Care of the Soul

The soul, the seat of our deepest emotions, can benefit greatly from the gifts of a vivid spiritual life, and suffer when it is deprived of them.

By Thomas Moore, published on May 01, 1993 - last reviewed on March 24, 2005

Neurosis could be defined, then, as a loss of imagination. We say we "act out," meaning that what should be kept in the realm of image is lived out in life as if it were not poetry. The cure, in fact, for neurotic ritualism could be the cultivation of a more genuine sense of ritual in our daily life.

Ritual maintains the world's holiness. Knowing that everything we do, no matter how simple, has a halo of imagination around it and can serve the soul enriches life and makes the things around us more precious, more worthy of our protection and care. As in a dream, a small object may assume significant meaning, so in a life that is animated with ritual there are no insignificant things.

When traditional cultures carve elaborate faces and bodies on their chairs and tools, they are acknowledging the soul in ordinary things, as well as the fact that simple work is also ritual. When we stamp out our mass-made products with functionality blazoned on them but no sign of imagination, however, we are denying ritual a role in ordinary affairs. We are chasing away the soul that could animate our lives.

We go to church or temple in order to participate in that strong traditional ritual, but also to learn how to do rituals. Tradition is an important part of ritual because the soul is so much greater in scope than an individual's consciousness. Rituals that are "made up" are not always just right, or, like our own interpretations of our dreams, they may support our pet theories but not the eternal truths. If we are going to give ritual a more important place in life, it is helpful to be guided by formal religion and tradition.

How interesting it would be if we could turn to priests, ministers, and rabbis in order to get help in finding our own ritual materials. These spiritual professionals might be better schooled in ritual rather than in sociology, business, and psychology, which seem to be the modem preferences. The soul might be cared for better through our developing a deep life of ritual rather than through many years of counseling for personal behavior and relationships. We might even have a better time of it in such soul matters as love and emotion if we had more ritual in our lives and less psychological adjustment. We confuse purely temporal, personal, and immediate issues with deeper and enduring concerns of the soul.

The soul needs an intense, full-bodied spiritual life as much as and in the same way that the body needs food. That is the teaching and imagery of spiritual masters over centuries. But these same masters demonstrate that the spiritual fife requires careful attention, because it can be dangerous. It's easy to go crazy in the life of the spirit, warring against those who disagree, proselytizing for our own personal attachments rather than expressing our own soulfulness, or taking narcissistic satisfactions in our beliefs rather than finding meaning and pleasure in spirituality that is available to everyone.

The history of our century has shown the proclivity of neurotic spirituality toward psychosis and violence. Spirituality is powerful, and thus has the potential for evil as well as for good. The soul needs spirit, but our spirituality also needs soul-intelligence, a sensitivity to the symbolic and metaphoric life, community, and attachment to the world.

We have no idea yet of the positive contribution that could be made to us individually and socially by a more soulful religion and theology. Our culture in is need of theological reflection that does not advocate a particular tradition, but tends the soul's need for spiritual direction. In order to accomplish this goal, we must gradually bring soul back to religion.

PHOTOS (3): Religious artwork (JENNIFER JESSEE)