The Five Phases of the Descent to Soul, Part 1, SM118: Bill Plotkin's weekly Soulcraft Musing

Animas Valley Institute — Guiding the Descent to Soul Since 1980

Letting Go of the Old Life [Collage]. Doug Van Houten ©

The Five Phases of the

Descent to Soul

Preparation

Friday, May 3, 2019

This is the first part of a five-part Musing (one per week).

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. [1] These are not at all the same phases as identified by Arnold van Gennep for rites of passage, nor are they the same phases as identified by Joseph Campbell for the hero’s journey. The Descent to Soul is not a rite of passage and it is not a Campbellian hero’s journey.

With the metaphor-image of Soul Canyon, a Descent to Soul always ends with an ascent from the Canyon, but do keep in mind that once the ego begins being rooted in soul (by way of our first Descent), we never really leave those depths. Our everyday lives in the Village world above the Canyon become expressions of those depths. As our lives unfold — as we continue to grow — our ego is rooted ever deeper in the mysteries of soul as our center of gravity spirals down always closer to the core.

The first phase of the Descent, Preparation, readies you developmentally and psychospiritually for the journey and supports you to ultimately arrive, for the first time, at the Rim of the Canyon, from where you can gaze down toward the incomprehensible, intimidating, and alluring mysteries that await you below. There are several realms and dimensions of personal development that you will need to address in order to arrive at the Rim and be able to descend with a good chance of not only surviving but of being blessed with an encounter with soul. This kind of preparation is something you would have been provided, as a matter of course, in a healthy (ecocentric and soulcentric) culture during your everyday routines of living, learning, and loving. But these are realms and dimensions of development that are at best absent from contemporary egocentric societies and, at worst, actively suppressed.

Although it can be said, without exaggeration, that your entire life before the moment you first peer over the Rim has been your preparation, nothing less, please do not fool yourself that you are therefore ready to descend now. In our current cultural context, the specific Preparation for the Descent usually takes several months or more. You will need to engage in practices that support you to develop in ways you are not likely to have addressed in contemporary Western society. The Preparation phase, for example, is not a matter of what the Western world considers to be psychotherapy or the healing of emotional wounds. It is not something you would have gained through even years of meditation, contemplative prayer, yoga, healthy diets, or nonviolent communication — as valuable as these and other practices are. It is not a matter of journal work, ceremony design, physical conditioning, or the clarification of intentions.

The majority of contemporary people are never adequately prepared for the Descent. The historical and religious evidence suggests this may have been true, at least in Western culture, for several millennia.

References

[1] Although the model I settled on has five phases for the Descent to Soul, an alternative would be to have three phases with a pre-phase (Preparation) and a post-phase (Enactment). With the five-phase model, the middle three are the liminal ones, the phases in which the initiate is set apart from the everyday life of the Village .

This Musing is adapted from the introduction to Bill’s book in progress, Secrets of Soul Initiation .

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Soulcraft Musings:

Exploring Soul and the Human Encounter with Soul

Soulcraft Musings are drawn from published and unpublished works by Bill Plotkin and other Animas guides and offer weekly trail markers (cairns) on the journey to soul. Each Musing builds on previous ones but also stands alone, and you can join at any time. You can read previous Musings here .

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