Bill Plotkin on Soul, Felt-sense, and Metaphor

The Journey of Soul Initiation by Bill Plotkin is a thorough description of the most essential things Plotkin has learned over the past 40 years about the journey to full maturity as human beings. Bill Plotkin uses common words in uncommon ways. Soul is, for example, an ecological concept.

Soul

Bill Plotkin writes (my emphasis in italics):

…Soul, for me, is … a person or thing’s unique ecological niche in the Earth community. …all human creations that evolve organically [have Soul]… Each natural thing…has its own unique position…in the larger web of…life. A niche…consists of a thing’s unique set of relationships with every other thing in its ecosystem. A thing’s eco-niche…is what makes it what it is on the deepest, widest, and most natural level of identity.

—Bill Plotkin, The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries

It’s worth noting that everything that is not fabricated or constructed solely with our strategic minds has Soul. Here I am reminded of Christopher Alexander’s work on living structure.

Felt-sense & Experiencing

We have, according to Bill Plotkin, a felt-sense about our unique ecological niche in the larger web of life. He writes (my emphasis in italics):

We humans possess a special realm…of consciousness…that rides on top of the more extensive consciousness we have in common with all other species. …because each individual Ego…is a child of culture and language, we at first…come to understand our place…in terms of social roles. … But we’re also born with an entirely different kind of knowledge, a felt-sense about our ecological place or niche in the world. This knowledge exists only within the deeper realm of consciousness…, knowledge that is not linguistic but imaginal…

—Bill Plotkin, The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries

Here I see a connection with Eugene Gendlin’s work on experiencing and felt sense. Besides the logical dimension of knowledge, there is also a directly felt, experiential dimension.

Metaphor & Poetry

This means that we can only point to our unique ecological niche indirectly with the language of the intrinsic, i.e., metaphor and poetry.

When it comes to identifying Soul, we can only point…to it using metaphor… We can linguistically understand our Souls only indirectly… We discover (or remember) our innate place, our true home, when the world mirrors it to us by way of nature-based metaphors, human archetypes, or other…poetic images or symbols. We don’t choose these metaphors or figure them out… Rather, we’re shown them in a moment of numinous vision…

—Bill Plotkin, The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries

Here I see a connection with Robert Hartmans work. Finding our unique echological niche, our true home in the larger web of life, constitutes a fulfillment of intrinsic value.

Related post:
Bill Plotkin on Purpose