Human Faith & Beliefs

Please see the message in the following.  It will reshape the way energy is used now and forever!

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 We are an organization that firmly believes we have come up with a revolutionary development program.  We must do this now.  Let's come together, put our heads down, and work for a better, more enjoyable, and renewable life experience

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Thank you for listening to our message!

 Sincerely,

The Founders of the Field of Dreams & Innovation

Keener Lake, Flat Tops Wilderness, Colorado 

Soulcraft
Most religions and spiritual paths omit or obscure the underworld half of the sprititual journey. Those of us coming to understand this are in a position similar to women raised in Western religions who have long suspected that half the story, the divine feminine, has been left out. But this similarity is not coincidental. As we shall see, the wild, earthy sensual half of the spiritual journey is the half that the uninitiated masculine mind experiences as feminine and therefore nonessential, perhaps undesirable or even harmful. (Soulcraftp23)

Spirituality is that sphere of experience that lies beyond the commonplace world of our surface lives and opens our awareness to the ultimate and core realities of existence. There are two realms of spirituality. They are distinct yet complementary. Together they form a whole. Either alone is incomplete.

One realm turns upward toward the light, transcending our (ego's) insistence that the world be just a certain way and not any other, helps us to disidentify from the commotion of the strategic mind, so that we can reclaim the inner quiet, peace, and wholeness of our true nature, and assists us in cultivating the blissful experience of being fully present in the moment and one with all of creation.

Soulcraft is the exploration of that other realm of spirituality, which leads not upward toward God, but downward toward the dark center of our individual selves and into the fruitful mysteries of nature... On this half of the spiritual journey, we do not rise toward heaven but fall toward the center of our longing. Although equally sacred and ancient, this second spiritual realm might be unfamiliar to people of Western cultures. (p24)

Transpersonal Ascent and Descent
Spirit and soul are loaded terms, words used in so many ways within so many traditions that it's difficult to know what we ourselves mean by them. Yet I haven't found better alternatives. The best solution is to tell you exactly how I use these two words. My uses might be different from yours, but please don't get hung up on the words; keep in mind what's most important are the meanings explained below, not the words themselves.

By soul I mean the vital, mysterious, and wild core of our individual selves, an essence unique to each person, qualities found in layers of the self much deeper than our personalities. By spirit I mean the single, great, and eternal mystery that permeates and animates everything in the universe and yet transcends all. Ultimately, each soul exists as an agent for spirit. 

The concept of soul embraces the essence of our particular individuality. This individuality reflects our unique and deepest personal characteristics, the core and enduring qualities that define our personhood, the true self, the "real me." Soul is what is most wild and natural within us...

In contrast to soul, the concept of spirit points to what all people, all things, have in common, our shared membership in a single cosmos, each of us a facet of the One Being that contains all. Spirit both transcends all things and is immanent in all things. Spirit, in other words, can be thought of as something majestic "out there," something removed from ordinary life; but is simultaneously that which infuses all and everything -- the land, the air, the animals, all peoples, our human creations, our own bodies and selves.

Soul embraces and calls us toward what is most unique in us. Spirit encompasses and draws us toward what is most universal and shared.

Our human souls are embodied (i.e., made visible in the world) through our core powers, those central to our character and necessary to manifest our soul-level uniqueness. Our core powers can be divided into our most central values, abilities, and knowledge. Our core values are the ideals for which we would be willing to die and for which we in fact live. Our core abilities are the natural talents or gifts indispensable for performing our soul work; they are developed effortlessly or are capable of being honed to exceptional levels. Our core knowledge consists of those mysterious, soul-level things we know without knowing how we know them and that we acquire without effort; they are the facts essential to performing soul work. (p25)

Spirit and soul are both sacred; they imbue life with meaning, beauty, and mystery. Spirit and soul are both spiritual or transpersonal -- they exist beyond the personal, beyond the conventional mind or personality. They might each be referred to as the "sacred Other."

Soul is that sacred Other whose purposes each person has been uniquely designed to serve. Even though the soul is at our very core, soul appears to the conscious self as mysteriously other. Spirit is the ultimate Other that encompasses all that exists. Nature, as the universe itself, is either synonymous with spirit or is immanent spirit. What all three have in common -- soul, spirit, and nature -- is their wild Otherness, the fact that they are indisputably beyond what we can create or control or claim as possession. We belong to and serve the Other. We are here to serve the soul. Spirit creates us. We don't own the land; the land owns us. Your soul is transpersonal and other because it is deeper and far more expansive than the conscious mind. Your soul encompasses many qualities of which you are not yet aware and may never become aware, including qualities you may flatly deny...

