New World Library Online Interview
September 2003

New World Library Interview
with Bill Plotkin

1. What do you mean by "soul" and how is that different from "spirit"? Do only humans have souls?

By "soul," I mean the essential nature of a thing, its primary organizing, sustaining, and guiding principle. Each thing in the universe is unique and therefore every soul is unique. By "spirit," I mean the single, great, and eternal mystery that permeates and animates everything in the universe and yet transcends all. Some would say that "spirit" (or "God" or "Buddha" or "the Tao") is the name we use for the soul of the universe.

Our human souls embrace the essence of our particular individuality. This individuality reflects our unique and deepest personal characteristics, the core and enduring qualities that are much deeper than personality and that define our personhood, the "real me." Soul is what is most wild and natural about us. It is our personal source of passion, inspiration, and meaning.

Soul embraces and calls us to embody what is most unique in us. Spirit encompasses and draws us toward what is most universal and shared.

Each thing -- "each stone, blossom, child," as the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes -- has a soul. But only we humans, as far as we know, develop a form of consciousness that is separate from our souls. This is a distinguishing feature of humanity, at once our greatest curse and our greatest blessing: after about age 4, our egos (our consciousness) are centered in a part of our selves separate from our souls so that we don't consciously understand our own unique individual essence. An initiation process is required for our egos to make contact with our souls. All nature-based cultures, from the beginning of the human story, have provided their people with such initiation rites so that each person can discover their particular way of belonging and the unique gift they might offer to their human community and to the larger more-than-human world. Over the past several centuries we, in the Western, industrialized cultures, have forgotten how to consciously encounter the mysteries and secrets of our own souls. What I call soulcraft is a collection of contemporary practices designed to help modern Westerners once again find their way into the mysteries of soul.

2. Most of your work with people takes place in the wilderness, or at least semi-wild places. Why? What is the relationship between nature and the human soul?

The soulcraft programs my colleagues and I lead take place in relatively untamed settings for at least two reasons. First, the everyday ego, which creates our routine ways of being in the world and is thereby our greatest obstacle to soul encounter, is supported too strongly by the structures and activities of everyday life at home and at work. To encounter our souls, we need to escape for a time from our everyday social routines, our human-created artifacts, and our everyday ways of belonging. Extended immersion in wild nature is the best way to do this. Second, because the soul is the most natural and wild element of our human nature, the soul is most encouraged and emboldened by sustained periods in wildness. There is a natural mystical communion that takes place between our human souls and wild nature -- it's animals, plants, waters, landforms, winds, clouds, seasons, sun, moon, stars, and galaxies. If we offer careful and reverent attention, we can overhear and be informed by the conversation constantly unfolding between nature and psyche.

Thomas Berry reminds us that the word nature comes from the Latin natus, "to be born," and that the nature of a thing "has to do with that dynamic principle that holds something together and gives it its identity." The human soul functions in the same way: the soul holds our individuality together and gives us our identity. Soul and nature are only slightly different ways of talking about the essence of a thing, whether a stone, a blossom, or a person. The soul of a blossom is its essential nature. Our human souls consist of those aspects of self that are most natural, that are most of nature — the aspects of self to which nature herself gave birth.

3. Does everyone need to spend time in wilderness to mature into an authentic adult? Why do you think so many modern people are afraid of the wilderness?

First of all, by "authentic adult," I mean a person who has discovered their soul image, "the truth at the center of the image they were born with," as the poet David Whyte calls it, AND has made an utter commitment to embodying that image in their world. The embodiment, the living, of that image is an adult's gift to his or her community. Making that commitment to live our specific soul image is what I mean by soul initiation.

To discover our soul image, what Michelangelo called the image in the heart, we must enter the wild places of life, for that is where the image dwells. These wild places include the depths of the human heart itself as well as the untamed terrain of the physical world. So it is not necessary to go out into the wilderness of nature, but it is certainly one of the most effective ways for most people.

Many modern people are afraid of the wilderness -- and for the same reason they are afraid of their own souls: they suspect at some level (and suspect correctly) that the encounter with the wild will upset the carefully arranged applecart of their everyday lives. We long for what that encounter will provide us -- the deeper passions, adventures, and aliveness of our souls -- but we shudder at the prospect of what it would cost us -- our safe and familiar routines and relationships.

4. Given how rare soul initiation is in Western industrialized cultures, do you mean to imply that most moderns never reach true adulthood?

Essentially, yes, but we need to remember that each culture has its own definition of adulthood. In Western cultures, by "adult" we mean something like a man or woman who is occupying what we consider a "mature" role in the human community, someone, that is, who is a responsible parent, or married, or owns a home with a mortgage, or holds down a job so that they are no longer an economic dependent upon their parents or society, or is contributing in some other way to "the common good". Jungian psychologist James Hollis refers to this stage of development as the first adulthood, which is indeed a type of achievement -- not everyone gets that far. But, if you think about it, even most 15-year-olds are capable of these sorts of things (if they had to, and we let them). And most 40- or 50-year-olds are still doing these same things more or less in the same way they might have done them at 15; the primary difference is that they have more polished versions of the personalities and worldviews they had as teenagers.

