ENCOUNTER WITH THE SOUL

Soul is the deepest essence, the mysterious center, of our psyches. It is the sacred realm of our most heartfelt purposes and of our lives' unique meanings. Soul holds the keys to the most important lessons of our lifetimes—and to the gifts that are ours alone to bring to the world. When the time is right, we must submit to a direct encounter with soul to discover our:

• paramount life purpose
• sacred work
• most vital personal powers
• source of greatest meaning
• heart wisdom
• deepest passions
• full capacity for both loving and being loved
• true name (or soul name)
• soul's story and its relationship to the universe story

• emotional healing at the deepest levels
• a powerful opening of the heart (sometimes a stretching or breaking)
• initiation into true adulthood or the next stage of adulthood
• confrontation with, and assimilation of, the personal shadow

Genuine and profound soul-encounter of this sort is rare and requires extraordinary circumstances. It's not likely to happen in a weekend workshop. It rarely occurs in even extended and intensive psychotherapy. Until our lives are well-rooted in soul, we're not likely to find abundant depth or sacredness in our everyday lives—no matter how hard we look. Profound soul-encounter is simply not an easy thing to arrange. It couldn't be: We spent our first 14 to 18 years (at least) developing an identity, a self-concept that allows us to participate successfully as a member of our world. This identity provides us with at least a minimal degree of acceptance from others, perhaps even an extraordinary amount of acceptance. This adolescent identity, however, is only provisional; it was not destined to take us through the rest of our lives! It is an early stage in psychospiritual growth, a means for us to carve an initial foothold in the world from which we can launch further explorations of life.

Many people journey through their entire lives with this adolescent identity, at the most making a series of prosaic amendments to this initial kernel.

What we need and long for is qualitatively distinct from these personality amendments: Ideally, at the end of adolescence, we receive our first of many opportunities to shed our provisional identity, to encounter soul, and to recover some significant pieces of our deeper soul-identity. We call this an "opportunity," but the truth is that the ego—our conscious self—can be very much threatened by this encounter, and understandably so. It is tremendously difficult to say goodbye to something that is so fundamental and that works so well for us. Even if we are depressed and unfulfilled, at least we know where we stand and how to operate there.

This deep-reaching encounter with soul constitutes a significant crisis for the ego, and so, normally, the ego would only consider such an undertaking during a crisis. In fact, that's exactly what happens: People experience genuine and profound soul encounter only under the most extraordinary of circumstances. And it turns out there are only a few categories of such circumstances:

• Significantly traumatic personal crises, including

  • major physical trauma (injury or illness), often resulting in a near-death experience
  • loss of a primary relationship (through death or otherwise)
  • an extreme psychosocial life crisis that forces us to re-examine everything in our life
  • spiritual crisis
  • a "dark-night-of-the soul" experience

• World-shattering or mind-blowing experiences: an occurrence that is not only extraordinary, but that significantly and irrevocably changes our understanding of what the world is and how it works
• Genuine and extended "wanderings" in which we journey far from "home" in both the physical and psychological senses, all the while without contact with "home" (e.g., a year in the desert or in a truly foreign culture)
• Rites of initiation or rites of passage: ceremonial processes specifically designed to temporarily displace the ego-bound state of consciousness to allow for the encounter with soul.

Animas Valley Institute offers the latter sort of opportunity. Our programs are designed to create an immensely powerful form of soul encounter for people of the contemporary first and second worlds.

LASTING BENEFITS FROM THE ENCOUNTER WITH SOUL

The encounter with soul, however it is induced, may be sublime or terrifying or both, but we will not realize any lasting benefit unless the ego is able to return from the journey with a clear grasp of those aspects of soul that were encountered. Otherwise, it will merely be a powerful experience that makes for a good story. The goal is for the ego to become firmly rooted in soul. Ultimately, for the experience to benefit both the quester and the rest of the world, we must learn to embody soul through a life of true service. It is important, then, to keep this in mind: To benefit from an encounter with soul, we need both (1) an extraordinary opportunity and (2) the knowledge and ability required to properly make use of that opportunity.

On all its programs, Animas Valley Institute offers training in the knowledge and abilities (Soulcraft) that help you take greatest advantage of the encounter with soul. Our programs include:

• The Animas Quest
• The Soulcraft Intensive
• Advanced Intensives & Trainings
• Soulcraft Journeys
• Apprenticeship Program
• Specialized Programs