Stephen, thank you for raising the topic of soul for discussion! And thank you, too, for mentioning the Mythologium. The Mythologium is a place for mythologists and friends of myth — meaning you, mythic reader — to share ideas, inspire each other, and amplify each other’s work. The 2022 program is now live, and we are so excited about this year’s theme of Myth and Ecological Consciousness. Please do feel free to visit the Mythologium site for more info (of particular interest might be JCF’s panel!) and to sign up to receive Mythologium emails.

Now, back to the topic of soul. In the Campbell passage quoted in the MythBlast, Campbell was using the term in a colloquial way, and not as defined by Jung or Hillman. Extending the idea of soul to a community, however, does gesture toward depth psychology, relating to Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious (from which Jung believes mythic motifs can arise across cultures), and also to archetypal psychology’s assertion that soul doesn’t live within us, but rather we live within soul. Soul, in this view, is far, far greater than ourselves.

To me, soul implies a person or community’s (or planet’s) most inward essence and most fulsome totality, both at once. Soul embraces all dimension of experience. For humans, that means mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional experience — and then also an extra something. Soul carries the ever-present possibility of more meaning, more depth, more experience. You could think of it as the greater mind, body, spirit, and heart that encompass and enfold us, each and all and perhaps the entire cosmos. I sense it as the qualitative dimension of all other dimensions, the context in which individual and collective experience unfolds.

Soul is the truth of our being, and it is that which allows us to recognize misalignments with our truth. When we are aligned, or in accord as Campbell would say, that’s when we can most easily experience the extra something through intuition, insight, synchronicity, and creativity — the images, ideas, and understandings we could never have come up with on our own but instead feel given as though from outside ourselves. These, I believe, are the language of soul.

What about you? When and how do you experience soul? What images come up for you when you think of the individual soul and/or a community’s soul? I’m also keen to hear your thoughts about the questions at the end of the MythBlast: How might a community release its soul from false beliefs, disidentifying from myths that cause misery and harm? How might a community enter more fully into the realm of truth, beauty, and creativity?

Heidegger imagined that our soul was a divine connection to the everyday experience in the world, but authentic.

Authentic is a dope place, where one gives up hamfisted connection to material and imaginary realms, and works, works hard to connect to the divine telepathic voice within.  That means working hard to disconnect from defense mechanisms, vanity, recognition and all the other unrealistic predatory illusions that detach us from the fantastic planetary showtime we so quickly reject.

i love your ability to dig into this mysterious man and his divine intentions.

his visions are guideposts for us, you are a scout who gets close to the trail.

Thank you very much.

How might a community release its soul from false beliefs, disidentifying from myths that cause misery and harm? How might a community enter more fully into the realm of truth, beauty, and creativity?

Hi Joanna,

Thank you so much for Releasing the Dreaming, I loved your insights and questions, as well as your response about the soul.  I have pondered this question about the community because I am centered in a marginalized one.  Releasing the soul from a false belief is difficult when everything you see confirms the lie you’ve been told.  Our minds are powerfully creative and attracts or confirms what we believe.   So if we are told that the world is filled with lions, tigers and bears we move through the world on alert looking for lions, tigers and bears.   The news reports spots one confirming the narrative we’ve been given.  We double down on our vigilance to stay safe from those lions, tigers and bears.

So to your question how do we release a community from the false belief, it is almost impossible.  If any evidence that supports the false claim that lions, tigers or bears the tension remains.

This is an over simplified answer to your question, but this is a question I have sought to answer for some time.   I  thought talking about how trauma still impacts our communities and explaining epigenetics would be the answer but what haunts from the past shows up so powerfully in the present most of can not tell the difference.

Media, advertising, education, religion and politics points to outward appearances as the barometer for how good life is or is not.  Unfortunately, when basic needs are still a daily struggle people have little concern for truth or beauty.  What is created from the pain seems to stir up more pain for those dealing with it.    Is is beauty from ashes or beauty of ashes?  Whatever it is, if it was yours it hurts.

