Homesick for Soul
This morning inspiration struck so I pulled up my personal Facebook page and posted, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and I’m back home on Friday to jam out with writing and enjoying Kate, and family, and yoga and music and film and art after a full week of rolling through intense dreams with patients doing trauma therapy and healing soul pain, my own dreams last night replete with subterranean messengers cautioning against following psychological gurus, yoga enlightened ones, and all manner of leaders since it’s all about listening to our own beat and rhythm and “don’t follow no leaders and watch your parking meters.’ “ This got to the heart of my soul’s yearning to return to the quietude of my study to read and write then move into the weekend with enjoyment.
The soul calls us home. When we feel tired, worn, and at odds with self or others, it may be that we’re homesick for soul. So much calls and begs and demands our attention. There is this and that to drag or siphon away time and energy. It’s always there – those maleficent sirens that look and sound alluring from afar. But, if we take the bait and follow every impulse to meet this need or that, then we’re left down and out and homesick for soul.
Reading visionary fiction draws me down and deep. I sense soul-stirring enlivenment when I read stories of people feeling their pain and conflict. They grope, as I often do, often blindly to find their way. Poignant themes of oppressive society and religion, yearning for true love in the midst of bad love, and breaking free from conventional restraint run hot and wild. Consciousness and personal evolution, making our way through life muck and gunk into cleared spaces of hope and life, is the soul’s path.
It’s sad when it takes a long time to return back inside, to that place within we call soul. It’s home, and there’s homesickness when we lose touch. During this week of professional psychotherapy practice, I’ve done my best to help folks regain touch with soul. Many have found themselves wandering for quite some time in the midst of godforsaken deserts. This translates into lives of emptiness and going about the tasks of daily life with no enjoyment or passion. It’s sad when we lose touch with soul. And, it’s good to know there’s a way back to cleared spaces of hope and life.
Reading helps us to get to cleared mental space of hope and life. Just settle back and into your chair or lay easefully on your bed and pick up a book that calls to you. Folks today tout mindfulness meditation as though it were something new. It’s been around for a long, long time. People have done it when they enjoy their relationships, the fine exchange of ideas and love. We happen into it when our work fills us with contentment. And then, there’s reading. We’re into the book, want to open it and read. There is natural mindfulness that comes when we settle back and into our favorite read.
Different types of reads speak to me at various times during the day. As I listen and respond, there’s a movement into soul. I feel like I find and nourish my deepest self. At times, it’s with new or old readings in depth psychology; first of the morning, it’s with my favorites news periodicals, catching me up on world events. Later in the day, I sink into stories, visionary fiction my favorite. Visionary fiction is a different kind of read because it calls out to us from a place of inner quietude, often unacknowledged psychic homesickness. Heartfelt visionary fiction tends to our homesickness for the mystic and offers rays of light for the soul.