## Highlights - My beginning premise is that a more mature human society requires more mature human individuals. ([Location 77](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=77)) - In contemporary society, we think of maturity simply in terms of hard work and practical responsibilities. I believe, in contrast, that true adulthood is rooted in transpersonal experience — in a mystic affiliation with nature, experienced as a sacred calling — that is then embodied in soul-infused work and mature responsibilities. This mystical affiliation is the very core of maturity, and it is precisely what mainstream Western society has overlooked — or actively suppressed and expelled. ([Location 90](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=90)) - Arrested personal growth serves industrial “growth.” By suppressing the nature dimension of human development (through educational systems, social values, advertising, nature-eclipsing vocations and pastimes, city and suburb design, denatured medical and psychological practices, and other means), industrial growth society engenders an immature citizenry unable to imagine a life beyond consumerism and soul-suppressing jobs. ([Location 146](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=146)) - As soon as enough people in contemporary societies progress beyond adolescence, the entire consumer-driven economy and egocentric lifestyle will implode. ([Location 191](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=191)) - As Albert Einstein noted, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” ([Location 211](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=211)) - Through psychospiritual adventure, the adolescent comes to know what she was born to do, what gift she possesses to bring to the world, what sacred quality lives in her heart, and how she might arrive at her own unique way of loving and belonging. ([Location 276](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=276)) - With the holistic approach, in contrast, dysfunction is not a central focus. We ask instead, “What qualities or capacities are missing from this person's embodiment of wholeness, and what can be done to cultivate these qualities or capacities?” The goal is to encourage and foster something functional and fulfilling rather than to remove something dysfunctional and deadening. ([Location 469](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=469)) - A healthy society is, among other things, sustainable, just, and compassionate. It is sustainable because it is expressly organized as an integral component of the greater community of Earth; it establishes a niche for itself that benefits both its people and the greater geo-biological community of which it is a member. It is a just society because it provides equal opportunities and benefits for all persons. It is compassionate because it shares its wealth with all other societies and with the greater web of life; it does not exploit other peoples or species. A healthy society also embraces and celebrates our enchanted human senses, bodies, and emotions and encourages our imaginative exploration of the mysteries of psyche and nature. ([Location 525](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=525)) - the core problem with patriarchal (and matriarchal) societies is their patho-adolescent egocentrism, which generates economic-class oppression, not their conspicuous suppression of the feminine or glorification of the (immature) masculine. Men have no monopoly on egocentrism. Men and masculinity are no more the problem than are women and femininity. I believe that most people would agree that we will not create a healthier society by affording women the equal right to be as pathologically egocentric as a large proportion of men have been for millennia, to acquire the equal opportunity to excel in the patho-adolescent, class-dividing world of prestige, position, and wealth, academic and corporate ladder-climbing, and power broking. Rather, mature men and women must join together to foster soulcentric development for both genders and for all races and cultures. ([Location 579](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=579)) - By soul, I mean a thing's ultimate place in the world. ([Location 641](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=641)) - A thing's place tells you how it fits in the world. ([Location 645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=645)) - Using that definition, every thing has a soul, ([Location 673](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=673)) - What makes you the individual you are is not your autonomy but your interdependent and communal relationship with everything else in nature. ([Location 682](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=682)) - If your soul is your ultimate place in the world and you need to live from that place to be fully yourself, then the world cannot be fully itself until you become fully yourself. ([Location 693](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=693)) - What I mean by place is similar to what ecologists mean by niche, which refers to the position or function of an organism within a community of plants and animals. ([Location 695](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=695)) - The human soul is a psycho-ecological niche, a niche whose essential features include the capacity for conscious self-awareness as well as social and ecological attributes. We humans occupy both a noosphere and an ecosphere. This is an essential feature of the soul of humanity. ([Location 698](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=698)) - To speak of soul as an ultimate place, we need a means of characterizing identity that is transcultural and independent of human creations. And we in fact have such a means: the natural world — its images, roles, patterns, processes, events, and animate beings. The language of nature is how soul identifies itself to us. ([Location 749](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=749)) - The human soul is precultural and prelinguistic. A person's ultimate place is what it is before he is acculturated or acquires a human language. He is born with it. It's his potential. His destiny is to live from that place, but there is no guarantee he'll succeed. ([Location 873](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=873)) - An adult is someone who has encountered her soul, retrieved some knowledge of her ultimate place in the world, acquired some practical means for occupying this place among her people, made a commitment to doing so, and is doing it. An elder is someone who, after many years of adulthood, consistently occupies his ultimate place without any further effort to do so. This frees him for something with yet greater scope and depth and fulfillment, namely, caring for the soul of the world. He does this by assisting others to prepare for, discover, and embody their souls, and by supporting the human-Earth system in the evolution of its soul. The Wheel portrays human development as the process of preparing to discover soul, cultivating a relationship with soul, and embodying soul. This is why I call it the Soulcentric Developmental Wheel. ([Location 884](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=884)) - By spirit, I mean the single, boundless, and eternal mystery that permeates and animates everything in the universe and yet transcends all. ([Location 890](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=890)) - Spirit both transcends all things and is immanent in all things. ([Location 897](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=897)) - Upperworld denotes transpersonal states of consciousness identified with spirit and characterized by unity (or nonduality), grace, bliss, transcendence, emptiness, light (often golden), enlightenment (identified, for example, as Buddha mind, nirvana, satori, or Self-realization), the celestial realm, and pure awareness (consciousness without an object). ([Location 940](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=940)) - Meditation, prayer, contemplation, and yoga are common practices for cultivating a relationship with the upperworld. ([Location 944](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=944)) - Middleworld refers to our everyday, waking identity and state of consciousness — the “dayworld,” the personal and interpersonal world of ego. ([Location 944](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=944)) - Underworld signifies transpersonal states of consciousness and identity associated with soul and characterized by depth, darkness, demons, the daemon, the subconscious, sacred woundings, dreams (the “nightworld”), the unknown or not-yet-known, shadow, death, and visions of personal and cultural destiny. ([Location 952](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=952)) - This is facilitated by practices that I refer to collectively as soul-craft and that include dreamwork and deep imagery journeys, wandering in nature, and communicating with birds, trees, the winds, and the land itself. Many of these practices are found in the ancient (and continuing) traditions of nature-based peoples. Currently, soulcraft is finding its way back into contemporary Western life through modern mystery schools, through individual disciplines (such as trance dancing and drumming, council work, storytelling, symbolic artwork, soul-oriented poetry, and shadow work), and through the work of depth psychologists such as Carl Jung and James Hillman. ([Location 956](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=956)) - I name such cultures soulcentric because they are designed to assist all members in discovering and living from their deepest and most fulfilling potentials (their individual souls), in this way contributing their most life-nourishing gifts to their community and environment and, in doing so, actualizing the culture's potential (the cultural soul) and supporting its ongoing evolution. ([Location 965](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=965)) - A society that is soulcentric is necessarily ecocentric. A soulcentric society supports each person in discovering and inhabiting her ultimate place, which is her place as granted and revealed by nature. In so doing, that society roots itself in the natural world. ([Location 972](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=972)) - The primary values of an egocentric society are safety, comfort, middleworld pleasures, and enhancement of socioeconomic status. ([Location 1003](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1003)) - The endless pursuit of security, comfort, and pleasure — in the absence of soul — leads, at best, to the accumulation of wealth (for the middle and upper classes). Wealth without soul leads to its inevitable pathological outgrowths: power differentials, socioeconomic (class) stratification, and exploitation of minorities, women, children, the poor, and all the “resources” of the natural world. For the presumably fortunate ones with adequate wealth, the pursuit of egocentric values often leads to boredom, addiction, alienation, and meaninglessness. For the lower classes, even basic security is rare. And for everyone, an illusory sense of autonomy (“freedom”) tends to breed an amorphous fear, a sense of alienation and vulnerability. ([Location 1007](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1007)) - The life of man is a circle from childhood to childhood and so it is in everything where power moves. ([Location 1062](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1062)) - The only way to cooperate with the process of maturation is to embrace fully the stage you're in (and its tasks). Paradoxically, you have to love the stage you're in, in order to (eventually) leave it. ([Location 1257](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1257)) - By yearning for the next stage, you fail to be fully in your present stage, and so you get stuck right where you are. ([Location 1406](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1406)) - The identifying signs of your stage (more or less from the most definitive to the least) are: your current psychospiritual center of gravity (PCG) the primary tasks you find yourself working on the developmental archetypes with which you and your behavior most fully resonate the primary psychosocial gift to community that you manifest without trying (simply through your presence) your circle of identity ([Location 1473](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1473)) - In your child's first four years, then, rather than emphasizing social conformity and predetermined lessons, you'll want to encourage and celebrate her natural curiosity, her dogged and multisensory exploration of everything in her world indoors and out, the pleasure she takes in her own flesh, her unrestrained laughter, her full-bodied emotionality, her unfettered sensuality (including her love of mud and rain), and her thrill in wild movement. In her infancy and early childhood, say YES! to her impulses in every way you can. Reserve your use of NO! for those rare moments when you need to teach her to avoid real dangers. ([Location 1758](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1758)) - egocentric values lead people to experience themselves primarily as agents for themselves and to maximize safety, personal comfort, and material satisfactions. What ([Location 1961](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1961)) - in