Soul

A few weeks ago I did a two-part post highlighting six dimensions of the healing power of creativity. But recently I realized I left out the most important one.

Creativity connects us to our soul. Our vital essence.

In a 2016 conversation with Elizabeth Gilbert, Brene Brown said something that has stayed with me ever since:

If you’d asked me five years ago what creativity means to me, I would have said, 'Ha. That’s cute. That’s fun. I don’t really do a lot of A-R-T because I’ve got a J-O-B. So you go grab your paintbrush and your scrapbooking, but I’ve got to get shit done.' ?But if you would ask me now, though, I would say that creativity is the way I share my soul with the world and without it I am not okay.

I've been thinking a lot about how to make sense of the atrocities we've been witnessing, and I've come to the conclusion that the root cause is that we've become desensitized to the suffering of others. And I believe this desensitized state is only possible when we've become, to some degree, cut off from soul.

Our society and its systems do not make it easy to live a soul-infused life. How often have you heard someone describe their work as "soul-crushing", "soulless" or "soul-destroying"?

Storyteller Michael Meade, in his book Awakening the Soul, describes how the modern world suffers from a collective loss of soul:

When life becomes severely polarised, when people become more opposed than they need to be, it is the connective energy and unifying presence of the soul that has gone missing. Meaningful solutions to deeply penetrating and broad-reaching problems require the kind of imaginative vision and innovative invention that can only be found in the depths of the human soul. If there is no change at the level of soul, there can be no meaningful change at the level of the world.

In shamanic traditions there is a concept called soul loss. Therapist Sandra Ingerman writes in Soul Retrieval that, when we experience trauma, a part of our soul "separates from us in order to survive the experience by escaping the full impact of the pain." (A process modern psychologists call dissociation). Soul loss can leave us feeling incomplete, estranged, deadened, fragmented, depleted and alienated. But I don't think we necessarily need to find a shaman to conduct a soul retrieval journey (although if you're at all curious I recommend it).

I believe that all you need to do to re-soul yourself is commit to living a creative life. Commit to showing up for your creativity, so your creativity can show up for you. Living a creative life doesn't mean quitting your job to become a professional artist or some other grand gesture. It can start with singing in the shower. Doodling during meetings. Five minutes a day of curating inspiration on Pinterest or Instagram. Fifteen minutes of free-writing or another form of self-expression. By making space for creativity, we're making space for soul.

This belief is born of my own experience.

A decade ago I was living in Dubai, working 80-hour weeks and spending more nights in hotels than at home. While I liked my colleagues and clients, there wasn't much space for soul to show up.

With one exception.

During that time I was working on a creative writing project. I didn't have much time or energy for actual writing, but I found pockets of time for "prewriting". I kept a notebook of ideas and would daydream about my characters and their stories. Having a creative side project felt like a lifeline. It kept me sane. It helped me stay a whole person.

Fast-forward a few years and I'm bawling my eyes out as John Spillane sings 'I'm Gonna Set You Free' at the closing ceremony of a small storytelling festival on an island off the southern coast of Ireland.

The weekend had been so soul-infused it felt like a spiritual homecoming, my prodigal soul returned. An intergenerational gathering in pristine nature. On land where the language of uncolonised ancestors is still the mother tongue. So much goodness and beauty and truth and laughter and song. And of course, story.

Since that day I have worked to craft a life for myself that I can call soul-infused, with creativity as the core. And I take these dark times as a catalyst to reaffirm my commitment to seeking out and co-creating soul-centred spaces where we can stay sensitized to the suffering of others no matter how different from us they may seem and we can tap into the "imaginative vision and innovative invention that can only be found in the depths of the human soul".