The Soul’s Call To Your Inner Poet

In last week’s post, “Access­ing the Wis­dom of the Soul,” one reader posed the ques­tion: “Shouldn’t we prove that the soul exists?” Oth­ers won­dered if the soul has a reli­gious con­no­ta­tion. All this talk about soul, but do we know what is it exactly?

My own idea of what the soul is and how it oper­ates has been deeply imprinted by my study of arche­typal psy­chol­ogy and the work of Dr. James Hill­man, the father and founder of arche­typal psy­chol­ogy, an approach to work­ing with the psy­che that addresses the pri­macy of the soul and its process in shap­ing our human experience.

From an inter­view with Dr. Hill­man in the New Kab­balah on the soul:

The clas­si­cal prob­lems of “… what it is to be truly human, how to love, why to live, and what is emo­tion, value, jus­tice, change, body, God, soul and mad­ness in our lives,” as well as the more imme­di­ate prob­lems of sex, money, power, fam­ily, health, etc. are all insol­u­ble. Their eter­nal pur­pose is sim­ply “to pro­vide the base of soul-making.”

From Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul:

“The ‘soul’ is not a thing, but a qual­ity or a dimen­sion of expe­ri­enc­ing life and our­selves. It has to do with depth, value, relat­ed­ness, heart and per­sonal substance.”

So whether or not you agree or can even remotely align with the idea or con­cept of a human soul, there are thinkers through­out human his­tory who, while not nec­es­sar­ily agree­ing on the word, have given the sub­ject of that part of human exis­tence that tran­scends body and mind, that is more than the sum of its parts, a great deal of thought and con­sid­er­a­tion. In this dis­cus­sion this is what we are call­ing “soul.”

One reader last week sug­gested that the soul is equiv­a­lent to an “ani­mat­ing life force.” I can align with this idea. Within every human being, at the moment of birth when the very first breath is drawn, this life force enters the body. It remains with us until we take our very last breath. With the final expi­ra­tion, this force which has ani­mated our life our entire life­time, leaves the body and the body dies.

Whether or not the soul lives on into eter­nity is a sub­ject of much spec­u­la­tion and lit­tle agree­ment. How­ever, the eter­nal­ity of the soul has been cel­e­brated through­out human his­tory. From the ancient draw­ings of the cave dwellers in south­ern France, to the tem­ples built to guard and ferry the souls of the pharaohs in ancient Egypt, to man’s ear­li­est cre­ation mytholo­gies in Sume­ria, the human story has always included the story of its soul.

Accord­ing to Dr. Hill­man, this ani­mat­ing force, embed­ded in us at birth, comes with a “call­ing.” He states “we enter the world called.” He bor­rows this idea from Plato’s Repub­lic. In a nut­shell, Plato’s idea is that the soul of each indi­vid­ual is given an image before it’s born. He calls it a “soul com­pan­ion” or a dai­mon. The dai­mon car­ries the pat­tern for our lives and guides us over the course of our lives in its unfold­ing. It is the car­rier of our des­tiny and our life’s guardian.

Whether this is fac­tu­ally true or sim­ply a myth can­not be proven. But imag­ine for a moment that it were true. If you begin to “inquire within,” to con­sult your own soul for what is its call­ing, it might just set you on a won­drous adven­ture of discovery.

One way to dis­cern the soul’s call­ing is to take a look around. Look closely and you will see that it’s all over your life. Seen through the fil­ter of the soul’s call­ing, look at your envi­ron­ment. It will tell you the story.

Is your envi­ron­ment orderly or chaotic? Are you drawn to vivid col­ors or qui­eter serene ones? Is beauty in your space impor­tant to you or is your liv­ing space a place to hang your hat only? What about gar­den­ing and flow­ers? Art? Music? The soul thrives in many dif­fer­ent kinds of envi­ron­ments. There is no one way for the soul. What is your way?

Look at your rela­tion­ships. What state are they in? Are they smooth and func­tion­ing well? Are they bumpy and rocky? Do you pay a lot of atten­tion to rela­tion­ships in your life? Do you tend to seek soli­tude and avoid rela­tion­ships altogether?

Look at your work life. How does it feel? Are you happy and sat­is­fied, pleased with your accom­plish­ments? Have you quit or lost jobs, started but never fin­ished things? What are the pat­terns you see? Are you where you want to be in this domain?

Your soul is express­ing its call­ing and its stamp is all over your life. There are many ways to tap into the psy­che of the soul. Last week, many read­ers offered up poetry in their com­ments. A response no doubt inspired by the soul for poetry is one of the soul’s favorite means of expres­sion. Writ­ing, poetry, art, music… all call upon the cre­ative realm where the soul dwells.

The soul is a poet by nature. So here’s an invi­ta­tion to let your inner poet out and see what emerges. You needn’t try to fig­ure any­thing out or make it rhyme. The soul fol­lows its own rules for expres­sion. If you feel so inspired, cre­ate some poetry, right here on the spot and leave it as a com­ment. What does your soul want to express?

Tagged as: Human Interest, James Hillman, Psychoanalysis, Soul