a soulcentric setting, stage 1 is a nurturing Nest. But in an egocentric family, stage 1 could be more accurately, and sadly, labeled Obedience Training ([Location 1982](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1982)) - from a soulcentric perspective, the primary developmental goal in parenting is not raising happy, well-rounded, well-educated, physically sound children. We all want this, but there is a greater goal that reframes all other child-rearing intentions, and which actually enhances the chance of raising happy children. ([Location 2421](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=2421)) - The award-winning American schoolteacher John Gatto, author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, argues that our contemporary school systems make learning anything difficult. ([Location 2948](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=2948)) - In fact, even genuine thinking is discouraged in our schools, most of which teach only memorization and mimicry. By overemphasizing shallow thinking and inconsequential strategizing, we shortchange indigenous human desires and developmental needs, such as the needs for exploration and celebration of the wondrous and beautiful, creativity and artistic expression, emotional growth and healing, healthy relationships, and personal fulfillment and meaning. ([Location 3003](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=3003)) - The Societal Entrepreneur is looking for opportunities to make things happen (progress), arrangements that'll be interesting, profitable, and a contribution to society, or at least ones that will allow him to get by socially and financially. He — or she — wants to create a notable place for himself on the socioeconomic map, a way to compete in a healthy way, a way to obtain attention, admiration, sexual partners, or at the very least, a decent place in the world. Even the shy introvert can be a Societal Entrepreneur. He may not be gregarious or have hordes of friends, but you can bet that his greatest desire is to be admired by his peers. As in the business realm, the Societal Entrepreneur is an innovator, generating and experimenting with new roles and ways of being, new styles, and new social environments. He's looking for the authentic combination that attracts his fair share of social, sexual, and economic fulfillment. ([Location 3623](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=3623)) - The central developmental task of early adolescence — again, this refers to Thespians of any age, not just teens — is to create a secure and authentic social self, one that invites both social acceptance and self-approval. ([Location 3678](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=3678)) - Many of these parents are trying to postpone the daunting question of how they'll define themselves and shape their own lives when they're no longer everyday parents. By delaying their own self-examination and growth, they are perpetrating the same developmental crime against their teens. ([Location 3752](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=3752)) - The Oasis study of human-nature reciprocity and responsibility, especially in a transitional society, might include an exploration of how nature supports every aspect of our human lives how there is only one economy — Earth's — of which all human economies are components how to design an individual lifestyle and a human economy with zero waste and emissions how to proactively care for endangered species and ecosystems how to care for abandoned pets how to restore damaged habitats how to cultivate intentional relationships in the more-than-human world how extractive industries have violated the human-nature balance, how to restore that balance, and what alternatives exist for meeting our genuine needs renewable and safe energy sources, processes, and economies rituals and practices for observing and deepening sacred reciprocity with the natural world how to see the natural world as our model, mentor, and inspiration for fashioning elements of human society and solving human problems (This is the new field of biomimicry; see the resources at the end of this book.) ([Location 4002](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4002)) - We might ask: independent of cultural influence, what are the differences between human masculinity and femininity? I think of masculinity as an outward orientation, like that of male genitals. Masculinity is the tendency or capacity to move outward or forward; to seek progress; to see the problems, opportunities, and solutions at some distance and ahead of oneself in both time and space; to be competitive; and to probe into the world and into the future. Relative to the feminine, the masculine supports sharper distinctions and more clearly defined boundaries, which assist a person in moving forward and fabricating new things. Genitalia notwithstanding, any given individual, male or female, can be more or less masculine at the core of the self. ([Location 4208](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4208)) - Femininity is somewhat the reverse of masculinity. It is an inward orientation — like that of female genitals. Femininity is the tendency or capacity to be receptive, welcoming, cooperative, perceptually and emotionally attuned to what is already present. The feminine desire is to flesh out and enhance what already exists, to creatively adorn and praise it. Boundaries are more permeable, and similarities more important than distinctions, which supports receptivity and communion. ([Location 4215](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4215)) - To become whole, most Thespian men (namely, those with masculine cores) must learn to receive the world into the self and develop their feminine openness. Most Thespian women (those with feminine cores) must learn to thrust themselves assertively into the world and develop their masculine drive. ([Location 4237](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4237)) - immaturity. The solution is not to make femininity more important than masculinity but to create a soulcentric society in which mature men and women are more prevalent than lifelong adolescents. ([Location 4250](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4250)) - For over one hundred years, mainstream American education has been systematically tuned to produce, on the one hand, blue-collar workers and soldiers, and, on the other, white-collar scientists, technologists, military officers, business managers, and career professionals. The idea has been to “keep America strong,” which means more successful than other nations in competing for Earth's limited resources, on which all human economies are grounded. This has been accomplished in the United States and other Western societies by creating a large workforce of wage slaves and soldiers and a sizable cadre of sharp and ambitious minds capable of managing that workforce and of creating technological advances for the march of military-economic “progress.” Consequently, we have a bifurcated educational system successfully designed to limit the options and dull the minds and aspirations of the first group while both sharpening and narrowing the minds of the second. The educational emphasis for the professional class is on thinking, but thinking in rather shallow and constricted modes. Independent, critical thinking and any kind of feeling, imagining, and sensing are minimized, marginalized, or discouraged because they are deemed irrelevant or detrimental to industrial development and personal fulfillment.27 Another reason these innate human capacities are suppressed in Western societies (and must be) is because they easily expose the egocentric idea of “progress” for the self-destructive and world-devastating fantasy that it is. ([Location 4283](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4283)) - From an eco-soulcentric perspective, the skills that teenagers really need to acquire, beyond those of the Garden, are those discussed in this chapter: the skills of authenticity, emotional access and expression, conflict resolution, status assignment, sexuality, sustenance, human-nature reciprocity, and Loyal Soldier rehabilitation. ([Location 4312](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4312)) - Life is about acquiring as much material wealth, physical attractiveness, and power as possible. ([Location 4435](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4435)) - Preparation for Soul Initiation requires that you be separated — psychologically if not physically — from the ordinary life of your community so that you might cease to define yourself according to the familiar rules and norms. During your Oasis time — the summer of your life — you gained some confidence in your personality and you came to trust the way that life unfolds. Now, as Rilke writes in his “Book of Pilgrimage,” life becomes “a riddle again, / and you again a stranger” — to yourself and others.2 You will have to relinquish your temptation to conform or to seek acceptance from others. You will have to go out on your own. ([Location 4802](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4802)) - Your task is not repentance for the sins of your past but a surrender to the desires of your truer human nature, that which “the soft animal of your body” loves. Oliver says this is the only thing you have to do, but she doesn't say it's easy. This is a surrender that takes some time and effort. What's involved is actually both a surrender of and a surrender to: first a surrender of your beliefs about how you were supposed to be and how the world was supposed to work, and then a surrender to your deepest and wildest passions. These two surrenders correspond to the two tasks of the Cocoon. ([Location 4812](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4812)) - Spirited teens want to become, not “responsible adults,” but animated, passionate, engaged, vital, alive, contributing, joyous adults — in love with the world, their lives, and others. ([Location 4864](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4864)) - Possible features of a Confirmation rite include the following: A preparation time in which the initiate simplifies her life. She drops out of social scenes, roles, and jobs that would not support the underworld journey. She ties up loose ends, completes as much unfinished interpersonal business as she can, and says her good-byes. A community ceremony in which the initiate's social and psychological successes are affirmed. Her talents, achievements, unique styles, and sensibilities are noted. The community acknowledges her maturity and Thespian social contributions. Putting away, giving away, or ritually sacrificing objects and clothes associated with her early adolescence, or first adulthood. A ritual funeral for, or sacrifice of, the primary ego (the adolescent personality, which, in Western society, sees us through our first adulthood). This includes expressions of both grief and joy. The taking of vows, in which she dedicates this next stage of life to mystery, soul discovery, and the underworld journey. A ceremonial dedication or commitment to the initiation process that is about to begin. (The initiation process can span several years.) A ceremony of leave-taking, in which, perhaps, she changes clothes (symbolizing or embodying the shift from Thespian to Wanderer), performs purifications and/or exchanges gifts with family members and/or mentors. The ceremony might conclude with a symbolic leave-taking from the community or a literal departure for a few weeks or months, a year, or indefinitely. ([Location 4894](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4894)) - Her authentic place is not simply one that someone will pay her to occupy, such as a job. Nor is it a task she happens to have the talent to perform, such as an art or a craft, or a career that a vocational counselor recommends for her, such as banking or social work. Nor is it a social role, such as caregiver, student, parent, servant, leader, whore, or rebel, that other people will accept her in. It's got to be her place, one that is in keeping with her vital core. It's a place defined not by the deeds she performs but by the qualities of soul that she embodies; not by her physical, social, or economic achievements but by the true character she manifests; neither by her capacity to conform to the masses, nor by her ability to creatively rebel against the mainstream, but by the unique way she performs her giveaway for her community. Her ultimate place is identified not by any social forms or roles but, rather, by the symbols, stories, and archetypes unearthed from the deep structure of her psyche and by the way the world invites her to belong to it. ([Location 5144](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5144)) - But, given that you'll never be healed of all of your emotional wounds, there's no need to become fixated there! An obsession with stage-3 psychotherapy can arrest your development. ([Location 5319](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5319)) - A key authenticity practice is to stop pleasing others at the expense of your own integrity. If the important others in your life — at home, at work, at play, in your spiritual community — want you to be someone you are not (for example, a carefree confidant, a charmer, a rescuer, a victim, a bad boy, a scholar, a hometown hero, a pleaser, a