Buddhist teacher Catherine McGee tells us about soulmaking and soulfulness in a buddhist context. This is about being able to see and sense in more soulful ways, to be able to see and sense ourselves and others and the world with more beauty and sacredness.
We start of by exploring what comes alive when exploring the word soul. Then we explore soulfulness in relation to ending suffering, which is at the core of the buddhist teachings.
Catherine tells us that the dharma opened her up to a mythic journey with so much sensibility, and the richness of that sensibility of body mind and feelings is very soulful. In essence this also touches upon presence, that when one stops - Presence can emerge, the senses feel more clear - there is more richness.
Soulfulness is not however directly equatable with heartfulness - it would include heartfulness, but there is even more to soulfulness.
When one is not soulful, there is poverty of soul, one can still have heartfuness, but feel a poverty of soul.
The goal of soulfulness and dharma is also to be able to train the heart and the mind to se more beauty and sacredness. To learn how to unbind, to loosen the bind of our sense of self and our patterns, as there is suffering in this binding of self other and the world
Soulmaking then, is to haven seen the binds, and then being able to loosen the binds. Leading us to being able to engage in a sense of perception in a soft and elastic way, in a way that nourishes soulfulness.
soulmaking is premised on already being able to loosen these binds a little bit.
There are different degrees of loosening, and then recognising that I can loosen more, but I might choose not to, to stay in my sense of myself and engage fully with my experience.
What sacredness can offer is a placeholder, for there being more than just what we perceive. More than what we have been told about the earth f.ex.
That more than, can inspire the heart and inspire the desire to light up, and it can open access to more dimensions of sacredness. A skilful relationship to desire, can also open up for more richness.
Our limited materialistic view of the world limits the soul, limits us in seeing more dimensionality and richness, limits the beauty of fantasy and story making.
We can speak about two types of sacredness, the one that is not about you, that is out there, and the other in soulmaking dharma, which is personal to you.
Eros is a kind of desire, but it doesn’t have to be sexual. It is a wanting to come closer to the beloved, what ever it is. The question is: What are we putting our eros in service of?
Eros can gaze upon the beloved without grasping nor rejection, and then the image can open, can flower, and you don’t actually need to possess it. You can never really have a thing anyway. And this desire isn’t just mine, it also belongs to the dive.
We can let eros open the body, the mind, the imagination and the intellect.
Whatever we do, we need our embodiment for sanity!
In soulmaking dharma, we open our imagination, and for it to be legitimate and helpful, we need to have our body, so as not to spin into all directions and just spiralling out. To be grounded in our body, so as not to spin into unskillful mindlessness. We want the imagination to be in service of something skilful.
Catherine McGee's mailing list: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/16Vxwezi6JFf6ydblUd2HGz9BTfPuFW1BSG8JKS_HC30/edit?usp=sharing
You can also find out about her here: www.gaiahouse.uk.co
My website: www.duritaholm.com
