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About Noetic Now From Issue Twenty-Three, June 2012 Previous Article Next Article Featured Article

The Mystics Journey Is Our Own


by Robert Atkinson, PhD
What I tell about me I tell about you The walls between us long ago burned down This voice seizing me is your voice Burning to speak to us of us. Rumi Mystics have a reputation for being mysterious. In the most basic sense, a mystic is one who seeks union, or unity. But dont most of us have such a yearning? Whether what we seek is union with ourselves, with others, with creation, with the Creator, or with Reality, maybe we are all mystics at heart. The mystic traditions came into being to help people remember their true origin and destiny. Remembering where we came from and where we are going would certainly change us and transform our relationships into ones of authenticity, respect, and compassion. The great mystic poets, like Rumi, knew that remembrance links us to the spirit we all possess, which links us to one another as well. The practice of remembrance is common to all sacred traditions. It assists us in reclaiming our own transcendent identity, as well as drawing out our innate altruistic nature. The vital importance of remembering who we are is vividly illustrated in the Hasidic story of Rabbi Zusya, who near the end of his life felt anxious about being left with a great question unanswered. He came to his followers one day, his eyes red from crying, after having a vision where he learned the question the angels will ask him about his life. His followers were puzzled; knowing that he was scholarly and humble, they asked what question could be so terrifying. He said, They will not ask me, Why werent you a Moses, leading your people out of slavery? His followers persisted, So what will they ask you? Finally, after another round of what they wont ask him, he said, They will say to me, Zusya, there was only one thing that no power on heaven or earth could have prevented you from becoming. They will say, Zusya, why werent you Zuzya?1 Perhaps it is our soul that knows the who we are whom no one else could be. We have a far better chance of becoming who our soul is destined to be than becoming anyone else, but we dont automatically know what that is. This is the mysterious journey we all set out upon, whether we know it or not: to remember who we are, to get to the heart of our souls story, and to embrace our own process of soul-making. This life is about the souls ascent to the spiritual plane, a formidable task involving challenge after challenge as we make our way through the physical world. But, as Joseph Campbell has made clear, we dont have to risk lifes greatest adventure alone: The labyrinth is thoroughly known . . . where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.2 The worlds sacred traditions provide the guideposts and markers for this adventure. Living our lives consciously, we encounter universal motifs, archetypes, and timeless patterns that will help us discover not only who we are but also why we are so deeply connected to all others. And we will then be able to answer Zusyas perplexing question to our satisfaction. The Soul Is Timeless The mystic journey is the journey of the soul. Though a mystery among mysteries, the soul is at the heart of all the worlds religious and spiritual traditions; it defines who we are at our essence. All sacred traditions agree that the soul is eternal, that it exists prior to birth and continues after death, and that it comes from and returns to God.3 A similar recognition of the ambiguous yet central nature of the soul is found in psychology, where psyche originally meant soul. C. G. Jung knew well that psychology least of all can afford to overlook the soul, since everything to do with religion, everything it is and asserts, touches the human soul so closely.4 For Jung, the soul is what links us to the archetypal world; it helps us experience the universals of life, because at our essence we are like all other human beings. Psychologist James Hillman turned Jungs individuation process inside out; soul-making for him became a lifelong process of living according to the innate calling that is within us. This is his acorn theory, which says we are born with an image of the person we
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are to become, and our soul plays a key role in guiding us through the pattern of the life we live toward our destiny.5 Marion Woodman, an English teacher and a Jungian analyst, sees the soul as the timeless part of ourselves. She clarifies both the spiritual and psychological connotations of the soul while recognizing its connective and collective nature: Were all little sparks of One Soul. We are ensouled on this planet . . . we are one people inhabiting one country . . . we are all part of One Soul . . . When we connect with our souls, we connect with the soul of every human being. We resonate with all living things.6 The soul is our perpetual connection to the immortal realm. Drawing Meaning from the Mystery around Us A mysterious petroglyph carved on a rock wall in southern Utah may hold the key to the journey of the soul. This particular imagea spiral with a horizontal line running through its middle and extending outward on both sidesappears to be one of a kind. Spirals are common in many indigenous cultures, but none seem to have this horizontal line leading into and out of the core spiral. Could this design depict the journey of the soul from its origin to its life on earth to its eternal destiny? Is this an ancient representation of the multifaith Creator concept that we all come from and will inevitably return to? And could the spiral represent the earthly experience of the soul, the passages we go through as we make our way in this physical bog, repeating transition after transition, each leading us deeper and deeper into who we really are? There are a number of traditions, from ancient mystical legends to Plato, that tell a story of the soul before it is born gaining knowledge of its life to come, then forgetting this knowledge when born, and spending the rest of its life trying to remember what it had forgotten. Poets and psychologists alike have further explored this life-journey metaphor of knowing, forgetting, and remembering. For contemporary nineteenth-century English poets William Wordsworth and John Keats, the soul carries a timeless wisdom to which we can gain access. As Wordsworth put it: Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our lifes Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting . . . Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, can in a moment travel thither . . .7 Keats focused on how what we encounter here plays a purpose in forming our true and lasting identity: Call the world if you Please The vale of Soul-making . . . There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millionsbut they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself . . . How then are Souls to be made? How then are these sparks [which are God] . . . to have identity given themso as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each ones individual existence? How, but by the medium of a world like this? . . . Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!8 The soul, a spark of God, needs the conflict of this world to fulfill its destiny. Soul-making happens when the light merges with the dark, when joy and sorrow intermingle, when the eternal breaks through from the temporal realm, and when polarities are consciously acknowledged and confronted in our everyday lives. When the lesson of opposites is learned in the classroom of life, the soul remembers what it came here for and evolves as it is designed to. As the woodcarver who sees the carving he wants to fashion before he starts to carve the wood, soul-making is a process of revealing what is already there. James Hillman sees soul-making as what happens when we have the experiencesof crisis and opportunity, of love and dying that give life a deeper meaning. At any reflective moment, the unique could turn into the universal, or the temporal into the eternal. But soul-making requires such a moment to differentiate the middle ground between these necessary oppositions.9 Marion Woodman draws these two threads together when she says: Soul-making is allowing the eternal essence to live and experience the outer world through all the sensesseeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, touchingso that the soul grows during its time on Earth. Soul-making is constantly confronting the paradox that an eternal being is dwelling in a temporal body. Thats why it suffers, and learns by heart . . . True creativity, true soulmaking, comes from that deep communication with what Jung would call the archetypal world. Thats where the real
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nourishment is.10 To this we could add, from the developmental model suggested by Francis Vaughan (see Consciousness, Transformation, and the Souls Journey in last months issue of Noetic Now journal), that deeply experiencing the sequence of magic, mastery, meaning, and mystery in our lives is also soul-making. Our consciousness evolves first from being enamored of the magic all around it, then from gaining meaning in all thats encounteredespecially the strugglesand finally from accepting that there will always be mysteries in life. As we explore this deeper story of our soul and digest these timeless experiences, we return to the eternal Self we forgot we were. The Collective Depends on the Personal The journey of the soul is not a solitary quest but rather a superhighway meant for everyone. As Marion Woodman puts it, We are all part of One Soul . . . When we connect with our souls, we connect with the soul of every human being. We resonate with all living things. Soul-making connects us to the archetypal realm, which is where we find the same inspiration and guidance from our common spiritual heritage. The lifelong process of soul-making leads us ultimately to personal and collective transformation. In our time, more than ever, when the well-being of the whole is so tied to the well-being of the parts, when the parts are indistinguishable, even inseparable, from the whole, each influencing the other, the personal is the collective. What benefits one benefits us all. The collective is at the mercy of the personal. The mystic journey of the soul and the path of service are one and the same. Each of us has a role to play, however large or small, in the grand scheme. Each of us has something to offer others. The journey of the soul is necessary for the advancement of civilization. We may not even recognize our role in the big picture until we are conscious of being an integral part of the larger whole and until we incorporate this into our being. Consciousness is all that matters; it is the source of all that exists. How we see the world we live in determines what it becomes. As our individual consciousness evolves, so does the collective consciousness. Our transformations transform the world. The timeless and the universal are the personally sacred, and the sacred journey of one is the sacred journey of all. Soul-making is part of our sacred inheritanceand responsibility. Your soul-making contributes to mine, and mine buoys yours. Getting to the heart of our souls story is important, especially now, because it helps us answer the really big questions of life that connect us deeply to one another, that extend our conscious evolution, and that ensure a desired collective future. What is most important in my life that affects the lives of others? How has the journey of my soul expressed my own personal truth, as well as some part of the collective truth of us all? What is my vision of the collective future of humanity, and what role do I want to play in this vision? What do I consider to be the greatest collective truth of our time? Three Steps of Practical Soul-Making Everything is laid out for us. The only path there is, Chief Leon Shenandoah says, is the path to the Creator.11 The prophets of God, mystics, and sages have all illumined this path where opposites meet, clash, and ultimately merge. They have highlighted a sacred pattern designed to bring