homeboy, a loser, or everybody's mother), you will have to surrender your impulse to keep living your life for them. You will have to relinquish your willingness to make major life decisions just to take care of them emotionally or to win their approval. ([Location 5400](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5400)) - Soul encounters take a variety of forms. One of the most common is a perception (visual, acoustic, or kinesthetic) of the mysterious image you were born with, your soul image. Another is a revelation of the shape of your soul story — the story you were born to live in the world. A third is a numinous meeting with a being or place that communicates something of your destiny through language, gesture, emotion, image, or dream. ([Location 5480](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5480)) - Woven into the fabric of your soul image is a mysterious symbol or theme that holds the secret of your life purpose. Through one or more soul encounters, you discover how that symbol or theme reveals the gift you were born to carry to others, and how your soul powers are vehicles for doing so. The fact that you have your particular soul qualities, and not others, is the truth at the center of your soul image. ([Location 5489](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5489)) - Every culture has, or once had, many soul-discovery practices. Some of the most common, each explored in considerable detail in Soulcraft, are as follows: Soulcentric dreamwork: experiential processes for facilitating transformation, personal deepening, and initiation through the rich landscapes of our nocturnal visions. Soulcentric dreamwork diverges from other, more common dream approaches in its premise that every dream is an opportunity to develop our relationship to the undercurrent identities beneath our surface personalities and routine agendas. Each dream provides a doorway into the unfolding story, desires, potentialities, and invitations of the soul, and a chance for the ego to be further educated and initiated into that underworld story and those underworld desires and possibilities. The purpose of soulcentric dreamwork is not to heal, improve, flatter, or entertain the personality but rather to destabilize it and create an opening to the mysteries of nature and psyche. With such an approach, we do not work on our dreams but help our dreams to do their work on us. Deep imagery or active imagination: inner journeys in which we interact, while awake, with the other-than-ego inhabitants of our own psyches or Earths psyche. There are many approaches, but among the most effective are those that involve imaginal animals as inner guides to personal wholing and initiation.48 Self-designed ceremony: a means of conversing with soul and nature in the Mystery's own language of embodied symbol and image. Discovery, fashioning, and use of symbols and objects: for attracting or embodying soul images or universal, transpersonal qualities. Skillful use of hallucinogenic or entheogenic substances as a component of ceremonies and soul-discovery processes: for the purpose of guided, ritual explorations of the underworld of soul.49 Symbolic artwork: for the purpose of both discovering and expressing soul qualities. Journal work: creative writing as a way to connect with our own depths and to cultivate a relationship with the Mystery. Vision questing: fasting for three days or more in wilderness solitude and crying for a vision that reveals how we might serve our people and the world. Apprehending and responding to signs and omens in nature. Body practices for altering consciousness: to perceive actualities and imagine possibilities that we might otherwise overlook, and in doing so helping us weave the subtle and unseen forces of the world into form, making the unconscious conscious. Examples: Fasting Breath work: consciousness-altering breathing techniques Practices involving extreme physical exertion Yoga postures and movement Council work: a way of empowering people to speak from their hearts, an ancient practice transforming the experience of contemporary group process. Council work enables us to open to the radical otherness of our fellow humans, in that way knitting together true community, and supports us in accessing and expressing our most vital… ([Location 5577](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5577)) - He knows that the changes in consciousness and identity that he goes through while searching are as important as finding what he seeks. He is not in a hurry. Wandering is as valuable as anything else he might do. ([Location 5717](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5717)) - in addition to wildlands, he will roam through diverse states of consciousness and have serendipitous communions with remarkable people. ([Location 5722](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5722)) - Often we discover that our negative shadow holds something sacred: our deepest passion. This might be a longing to dance, to create magic, to sing, or to love with abandon. ([Location 5808](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5808)) - As a Wanderer, however, you'll find it necessary to adopt the regular practice of identifying and engaging the shadow. Take careful note, for example, when you find yourself with a strong charge — positive or negative — around another person, especially someone you don't know well. Which of their qualities do you like or dislike? Look for these same qualities in yourself, perhaps expressed in subtle or unexpected ways, or only occasionally but with a vengeance or a flare. Wonder about the other qualities of that person, too, the ones you didn't notice at first. Then imagine how you might be changed if you embraced that person as an ally or assimilated their qualities. Whether the other is from your everyday life or the nightworld of dreams, engage in imaginary dialogues with this shadow figure. Or imagine yourself merging with the shadow, and then allow it to express itself through drawing, painting, writing, movement, music, or dance. ([Location 5817](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5817)) - She learns to look into her lover's eyes and see not just her friend and sexual partner but also a reflection of her own animus or anima ([Location 5836](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5836)) - True service to community and deep personal fulfillment are the twin and inseparable aspirations of adulthood. Soul-rooted service is the adult's way of loving the world. ([Location 6342](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=6342)) - Soul-acceptance seeks a good fit among three parties: personality, soul, and the more-than-human community. The adult aspires to effectively embody his gifts of soul in the mysterious and complex web of people, other creatures, and ecosystems. ([Location 6358](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=6358)) - The Apprentice's developmental task can be divided into four subtasks: identifying one or more cultural settings for her soulwork developing the skills of her soulwork (acquiring a delivery system) and performing that work in her community further explorations of her soul image or story and of the nature of her soul powers the soul-rooted individuation of the personality (differentiating the self in relation to soul, as opposed to the earlier differentiation in relation to society) ([Location 6438](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=6438)) - Ecocentrism develops as a matter of course during the Wellspring precisely because the Apprentice is now learning to embody soul. ([Location 6663](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=6663)) - Before I committed myself to this new mission and vision of my work, my business was on the way to having the best financial year in the eleven of its existence. As soon as I made a commitment to the new direction, business opportunities dried up. Clients had to cancel scheduled assignments because of budget cuts. Prospective assignments that, before, I would easily secure were awarded to competitors. Gradually, I realized that those assignments were congruent with my previous focus but not with my new mission. ([Location 6741](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=6741)) - Whether his service is tangible or intangible, the Artisan's task does not require the invention of new cultural traditions such as original art media, political philosophies, educational methods, or economic systems. His service is just as likely to flow through a new voice expressed within an existing tradition like poetry, jazz, medicine, ecology, agriculture, ecopsychology, cybernetics, democracy, or journalism or other media. Whatever delivery systems he employs, the Artisan is doing something new within that form, or stretching that form's envelope, or applying it to a novel context. ([Location 7407](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=7407))  ## Highlights - My beginning premise is that a more mature human society requires more mature human individuals. ([Location 77](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=77)) - In contemporary society, we think of maturity simply in terms of hard work and practical responsibilities. I believe, in contrast, that true adulthood is rooted in transpersonal experience — in a mystic affiliation with nature, experienced as a sacred calling — that is then embodied in soul-infused work and mature responsibilities. This mystical affiliation is the very core of maturity, and it is precisely what mainstream Western society has overlooked — or actively suppressed and expelled. ([Location 90](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=90)) - Arrested personal growth serves industrial “growth.” By suppressing the nature dimension of human development (through educational systems, social values, advertising, nature-eclipsing vocations and pastimes, city and suburb design, denatured medical and psychological practices, and other means), industrial growth society engenders an immature citizenry unable to imagine a life beyond consumerism and soul-suppressing jobs. ([Location 146](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=146)) - As soon as enough people in contemporary societies progress beyond adolescence, the entire consumer-driven economy and egocentric lifestyle will implode. ([Location 191](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=191)) - As Albert Einstein noted, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” ([Location 211](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=211)) - Through psychospiritual adventure, the adolescent comes to know what she was born to do, what gift she possesses to bring to the world, what sacred quality lives in her heart, and how she might arrive at her own unique way of loving and belonging. ([Location 276](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=276)) - With the holistic approach, in contrast, dysfunction is not a central focus. We ask instead, “What qualities or capacities are missing from this person's embodiment of wholeness, and what can be done to cultivate these qualities or capacities?” The goal is to encourage and foster something functional and fulfilling rather than to remove something dysfunctional and deadening. ([Location 469](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=469)) - A healthy society is, among other things, sustainable, just, and compassionate. It is sustainable because it is expressly organized as an integral component of the greater community of Earth; it establishes a niche for itself that benefits both its people and the greater geo-biological community of which it is a member. It is a just society because it provides equal opportunities and benefits for all persons. It is compassionate because it shares its wealth with all other societies and with the greater web of life; it does not exploit other peoples or species. A healthy society also embraces and celebrates our enchanted human senses, bodies, and emotions and encourages our imaginative exploration of the mysteries of psyche and nature. ([Location 525](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=525)) - the core problem with patriarchal (and matriarchal) societies is their patho-adolescent egocentrism, which generates economic-class oppression, not their conspicuous suppression of the feminine or glorification of the (immature) masculine. Men have no monopoly on egocentrism. Men and masculinity are no more the problem than are women and femininity. I believe that most people would agree that we will not create a healthier society by affording women the equal right to be as pathologically egocentric as a large proportion of men have been for millennia, to acquire the equal opportunity to excel in the patho-adolescent, class-dividing world of prestige, position, and wealth, academic and corporate ladder-climbing, and power broking. Rather, mature men and women must join together to foster soulcentric development for both genders and for all races and cultures. ([Location 579](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=579)) - By soul, I mean a thing's ultimate place in the world. ([Location 641](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=641)) - A thing's place tells you how it fits in the world. ([Location 645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=645)) - Using that definition, every thing has a soul, ([Location 