From the perspective of soul and that of nature-based cultures, most people in the West are, developmentally, children or, at best, adolescents. Most of our educational, religious, social, political, and economic organizations in the West are designed precisely to maintain a sort of perpetual immaturity among the people they "serve." This is because our economic system requires unimaginative and docile workers who are willing to take the soul-stifling jobs that produce the products and services of our consumer society, as well as to be the consumers who desire and buy those products and services, most of which nobody really needs but which those who run and benefit from those organizations need you to want. An initiated adult has no interest in contributing to that economy or that lifestyle, as either one of its workers or as one of its consumers. They have something more inspiring, challenging, fulfilling, and life-affirming to do: live their souls into the world as a gift to others.

What Hollis calls the second adulthood is what I refer to as true, or soulful, adulthood. This is the stage that begins when you become convinced that life really must be about more than another round of success (or failure) at the Standard Game of Security Building -- the pursuit of your personal selection of career, material possessions, physical safety, comfort, social and sexual relationships, and economic position. Now you hear a call to "sink back into the source of everything," as Rilke writes, to "go out into your heart as onto a vast plain." You’re no longer willing or able to continue your life the way you have. First you'll have to loosen your beliefs about the world and the way you exist in it. Then you will have to open yourself to those mysterious possibilities — your destiny — that the soul has in store for you. Finally, you will gather up those soulful intentions and powers and learn to manifest them in the world. These are the three stages of the underworld journey, the path that leads to a soulful adulthood.

5. What is the role of rites of passage in your work? Is soulcraft related to the initiation rites of indigenous people?

My work is about helping people develop psycho-spiritually, to progress from the first adulthood to soulful adulthood and, eventually, to genuine elderhood. There are two fundamental components to the maturation process: first are the developmental tasks specific to each stage and second are the rites of passage to help people move, when they are ready, from one stage to the next. There are at least eight distinct stages in a full human life, stages that range from infancy through elderhood, and nine rites of passage that help us move from our beginnings (birth) to our end (death). The passage from late adolescence to true adulthood, for example, is only one of those nine transitions. A rite of passage, by itself, no matter how powerful, will not move a person from one stage to the next. The person has to become eligible for that rite by virtue of the work they have done on the developmental tasks specific to the stage they are in. This usually takes several years or more in each stage. Otherwise, a rite of passage will have no real or lasting effect.

My book, Soulcraft, presents a set of practices that help us accomplish the developmental tasks of one stage in particular: what I call the Second Cocoon, the stage within which we make the crossing from our first adulthood (which is, in essence, an extended adolescence) to a soulful adulthood. The majority of people in Western culture never get this far. But we all can get there, and Soulcraft is a guidebook for how this can be done in our own contemporary, Western ways without adopting the techniques developed by the indigenous or nature-based cultures for their own people. I am currently completing a second book which offers a modern perspective on the developmental tasks and the rites of passage for all eight stages of the human journey.

Soulcraft focuses on the developmental tasks of one stage of life, the Second Cocoon, more than it focuses on the associated rites of passage. I call this stage the Second Cocoon because it is the time of life that takes us from our first, successful caterpillar-like personality structure, across the borders and into the wild mysteries of nature and psyche to eventually become butterfly-like. The Second Cocoon, involving a death of an old way of being and a birth of something new and soul-rooted, is a place into which most Western people never go willingly and/or don't know how to reach, but that affords the greatest ecstasies, adventures, and opportunities.

The primary focus of Soulcraft is neither on indigenous rites of passage nor on rites of passage more generally. It is on modern, nature-based pathways to soul that deepen our time in the Second Cocoon and that eventually lead to true adulthood.

6. What are some of the differences between modern society and the cultures of the nature-based peoples that require us to have a new approach to soul?

First, we have a very different worldview than indigenous peoples. Their story of how the world began, how we humans got here, and why we are here is a very different one than ours. They have their sacred stories (myths) and we have ours. Our emerging sacred story is none other than what Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme call the Universe Story, the 13 billion year old epic of how the cosmos unfolded from the primordial flaring forth to our present time. We've caught on to this story in part through the discoveries of empirical science, something the indigenous people did not and do not have. Our approach to soul must be informed by our own modern understanding of the universe.

Second, we have an unprecedented knowledge of many cultures, their great diversity, and their relativity, each to the others. We can no longer pretend that our ways, our religion(s), and our stories are the only ones. Our approach to soul must honor cultural relativity.

Third, we've invented a stage of life, adolescence, that did not exist (at least in the same form) before a couple hundred years ago. We are not likely to reverse that development. Our approach to soul must incorporate our modern creation of adolescence.

Fourth, unlike many indigenous cultures, we know about and embark upon ascent-oriented spiritual journeys (upward toward the non-dual, the One, as in Buddhism and mystical Christianity and Judaism) which are journeys of transcendence, as well as engaging in descent-oriented spiritual journeys (downward toward the dark mysteries of the individual soul and of wild nature) which are journeys of inscendence, as Thomas Berry calls them. Our modern approach to soul must be undertaken in the light of the ascent as well as in the dark of the descent.