about the transformations in our lives that will lead us to our destiny. The first step is to remember who we are, what our potential is, and where our destiny lies. This leads to knowledge of our life as an eternal journey. The important questions for this stage are Who am I at my essence? What is my essential nature? What am I doing here? Where am I going? How can I fulfill my inner potential? How can I accomplish my purpose on this earth? These are complex questions, but we soon discover that the answers are available to us as part of our spiritual heritage from the worlds myths, rituals, religions, and mystic traditions. As we awaken to an eternal reality, we experience a yearning to immerse ourselves in it as fully as possible. Remembering that our own experience mirrors the lives of the prophets moves us along a continuum of familiarity with the universal archetypes that we also share. The second step is to revision our own life experience in the context of the timeless pattern that makes up the archetype of transformation. This is when we integrate our experience of transformation with our conscious understanding of its meaning and purpose for our lives, see our lives as having been transformed, and transpose the most important motifs and archetypes from our own lives onto this pattern, thus making the personal universal. In this pattern, we recognize a repetition of the basic dialectic of crisis followed by victory, or muddle followed by resolution. The goal is to become conscious of the entire experience of transformation so that the continual flow of opposites in our lives wont overwhelm us and so that their tension is seen as natural and necessary aspects of our existence. The third step in soul-making is to reclaim a personal spiritual life that takes in our common spiritual heritage. This connection to our collective spiritual roots keeps us on track to achieve our potential and helps bring about a collective renewal. As we embrace and
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cultivate our own innate spiritual nature and what we share as human beings, we will start consciously integrating timeless patterns into our daily lives that take us ever closer to the person we know in our heart of hearts we truly area fully unified being, one with all. These three steps may well be experienced as a remarkable narrative of oppositessorrow and joy, accomplishments and setbacks, struggles and triumphs, beginnings and endings, seeking and finding, helplessness and aid, retreat and renewal, doubt and certitude, illusion and truth, tyranny and justice, matter and spirit, all eventually and inevitably blending in a continuous ebb and flow of oneness and wholeness, with contrasting elements merging to highlight a powerful and meaningful story. The Mystic in Us All The underlying spiritual principle of soul-making is that the soul comes from an eternal realm, is separated at birth from the original union it knew, and spends its life on earth learning timeless lessons and seeking that lost union. In the mystical classic The Seven Valleys, Bahaullah captures with eloquent metaphorical imagery the essence and scope of this journey, from making its way through this mortal world with all its distractions, to opening up to divine aid and assistance, to gaining an understanding of the sublime purpose we inherit as creatures with both physical and spiritual aspects. The book, in fact, provides a magnificent template for the mystical traveler: knowing what is achievable through conscious effort; seeing in the oscillation of opposites the possibility of their union; recognizing that the resolution of such a procession of opposites in our lives is designed to move us closer to our Creator; and understanding that our deepest spiritual transformation comes about not through escape from the world but from work in the world, as service to humanity.12 Spiritual growth, and in particular the journey of the soul, carries with it a distinct service orientation. What may have seemed like a principle of the mystic life, of interest only to those few who consciously seek the ultimate reunion, becomes a guiding principle for everyone. The living of ones life according to the principle of unionor, carried to the practical level of the world we live in, the principle of the essential oneness of all life is not merely a social commitment or even an act of social justice but a core spiritual belief, designed to direct and guide every aspect of our lives toward the fullest achievement of what is humanly possible. Notes Epigraph. Rumi, What I Tell About Me, quoted in Speaking Flame, trans. Andrew Harvey (Ithaca: Meeramma, 1989). 1. http://hasidicstories.com/Stories/Other_Early_Rebbes/zusia.html 2. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949), p. 25. 3. Eccl.12:7; Cor. II 4:1, 18; Quran 10:4, 17:1, 19:11, 29:5758; Bahaullah, The Kitab-i-Aqdas (Haifa: Bahai World Center, 1992), p. 72. 4. C. G. Jung, Psychology and Religion: East and West, Collected Works 11 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958), para. 172. 5. James Hillman, The Souls Code: In Search of Character and Calling (New York: Random House, 1996), pp. 314. 6. Marion Woodman, Conscious Femininity (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1993), p. 134; Coming Home to Myself (Berkeley, CA: Conari Press, 2001), p. 247; www.banyen.com/INFOCUS/WOODMAN.HTM. 7. William Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, in The Oxford Book of English Verse, 12501900, ed. Arthur Quiller-Couch(Oxford: Clarendon, 1919). 8. John Keats, Selected Letters (New York: Oxford University Press, World Classics, 2009), p. 232233. 9. James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology (New York: William Morrow, 1977), p. xvi. 10. Marion Woodman, Coming Home to Myself, p. 209; Conscious Femininity, p. 79. 11. Chief Leon Shenandoah, quoted in The Essential Mystics: Selections from the Worlds Great Wisdom Traditions, ed. Andrew Harvey (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1996), p. 6. 12. Bahaullah, The Seven Valleys and The Four Valleys (Wilmette, IL: Bahai Publishing Trust, 1995).