673](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=673)) - What makes you the individual you are is not your autonomy but your interdependent and communal relationship with everything else in nature. ([Location 682](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=682)) - If your soul is your ultimate place in the world and you need to live from that place to be fully yourself, then the world cannot be fully itself until you become fully yourself. ([Location 693](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=693)) - What I mean by place is similar to what ecologists mean by niche, which refers to the position or function of an organism within a community of plants and animals. ([Location 695](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=695)) - The human soul is a psycho-ecological niche, a niche whose essential features include the capacity for conscious self-awareness as well as social and ecological attributes. We humans occupy both a noosphere and an ecosphere. This is an essential feature of the soul of humanity. ([Location 698](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=698)) - To speak of soul as an ultimate place, we need a means of characterizing identity that is transcultural and independent of human creations. And we in fact have such a means: the natural world — its images, roles, patterns, processes, events, and animate beings. The language of nature is how soul identifies itself to us. ([Location 749](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=749)) - The human soul is precultural and prelinguistic. A person's ultimate place is what it is before he is acculturated or acquires a human language. He is born with it. It's his potential. His destiny is to live from that place, but there is no guarantee he'll succeed. ([Location 873](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=873)) - An adult is someone who has encountered her soul, retrieved some knowledge of her ultimate place in the world, acquired some practical means for occupying this place among her people, made a commitment to doing so, and is doing it. An elder is someone who, after many years of adulthood, consistently occupies his ultimate place without any further effort to do so. This frees him for something with yet greater scope and depth and fulfillment, namely, caring for the soul of the world. He does this by assisting others to prepare for, discover, and embody their souls, and by supporting the human-Earth system in the evolution of its soul. The Wheel portrays human development as the process of preparing to discover soul, cultivating a relationship with soul, and embodying soul. This is why I call it the Soulcentric Developmental Wheel. ([Location 884](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=884)) - By spirit, I mean the single, boundless, and eternal mystery that permeates and animates everything in the universe and yet transcends all. ([Location 890](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=890)) - Spirit both transcends all things and is immanent in all things. ([Location 897](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=897)) - Upperworld denotes transpersonal states of consciousness identified with spirit and characterized by unity (or nonduality), grace, bliss, transcendence, emptiness, light (often golden), enlightenment (identified, for example, as Buddha mind, nirvana, satori, or Self-realization), the celestial realm, and pure awareness (consciousness without an object). ([Location 940](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=940)) - Meditation, prayer, contemplation, and yoga are common practices for cultivating a relationship with the upperworld. ([Location 944](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=944)) - Middleworld refers to our everyday, waking identity and state of consciousness — the “dayworld,” the personal and interpersonal world of ego. ([Location 944](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=944)) - Underworld signifies transpersonal states of consciousness and identity associated with soul and characterized by depth, darkness, demons, the daemon, the subconscious, sacred woundings, dreams (the “nightworld”), the unknown or not-yet-known, shadow, death, and visions of personal and cultural destiny. ([Location 952](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=952)) - This is facilitated by practices that I refer to collectively as soul-craft and that include dreamwork and deep imagery journeys, wandering in nature, and communicating with birds, trees, the winds, and the land itself. Many of these practices are found in the ancient (and continuing) traditions of nature-based peoples. Currently, soulcraft is finding its way back into contemporary Western life through modern mystery schools, through individual disciplines (such as trance dancing and drumming, council work, storytelling, symbolic artwork, soul-oriented poetry, and shadow work), and through the work of depth psychologists such as Carl Jung and James Hillman. ([Location 956](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=956)) - I name such cultures soulcentric because they are designed to assist all members in discovering and living from their deepest and most fulfilling potentials (their individual souls), in this way contributing their most life-nourishing gifts to their community and environment and, in doing so, actualizing the culture's potential (the cultural soul) and supporting its ongoing evolution. ([Location 965](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=965)) - A society that is soulcentric is necessarily ecocentric. A soulcentric society supports each person in discovering and inhabiting her ultimate place, which is her place as granted and revealed by nature. In so doing, that society roots itself in the natural world. ([Location 972](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=972)) - The primary values of an egocentric society are safety, comfort, middleworld pleasures, and enhancement of socioeconomic status. ([Location 1003](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1003)) - The endless pursuit of security, comfort, and pleasure — in the absence of soul — leads, at best, to the accumulation of wealth (for the middle and upper classes). Wealth without soul leads to its inevitable pathological outgrowths: power differentials, socioeconomic (class) stratification, and exploitation of minorities, women, children, the poor, and all the “resources” of the natural world. For the presumably fortunate ones with adequate wealth, the pursuit of egocentric values often leads to boredom, addiction, alienation, and meaninglessness. For the lower classes, even basic security is rare. And for everyone, an illusory sense of autonomy (“freedom”) tends to breed an amorphous fear, a sense of alienation and vulnerability. ([Location 1007](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1007)) - The life of man is a circle from childhood to childhood and so it is in everything where power moves. ([Location 1062](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1062)) - The only way to cooperate with the process of maturation is to embrace fully the stage you're in (and its tasks). Paradoxically, you have to love the stage you're in, in order to (eventually) leave it. ([Location 1257](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1257)) - By yearning for the next stage, you fail to be fully in your present stage, and so you get stuck right where you are. ([Location 1406](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1406)) - The identifying signs of your stage (more or less from the most definitive to the least) are: your current psychospiritual center of gravity (PCG) the primary tasks you find yourself working on the developmental archetypes with which you and your behavior most fully resonate the primary psychosocial gift to community that you manifest without trying (simply through your presence) your circle of identity ([Location 1473](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1473)) - In your child's first four years, then, rather than emphasizing social conformity and predetermined lessons, you'll want to encourage and celebrate her natural curiosity, her dogged and multisensory exploration of everything in her world indoors and out, the pleasure she takes in her own flesh, her unrestrained laughter, her full-bodied emotionality, her unfettered sensuality (including her love of mud and rain), and her thrill in wild movement. In her infancy and early childhood, say YES! to her impulses in every way you can. Reserve your use of NO! for those rare moments when you need to teach her to avoid real dangers. ([Location 1758](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1758)) - egocentric values lead people to experience themselves primarily as agents for themselves and to maximize safety, personal comfort, and material satisfactions. What ([Location 1961](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1961)) - in a soulcentric setting, stage 1 is a nurturing Nest. But in an egocentric family, stage 1 could be more accurately, and sadly, labeled Obedience Training ([Location 1982](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1982)) - from a soulcentric perspective, the primary developmental goal in parenting is not raising happy, well-rounded, well-educated, physically sound children. We all want this, but there is a greater goal that reframes all other child-rearing intentions, and which actually enhances the chance of raising happy children. ([Location 2421](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=2421)) - The award-winning American schoolteacher John Gatto, author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, argues that our contemporary school systems make learning anything difficult. ([Location 2948](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=2948)) - In fact, even genuine thinking is discouraged in our schools, most of which teach only memorization and mimicry. By overemphasizing shallow thinking and inconsequential strategizing, we shortchange indigenous human desires and developmental needs, such as the needs for exploration and celebration of the wondrous and beautiful, creativity and artistic expression, emotional growth and healing, healthy relationships, and personal fulfillment and meaning. ([Location 3003](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=3003)) - The Societal Entrepreneur is looking for opportunities to make things happen (progress), arrangements that'll be interesting, profitable, and a contribution to society, or at least ones that will allow him to get by socially and financially. He — or she — wants to create a notable place for himself on the socioeconomic map, a way to compete in a healthy way, a way to obtain attention, admiration, sexual partners, or at the very least, a decent place in the world. Even the shy introvert can be a Societal Entrepreneur. He may not be gregarious or have hordes of friends, but you can bet that his greatest desire is to be admired by his peers. As in the business realm, the Societal Entrepreneur is an innovator, generating and experimenting with new roles and ways of being, new styles, and new social environments. He's looking for the authentic combination that attracts his fair share of social, sexual, and economic fulfillment. ([Location 3623](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=3623)) - The central developmental task of early adolescence — again, this refers to Thespians of any age, not just teens — is to create a secure and authentic social self, one that invites both social acceptance and self-approval. ([Location 3678](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=3678)) - Many of these parents are trying to postpone the daunting question of how they'll define themselves and shape their own lives when they're no longer everyday parents. By delaying their own self-examination and growth, they are perpetrating the same developmental crime against their teens. ([Location 3752](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=3752)) - The Oasis study of human-nature reciprocity and responsibility, especially in a transitional society, might include an exploration of how nature supports every aspect of our human lives how there is only one economy — Earth's — of which all human economies are components how to design an individual lifestyle and a human economy with zero waste and emissions how to proactively care for endangered species and ecosystems how to care for abandoned pets how to restore damaged habitats how to cultivate intentional relationships in the more-than-human world how extractive industries have violated the human-nature balance, how to restore that balance, and what alternatives exist for meeting our genuine needs renewable and safe energy sources, processes, and economies rituals and practices for observing and deepening sacred reciprocity with the natural world how to see the natural world as our model, mentor, and inspiration for fashioning elements of human society and solving human problems (This is the new field of biomimicry; see the resources at the end of this book.) ([Location 4002](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4002)) - We might ask: independent of cultural influence, what are the differences between human masculinity and femininity? I think of masculinity as an outward orientation, like that of male genitals. Masculinity is the tendency