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The Inner Wilderness of Soul

OUR LIVES ARE MARKED with a series of events, encounters, and turning points that in one way or another stamp our outlook on life and move us in this direction or that. Ultimately, our responses to those events shape us into who we are today. If we can view these circumstances of our lives as aspects of our very own story, our unique pathway through life, then we can make the journey more conscious, and we can open to it. As Loren Eiseley has suggested, the only vantage point for the journey is “from my own wilderness.” If we imagine our own inner wilderness as a base camp, this book is about the exploration of that personal wilderness and going out into the wilderness of our work lives. It’s about beholding the wonders and dangers, bringing the journey into consciousness. Perhaps we shall also discover something about soul!10

If you are unsure of what this word soul means and yet find yourself strangely drawn to it—especially with regard to using it in the same sentence as workplace—you are not alone. There are about as many meanings for the word soul as there are people taking up the question. Rather than that being a deterrent, it actually serves a useful purpose: Without the complications of a technical, rational understanding, the word soul can be a metaphor that feeds directly into our longings for meaning and purpose. In this way, it serves as something of a projection screen from which we can each envision our own particular meaning.

Reflection

GETTING STARTED

• WHAT MEANING does soul have for you? How would you describe it?
• WHAT IS currently stirring in your life that draws your attention to a book such as this?

How We Describe Soul

There is a lot of talk these days about soul and spirit, with many different concepts thrown around rather loosely. Teasing out some of the historical meanings behind the words can help us get grounded for the journey ahead. The meaning and context of the words themselves have crossed over into each other in different ways, at different times, and in different cultures. Our interest is not so much in distinguishing the use of one word from another historically as it is to clarify how we are using the word soul in this book. Accordingly, the following table highlights distinguishable themes for how the word soul has been used in the past, suggesting how, in this book, we might draw upon these meanings.

Chapter 6: Table 1

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Notable themes of soul relevant to our work here include the journey into the shadowy nature of our inner world, vitality and renewal, the union of opposites, and elements of transcendence. Though they span several thousand years, these themes remain current. In a time of emphasis upon external impressions, it is appropriate to go inward; in a time of lost authenticity at work, to seek renewal; in a time of linear, absolute thinking, to consider the relationship of opposites; and in a time of constrictions from all of the above, to open to the transcendent.

A popular response to the increasing turbulence at work is to turn to spiritual answers. Though attending to the spiritual has value, it can also have limitations. It may be used to avoid the tough issues at work, or become a new form of rhetoric, or be confused with religious observance, or even pit groups against each other. Sometimes, it seems, a common thread in the popular movement is to take the focus away from actual work—to take time out for poetry, for walks in nature, for opening to the heart’s calling regarding “real work,” or for praying or meditating with others at work. When the subject is more directly related to work itself, it frequently manifests in the form of achieving one’s highest potential, attaining power and wealth, managing stress, and even developing “emotional intelligence.” One gets the feeling that to be spiritual at work requires either being away from work entirely (ironic) or doing a significant amount of additional work (equally ironic). The question remains, dangling for us to figure out for ourselves, of how to bridge the painful distance between our spiritual lives and our work lives.

There is a valid place for a spirituality that emphasizes time apart from the ordinary routines of work, including time for rest, reflection, rejuvenation. Certainly the idea of a “Sabbath rest” makes intuitive sense. In the face of today’s work demands, a case could be made for spirituality as a complete flight from work and not merely as a Sabbath rest. Such a stance reflects the seeming impossibility of actually bridging the two worlds; we are left instead with having to choose between them. Unfortunately, this dilemma is all too real for many people today, quite possibly for you personally. Yet it is here, in this dilemma, that we are most vulnerable to a form of spirituality that is a disservice—when focus on the spiritual leads to a flight away from the more difficult realities requiring our attention. How does one embrace the spiritual without simply fleeing from the challenges and difficulties that mark our lives?13

Spirit can suggest our highest potential, a place described by the Dalai Lama as a land of high, white peaks. But spirit needs to be joined with the fertile fields and hidden valleys of our own experience. Soul, as a concept distinct from spirit, draws on imagination, passion and reflection to remind us that life is a constant tension among opposite pulls. To approach the soul means to go deeper, on an odyssey of self-discovery that connects us to the world and our duties in life. Soul introduces us to mystery, it leads us to our own darkness, and it reveals new possibilities. In soul, we find the threads that weave together those fundamental questions of life: Where have I been? Where am I going? What truly matters? What do I want?

Soul beckons us straight into the swampy muck where our inner life and our work life intersect. This space is often marked with uncertainty and is sometimes dark, absent of the light clarity brings. Yet soul is the space in which the most fertile materials are found, the space which offers the possibility for renewal and vitality. It is in delving directly into the gritty realities of contradiction and uncertainty at work that one is able to bring spirituality into work life. The swamp is a provocative metaphor. Henry David Thoreau wrote, “When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable, and to the citizen, most dismal swamp. I enter the swamp as a sacred place—a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow of nature.”³

Learning to hold the material and spiritual worlds together in creative tension is an act of courage and a form of love. Embedded in the idea of soul, therefore, is the sacredness of connecting the complexity of our own inner world with the complexity of the outer world. We grapple at the boundary, the overlap between self and other, the permeable line between what is inside and what is out there in the world. This can be especially difficult in the context of modern work life, with the polarization that has developed between the material and the spiritual, and with the constant shifting of boundaries around our work groups. To approach soul in organizational life is to become mindful of the web of relationships, beginning within and connecting into larger and larger circles of participation.14

Reflection

CHECKING OUR PULSE

• IS THERE a part of you that wants to take a kind of Sabbath rest from the issues in the workplace? Why?
• IS THERE a part of you that wants to flee entirely from a focus on work and turn your attention toward spiritual development or other matters?
• IS THERE a part of you that is willing to go into the muck, that fertile and creative space that can also be uncomfortable?

The Journey Ahead

This book is about the journey inward and the search for outward, meaningful connection in our work. Inevitably what we find affects us, so that the journey shifts, changes focus, beckons us to new directions. It is not linear. Though surprises can be frightening as well as enlightening, they are often the channels through which we catch glimpses of our deepest wilderness. The challenges of the workplace today provide many opportunities for making the journey real in our lives.

The journey is about ownership—of our inner world and the ways in which our inner world links outward. In those links, the spiritual and material coexist: Ownership makes possible the coming together of our spiritual lives and our work lives.16

In the next chapters of this book, we will be gathering tools for the journey—initiating ourselves into the practice of seeing in new ways and exploring the many aspects of our multiplicity of selves. We do this by learning to approach the soul indirectly, while cultivating the skill of inward awareness. And we do it with an eye toward work—both how we understand ourselves in the context of work challenges and how we might bring more of our inner richness to bear on them.