Review of Bill Plotkin’s The Journey of Soul Initiation

As a Climate Coach I am always interested in what is pushing the boundaries of human purpose and motivation, especially when that intersects with how we can engage more effectively in our work on climate disruption. This intersection is why I’m so excited to share this new release with you. I was fortunate to be invited to read The Journey of Soul Initiation in pre-publication as a reviewer. It is challenging to express how profound, thorough, and necessary this book is, both as a summation of Bill Plotkin’s pioneering life’s work, and as a comprehensive guide to what the Earth is asking us to embody.

Rather than limiting himself to a trailblazing new map of the territory, which is characteristic of the most valuable such lifeworks, Plotkin also provides evolving Songlines, vivid legends, evocative dreams, and new myths to help guide our steps on what he calls the Descent to Soul. And he helps us understand that this descent is what the Earth now urgently requires of us.

Note he uses this term Soul not in the more common religious usage, but instead as: “our psycho-ecological niche in the more-than-human world.” And also: “our greatest possible contribution” through our ecosystem role of “visionary co-creator of a life-enhancing future… [leading to] ecological vitality and cultural evolution.” There is nothing more vital for us each to accomplish at this moment of acute planetary crisis.

To that end, he is both asking the questions most important to ask at this time in evolutionary history, and also pointing his finger directly at how we can begin to live into these questions most profoundly and to the highest possible outcome for all beings (as we begin to embody ourselves as truly indigenous to and in deepest reciprocity with Mother Earth).

Plotkin asserts that our current “Developed” cultures are what he terms “patho-adolescent,” or “consumer-conformist-dominator” societies. Cultures which “in their worst expression are often centered on greed, shame, addiction, violence,” etc. -- predominantly locked in cycles of serving our adolescent needs. Cultures where no more than 10% of us are successfully maturing into true self- and other-nurturing Adulthood (and further, he points out we are almost entirely bereft of true Elders). This reality is hard to see because we are swimming in it – but Plotkin offers the glasses with which to view clearly both the dire situation and the path out.

He serves up the requisite conceptual framework and vocabulary while balancing that with concrete, lived examples from Descent to Soul participants over the years that are necessary to illustrate the new concepts he is introducing. Together, the framework and example narratives help us firmly grasp all we have lost and all we stand to (re)gain through this journey. He also provides credit to and critical comparisons between his methodology and those which have come before (psycho-analytical, Eco-Depth, Systems, mythic, intact Native and indigenous, etc.), and leavens this with vivid metaphors for what he is proposing.

For example: Plotkin draws the parallel between humans and very hungry caterpillars, who, with each molting are content to say only: “Yay, I’m a bigger caterpillar!” and continue eating voraciously all the leaves that we can. Humanity in this metaphor thus molting when we came out of the trees 4 million years ago, then molting again in each of the agricultural, industrial, and technological revolutions. If the caterpillar were only a voracious leaf-eater it would be a disaster for the forest, as we have become for the planet. But the caterpillar has one more role to fill – it liquifies in the chrysalis and emerges an iridescent butterfly -- whose role then is to return the favor, and to help the forest by pollenating and ensuring reproduction of many of the plants therein, so all may thrive. This is the evolutionary moment Plotkin is presaging for us: we are called to spend time in our chrysalis, transforming ourselves through the Descent to Soul, so we may become the active stewards and servants of creation we are meant to be.

In all this, Plotkin offers us deep and needful cultural therapy – beyond what any individual counseling could achieve, to assist our societies to move past our patho-adolescent loops into mature Adulthood and eventually, true Elderhood. Consider that Plotkin’s earlier works presented both a complete and coherent theory of personality (Wild Mind) and of eco-centric human development (Nature and the Human Soul), to assist us in healing and wholing our individual selves. The Descent to Soul takes all of this to new heights, and provides the keys to healing and wholing our cultures and our planet.

One of my mentors hails Plotkin as “possibly the next Carl Jung,” and yet I think even that admiration understates the case. The radical shift in perspective Plotkin offers is a greater leap than Jung’s was from Freud, as Plotkin also expands the realm of the conversation geometrically outwards from mere psychology to David Whyte’s “the largest conversation we can have with the world,” and then taking us quite a distance further -- to praxis constantly informed and renewed by that conversation.

Plotkin is described on the back cover of the book as an "Eco-Depth Psychologist, wilderness guide, and agent of cultural revolution." The book proves he is all that, and I send my deep thanks to him and the entire team at Animas Valley Institute for the work they and the School of Lost Borders have pioneered, reflected herein. And I amplify their open invitation for others to take up this mantle and spread the word and the work to many other people and regions around the globe.

NB: Do not skip the Appendices & Glossary, they are also vital and profound, adding to the richness and valence of all he is presenting, which is in sum, a true and welcome gift.