Joanna, a very warm welcome back to the forums.
Joanna and Stephen, bishopme brings up what I think is an extremely important connection of the psyche as to the Jungian concept of projection and its’ ability to evoke or conjure up the “dark side” in human nature and to be influenced by and for political purposes. Indeed, the Star Wars concept of the “power of dark side” I think is an interesting metaphor which Joseph expounds on at length in: “The Power of Myth” as a perfect example. (There was an open disclaimer on this clip about learning to live within a system, so I hope there is no copyright conflict. But it makes the point extremely well concerning the psyche.) My apologies but I’m not familiar enough with the point Doro was bringing up to comment, so I’ll leave that up to everyone else.

For instance, the US political consciousness as to the use of “hatred” as a weapon for political purposes; or what Joseph might have called the demonizing aspect of the other side and its’ ability to conjure, evoke, manipulate, emotions for political ends and purposes has put so many people at risk of harm because they do or do not agree about something. The ability to turn a “thou into an it” and use it as a device to spread fear and uncertainty, or to turn ones’ idea of their neighbor into their opponent or even worse their enemy. It’s an age-old tactic used by clerics and politicians to drive a point of view, but with possible disastrous results as with yesterday’s “4th of July shooting” by a mentally disturbed or deranged young individual who has lost touch with reality as just one of many possible examples like that of school shootings and other public massacres.

Guns and violence as an expression of anger or paranoia are a deadly mix that this country is now trying to come to terms with; and getting both political sides to agree on how to solve it is proving an almost insurmountable task at the moment. And emotional projection of shadow contents onto another because of fear or some other anxiety driven emotion I think is a major social and political concern right now that we as individuals must learn how to recognize. In other words, I think this is more than just a “golden rule” issue but a major psychological concern countries across the planet are now having to confront. So: “lions, tigers, and bears, Oh my!” I think hits the nail right on the head, so to speak, as a huge social as well as individual concern right now.

It was hard enough to get people to wear masks during this last Covid pandemic surge; and it’s not over yet either as new variants continue to emerge. How people handle fear is one thing, but “projection” can take on many faces, and bishopme and your interest in this particular feature might open some interesting aspects to explore. Stephen or anyone else may also have some interesting thoughts about this to add as well.

Please forgive my rather clumsy attempt at description, but hopefully it will be enough to illustrate what I’m trying to get at.

Thank you so much Joanna; your kindness helps more than you know! Yes, I was feeling extremely uncertain concerning how I was interpreting this outer landscape we are all navigating right now. And your insights concerning one’s authenticity really help put what I was feeling into a more balanced perspective. You made my night! Namaste

Lovely and poignant Joanna.

Sometimes I wonder if awareness, that child of sudden dawning might hold some possibility? Both individual and collective/universal?

Awareness: That which comes through insight as much as “reasoning out the wherefores?” Or at least a balance between the two?

It seems to be on the flip coin of the trickster (last month’s theme,) that some myths point to a different kind of spontaneity, even compassionate spontaneity, which can sometimes lead to inner knowing or even a type of healing or resolution larger than oneself alone?

I think Campbell is right on about the drudgery of the world or being caught up in the daily grind just to survive.   It makes it hard to seek the truth and beauty, unless they catch you by surprise like a piercing ray of a sunset flashing against a glass sky scraper turning it to molten gold or the echo of a hawk’s cry against the mountains.
Maybe that does not work for everyone, but perhaps something else might. I don’t know.

My thought is that myth is perceived both as something within and without the system. And we are told myths are born out of human systems.

Yet, near the end of the essay Joanna,  you mention myths connection to human subconscious or the collected subconscious (or consciousness?) A very familiar theme for those acquainted with Campbell, Jung or other fields of myth/psychology.

