Soul growing and the courage to create

It’s not just about keeping soul in the body. It’s about growing soul, becoming more than we ever were, embodying more of the Higher Self. This requires courage. French architect and author Fernand Pouillon speaks beautifully about what this involves in his book The Stones of the Abbey:

Courage lies in being oneself, in showing complete independence, in loving what one loves, in discovering the deep roots of one's feelings....A real work is truth, direct and honest...You have to take the greatest possible risks; even recklessness seems a bit halfhearted. The best works are those that are at the limits of real life; they stand out among a thousand others when they prompt the remark: 'What courage that must have taken!' Enduring work follows from a leap into the void, into unknown territory, icy water or murderous rock.

    Now that’s a plan that will call in your boldest and juiciest self, and entertain the liveliest spirits!

    It requires the willingness to take the creator’s leap and bring something new into our lives and our worlds. If I want to encourage people to move gently in this direction, I might instruct them along the following lines:

Go deep into yourself and ask: What is something new that I want to bring into the world?

    When you have the answer to that, ask: What definite action will I take to bring that new thing into the world?

     But if I am in a hurry to see soul grow – and why wouldn’t we be eager to hurry this process along? – I might say:

Picture this: Your whole life has been preparing you to take a creative leap. Now you are at the edge of an abyss. You can’t bear to look down. The drop is immense – you can’t see how far it goes down, through the swirling mists.

    It’s your time to jump, but you’re paralyzed with fear. You shrink back from the edge, grasping after something solid and familiar. But there’s nothing worth holding onto. Everything smells stale behind you, and crumbles away under your clutching hands.

    So you jump…

    And you find that the abyss is no more and no less terrifying than the drop from the nest of a baby bird before its first flight.

   

    And you’ll work. You’ll work as you have never worked before. But this work is not the drudgery of offices and routines. This is the work - “the hardest among those not impossible” (as Yeats said) – that your creative spirit demands of you, and your growing soul requires. If you give yourself to this work, you will not only find that it is the very best kind of play. You will know rapture. Truly.

Painting by AE, the Irish mystic, poet and artist George Russell.

For soul growing, learn from the Big O

Do you remember The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, Shel Silverstein's delightful parable for kids of all ages? My youngest daughter (now in her twenties) told me that it was the best story we read together when she was very young.     

    I woke from an evening nap  in which a sidekick to some Mr Big told me that I needed to "get" the missing piece. I could hardly ignore the double prompt so I went to my daughter's room and borrowed her copy of the Shel Silverstein story (with her permission, of course).

    With the aid of wickedly simple line drawings, we follow the adventures and travails of what looks like a slice of pie. It's trying to find a hole it can fit, and tries varies orifices that turn up, in characters it encounters.

    Eventually it finds what seems to be Mr Right. He looks like a pie missing a wedge, and the missing piece slips into the hole and the fit seems perfect. But then the missing piece starts to grow, and grow, until its host complains, "I didn't know you were going to grow." The missing piece is ejected, and the one with the hole lumbers away, caterwauling, "I'm looking for my missin' piece, one that won't increase."

    We come to the denouement of the story. A character comes along who is different from the rest. He is not one of the hungry ones, or the shy ones, and there is no hole in him at all. He is the Big O. 
    The missing piece would love to join him, but there is no place where she could fit. Can't she at least travel on his back as he rolls along? Nope, The Big O is not going to carry her. "But perhaps you can roll by yourself," he tells her. She is incredulous. How can she roll on her sharp corners? Corners wear off, says the Big O, and shapes change.

    The missing piece just sits for a long time, despondent, when the Big O rolls away. Then very slowly she hauls herself up, and flops over. And does it again. And her edges start to wear off, and she is bumping instead of flopping, then bouncing instead of bumping, until at last, she is rolling.

    There is a terrific teaching in this simple tale. It's all about soul, and soul-making. All those creatures with holes in them evoke the soul-loss any one of us is likely to suffer in the course of a life, through pain or shame or disappointment. The hunger this creates can't be filled authentically by something that is not our own.

    Nor can we find our way in life by trying to fill a gap in another person, or a niche in a social or work environment, or by just sitting around waiting for something to happen. We need to pick ourselves up and - unaccustomed though this may be - start moving according to our own inner lights. And let the road smooth out our sharp edges and put curves in our linear thinking.

    Instead of trying to fit a hole, we want to become whole. To be pals with the Big O, you have to become your own Big O.