or capacity to move outward or forward; to seek progress; to see the problems, opportunities, and solutions at some distance and ahead of oneself in both time and space; to be competitive; and to probe into the world and into the future. Relative to the feminine, the masculine supports sharper distinctions and more clearly defined boundaries, which assist a person in moving forward and fabricating new things. Genitalia notwithstanding, any given individual, male or female, can be more or less masculine at the core of the self. ([Location 4208](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4208)) - Femininity is somewhat the reverse of masculinity. It is an inward orientation — like that of female genitals. Femininity is the tendency or capacity to be receptive, welcoming, cooperative, perceptually and emotionally attuned to what is already present. The feminine desire is to flesh out and enhance what already exists, to creatively adorn and praise it. Boundaries are more permeable, and similarities more important than distinctions, which supports receptivity and communion. ([Location 4215](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4215)) - To become whole, most Thespian men (namely, those with masculine cores) must learn to receive the world into the self and develop their feminine openness. Most Thespian women (those with feminine cores) must learn to thrust themselves assertively into the world and develop their masculine drive. ([Location 4237](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4237)) - immaturity. The solution is not to make femininity more important than masculinity but to create a soulcentric society in which mature men and women are more prevalent than lifelong adolescents. ([Location 4250](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4250)) - For over one hundred years, mainstream American education has been systematically tuned to produce, on the one hand, blue-collar workers and soldiers, and, on the other, white-collar scientists, technologists, military officers, business managers, and career professionals. The idea has been to “keep America strong,” which means more successful than other nations in competing for Earth's limited resources, on which all human economies are grounded. This has been accomplished in the United States and other Western societies by creating a large workforce of wage slaves and soldiers and a sizable cadre of sharp and ambitious minds capable of managing that workforce and of creating technological advances for the march of military-economic “progress.” Consequently, we have a bifurcated educational system successfully designed to limit the options and dull the minds and aspirations of the first group while both sharpening and narrowing the minds of the second. The educational emphasis for the professional class is on thinking, but thinking in rather shallow and constricted modes. Independent, critical thinking and any kind of feeling, imagining, and sensing are minimized, marginalized, or discouraged because they are deemed irrelevant or detrimental to industrial development and personal fulfillment.27 Another reason these innate human capacities are suppressed in Western societies (and must be) is because they easily expose the egocentric idea of “progress” for the self-destructive and world-devastating fantasy that it is. ([Location 4283](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4283)) - From an eco-soulcentric perspective, the skills that teenagers really need to acquire, beyond those of the Garden, are those discussed in this chapter: the skills of authenticity, emotional access and expression, conflict resolution, status assignment, sexuality, sustenance, human-nature reciprocity, and Loyal Soldier rehabilitation. ([Location 4312](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4312)) - Life is about acquiring as much material wealth, physical attractiveness, and power as possible. ([Location 4435](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4435)) - Preparation for Soul Initiation requires that you be separated — psychologically if not physically — from the ordinary life of your community so that you might cease to define yourself according to the familiar rules and norms. During your Oasis time — the summer of your life — you gained some confidence in your personality and you came to trust the way that life unfolds. Now, as Rilke writes in his “Book of Pilgrimage,” life becomes “a riddle again, / and you again a stranger” — to yourself and others.2 You will have to relinquish your temptation to conform or to seek acceptance from others. You will have to go out on your own. ([Location 4802](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4802)) - Your task is not repentance for the sins of your past but a surrender to the desires of your truer human nature, that which “the soft animal of your body” loves. Oliver says this is the only thing you have to do, but she doesn't say it's easy. This is a surrender that takes some time and effort. What's involved is actually both a surrender of and a surrender to: first a surrender of your beliefs about how you were supposed to be and how the world was supposed to work, and then a surrender to your deepest and wildest passions. These two surrenders correspond to the two tasks of the Cocoon. ([Location 4812](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4812)) - Spirited teens want to become, not “responsible adults,” but animated, passionate, engaged, vital, alive, contributing, joyous adults — in love with the world, their lives, and others. ([Location 4864](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4864)) - Possible features of a Confirmation rite include the following: A preparation time in which the initiate simplifies her life. She drops out of social scenes, roles, and jobs that would not support the underworld journey. She ties up loose ends, completes as much unfinished interpersonal business as she can, and says her good-byes. A community ceremony in which the initiate's social and psychological successes are affirmed. Her talents, achievements, unique styles, and sensibilities are noted. The community acknowledges her maturity and Thespian social contributions. Putting away, giving away, or ritually sacrificing objects and clothes associated with her early adolescence, or first adulthood. A ritual funeral for, or sacrifice of, the primary ego (the adolescent personality, which, in Western society, sees us through our first adulthood). This includes expressions of both grief and joy. The taking of vows, in which she dedicates this next stage of life to mystery, soul discovery, and the underworld journey. A ceremonial dedication or commitment to the initiation process that is about to begin. (The initiation process can span several years.) A ceremony of leave-taking, in which, perhaps, she changes clothes (symbolizing or embodying the shift from Thespian to Wanderer), performs purifications and/or exchanges gifts with family members and/or mentors. The ceremony might conclude with a symbolic leave-taking from the community or a literal departure for a few weeks or months, a year, or indefinitely. ([Location 4894](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4894)) - Her authentic place is not simply one that someone will pay her to occupy, such as a job. Nor is it a task she happens to have the talent to perform, such as an art or a craft, or a career that a vocational counselor recommends for her, such as banking or social work. Nor is it a social role, such as caregiver, student, parent, servant, leader, whore, or rebel, that other people will accept her in. It's got to be her place, one that is in keeping with her vital core. It's a place defined not by the deeds she performs but by the qualities of soul that she embodies; not by her physical, social, or economic achievements but by the true character she manifests; neither by her capacity to conform to the masses, nor by her ability to creatively rebel against the mainstream, but by the unique way she performs her giveaway for her community. Her ultimate place is identified not by any social forms or roles but, rather, by the symbols, stories, and archetypes unearthed from the deep structure of her psyche and by the way the world invites her to belong to it. ([Location 5144](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5144)) - But, given that you'll never be healed of all of your emotional wounds, there's no need to become fixated there! An obsession with stage-3 psychotherapy can arrest your development. ([Location 5319](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5319)) - A key authenticity practice is to stop pleasing others at the expense of your own integrity. If the important others in your life — at home, at work, at play, in your spiritual community — want you to be someone you are not (for example, a carefree confidant, a charmer, a rescuer, a victim, a bad boy, a scholar, a hometown hero, a pleaser, a homeboy, a loser, or everybody's mother), you will have to surrender your impulse to keep living your life for them. You will have to relinquish your willingness to make major life decisions just to take care of them emotionally or to win their approval. ([Location 5400](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5400)) - Soul encounters take a variety of forms. One of the most common is a perception (visual, acoustic, or kinesthetic) of the mysterious image you were born with, your soul image. Another is a revelation of the shape of your soul story — the story you were born to live in the world. A third is a numinous meeting with a being or place that communicates something of your destiny through language, gesture, emotion, image, or dream. ([Location 5480](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5480)) - Woven into the fabric of your soul image is a mysterious symbol or theme that holds the secret of your life purpose. Through one or more soul encounters, you discover how that symbol or theme reveals the gift you were born to carry to others, and how your soul powers are vehicles for doing so. The fact that you have your particular soul qualities, and not others, is the truth at the center of your soul image. ([Location 5489](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5489)) - Every culture has, or once had, many soul-discovery practices. Some of the most common, each explored in considerable detail in Soulcraft, are as follows: Soulcentric dreamwork: experiential processes for facilitating transformation, personal deepening, and initiation through the rich landscapes of our nocturnal visions. Soulcentric dreamwork diverges from other, more common dream approaches in its premise that every dream is an opportunity to develop our relationship to the undercurrent identities beneath our surface personalities and routine agendas. Each dream provides a doorway into the unfolding story, desires, potentialities, and invitations of the soul, and a chance for the ego to be further educated and initiated into that underworld story and those underworld desires and possibilities. The purpose of soulcentric dreamwork is not to heal, improve, flatter, or entertain the personality but rather to destabilize it and create an opening to the mysteries of nature and psyche. With such an approach, we do not work on our dreams but help our dreams to do their work on us. Deep imagery or active imagination: inner journeys in which we interact, while awake, with the other-than-ego inhabitants of our own psyches or Earths psyche. There are many approaches, but among the most effective are those that involve imaginal animals as inner guides to personal wholing and initiation.48 Self-designed ceremony: a means of conversing with soul and nature in the Mystery's own language of embodied symbol and image. Discovery, fashioning, and use of symbols and objects: for attracting or embodying soul images or universal, transpersonal qualities. Skillful use of hallucinogenic or entheogenic substances as a component of ceremonies and soul-discovery processes: for the purpose of guided, ritual explorations of the underworld of soul.49 Symbolic artwork: for the purpose of both discovering and expressing soul qualities. Journal work: creative writing as a way to connect with our own depths and to cultivate a relationship with the Mystery. Vision questing: fasting for three days or more in wilderness solitude and crying for a vision that reveals how we might serve our people and the world. Apprehending and responding to signs and omens in nature. Body practices for altering consciousness: to perceive actualities and imagine possibilities that we might otherwise overlook, and in doing so helping us weave the subtle and unseen forces of the world into form, making the unconscious conscious. Examples: Fasting Breath work: consciousness-altering breathing techniques Practices involving extreme physical exertion Yoga postures and movement Council work: a way of empowering people to speak from their hearts, an ancient practice transforming the experience of contemporary group process. Council work enables us to open to the radical otherness of our fellow humans, in that way knitting together true community, and supports us in accessing and expressing our most vital… ([Location 5577](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5577)) - He knows that the changes in consciousness and identity that he goes through while searching are as important as