various social or vocational transformations we might undergo. Only the final chrysalis stage represents a radical transformation of the caterpillar into a completely different kind of being. Before becoming a butterfly, the caterpillar is mostly a consumer (ie The Hungry Caterpillar.) After becoming a butterfly, the it becomes a pollinator. The predicament of this world is that too many of us remain in the caterpillar stage. There are too many egocentric consumers, and not enough soulcentric pollinators. ### Death > Consider what death is: Beyond the stark fact that your body stops functioning and soon begins to decompose, what is at the core of this transition? It is the termination — for both you and others — of your embodiment of the social, vocational, and community roles you’ve been occupying. All of them. Others might soon fill some of those roles, but no longer will you. You will no longer dwell within or through them. Even if, as James Hillman suggests, you might continue as an enduring imaginal presence among your people, you will no longer be embodied among them. > Dissolution precipitates a complete meltdown of your prior identity, the definitive end of the story you’ve been living, the unconditional disintegration of your former prospects and of what you believed the world was. You shed your former identity and do not receive a new one for quite some time. You are neither who you have been nor who you will become. If you have an identity at all now, it is a nameless embodiment of the archetype of the Wanderer. You exist outside and beyond the benefits and limitations of selfhood, social role, and cultural norms. Your capacity and eligibility to make things happen is minimal. You’re more a passenger than a driver. You are a seeker but you cannot decipher. You can cooperate but you cannot make it happen. You are not a solver but that which gets dissolved. This last paragraph reminds me of Mingyur Rinpoche's wandering retreat, as described in [[In Love With the World]]. ## Metamorphosis There are 5 goals of metamorphosis: - The conscious gathering of your soul-encounter experiences. - The preservation and embrace of these experiences, especially in the face of social disinterest, incomprehension, or criticism — or your own subpersonality static. - The reshaping of your Ego by your vision. - The advanced cultivation of your facets of wholeness needed for the core work of Metamorphosis (goal three) and for the next phase of Enactment. - Developing the skills and acquiring the knowledge resonant with your mythopoetic identity. ### Experimental Threshold Crossings Once we've had a soul encounter, and discovered our mythopoetic identity, we should perform Experimental Threshold Crossings (ETCs). We asks ourselves, "What would my mythopoetic identity do or choose now?" Then we cross that threshold. Each time, the world will react to us, and that reinforces our mythopoetic identity. In this way, we soulcraft our Ego. > There’s an important general principle here: Metamorphosis largely happens through the crucible of relationship — our relationships within the Village and within the natural world, as well as our relationship to Soul. Relational and contextual forces shape us. An essential dimension of Metamorphosis is to be witnessed by others in our mythopoetic identity. Relationships are the alchemical retort for the reshaping of the Ego. Some practices that can be used as ETCs: - One way portal - Mandorla - Empty Vessel # Quotes > There are at least three distinct kinds of individuation pro- cesses that might be guided by a psychotherapist — if they possess the skills to do so: (1) addressing everyday problems in living (what I call the healing of subpersonalities, which Jung called “ego complexes”); (2) the cultivation of wholeness (what I call the four facets of the Self, and what Jungians might call “tending the whole psyche”); and (3) the Descent to Soul (what Jung referred to as the search for a personal myth). These three processes have different and often divergent outcomes. Most psychotherapists are not trained in the second process, and virtually none in the third. --- # Other links [[Belonging#^8119bc]]: Similar idea to mythopoetic identity