Spirit is transpersonal too. It is independent of any beliefs or knowledge you have about yourself, no matter how shallow or deep, ridiculous or sublime. Spirit is not so concerned with the particularities of your life direction. Spirit simply invites you to return to spirit (and the universal essence of your self through surrender to the present moment). You can also come into alignment with spirit by responding to the bidding of your soul. Soul is ultimately an agent for spirit. And a healthy ego or personality is an agent for soul and, by extension, for spirit as well. 

Although both are transpersonal, spirit takes you in one direction from the conscious mind or personality, and soul takes you in the other. The movement toward spirit is a journey of ascent while the movement toward your soul is a journey of descent or what Thomas Berry calls inscendence, a journey that deepens. (p27)

Neuberger Cairn by sculptor, photographer & environmentalist Andy Goldsworthy. His land-art, either temporary (made with found objects) or permanent, seeks to draw out the soul of the natural environment.
 
People who live excessively upperworld lives take a transcendental view of everything. They tend to see light, love, unity and peace everywhere. They are attracted to the Course in Miracles or aspire to, “enlightenment,” via an ungrounded approach to Buddhism. They avoid getting dragged down into the particulars of life or actively addressing the social, political, or environmental deterioration of the world. They want to exist above it all and are encouraged to do so by many approaches to spirituality...

People who live excessively underworld lives see the world darkly. They tend to see hidden meaning, mystery, and the undoing of things everywhere. They gravitate toward the occult and the paradoxical. They want to penetrate to the center of everything and understand it all by standing under....

A holistic approach to spirituality interweaves the ascent and the descent, rendering balance to the experience of both the upperworld and the underworld.

...Western religious traditions associate the downward direction with a turn away from the sacred, toward evil and wickedness, toward "hell". We have been taught that entering the underworld is sinful, suicidal, or a one-way trip reserved for those who have been particularly bad.

Likewise, nature has been rendered as evil. Pan, the Greek horned god of the forest, was transformed into the devil of Christian mythology. Most Western cultures have feared wild nature and thought of it as an unruly realm whose laws clash with society's.

We have, in short, been led to believe that nature and soul are not merely wild but dangerous, forbidden, tainted, or evil. This portrayal is not likely to be a coincidence. Perhaps our religious and political forefathers were afraid of the influences of nature and soul, steered us away from the wild, and tried to control or destroy wildness wherever it might be found. Fear of nature and the soul, like fear of the feminine, is a fear of our own essence. (p28) 

Although opposite in one sense, soul and spirit are in no way opposed to each other. They are, to borrow a phrase employed by depth psychologist James Hillman, two polar forces of one and the same power. We might call that one power the transpersonal, the sacred, or the Great Mystery...

In relation to spirit, everyone has the same lessons to learn; for example, compassion and loving-kindness toward all beings, as Buddhism teaches. Our relationship to spirit makes possible the experience and expression of universal, transpersonal qualities like unconditional love, perennial wisdom, and healing power.

Soul is encountered in the subconscious (i.e., that which lies below awareness), while spirit is apprehended in states of super-consciousness. Both are associated with states of ecstasy (i.e., outside the ordinary), but the encounter with soul is characterized by dreams and visions of personal destiny, while spirit-realization engenders pure, content-free awareness.

When a person experiences ego transcendence or enlightenment, we often say they have merged with the Light or with God, the Self, Buddha-nature, Emptiness or Being -- the ultimate sacred other. This is the Other who is dreaming the world into manifestation, the Other of which our everyday mind is a tiny part, the Other who is both inside us and in whom we are inside.

When a person encounters her individual soul, on the other hand, we are more likely to say she has uncovered her unique gifts, her destiny, life purpose, or personal meaning. Through soul encounter, she learns why spirit and nature gave birth to the exceptional individual she is, and about her particular way of belonging to the world. (p30)

Many ascent-orientated spiritual paths see the descent as simply unnecessary and avoidable or perhaps as necessary but a temporary diversion from the ascent, at best an experience from which we can learn something that will help us return to the light. I have heard certain spiritual teachers say that paying heed to a vision, even of personal destiny, is a distraction from the spiritual path. The light is seen as the only goal.