finding what he seeks. He is not in a hurry. Wandering is as valuable as anything else he might do. ([Location 5717](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5717)) - in addition to wildlands, he will roam through diverse states of consciousness and have serendipitous communions with remarkable people. ([Location 5722](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5722)) - Often we discover that our negative shadow holds something sacred: our deepest passion. This might be a longing to dance, to create magic, to sing, or to love with abandon. ([Location 5808](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5808)) - As a Wanderer, however, you'll find it necessary to adopt the regular practice of identifying and engaging the shadow. Take careful note, for example, when you find yourself with a strong charge — positive or negative — around another person, especially someone you don't know well. Which of their qualities do you like or dislike? Look for these same qualities in yourself, perhaps expressed in subtle or unexpected ways, or only occasionally but with a vengeance or a flare. Wonder about the other qualities of that person, too, the ones you didn't notice at first. Then imagine how you might be changed if you embraced that person as an ally or assimilated their qualities. Whether the other is from your everyday life or the nightworld of dreams, engage in imaginary dialogues with this shadow figure. Or imagine yourself merging with the shadow, and then allow it to express itself through drawing, painting, writing, movement, music, or dance. ([Location 5817](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5817)) - She learns to look into her lover's eyes and see not just her friend and sexual partner but also a reflection of her own animus or anima ([Location 5836](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5836)) - True service to community and deep personal fulfillment are the twin and inseparable aspirations of adulthood. Soul-rooted service is the adult's way of loving the world. ([Location 6342](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=6342)) - Soul-acceptance seeks a good fit among three parties: personality, soul, and the more-than-human community. The adult aspires to effectively embody his gifts of soul in the mysterious and complex web of people, other creatures, and ecosystems. ([Location 6358](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=6358)) - The Apprentice's developmental task can be divided into four subtasks: identifying one or more cultural settings for her soulwork developing the skills of her soulwork (acquiring a delivery system) and performing that work in her community further explorations of her soul image or story and of the nature of her soul powers the soul-rooted individuation of the personality (differentiating the self in relation to soul, as opposed to the earlier differentiation in relation to society) ([Location 6438](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=6438)) - Ecocentrism develops as a matter of course during the Wellspring precisely because the Apprentice is now learning to embody soul. ([Location 6663](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=6663)) - Before I committed myself to this new mission and vision of my work, my business was on the way to having the best financial year in the eleven of its existence. As soon as I made a commitment to the new direction, business opportunities dried up. Clients had to cancel scheduled assignments because of budget cuts. Prospective assignments that, before, I would easily secure were awarded to competitors. Gradually, I realized that those assignments were congruent with my previous focus but not with my new mission. ([Location 6741](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=6741)) - Whether his service is tangible or intangible, the Artisan's task does not require the invention of new cultural traditions such as original art media, political philosophies, educational methods, or economic systems. His service is just as likely to flow through a new voice expressed within an existing tradition like poetry, jazz, medicine, ecology, agriculture, ecopsychology, cybernetics, democracy, or journalism or other media. Whatever delivery systems he employs, the Artisan is doing something new within that form, or stretching that form's envelope, or applying it to a novel context. ([Location 7407](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=7407))  ## Highlights - My beginning premise is that a more mature human society requires more mature human individuals. ([Location 77](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=77)) - In contemporary society, we think of maturity simply in terms of hard work and practical responsibilities. I believe, in contrast, that true adulthood is rooted in transpersonal experience — in a mystic affiliation with nature, experienced as a sacred calling — that is then embodied in soul-infused work and mature responsibilities. This mystical affiliation is the very core of maturity, and it is precisely what mainstream Western society has overlooked — or actively suppressed and expelled. ([Location 90](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=90)) - Arrested personal growth serves industrial “growth.” By suppressing the nature dimension of human development (through educational systems, social values, advertising, nature-eclipsing vocations and pastimes, city and suburb design, denatured medical and psychological practices, and other means), industrial growth society engenders an immature citizenry unable to imagine a life beyond consumerism and soul-suppressing jobs. ([Location 146](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=146)) - As soon as enough people in contemporary societies progress beyond adolescence, the entire consumer-driven economy and egocentric lifestyle will implode. ([Location 191](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=191)) - As Albert Einstein noted, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” ([Location 211](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=211)) - Through psychospiritual adventure, the adolescent comes to know what she was born to do, what gift she possesses to bring to the world, what sacred quality lives in her heart, and how she might arrive at her own unique way of loving and belonging. ([Location 276](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=276)) - With the holistic approach, in contrast, dysfunction is not a central focus. We ask instead, “What qualities or capacities are missing from this person's embodiment of wholeness, and what can be done to cultivate these qualities or capacities?” The goal is to encourage and foster something functional and fulfilling rather than to remove something dysfunctional and deadening. ([Location 469](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=469)) - A healthy society is, among other things, sustainable, just, and compassionate. It is sustainable because it is expressly organized as an integral component of the greater community of Earth; it establishes a niche for itself that benefits both its people and the greater geo-biological community of which it is a member. It is a just society because it provides equal opportunities and benefits for all persons. It is compassionate because it shares its wealth with all other societies and with the greater web of life; it does not exploit other peoples or species. A healthy society also embraces and celebrates our enchanted human senses, bodies, and emotions and encourages our imaginative exploration of the mysteries of psyche and nature. ([Location 525](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=525)) - the core problem with patriarchal (and matriarchal) societies is their patho-adolescent egocentrism, which generates economic-class oppression, not their conspicuous suppression of the feminine or glorification of the (immature) masculine. Men have no monopoly on egocentrism. Men and masculinity are no more the problem than are women and femininity. I believe that most people would agree that we will not create a healthier society by affording women the equal right to be as pathologically egocentric as a large proportion of men have been for millennia, to acquire the equal opportunity to excel in the patho-adolescent, class-dividing world of prestige, position, and wealth, academic and corporate ladder-climbing, and power broking. Rather, mature men and women must join together to foster soulcentric development for both genders and for all races and cultures. ([Location 579](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=579)) - By soul, I mean a thing's ultimate place in the world. ([Location 641](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=641)) - A thing's place tells you how it fits in the world. ([Location 645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=645)) - Using that definition, every thing has a soul, ([Location 673](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=673)) - What makes you the individual you are is not your autonomy but your interdependent and communal relationship with everything else in nature. ([Location 682](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=682)) - If your soul is your ultimate place in the world and you need to live from that place to be fully yourself, then the world cannot be fully itself until you become fully yourself. ([Location 693](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=693)) - What I mean by place is similar to what ecologists mean by niche, which refers to the position or function of an organism within a community of plants and animals. ([Location 695](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=695)) - The human soul is a psycho-ecological niche, a niche whose essential features include the capacity for conscious self-awareness as well as social and ecological attributes. We humans occupy both a noosphere and an ecosphere. This is an essential feature of the soul of humanity. ([Location 698](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=698)) - To speak of soul as an ultimate place, we need a means of characterizing identity that is transcultural and independent of human creations. And we in fact have such a means: the natural world — its images, roles, patterns, processes, events, and animate beings. The language of nature is how soul identifies itself to us. ([Location 749](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=749)) - The human soul is precultural and prelinguistic. A person's ultimate place is what it is before he is acculturated or acquires a human language. He is born with it. It's his potential. His destiny is to live from that place, but there is no guarantee he'll succeed. ([Location 873](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=873)) - An adult is someone who has encountered her soul, retrieved some knowledge of her ultimate place in the world, acquired some practical means for occupying this place among her people, made a commitment to doing so, and is doing it. An elder is someone who, after many years of adulthood, consistently occupies his ultimate place without any further effort to do so. This frees him for something with yet greater scope and depth and fulfillment, namely, caring for the soul of the world. He does this by assisting others to prepare for, discover, and embody their souls, and by supporting the human-Earth system in the evolution of its soul. The Wheel portrays human development as the process of preparing to discover soul, cultivating a relationship with soul, and embodying soul. This is why I call it the Soulcentric Developmental Wheel. ([Location 884](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=884)) - By spirit, I mean the single, boundless, and eternal mystery that permeates and animates everything in the universe and yet transcends all. ([Location 890](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=890)) - Spirit both transcends all things and is immanent in all things. ([Location 897](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=897)) - Upperworld denotes transpersonal states of consciousness identified with spirit and characterized by unity (or nonduality), grace, bliss, transcendence, emptiness, light (often golden), enlightenment (identified, for example, as Buddha mind, nirvana, satori, or Self-realization), the celestial realm, and pure awareness (consciousness without an object). ([Location 940](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=940)) - Meditation, prayer, contemplation, and yoga are common practices for cultivating a relationship with the upperworld. ([Location 944](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=944)) - Middleworld refers to our everyday, waking identity and state of consciousness — the “dayworld,” the personal and interpersonal world of ego. ([Location 944](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=944)) - Underworld signifies transpersonal states of consciousness and identity associated with soul and characterized by depth, darkness, demons, the daemon, the subconscious, sacred woundings, dreams (the “nightworld”), the unknown or not-yet-known, shadow, death, and visions of personal and cultural destiny. ([Location 952](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=952)) - This is facilitated by practices that I refer to collectively as soul-craft and that include dreamwork and deep imagery journeys, wandering