And, finally, we in the West have developed are own distinct approach to soul in the form of the concepts and practices of the depth psychologists -- the Jungians and post-Jungians -- whose work has produced unique and sophisticated approaches to dreams and to our waking deep imagination. A truly Western path to soul must be anchored in depth psychology as well as in wild nature.

7. Does your book actually guide the reader in practices that lead to soul encounter? Can people do this on their own?

Yes, the book includes over 40 practices, disciplines, and lifestyle approaches that lead to the recovery and embodiment of our individual soul images. Readers supported only by the book can employ many of the practices, but most can be taken deeper when used in a group or led by an experienced soulcraft guide.

8. Over the past 20 years or so, there's been great interest in the work of Joseph Campbell, who introduced many of us to the power of myth and the universal hero's journey into the underworld. What is the relationship between soulcraft and the hero's journey of which Campbell wrote?

Soulcraft is a set of practices and perspectives that support the contemporary member of Western culture to embark upon the cross-cultural hero's journey of which Joseph Campbell wrote. In his classic book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell identified in rich detail the universal patterns and themes underlying the journey of descent as found throughout world mythology. These patterns and themes reveal what we can expect on our own underworld journeys.

But once we’ve identified the patterns of descent, how do we activate those patterns in contemporary Western life? This question has been at the heart of my work as a psychologist, wilderness guide, and ally to the underworld journey. Soulcraft makes the bridge from the recognition of archetypal patterns to the actual experience of the descent. It provides practices and pathways to initiate and deepen the journey. Some of these methods are modern adaptations from the cultural wisdom of the ages, and others are what my colleagues and I discovered by simply rolling up our sleeves, along with our participants, and diving into the mysteries. With the support of nature and an underworld guide, our souls can show us how to re-create a relationship with mystery.

9. Other authors have written popular books about the need for contemporary people to undergo the journey to soul (James Hillman, Thomas Moore, Jean Houston, David Whyte, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Malidoma Somé, Martín Prechtel, Theodore Roszak). What is unique about soulcraft?

These authors have written from the perspectives of depth psychology (Moore, Hillman, Johnson, Houston), mythology and the poetic tradition (Campbell, Estes, Whyte), shamanism (Somé, Prechtel), and ecopsychology (e.g., Theodore Roszak). Soulcraft, however, combines and integrates the perspectives of all four fields, comprising a new field of study and practice: an eco-depth psychology that fosters a form of soul-oriented human growth appropriate to Western people of the 21st century.

Soulcraft interweaves the psychological sophistication and inner work of depth psychology (e.g., as developed by Carl Jung, James Hillman, and Robert Johnson) with the “outer work” practices of nature-based spiritualities (e.g., the Animas Quest, the way of council, nature ceremonies, shamanism).

Some authors write about "soul" when they are actually describing the journey toward spirit. Soulcraft practice does not go upward toward oneness and light but rather in the spiritually complementary direction, downward into the dark, rich, wild, and mysterious soils of soul, cultivating a way of life that expresses our unique personal gifts. This deepens and “en-wilds” the ego rather than transcending it.

Also, unlike psychotherapy, soulcraft’s primary goal is not emotional healing or relationship improvement, but rather personal deepening and discovering the essence of our individual life paths. Psychologist James Hillman has famously opined that “We’ve had a hundred years of psychotherapy and the world’s getting worse”. Many are calling for an approach to personal development that supplements psychotherapy and meditative disciplines, but is distinct from both. Soulcraft offers practices for this "third way."

Soulcraft introduces over 40 specific strategies for approaching the soul. Several of the practices have rarely been discussed previously from a soul-oriented perspective, including: self-generated ceremonies, council work and mirroring, understanding and responding to signs and omens in nature, talking across the species boundaries, sacred speech and silence, discovering and practicing nature as a mirror, the art of wandering in nature, befriending the dark, and the art of being lost.

10. You note in your book that you began your career as a research psychologist studying non-ordinary states of consciousness such as meditation, dreams, and hypnosis. Is there a relationship between soulcraft and non-ordinary states?

Yes. Many soulcraft practices -- such as dreaming, deep imagery work, fasting, trance drumming and dancing, ceremonial sweats, talking across the species boundaries, and self-designed ceremonies -- entail the deliberate alteration of consciousness, perhaps explaining why religious historian Mircea Eliade referred to them as "techniques of ecstasy." To uncover the mysterious images of the soul, the ordinary state of ego consciousness must be temporarily dissolved or radically shifted because the uninitiated ego is the primary obstacle to the conscious experience of soul. The encounter with soul will shake up the everyday personality’s beliefs about self and world. That’s why a conversation with soul is not likely within the defended confines of ordinary consciousness. The conscious self must look at its own psyche from a different perspective, from a unique angle, from a position of altered awareness, like viewing earth from outer space, or returning home after a month in an exotic culture. Most soul-encounter practices induce states of temporary ego dissolution that release us from the usual rules and norms of our personality and culture, opening the way to fresh observations and creative adventures. In other words, non-ordinary states enable us to perceive actualities and imagine possibilities that we might otherwise miss, thereby assisting us to weave the subtle and unseen forces of the world into form, making the unconscious soul conscious.