I understand that particular myths can “grow” out of societies through time or systems. But it seems like the primary system of the myth seems to be within the subconscious or consciousness and some of that is still not fully understood.
And with myths occasional ability to dance between human systems and outside of those systems; it’s almost easy to imagine these stories as something that flow through these systems but are not always dependent on them. Not to say we don’t need the systems, but for me occasionally it feels like the myths do not require the systems for their existence. It sounds strange and maybe I’m off the mark, but if the myths are tied into the collective dream or universal dreams of humanity (minus maybe particular instructional myths or landscape myths still beautiful like the aboriginal song lines)…

then the systems that birth myths are not just social orders. But maybe they are the subconscious (or universal/collected subconscious, that exists even prior to social orders in which the myths can be adapted to fit.

In David Abram’s “Spell of the Sensuous,” and in Joe Campbell’s reference to the times early people would address both animals and features of the natural landscapes around them as Thou…there is a raw direct experience. And experience is a word Campbell seemed to love. Meaning through experience first.
Now, with all the battering of the tides of the world, we are so overloaded for many; it may feel impossible to reach that. So that is a challenge.

Because I know what works for me might not work for another. My only thought on this is if a natural awareness could perform the archetype of a pebble in water? Maybe there is too much stress and angst for this. How long can any one or many wait? Difficult question.
Yet,  awareness in the stories can come when least expected and not always in the way one expects. And there are those rare moments in life of dawning awareness. But maybe they are too rare to dwell upon.
I could be hopeful but would that make me foolish? Not aware of the real world? Dreaming impossible eucatastrophes? After so much pain?
Maybe I’m not fully appreciating myths connection to societal systems, yet I’m also reminded of the Wasteland of the Grail King…in one translation where Campbell says the rules are not the same in the wasteland and there are no guides…well apparently none except for spontaneous compassion.
This is what gives me the imagining of the myths and stories being like an old River that flows through many societal comings and going’s even perhaps prior to those societal orders…because there is the deeper River maybe even through our subconscious or our collected subconscious…or perhaps something transcendent of that impossible to describe if limited by the various dragons of thou shalt and cannot be.

in the month of the trickster we fear chaos and dangerous floods…death and doom…

But the River has also been a symbol of Life.
The question then is knowing when to dam and when to let the River flow?

Even a more metaphorical River.
What if even simple awareness of the River is like a reconnection to life giving waters in a time of drought? Or perhaps even a drought which has dammed up limited time for appreciating  “truth and beauty” and experience? What if the awareness of the river even can help with the stagnation of course…or being trapped in a current.

Maybe the pain reflects our “thirst” both real and perhaps spiritual?

My sense is that a centering in Awareness would allow for a potential change in energy both individually and collectively where discernment is more present…than blind judgement…and an Awareness, which is not only aware of more than itself but is not so deeply and understandably rooted in painful or fearful emotions or frustrated ones that it can no longer feel the Life Giving Waters of the River.

Because if the Centered awareness is not there, then my guess is that it’s pain, (real pain) which takes center stage and that makes communication very difficult. Because it is the Pain being addressed and the Pain addressing you back not simply the person in pain or frustration …and it’s not going to be a normal conversation.
Or  fear. There is a difference between facing, embracing  or acknowledging fear and thinking with fear…because   fear can paralyze…and can turn to anger…which may harm both an individual and others around them.

And that’s why I choose kindness…

But maybe I’m off on a current. How can I possibly know a strangers life story and experiences?  I cannot… except to know their story might be completely different from mine. And to respect that or be aware of that the best I can.

Because I don’t know…I am still working things like this out for myself (laugh) and can often wind in circling muddy eddies…but maybe one day? Who knows?
I send my best to all who are struggling and working through these challenging times. Take care.

Western culture has had decades of fatness and suddenly we are at the edge of the abyss of lean.

That would make any conscious spirit disoriented.  While we reconstruct our aim toward a “Thou”

world of spirit and gratefulness, we should expect to have a weird time grounding.  Beautiful sentiments,

you have a way of going inward that is lovely.