in nature, and communicating with birds, trees, the winds, and the land itself. Many of these practices are found in the ancient (and continuing) traditions of nature-based peoples. Currently, soulcraft is finding its way back into contemporary Western life through modern mystery schools, through individual disciplines (such as trance dancing and drumming, council work, storytelling, symbolic artwork, soul-oriented poetry, and shadow work), and through the work of depth psychologists such as Carl Jung and James Hillman. ([Location 956](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=956)) - I name such cultures soulcentric because they are designed to assist all members in discovering and living from their deepest and most fulfilling potentials (their individual souls), in this way contributing their most life-nourishing gifts to their community and environment and, in doing so, actualizing the culture's potential (the cultural soul) and supporting its ongoing evolution. ([Location 965](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=965)) - A society that is soulcentric is necessarily ecocentric. A soulcentric society supports each person in discovering and inhabiting her ultimate place, which is her place as granted and revealed by nature. In so doing, that society roots itself in the natural world. ([Location 972](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=972)) - The primary values of an egocentric society are safety, comfort, middleworld pleasures, and enhancement of socioeconomic status. ([Location 1003](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1003)) - The endless pursuit of security, comfort, and pleasure — in the absence of soul — leads, at best, to the accumulation of wealth (for the middle and upper classes). Wealth without soul leads to its inevitable pathological outgrowths: power differentials, socioeconomic (class) stratification, and exploitation of minorities, women, children, the poor, and all the “resources” of the natural world. For the presumably fortunate ones with adequate wealth, the pursuit of egocentric values often leads to boredom, addiction, alienation, and meaninglessness. For the lower classes, even basic security is rare. And for everyone, an illusory sense of autonomy (“freedom”) tends to breed an amorphous fear, a sense of alienation and vulnerability. ([Location 1007](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1007)) - The life of man is a circle from childhood to childhood and so it is in everything where power moves. ([Location 1062](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1062)) - The only way to cooperate with the process of maturation is to embrace fully the stage you're in (and its tasks). Paradoxically, you have to love the stage you're in, in order to (eventually) leave it. ([Location 1257](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1257)) - By yearning for the next stage, you fail to be fully in your present stage, and so you get stuck right where you are. ([Location 1406](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1406)) - The identifying signs of your stage (more or less from the most definitive to the least) are: your current psychospiritual center of gravity (PCG) the primary tasks you find yourself working on the developmental archetypes with which you and your behavior most fully resonate the primary psychosocial gift to community that you manifest without trying (simply through your presence) your circle of identity ([Location 1473](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1473)) - In your child's first four years, then, rather than emphasizing social conformity and predetermined lessons, you'll want to encourage and celebrate her natural curiosity, her dogged and multisensory exploration of everything in her world indoors and out, the pleasure she takes in her own flesh, her unrestrained laughter, her full-bodied emotionality, her unfettered sensuality (including her love of mud and rain), and her thrill in wild movement. In her infancy and early childhood, say YES! to her impulses in every way you can. Reserve your use of NO! for those rare moments when you need to teach her to avoid real dangers. ([Location 1758](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1758)) - egocentric values lead people to experience themselves primarily as agents for themselves and to maximize safety, personal comfort, and material satisfactions. What ([Location 1961](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1961)) - in a soulcentric setting, stage 1 is a nurturing Nest. But in an egocentric family, stage 1 could be more accurately, and sadly, labeled Obedience Training ([Location 1982](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=1982)) - from a soulcentric perspective, the primary developmental goal in parenting is not raising happy, well-rounded, well-educated, physically sound children. We all want this, but there is a greater goal that reframes all other child-rearing intentions, and which actually enhances the chance of raising happy children. ([Location 2421](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=2421)) - The award-winning American schoolteacher John Gatto, author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, argues that our contemporary school systems make learning anything difficult. ([Location 2948](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=2948)) - In fact, even genuine thinking is discouraged in our schools, most of which teach only memorization and mimicry. By overemphasizing shallow thinking and inconsequential strategizing, we shortchange indigenous human desires and developmental needs, such as the needs for exploration and celebration of the wondrous and beautiful, creativity and artistic expression, emotional growth and healing, healthy relationships, and personal fulfillment and meaning. ([Location 3003](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=3003)) - The Societal Entrepreneur is looking for opportunities to make things happen (progress), arrangements that'll be interesting, profitable, and a contribution to society, or at least ones that will allow him to get by socially and financially. He — or she — wants to create a notable place for himself on the socioeconomic map, a way to compete in a healthy way, a way to obtain attention, admiration, sexual partners, or at the very least, a decent place in the world. Even the shy introvert can be a Societal Entrepreneur. He may not be gregarious or have hordes of friends, but you can bet that his greatest desire is to be admired by his peers. As in the business realm, the Societal Entrepreneur is an innovator, generating and experimenting with new roles and ways of being, new styles, and new social environments. He's looking for the authentic combination that attracts his fair share of social, sexual, and economic fulfillment. ([Location 3623](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=3623)) - The central developmental task of early adolescence — again, this refers to Thespians of any age, not just teens — is to create a secure and authentic social self, one that invites both social acceptance and self-approval. ([Location 3678](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=3678)) - Many of these parents are trying to postpone the daunting question of how they'll define themselves and shape their own lives when they're no longer everyday parents. By delaying their own self-examination and growth, they are perpetrating the same developmental crime against their teens. ([Location 3752](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=3752)) - The Oasis study of human-nature reciprocity and responsibility, especially in a transitional society, might include an exploration of how nature supports every aspect of our human lives how there is only one economy — Earth's — of which all human economies are components how to design an individual lifestyle and a human economy with zero waste and emissions how to proactively care for endangered species and ecosystems how to care for abandoned pets how to restore damaged habitats how to cultivate intentional relationships in the more-than-human world how extractive industries have violated the human-nature balance, how to restore that balance, and what alternatives exist for meeting our genuine needs renewable and safe energy sources, processes, and economies rituals and practices for observing and deepening sacred reciprocity with the natural world how to see the natural world as our model, mentor, and inspiration for fashioning elements of human society and solving human problems (This is the new field of biomimicry; see the resources at the end of this book.) ([Location 4002](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4002)) - We might ask: independent of cultural influence, what are the differences between human masculinity and femininity? I think of masculinity as an outward orientation, like that of male genitals. Masculinity is the tendency or capacity to move outward or forward; to seek progress; to see the problems, opportunities, and solutions at some distance and ahead of oneself in both time and space; to be competitive; and to probe into the world and into the future. Relative to the feminine, the masculine supports sharper distinctions and more clearly defined boundaries, which assist a person in moving forward and fabricating new things. Genitalia notwithstanding, any given individual, male or female, can be more or less masculine at the core of the self. ([Location 4208](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4208)) - Femininity is somewhat the reverse of masculinity. It is an inward orientation — like that of female genitals. Femininity is the tendency or capacity to be receptive, welcoming, cooperative, perceptually and emotionally attuned to what is already present. The feminine desire is to flesh out and enhance what already exists, to creatively adorn and praise it. Boundaries are more permeable, and similarities more important than distinctions, which supports receptivity and communion. ([Location 4215](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4215)) - To become whole, most Thespian men (namely, those with masculine cores) must learn to receive the world into the self and develop their feminine openness. Most Thespian women (those with feminine cores) must learn to thrust themselves assertively into the world and develop their masculine drive. ([Location 4237](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4237)) - immaturity. The solution is not to make femininity more important than masculinity but to create a soulcentric society in which mature men and women are more prevalent than lifelong adolescents. ([Location 4250](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4250)) - For over one hundred years, mainstream American education has been systematically tuned to produce, on the one hand, blue-collar workers and soldiers, and, on the other, white-collar scientists, technologists, military officers, business managers, and career professionals. The idea has been to “keep America strong,” which means more successful than other nations in competing for Earth's limited resources, on which all human economies are grounded. This has been accomplished in the United States and other Western societies by creating a large workforce of wage slaves and soldiers and a sizable cadre of sharp and ambitious minds capable of managing that workforce and of creating technological advances for the march of military-economic “progress.” Consequently, we have a bifurcated educational system successfully designed to limit the options and dull the minds and aspirations of the first group while both sharpening and narrowing the minds of the second. The educational emphasis for the professional class is on thinking, but thinking in rather shallow and constricted modes. Independent, critical thinking and any kind of feeling, imagining, and sensing are minimized, marginalized, or discouraged because they are deemed irrelevant or detrimental to industrial development and personal fulfillment.27 Another reason these innate human capacities are suppressed in Western societies (and must be) is because they easily expose the egocentric idea of “progress” for the self-destructive and world-devastating fantasy that it is. ([Location 4283](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4283)) - From an eco-soulcentric perspective, the skills that teenagers really need to acquire, beyond those of the Garden, are those discussed in this chapter: the skills of authenticity, emotional access and expression, conflict resolution, status assignment, sexuality, sustenance, human-nature reciprocity, and Loyal Soldier rehabilitation. ([Location 4312](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4312)) - Life is about acquiring as much material wealth, physical attractiveness, and power as possible. ([Location 4435](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4435)) - Preparation for Soul Initiation requires that you be separated — psychologically if not physically — from the ordinary life of your community so that you might cease to define yourself according to the familiar rules and norms. During your Oasis time — the summer of your life — you gained some confidence in your personality and you came to trust the way that life unfolds. Now, as Rilke writes in his “Book of Pilgrimage,” life becomes “a riddle again, / and you again a stranger” — to