“There is a third way to deal with human foibles and suffering. It is the way of the Soul”
– Bryan Maynard
When someone enters into therapy, they come in with “symptoms” of depression, anxiety, emptiness, and, understandably, they are often baffled as to where these haunting triggers and states are coming from. They want to feel better.
These “symptoms,” however, are not symptoms.
They are pointers. They are the body’s way of talking to other parts of us that the thinking mind wants to fix and cure.
There is a way to pass through these symptoms, but it is not the way of the rational mind.
The thinking mind has to split things into opposites in order to understand. “This IS me; that is NOT me. This IS a rock; That is NOT a rock.”
We live in an age where this dualistic mind has divided the mind from the body and spirituality from a materialistic-only view of life. Again, a division of the rational mind.
We can’t just think our way out of “symptoms” because thinking itself is a part of the problem, as Thomas Moore said.
What we need is a third way beyond the binary/oppositional way of the thinking mind.
This third way is the way of soul…A quality of being where the mind drops into the heart. Where imagination as “knowing with love” meets, with profound acceptance, the human condition.
Dignity and peace emerge from this imaginative way of the soul’s meeting what is. The path of the soul is the art of descending through all of what arises. The person who enters this descent is not the person who emerges on the other side.
The person who has learned how to meet what is true and real is learning to practice being co-eternal with Being itself.
This learning how to “be with” or meet what is true and real with soulfulness is an art that requires mentoring and walking with someone who knows this third way of the soul. Like being an apprentice of a Jedi Knight who trains you in the ways of the Force 🙂