TheRogue1000 Jun 06, 2012 This all seems so "heavy", so full of "sacredness". Where is the fun in any of this? How about we come back over and over for the sheer joy of the journey? For helping to expand and connect with others for *their* expansion? Why does it have to be so solemn? Richard Bach said, "We are game playing, fun having creatures. We are the otters of the Universe." Abraham (Abraham-Hicks) has told us that we are all god, connected directly to God in our journeys. And what if the journey has no
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ending? What if there is always MORE? And GREATER? Lighten up, folks!

karinjoy Jun 06, 2012 The problem with Abraham-Hicks, and other LOA prononents, is that the deep, dark stuff gets ignored. When I am able to step into and embrace the pain of my physical separation, then I am able to fully feel the esctatic connection to the Divine. After which, I dance the hip-hop with my kids, the crickets and the trees.

Sampatron Jun 07, 2012 In the first paragraph it's mentioned that the mystic traditions came into being to help us remember our origins and destination but the question for me then becomes, "Why do we forget in the first place?" Do we forget just for the fun of searching out the memory? I can buy into the "just for the experience" to some extent, and I can also buy into the idea that remembering would interfere with growth potential to some extent. But I have never got an answer I can completely buy into about why we forget.

Robert Atkinson, PhD Jun 07, 2012 Thanks, TheRogue1000, for bringing this back to the heart of soul-making! Without the tension between opposites there would be no archetype of transformation, and therefore no growth or progress in our journey. Wheres the fun and the sheer joy of the journey get to why the mystic journey is not just for mystics but for all of us, because we all need moderation in our lives, as Karinjoy notes, a healthy balance between the material and the spiritual, the fun and the hard work, the mundane and the ecstatic. Any pair of opposites represents aspects of the whole. To keep a perspective on the whole is one of the goals of the journey. The recognition that opposing states are really one comes as we shift our focus from the temporal to the eternal. It is in the understanding that the journey has no ending that we do find a deeper, longer lasting joy which is much different from the fleeting joy found in any temporal moment. The eternal perspective also allows us to see the end in the beginning, even fun in the boring, and not get overtaken by any one state of being. This very complicated journey of the soul, with all its fascinating and mysterious nuances, is explained in much more depth than be covered here in Bahaullahs The Seven Valleys (especially the valley of unity and the valley of contentment), where we can get a better sense of how sorrow is turned to bliss, anguish to joy, and grief to delight. I also focus on opposition as the necessary catalyst for change and provide a much more detailed commentary on how lifes eternal journey leads to both personal and collective transformation in my forthcoming book.

Robert Atkinson, PhD Jun 07, 2012 Great question, Sampatron, "Why do we forget in the first place?" John Keats and Marion Woodman offer some hints. As "sparks" of God, this "world of Pains and troubles" is necessary to "school an Intelligence and make it a soul." Erik and Joan Erikson have said, wisdom is life experience well digested. Another way of looking at it is that this world is to the soul what the womb is to the body. Both experiences are necessary in exactly the way they are designed to prepare us for the next
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state of being that is to come. So, it comes back to all of the possible answers you suggested: the search, which gives us the life experience, which fulfills our growth potential as "an eternal being dwelling in a temporal body." We forget so that soulmaking - finding and identifying with our eternal, Infinite nature - is possible here.

iamonesoru Jun 13, 2012 This is a wonderful article and I would like to add a little insight to it, if I may be so bold. Consider the possibility that all energy is something that we misunderstand as Intelligence. We misunderstand it because we havent come to fully understand it. What if this energy is itself conscious and exploring the potentials of its own awareness? The archetypes of the human psyche might be seen as a kind of consciousness awareness mapping system that the parts of this intelligent energy, out exploring the boundaries of awareness that we call universe, use to find its way back to its Source. Our souls may be conglomerations of this energy that have come together and agreed to form an identity in which all the parts work together to move through this consciousness mapping system as a cooperative or collective conscious awareness. This collective conscious awareness we call soul is simply one level of potential awareness that must increase its awareness of itself, as part and parcel of the whole, through experience. One part of this collective experiences through what we call the intellect or mental body. One part experiences through what we call emotions, that are intuitive rather than intellectual, or the emotional body. These two apparently different parts of ourselves represent the polarities that this energy must use to do its work, which is to evolve back to the level of awareness of the Source. Each of these polarities must do its work in order for the other to be empowered to do its work. If we repress the emotional intuitive polarity, then the intellectual polarity can only evolve so far before it loses its ability to further evolve. A kind of balance must be maintained in order for all of our parts to evolve together. We cannot continue to evolve intellectually at the expense of our emotions and our intuitive abilities. The most important of our emotional and intuitive abilities is the ability to Love. Our understanding of love is actually a grossly distorted misunderstanding. In our journeys of awareness exploration outward from the source, we lost our awareness of what Love truly is, and now we are experiencing the part of our journey back to the Source, and remembering or learning Love is essential to our ability to return to the Source.

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