yourself and others.2 You will have to relinquish your temptation to conform or to seek acceptance from others. You will have to go out on your own. ([Location 4802](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4802)) - Your task is not repentance for the sins of your past but a surrender to the desires of your truer human nature, that which “the soft animal of your body” loves. Oliver says this is the only thing you have to do, but she doesn't say it's easy. This is a surrender that takes some time and effort. What's involved is actually both a surrender of and a surrender to: first a surrender of your beliefs about how you were supposed to be and how the world was supposed to work, and then a surrender to your deepest and wildest passions. These two surrenders correspond to the two tasks of the Cocoon. ([Location 4812](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4812)) - Spirited teens want to become, not “responsible adults,” but animated, passionate, engaged, vital, alive, contributing, joyous adults — in love with the world, their lives, and others. ([Location 4864](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4864)) - Possible features of a Confirmation rite include the following: A preparation time in which the initiate simplifies her life. She drops out of social scenes, roles, and jobs that would not support the underworld journey. She ties up loose ends, completes as much unfinished interpersonal business as she can, and says her good-byes. A community ceremony in which the initiate's social and psychological successes are affirmed. Her talents, achievements, unique styles, and sensibilities are noted. The community acknowledges her maturity and Thespian social contributions. Putting away, giving away, or ritually sacrificing objects and clothes associated with her early adolescence, or first adulthood. A ritual funeral for, or sacrifice of, the primary ego (the adolescent personality, which, in Western society, sees us through our first adulthood). This includes expressions of both grief and joy. The taking of vows, in which she dedicates this next stage of life to mystery, soul discovery, and the underworld journey. A ceremonial dedication or commitment to the initiation process that is about to begin. (The initiation process can span several years.) A ceremony of leave-taking, in which, perhaps, she changes clothes (symbolizing or embodying the shift from Thespian to Wanderer), performs purifications and/or exchanges gifts with family members and/or mentors. The ceremony might conclude with a symbolic leave-taking from the community or a literal departure for a few weeks or months, a year, or indefinitely. ([Location 4894](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=4894)) - Her authentic place is not simply one that someone will pay her to occupy, such as a job. Nor is it a task she happens to have the talent to perform, such as an art or a craft, or a career that a vocational counselor recommends for her, such as banking or social work. Nor is it a social role, such as caregiver, student, parent, servant, leader, whore, or rebel, that other people will accept her in. It's got to be her place, one that is in keeping with her vital core. It's a place defined not by the deeds she performs but by the qualities of soul that she embodies; not by her physical, social, or economic achievements but by the true character she manifests; neither by her capacity to conform to the masses, nor by her ability to creatively rebel against the mainstream, but by the unique way she performs her giveaway for her community. Her ultimate place is identified not by any social forms or roles but, rather, by the symbols, stories, and archetypes unearthed from the deep structure of her psyche and by the way the world invites her to belong to it. ([Location 5144](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5144)) - But, given that you'll never be healed of all of your emotional wounds, there's no need to become fixated there! An obsession with stage-3 psychotherapy can arrest your development. ([Location 5319](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5319)) - A key authenticity practice is to stop pleasing others at the expense of your own integrity. If the important others in your life — at home, at work, at play, in your spiritual community — want you to be someone you are not (for example, a carefree confidant, a charmer, a rescuer, a victim, a bad boy, a scholar, a hometown hero, a pleaser, a homeboy, a loser, or everybody's mother), you will have to surrender your impulse to keep living your life for them. You will have to relinquish your willingness to make major life decisions just to take care of them emotionally or to win their approval. ([Location 5400](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5400)) - Soul encounters take a variety of forms. One of the most common is a perception (visual, acoustic, or kinesthetic) of the mysterious image you were born with, your soul image. Another is a revelation of the shape of your soul story — the story you were born to live in the world. A third is a numinous meeting with a being or place that communicates something of your destiny through language, gesture, emotion, image, or dream. ([Location 5480](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5480)) - Woven into the fabric of your soul image is a mysterious symbol or theme that holds the secret of your life purpose. Through one or more soul encounters, you discover how that symbol or theme reveals the gift you were born to carry to others, and how your soul powers are vehicles for doing so. The fact that you have your particular soul qualities, and not others, is the truth at the center of your soul image. ([Location 5489](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5489)) - Every culture has, or once had, many soul-discovery practices. Some of the most common, each explored in considerable detail in Soulcraft, are as follows: Soulcentric dreamwork: experiential processes for facilitating transformation, personal deepening, and initiation through the rich landscapes of our nocturnal visions. Soulcentric dreamwork diverges from other, more common dream approaches in its premise that every dream is an opportunity to develop our relationship to the undercurrent identities beneath our surface personalities and routine agendas. Each dream provides a doorway into the unfolding story, desires, potentialities, and invitations of the soul, and a chance for the ego to be further educated and initiated into that underworld story and those underworld desires and possibilities. The purpose of soulcentric dreamwork is not to heal, improve, flatter, or entertain the personality but rather to destabilize it and create an opening to the mysteries of nature and psyche. With such an approach, we do not work on our dreams but help our dreams to do their work on us. Deep imagery or active imagination: inner journeys in which we interact, while awake, with the other-than-ego inhabitants of our own psyches or Earths psyche. There are many approaches, but among the most effective are those that involve imaginal animals as inner guides to personal wholing and initiation.48 Self-designed ceremony: a means of conversing with soul and nature in the Mystery's own language of embodied symbol and image. Discovery, fashioning, and use of symbols and objects: for attracting or embodying soul images or universal, transpersonal qualities. Skillful use of hallucinogenic or entheogenic substances as a component of ceremonies and soul-discovery processes: for the purpose of guided, ritual explorations of the underworld of soul.49 Symbolic artwork: for the purpose of both discovering and expressing soul qualities. Journal work: creative writing as a way to connect with our own depths and to cultivate a relationship with the Mystery. Vision questing: fasting for three days or more in wilderness solitude and crying for a vision that reveals how we might serve our people and the world. Apprehending and responding to signs and omens in nature. Body practices for altering consciousness: to perceive actualities and imagine possibilities that we might otherwise overlook, and in doing so helping us weave the subtle and unseen forces of the world into form, making the unconscious conscious. Examples: Fasting Breath work: consciousness-altering breathing techniques Practices involving extreme physical exertion Yoga postures and movement Council work: a way of empowering people to speak from their hearts, an ancient practice transforming the experience of contemporary group process. Council work enables us to open to the radical otherness of our fellow humans, in that way knitting together true community, and supports us in accessing and expressing our most vital… ([Location 5577](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5577)) - He knows that the changes in consciousness and identity that he goes through while searching are as important as finding what he seeks. He is not in a hurry. Wandering is as valuable as anything else he might do. ([Location 5717](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5717)) - in addition to wildlands, he will roam through diverse states of consciousness and have serendipitous communions with remarkable people. ([Location 5722](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5722)) - Often we discover that our negative shadow holds something sacred: our deepest passion. This might be a longing to dance, to create magic, to sing, or to love with abandon. ([Location 5808](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5808)) - As a Wanderer, however, you'll find it necessary to adopt the regular practice of identifying and engaging the shadow. Take careful note, for example, when you find yourself with a strong charge — positive or negative — around another person, especially someone you don't know well. Which of their qualities do you like or dislike? Look for these same qualities in yourself, perhaps expressed in subtle or unexpected ways, or only occasionally but with a vengeance or a flare. Wonder about the other qualities of that person, too, the ones you didn't notice at first. Then imagine how you might be changed if you embraced that person as an ally or assimilated their qualities. Whether the other is from your everyday life or the nightworld of dreams, engage in imaginary dialogues with this shadow figure. Or imagine yourself merging with the shadow, and then allow it to express itself through drawing, painting, writing, movement, music, or dance. ([Location 5817](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5817)) - She learns to look into her lover's eyes and see not just her friend and sexual partner but also a reflection of her own animus or anima ([Location 5836](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=5836)) - True service to community and deep personal fulfillment are the twin and inseparable aspirations of adulthood. Soul-rooted service is the adult's way of loving the world. ([Location 6342](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=6342)) - Soul-acceptance seeks a good fit among three parties: personality, soul, and the more-than-human community. The adult aspires to effectively embody his gifts of soul in the mysterious and complex web of people, other creatures, and ecosystems. ([Location 6358](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=6358)) - The Apprentice's developmental task can be divided into four subtasks: identifying one or more cultural settings for her soulwork developing the skills of her soulwork (acquiring a delivery system) and performing that work in her community further explorations of her soul image or story and of the nature of her soul powers the soul-rooted individuation of the personality (differentiating the self in relation to soul, as opposed to the earlier differentiation in relation to society) ([Location 6438](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=6438)) - Ecocentrism develops as a matter of course during the Wellspring precisely because the Apprentice is now learning to embody soul. ([Location 6663](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=6663)) - Before I committed myself to this new mission and vision of my work, my business was on the way to having the best financial year in the eleven of its existence. As soon as I made a commitment to the new direction, business opportunities dried up. Clients had to cancel scheduled assignments because of budget cuts. Prospective assignments that, before, I would easily secure were awarded to competitors. Gradually, I realized that those assignments were congruent with my previous focus but not with my new mission. ([Location 6741](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=6741)) - Whether his service is tangible or intangible, the Artisan's task does not require the invention of new cultural traditions such as original art media, political philosophies, educational methods, or economic systems. His service is just as likely to flow through a new voice expressed within an existing tradition like poetry, jazz, medicine, ecology, agriculture, ecopsychology, cybernetics, democracy, or journalism or other media. Whatever delivery systems he employs, the Artisan is doing something new within that form, or stretching that form's envelope, or applying it to a novel context. ([Location 7407](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0010SEOW6&location=7407))