Aboriginal healing restores natural balance

In Melbourne’s The Age, Andrew Stephens writes about a group of dancers and musicians, from Arnhem Land, visiting Victoria’s sites of the devastating bushfires in "Spirit songs of healing".

"Healing can seem largely mysterious. In a world where so much is deeply traumatic ― where wealth and poverty are in extreme, where fragile ecologies, economies and weather systems are collapsing, where faiths bicker, where our psyches and spirits are besieged ― the energy, respect and care required for healing and renewal might seem all too scarce and difficult.
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Contemporary philosopher Thomas Moore writes in Care of the Soul(1992) that caring for ourselves ― not just for our physical bodies ― does not mean curing, fixing, changing, adjusting or making healthy. Instead, he writes, we need to attend to soul with "an application of poetics to everyday life". That sounds abstract, but perhaps it is about sitting with the emotions and evolving in some enigmatic way ― something the arts, beauty and sharing with other people might help us to do in addition to professional help.
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Those who lived through the bushfires might naturally have incredible rage towards the brutal Australian landscape ― towards trees and fire and smoke and wind, towards the terrible confluence of circumstances that burnt so much life away. The indigenous approach to healing, in which everything is seen in relationship, perhaps has much to offer in its generous way. Land, people, spirituality: for our indigenous peoples, these cannot be treated in isolation.

It is a holism expressed beautifully by Gregory Phillips, a Waanyi and Jaru man from north-west Queensland who works in Melbourne as a medical anthropologist and who has long been involved with healing in Aboriginal education, land councils, youth and health sectors by developing community recovery programs. Healing of an individual, a family, community; or healing at a political level, or healing of country: they are all connected, he says. People, land, waterways, animals: they are in relationship together.

"Mainstream Western healing is concerned with the physical and the mental," says Phillips. "It doesn't understand or deal very well with the spiritual or emotional part of health. Aboriginal healing is essentially about restoring balance. It's all about relationships - about healing the individual, but also their relationships in the world. The thing is, in the Aboriginal world we are all connected, everything is connected.

"For us to survive, we have to look after our country. The land needs its people. For us, it's all about looking after those dreaming places we come from."

Read description of Moore as spiritual visionary

Maya Kumar Mitchell’s description of Thomas Moore as a visionary of the 20th century is available for reading online through Google Books. Visionaries, the 20th Century’s 100 Most Important Inspirational Leaders (2007) is edited by Satish Kumar and Freddie Whitefield.

The entry for Moore, starting on page 188, includes:
"When Moore speaks of religion he sees an opportunity to reawaken the soul within many practices, enabling a new lease of life and power within our religions. At the heart of religion there is always mystery, and this is where soul can find the space it needs. At the same time religion offers us rituals and traditions, whose symbolism is a rich language for the soul. In our modern world we can observe a split between mind and body, spirituality and materialism, ongoing dualisms which entice us to one extreme or the another. But soul can be found in the middle, "holding together ideas and life". Thus soul work is vital in the effort to rebalance the radical consequences of the spiritual/material split, which we see on a global scale."

Barque profiles this book in a November 2007 entry.

Winter season invites restoration of soul

In today’s Huffington Post, Dr. Judith Rich writes about "The Soul of Winter", the seasonal solstice, and opportunities to explore our interior lives. Her column includes,

"The soul continually calls us to make the journey to the farthest reaches of our own interior, to places the light of awareness has never reached so that we too, might be rewarded with the riches of renewal and restoration. However to do so, we must be willing shed the skin of the ordinary world in order to enter the darkness.

Dr. James Hillman, founder of Archetypal Psychology, an extension of the work of Carl Jung, has written many books on the subject of the soul including his most important work, The Soul's Code, a highly recommended read for anyone interested in learning more about this area. Archetypal Psychology is devoted to the study of world mythology, which includes soul process and evolution.

Two other important writers in this area: Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and The Soul's Religion, and Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero With A Thousand Faces, who became especially known for his PBS series with Bill Moyer. All speak of the soul's process as characterized by the necessity to descend repeatedly into this inner realm of darkness."

Rich suggests, "The call may come in the form of a loss: perhaps the loss of a job or death of a loved one, the end of an important relationship or a life-threatening illness. Or perhaps it's a betrayal or deep disappointment that pierces the veil of our resistance and renders us ready to deepen. When all the usual outer-oriented coping mechanisms no longer work, when we've run out of ways to avoid or means to distract ourselves, the call to begin the inward journey can finally be heard."

