The Soulful Quest: Pilgrimage Into Soul

(I wrote this years ago, just after re-reading Same Keen’s Fire In The Belly)

This is a man’s journey into the depths of himself, where he confronts his false roles, illusions, deceptions, avoidance, feelings, shadows, demons, and eventually, despair. This is typically the Hero’s Journey where a man would call upon his warrior’s fierceness, courage, strength, and aggression to enter the dark underground passages of his Soul. But this of course is only the first part of the Quest, because towards the end nothing can aid or save him but grace…

From Sunny Pragmatism to the Dark Wisdom of Dream Time:
-Rationality, reason, and practicality take a backseat to emotion, impulse, and imagination.
-Attention turns from the obvious realm of the ‘known outer’, toward the amorphous realm of the ‘unknown inner’.
-The focus of life shifts from solving problems to a deep curiosity for the questions.

From having the Answers to living the Questions:
-The ways of being and seeing that we were taught (answers) feel inadequate and unsatisfactory.
-Because the questions overwhelm the answers, a move is made away from knowing into the Undefined Mystery.
-The pillars of belief and faith collapse under the weight of confusion and doubt.

From Cocksure-ness to Potent Doubt:
-False certainty of direction gives way to authentic disorientation and lost-ness.
-Pretending and performing a false sense of security gives way to honest vulnerability and uncertainty.
-Protective macho bravado and posturing fall away, replaced by quiet humility, grace, and the grief of our realized falseness/fakeness.

From Numbness to Manly Grief:
-We become aware of a life of avoidance and denial, half alive, full of pain, empty of meaning.
-Feelings unthaw and awaken, and with it all the terror, grief, and shame of a lifetime of self-deception.
-Awareness arises of a life built of avoidance and fear that has lead to separation and loneliness.

From Isolation to the Awareness of Loneliness:
-Cut off from ones own feelings as well as the world, we feel we have nowhere to turn, no one to turn to.
-Our struggle for individualism, self-esteem, success by competing with our brothers/sisters, and buying into shallow ideals, has lead to alienation, disillusionment, and despair.

From False Optimism to Honest Despair:
-Dreams based on ‘hand-me-down’ ideals and societies shallow visions no longer satisfy, and it is realized they never will.
-Darkness, desolation, and death consume the self, leaving all one has held near and dear, in ruins.
-No ‘quick-fix’ is forthcoming, no one to save us, no hope, only being and waiting.

From Compulsive Action to Fallow-ness and Waiting:
-Restlessness, impatience, and doing cannot hasten the process of undoing and unbecoming.
-The methods of fixing, controlling, and willpower are rendered useless, because it is those methods that are being uprooted.
-Developing a trust in not-knowing and a faith in life’s unfoldings are the only tasks.
-Without conscious knowledge, we are being opened and emptied in preparation for rebirth.

Renewal and the Rebirth of Joy:
-When the bottom is reached, the upward spiral begins of it’s own accord.
-The eye accustomed to the darkness, now become sensitive to subtle slivers of sunlight and moonbeam.
-The simple and the mundane become magical and mysterious.
-Gratitude, acceptance, and joy become the flavors of living and life.
-We have recaptured our innocence by forsaking it, and we have come home by abandoning it.