Consider, in contast, that the descent has its own rewards, both independent of the ascent and in conjunction with it. As Rilke wrote:
If we surrendered
To earth's intelligence
We could rise up rooted, like trees... 
(p34)

A Vision With a Task
Each of us is born with a treasure, an essence, a seed of quiescent potential, secreted for safekeeping in the center of our being. This treasure, personal quality, power, talent, or gift (or set of such qualities) is ours to develop, embody, and offer to our communities through acts of service -- our contribution to a more diverse, vital, and evolved world. Our personal destiny is to become that treasure through our actions...

Psychologist Abraham Maslow made this point in describing people who are psychologically and spiritually healthy: 

Self-actualizing people are, without exception, involved in a cause outside their own skins, in something outside themselves. They are devoted, working at something, something very precious to them -- some calling or vocation in the old sense, the priestly sense. They are working at something which fate has called them to somehow, and which they work at and which they love, so that the work-joy dichotomy in them disappears.

...Even in Western society, our deepest yearnings go far beyond a vacation or retirement. We long for a vision of our destiny, and equally for a way to carry that vision as a gift to others. The following lines, attributed to sources as diverse as Chief Seattle, Winston Churchill, and anonymous, say it quite neatly:

A task without a vision is just a job.
A vision without a task is just a dream.
A vision with a task can change the world.

It is this sacred work, this "vision with a task" that we seek, individually and collectively. The rarity of finding sacred work is at the root of our Western despair and sorrow. When not acknowledged and embraced, our grief is acted out through violence, against ourselves (e.g., addictions, suicide, masochism), each other (e.g., sadism, racism, sexism, war, child-abuse, ethnic cleansing), and the environment (e.g. toxic waste, resource depletion, species extinction, deforestation, environmental degradation). Unacknowledged grief also manifests as depression, anxiety, and a growing sense of meaninglessness.

By consciously honoring our grief -- the absence of vision and sacred work -- we take our first steps toward soul discovery and personal fulfillment. We begin the return to our true nature. (pp 40-41)

Your Place in the More-Than-Human World of Nature
Your soul is your true nature. It can also be thought of as your true place in nature. You were born to occupy a particular place within the community that ecophilosopher David Abram calls the more-than-human world. You have a unique ecological role, the way you are meant to serve and nurture the web of life, directly or through your role in society. "A particular place" also means a specific physical location. The Australian aborigines say, for example, that for each person there is one place in the natural world where he most belongs, a place that is part of him and where he is part of that place. In finding it, he also finds his true self...

You too can reclaim your membership as a natural being in a natural world. The easiest and most direct way to begin is to simply spend time outdoors, quietly, observantly, and gratefully. By innocently immersing yourself in nature, you will discover, in time, that nature reflects your soul, revealing your particular place in the more-than-human world...

You can count on wild nature to reflect your soul because soul is your most wild and natural dimension. Nature gives birth to your soul -- and that of all other animals and plants on the planet. Your ego, on the other hand, is not born directly from nature, but rather from the matrix of culture-language-family...

Wild nature contains all the terrestrial patterns of belonging. Every niche of the world is filled with a life-form that perfectly fits there, because it was born to do just that. The wilder the environment (the more complex and diverse it is) the more likely it contains patterns of belonging that resonate with your destiny. No matter who you are, no matter what possibilities you contain, there are forms and forces in wild nature that will reflect the nuances of your soul.

The poets understand this. Mary Oliver, for example, writes:

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clear blue air, 
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese,
harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
(p42)

From Soulcraft © 2003 by Bill Plotkin. 
Used by permission of New World Library (http://www.newworldlibrary.com)

 
Bill Plotkin Ph.D., is a depth psychologist, wilderness guide, and agent of cultural transformation. As founder of western Colorado’s Animas Valley Institute in 1981, he has guided thousands of women and men through nature-based initiatory passages, including a contemporary, Western adaptation of the pan-cultural vision quest. Previously, he has been a research psychologist (studying non-ordinary states of consciousness), professor of psychology, psychotherapist, rock musician, and whitewater river guide. Bill is the author of Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (an experiential guidebook) and Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (a nature-based stage model of human development through the entire lifespan). His doctorate is in psychology from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Animas Valley Institute, a Colorado nonprofit, offers nature-based programs that assist people through the initiatory process that leads to visionary leadership and cultural artistry. The central goal is the descent to soul for the purpose of maturing the ego so that it becomes a vessel for a person’s deepest, world-transforming gifts. Rare in today’s world, Animas programs are not designed to transcend the ego, to solve everyday personal problems, or to help people better adjust to — or be happier in — the surface world of contemporary Western culture. Instead, our intent is a foundational shift that elicits each person’s most creative, soul-rooted response to our precious, critical moment in history.