She includes a YouTube video link to Thomas Moore talking about a dark night of the soul, and two quotes:

"Instead of seeing depression as a dysfunction, it is a functioning phenomenon. It stops you cold, sets you down, makes you damn miserable." — James Hillman

"Loss means losing what was. We want to change but we don't want to lose. Without time for loss, we don't have time for soul." — James Hillman

Creative Mythology describes soul qualities

The Creative Mythology Blog talks about soul in two posts:
27 November 2008 The Soul: Part One
16 December 2008 The Soul: Part Two
The second post, based primarily on Thomas Moore’s audio program, Soul Life, describes qualities of soul:
- Individual
- Vast
- Madness
- Complex
- Cyclic
- Shadowy
- Other
The posts also refer to Carl Jung’s work.

Time of gratitude and thanksgiving evokes soul

In Sunday’s entry on her news analysis and opinion blog, Virginia Bergman shares the presentation she gave at Groveland Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship in St. Paul, Minnesota. She tells a family story about the blue bird of happiness, acknowledges the power of imagination, and quotes Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul.

Bergman describes how she honours soul, especially at this time of thanksgiving in the U.S.: "Rituals at home and in community help. I’ve mentioned my dream journal, keeping fresh flowers in my apartment, and recent efforts to meditate regularly. Preparing for Thanksgiving has reminded me of long-practiced family rituals. Our dinner menu is handed down from the previous generation. Along with turkey and homemade bread stuffing, it includes required items such as watermelon rind pickles, black olives, rutabaga, and cranberry sauce (the jellied kind that comes in a can)."

She observes, "Turning the pages of The Care of the Soul in the past few weeks, I’ve been reminded of the person I was at my first reading some ten or fifteen years ago compared to who I am now. And what delights me most is the discovery that wherever we are in our lives we are free to nurture our souls and experience healing and growth."

Listener recommends Moore's set of soul tapes

On his blog, Exploring a Dancing Soul, Ken Blackham recommends Thomas Moore's set of cassette tapes Soul Life in which Moore informally talks directly to the listener about the life of soul.

In its review of the cassette set, Library Journal said, "Moore challenges our generation, like the alchemists of 500 years ago, to engage the energies of the soul for every aspect of life in need of nourishment. He forsakes the modern clinical approach involved with curing the soul and contends that there is no quick fix to our everyday problems. We cannot solve our inner struggles on a scientific or mechanical level. Caring for the soul involves some sort of spirituality. Which type depends upon each person and his or her individual gifts of the soul, Moore claims."

Moore's writings considered "holy" by reader

On St. Patrick's Day in 2007, Lorette C. Luzajic posted an article called "Looking after the Soul: Thomas Moore Speaks" that talks about the effect Thomas Moore's writings have had on her. A revised version is available as "Thomas Moore Speaks on Soul."

In her article, Luzajic says, "As the pages turn in his many works on the soul, and indeed his many reflections of Eros and soul-mating, we deepen our understanding of ourselves. Moore goes right into the heart and pries it open, but gently, assuring you the whole way that you are safe. He speaks wisely and in soothing tones about difficult areas in our lives, holding the dark spots up to sunlight, shedding light on our path inwards. One can't help but feel naked beforeis stranger, and yet the union between reader and writer is so ... holy."

She includes quotes from Moore's books and direct references about his understanding of soul. According to Luzajic, Moore says:

"My own definition of the soul is the component in beings that gives them their individuality, their mysterious depth, their capacity to imagine and relate, and their connection with memory. In addition, I see the soul as having certain characteristics or areas peculiar to it: beauty, intimacy, friendship, imagination and the poetic, shadow, connection, and memory. We can talk about an animal, a place, and even as object as having a soul. When we speak of a person as having soul, we mean that this is someone who has not defended himself against life, and has been made more human because of it."

Luzajic quotes Moore responding to a question about therapy:

"Is attention [to] the soul self-indulgent? I wish it were required of our leaders that they read excellent books, be intensely involved in the arts, and be in therapy. I don't think that the arts and therapy are going to kill us off as a people...the problem with modern society is not too much attention to the self but unconscious narcissism. We don't treat each other well as people."

She also highlights passages from Moore’s various books that especially resonate with her.
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Do you want to comment on Luzajic's article? Join the free forum at Barque: Thomas Moore Forum.