Phases of Descent to Soul - Soul Encounter

#3

Soul Encounter

This is the third part of a five-part Musing

“The Descent to Soul is a psychospiritual expedition into one particular precinct of the underworld — the precinct I call Soul Canyon — and, if fortunate, the eventual emergence from those depths having been radically transformed by an encounter with soul. My names for the five phases of the Descent are Preparation, Dissolution, Soul Encounter, Metamorphosis, and Enactment.

The third phase, Soul Encounter, is what happens if you do reach the depths — namely, visions and/or revelations of your unique ecological niche in the greater web of life. But this experience is not anything like a textbook description of species, habitats, food sources, and ecosystems. Rather, it is a glimpse of a pattern or image that metaphorically encompasses or characterizes or connotes that niche. It is more like a poem or a myth, or a dream. It is the revelation of your mythopoetic identity , a phrase that Geneen Marie Haugen and I coined many years ago to name the way that human consciousness experiences soul. And what this vision or revelation does is root your ego in the mysterious soil of soul. The seed of you cracks open and you begin to draw your life from a realm much deeper than you had ever imagined, a realm that turns out to hold your destiny for this lifetime.

From another angle, while the previous Dissolution phase was a type of dying (to an old identity), the Soul Encounter phase is a type of being dead (relative to who you had been in your human community).

How long must you be in these hazardous and often terrifying depths? How long, that is, do you get to enjoy these peculiar and rare ecstasies? Maybe a day. Maybe a few weeks. Maybe years. In an ideal cultural setting, alas, probably not very long. But let’s be clear: Although the Soul Encounter phase is the time when something of your mythopoetic identity is revealed, you are forever after drawing on and living from this revelation.”

Content from SoulCraft Musings, Animas Valley Institute