Page 48 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - October / November 2018

48 New Stories Of Our Souls

The New Stories of Our

Souls

Terry Patten

The ultimate awakening, say the great wisdom
traditions, is radical, nonseparate, “nondual”
awareness – stable, conscious oneness with all
existence – the essence of wholeness.
Paradoxically, though, applying nondual psychotherapy have evolved a new specialty, in Next you go before Lachesis, who assigns your
orientations to the messiness of life often results which people are guided into a full, healthy luck, the subtle magnetism that surrounds your
in delusions. In practical terms, transcendental relationship to their life purpose. As daemon, attracting and repelling certain people,
spiritual teachings are an incomplete description methodologies are charted for thriving at a new events, and qualities of experience. This too is
of what it actually takes to engage in a total, level, we learn the art and science of mastery as responsive to your character, and like your
conscious, integral life of practice. For most it emerges organically from meaning and character, this magnetism remains malleable as
people, a second and simultaneous mystical motivation. you continue to practice and cultivate virtue.
adventure is also real and necessary. Many This is an important contemporary The last fate, Atropos, assigns the moment of
teachers call this “soul work.” expression of the ancient tradition of soul your death, which is determined before you are
This kind of mystical growth is visible in adventure and maturation, which is celebrated in even born. She was “she who cannot be turned”
the life journey through its tests, lessons, and the esoteric traditions of all religions. In that – not malleable at all. The deeper significance of
adventures. Soul work contacts intuitive ancient framing, the hero’s purpose was his this ancient Greek view is what it says about a
guidance, cultivates character, and discovers story. He or she seized a means by which to live soul’s task, which is to cultivate virtue, to
purpose. It draws upon the power of the a meaningful destiny. Today, we all must develop character, and to build a relationship
foundational structures of the human psyche and become the heroes of our own stories. None of with one’s daemon – to learn to listen to the
human culture as they are revealed in archetypal us wants an insignificant, ignorant, voice of the daemon with the “ear of the heart”
stories. Every one of us is living out a unique impoverished, diminished destiny in a and to realize one’s soul’s highest destiny. This
story, even while we all share a collective story. diminishing world. We feel called to be the resonates with James Hillman’s “acorn theory”
Today, all those stories unfold in an heroes of our lives, and perhaps heroes of our (1997), in which, like an acorn, which is
unprecedentedly urgent context. We are living collective life. So a focus on purpose is an ever potentiated to become an oak, the soul is
through a particular moment in our great more crucial dimension of personal potentiated to gradually express its unique
collective story, and it confers an extra transformation. It is an important dimension character across the trajectory of a human life.
dimension of meaning and purpose on every even of indigenous soul traditions. Serious soul work is directed at discovering and
individual life journey. Whereas the ultimate Ecopsychologists like Bill Plotkin have been realizing the soul’s deepest purposes.
spiritual awakening is to radical and exploring how people can incarnate their soul In this work, we ask to hear the voice of
transcendental consciousness, soul work intuits life and purpose by deriving virtue, vitality, and our soul, our daemon. And then we make
and participates primarily in the subtle guidance from relationships with natural places, ourselves a pleasing offering and wait in silence.
animating energetics of our lives and their animals, trees, and plants. From both local and After a time, it blesses us by awakening a
sources of guidance and inspiration. global foundations, we can become heroically channel of communication, eventually helping
PURPOSE AND SOUL related to our whole more-than-human world. us discover that our own way of being, our own
A great deal of dynamic personal growth Socrates, as related by Plato in The way of seeing things, our own way of going
work focuses on purpose. Purpose gives us Republic, told “the myth of Er,” which describes through the world, is, paradoxically, a kind of
meaning. Meaning confers value. Value is a what happens between lifetimes. After death, salvation.
basis for dignity. And dignity is essential to each soul drinks the water of Lethe and forgets By this means we arrive in soul-level
health. People who have a sense of positive everything of the life just ended and all past authenticity, where our purpose can naturally
purpose thrive more. Research documents that a identities. But your character, shaped by the show itself to us, and show us how to grow to
sense of purpose or meaning correlates with virtue you cultivated in your previous life and incarnate it more and more fully, and discover its
dramatic benefits to mood, quality of lives, remains. And on the basis of your far corners. As we each do this, traveling every
relationships, success in careers, cognitive character, you are assigned your daemon, your step in our unique paths, we can discover that
function, cardiovascular health, immune life’s soul companion, the carrier of your deeper together we are all dancing a precise, beautiful
function, and longevity. Egoic purpose is flavor, your soulful nature and guiding spirit. holographic choreography, through which the
sufficient for basic health, but larger purposes Then you go before the Fates: Clotho, Lachesis, soul of the world is working out its passionate
beyond the apparent separate ego – for example, and Atropos. On the basis of your character and logic, or entelechy.
those centered around one’s community, or daemon, Clotho spins forth the unique (Continued on Page 49)
nation, or the world, or the cosmos – have the circumstances of your birth – including
potential to liberate progressively higher levels everything we ordinarily associate with both Dare To Believe - Dare To Be Heard
of happiness and thriving. As a result of these heredity and environment – as your “spindle The ‘X’ Zone Radio TV Show
observations, the fields of coaching and destiny.” Rob McConnell