"Excluded soul is the great calamity of our age."
___ John Moriarty, "Turtle Was Gone a Long Time"
Wherever we look, we see a lack of sensitivity to the soul's needs. In the race to eliminate world starvation, we have forgotten that the soul can also suffer from lack of nurture. On the way to world literacy, we have fogotten how to read the book of the soul. The temptation to go beyond what is humanly feasible, to drive our energies to the breaking point, is often irresistible. In conventional health care, the needs of the soul are often secondary to the needs of the body (if they are consulted at all). In the building of housing, little attention is paid to the aesthetic and pyschic needs of those who will occupy the structures.
When soul is excluded, we instinctively and unconsciously recoil from the implicit rejection, seeking out ways in which soul-satisfaction can be stimulated. This stimulated satisfaction often takes the form of shallow gratifications that give us a quick-fix sense of satisfaction, but when this feeling passes - which it soon does - we reach for even less nurturing things. When soul is pushed right out onto a limb, we grasp at addictive things: not just substances - drugs or food - but forms of behavior and crablike ways of living that scurry around the real need. These addictive ways of life are on their own continual loop, giving us nothing eroding soul ever more at each turn. Addictive fixes are merely self-sabotaging. The needs of the soul are not just religious: they are cultural, creative, and inspirational. When we pay attention to these, the soul is able to give scope and dynamism to our lives.
"Meditate upon the needs of your soul and how they are being met currently. Where are they being enroached upon or neglected?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]
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