Doro and Sunbug, I think you have both illustrated a very insightful point concerning how the individuation process unfolds concerning Jung’s idea of “repression and the shadow complex”; especially in terms of “integration of the shadow”. Two quotes caught my eye that seem to refer to this process.

Doro said: “That means working hard to disconnect from defense mechanisms, vanity, recognition and all the other unrealistic predatory illusions that detach us from the fantastic planetary showtime we so quickly reject.”

And Sunbug said:
“Maybe the pain reflects our “thirst” both real and perhaps spiritual?
My sense is that a centering in Awareness would allow for a potential change in energy both individually and collectively where discernment is more present…than blind judgement…and an Awareness, which is not only aware of more than itself but is not so deeply and understandably rooted in painful or fearful emotions or frustrated ones that it can no longer feel the Life Giving Waters of the River.

Because if the Centered awareness is not there, then my guess is that it’s pain, (real pain) which takes center stage and that makes communication very difficult. Because it is the Pain being addressed and the Pain addressing you back not simply the person in pain or frustration …and it’s not going to be a normal conversation.
Or fear. There is a difference between facing, embracing or acknowledging fear and thinking with fear…because   fear can paralyze…and can turn to anger…which may harm both an individual and others around them.

And that’s why I choose kindness…”

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I think Joanna can probably do a much better job at this than I can, but here is what struck me concerning how our attitudes can change by changing our perception; (which is what Jung and Campbell try to illuminate, at least as I see it). The libido, or psychic energy, gets stuck by a blockage of some sort for any number of reasons; and as both Joseph and Jung try to explain we need a symbol or experience of some sort to open it up; something that gives us a way to relate or marry both sides so that this flow can resume. Jung calls this symbol making process the: “Axum of Maria”; which has to do the (transcendent function) which makes a third thing, or bridge if you will, that unites or creates a new way of seeing or interpreting this tension what is pulling you apart. “One becomes two, which creates 3, which makes a fourth”.

Sounds strange I know, but Joseph describes this a little bit differently by saying when you are stuck or held between two opposing forces you must find the “middle” way. One example he uses in one of his lectures is you want to find some sort of symbolic realization that will help you to transform the way you look at your situation, whether through your art or some kind of activity that helps you symbolically address what is going on inside you and resolve it. (The link above I provided may help to describe this process a little better than I’m doing at the moment), but another example would be Jung’s: “Red Book”; which he used to write down his dreams and draw pictures. There are numerous stories about Jung and how he used this process to build his house at Bollingen in Zurich; but the point is to help you connect with your inner world in a way to open up and release what is blocking you.

Pattrick Slattery uses a question in his approach to personal writing where he asks himself in this clip: “What am I about?”  Joseph asks us: “What did you like to do as a child?” and describes the (act of play) as how to think about this process. But find something you love that will help you access it. One quote Joseph used in one of his lectures is: “Take the guy you want to murder and beat him at golf”; but the point is to help access and integrate your “Shadow”; which is going to come up and pay you a visit whether you know it or not. Shadow content is usually related to “a complex”; and as the saying goes: “complexes have us”; not the other way around. They come up out of nowhere and blindside us because they have been repressed. Joseph describes the way these things in the psyche are constellated and talks about how the shadow works. This is what we have to know and learn to recognize as described in this part of his lecture: “Psyche and Symbol”.

So, to repeat myself, as I mentioned I’m sure Joanna can do a much better job of explaining all of this than my humble attempt which is pretty ragged and full of holes no doubt; but that’s my understanding that was triggered by the excellent earlier text I extracted from Doro and Sunbug. So, I’m hoping she has more to add about this.

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(A quick word of clarity concerning art therapy and “symbolic realization”. Yes, the clip was about the “sacred space” which is usually referred to as Temenos that exists between client and therapist; but in this case we are “also” talking about the individual and their expression of their art (with or without a therapist as well.)