Regaining
Soul
“Behind
the word soul,” John Ayto tells us in the Dictionary of Word Origins,
“lies the ancient notion of the soul as something fleeting or mercurial. For its prehistoric Germanic ancestor,”
he writes, “saiwalo, was related to Greek aiolos ‘quick-moving.’” The Buddha gave us the image of a
stream to capture the flowing movement that we, in our essence, are. Modern physics gives us the image of
vibrating strings as the stuff that matter is made of.
Like
a stream that flows from a source high in the mountains, we, too, automatically
flow from within to without.
Feelings of tendency flow into consciousness with no effort on our part,
expressing the harmonious interaction of various systems in our organism, the
electrical-chemical processes going on within us. Our feelings are the link with those automatic, unconscious,
bodily processes within, an inner system of signals telling us how we are being
affected by what goes on within and without. We feel sadness at loss, fear at the threat of loss, and
anger at violation. Happiness is
the feeling we feel when our needs are met, when the flow of our being is
unobstructed.
Everything
we do we do because of some need.
We can’t turn off our needs.
They are always on, always motivating. When they are frustrated an obstruction occurs in the
electrical-chemical flow of the processes we are. Some lack exists.
So it’s not a matter of having are needs met or not, our needs are our
imperatives, the requirements of soul.
To recognize that is the first step in regaining soul, in understanding
how to restart flow, the “quick-moving” soul is.
We
need air and water and food. No
ifs or buts about it. We all have
physical needs that must be met.
But our physical needs are just the obvious ones. We all have psychological needs,
too. And flow is obstructed when
we lack them, too. We all know a
person whose psychological needs were not met, who suffered some obstruction to
soul, we derogatively in our culture sometimes call them crazy. For Mother Nature exacts a price when
flow is obstructed, when soul is messed with.
It
wasn’t a need for food or water or air the crazy person lacked, but a sense of
identity or recognition from others or affirmation from important people in
their lives or a sense of belonging that was absent. And without these psychological needs met, they suffer
mental illness, an illness of soul, of flow, or more precisely aren’t living
from within to without as I-process.
They may look alive, but something is missing and they know it even if
they can’t name it. They lack a
genuineness, an authenticity, a bodily gutfulness they would have if in touch
with their feelings. In place of
that they have an adapted self, a fixed immobile concept of who they are, a
self from without to within, more attuned to the needs and wants and
expectations of others than their own needs flowing from their own
biology. There’s an outward focus
where an inner rootedness should be, a rootedness emanating from the depths of
their own unique being. These
soulless ones, lack the interests and meanings that come from their depths, the
biological depths of who they really are.
Our
needs define what’s missing in our lives.
We need to reconnect with our true needs to have soul again. To understand that you have to
recognize boundries. There are
boundries between I-process and other.
We have different biologies and from that spring different needs. It’s not a matter of likes and
dislikes, but who we are on a cellular level. That’s where needs originate.
This
process, this I-process, this process of soulfulness or flow, begins at the
very beginning of our lives. We
ARE then. But to sustain
soulfulness we need an optimally available person there for us. We need someone to attend to our needs
even when we are shitty or crying, especially then. We NEED and someone must be there to meet our needs, who can
figure out what it is we need and supply it, to find out what is obstructing flow.
Now
if that early person in our lives isn’t good at guessing what we need the
I-process begins to become chaotic.
It’s then flow might start to go from without to within. In place of I-process as the foundation
of being, an adapted self arises.
That’s when an outward focus arises where an inward focus should
be. That’s when we begin to lose
soul, a “quick moving” that ebbs from our own unique tendencies. When our needs
are fulfilled, when our tendencies are actualized, we feel pleasure. When our needs are frustrated they call
out for gratification. We become
needier.
Psychoanalyst
Joseph D. Lichtenberg with his Motivational Systems Theory postulates we have
five systems that make up our basic human needs – “(1) the need to fulfill
physiological requirements; (2) the need for attachment and affiliation; (3)
the need
for assertion and exploration; (4)
the need to react aversively through antagonism and/or withdrawal; (5) the need
for sensual and sexual pleasure.”
At any particular time one or another of these motivational systems
assumes dominance. Each system
Lichtenberg wrote in an article in the Journal of the American
Psychoanalytic Association “has a biological and neurophysiological base
assuring survival.” Lichtenberg
continues, “I regard needs as fundamental requirements for biological survival
and psychic integrity.” When our
needs are met, he explains, we feel a sense of vitality. “When the fundamental needs that
underlie each system and the wishes that develop in the course of life’s
vicissitudes are relatively compatible, a basically harmonious sense of self is
felt. When needs and wishes are
persistently discordant, patterns of a pathological nature develop.” Soul or Craziness – that’s Mother
Nature’s bottom line.
So
to regain soul you must be in touch with your needs. Needs pinpoint obstructions in the flow of our natural,
biologic tendencies. Find people
and environments that allow your natural tendencies to be actualized , your
needs to be met, and you become stream, “quick moving” again. That’s Mother Nature’s recipe for
regaining soul.
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