Midwifing Soul
January 7th, 2021
Many years ago during my studies with Virginia Satir at The Haven Institute I heard her speak of The Third Birth. I have resonated with that ever since.
Art by Susan Williams, MSW, RCSW
Salish Sea Counselling
She spoke of the First Birth as conception, when sperm and egg unite. Second Birth is when we emerge from the womb.
Our Third Birth, which tragically many people never experience, is when we blossom into full autonomy as awakened, conscious beings, living in the present, free from being driven by fear and unconscious limitations.
Our Third Birth is when we integrate and fully embody the unique characteristics and multiple dimensions of our whole self. We wake up to our interdependence with all around us. We recognize and relate with others, as well as ourselves, with empathy and compassion instead of with blame, hiding inside the false identity we have constructed around us as protection against fear. We emerge into our world as the mature, vibrantly alive and creative being we carry the potential to be. We are awake, we embrace our value as active participants in the co-creation of our interdependent world. We accept that we are contributors to the consciousness that our planet and our universe is calling for now.
Midwifing (bringing forth together)
Maieutic education is based on the idea that our deepest wisdom lies dormant and unexpressed unless consciously awakened by engaging with challenging questions and problems. Maieutic is derived from a Greek word pertaining to ‘midwifery.’ A midwife is a person who assists in birthing, a skilled assistant in bringing forth. The preposition mid, in its early origins meant together with.
Midwifing a soul is a privilege and an enormous responsibility that entails a vast range of skill and flexibility to face the unknown together with the Being bringing forth their own soul.
Midwifing a Third Birth involves teaching skills for navigating the complexities of life, providing guidance and assistance through a deeply personal and sometimes delicate, sometimes vigorous, sometimes complex and frightful, sometimes wondrous and often emotional passage.
Midwifing also includes presenting challenging questions and engaging in dialogue to guide the person toward potent insights. It includes breath and body work to free the grip and pain of unexpressed feelings and unconscious beliefs and behavioral patterns that suppress the soul.
Midwifing is to be together with and assist the person through relevant illuminating growth experiences as they open into their hidden strengths and wisdom.
Soul
Ah, now here is a word that can be defined in so many different ways. You may find it beneficial to define what this means to you rather than look to others to define it for you! What is soul to you?
Dictionary definitions of soul say things like this:
a person’s total self
an active or essential part, a leader – as in something that leads, such as a primary or terminal shoot of a plant
the immaterial essence, animating principle or actuating cause of a life
Richard Rohr says this:
“I think of soul as anything’s ultimate meaning which is held within. Soul is the blueprint inside of every living thing that tells it what it is and what it can become. When we meet anything at that level, we will respect, protect, and love it.”
Bill Plotkin, in his wonderful Soulcraft Musings expresses it this way:
“What I mean by soul, then, is a being’s one-of-a-kind psycho-ecological niche, the place in the greater web of life they were born to occupy — or said differently, the unique web of relationships they were born to have with all things. This definition of soul is psycho-ecological, or you could say, eco-psychological. But do notice that a person’s unique psycho-ecological niche expressed in religious terms might be called something like “God’s will for how you specifically are to live your life.” Or in mythic terms, it might be called your destiny or your unique genius. I prefer the psycho-ecological way of saying it, because this makes explicit our human relationship to the greater web of life: the relationship we have most neglected in our contemporary world, the relationship most essential to the Great Work of our time, to the Great Turning of this century, to the re-invention of healthy human cultures, and even to the survival of humanity as well as most other species of our planet.”
For much more about Bill Plotkin’s illuminations go to his Animas Valley Institute Soulcraft Musings.
Here is a description that I like from Coleman Barks’ Rumi — The Big Red Book, p. 9:
“Plotinus has a wonderful metaphor for the predicament of human consciousness: a net thrown into the sea. This is what we are with our longings, our works of art, our loves. We are the net. Soul is the ocean we are in, but we cannot hold on to it. We cannot own any part of what we swim within, the mystery we love so. Yet the longing we feel is there because of soul. To some degree we are what we are longing for. Some part of the ocean swims inside the fish. In Plotinus’s view the visible universe — the entire cosmos, nature, ourselves, and all that we do — is a net thrown into the ocean of soul. The cosmos is like a net thrown into the sea, unable to make that in which it is its own. Already the sea is spread out, and the net spreads with it as far as it can, for no one of its parts can be anywhere else than where it is. But because it has no size, the Soul’s nature is sufficiently ample to contain the whole cosmic body in one and the same grasp.” ~ Ennead IV, Section 9
James Hillman, Psychologist, author of The Soul’s Code, has spoken of soul as being the spark of divine light that lays hidden within the human personality, and refers to soul being at the heart of the world.
He describes the nature of the soul as
making all meaning possible
turning events into experiences
involving a deepening of experience
communicated through love
having a special relationship with death (because we recognize we are finite, therefore we have imaginations that conceive of possibilities which may or may not be realized.)
Hillman talks of our soul as ordinarily laying hidden behind our routines, dogmas and fixed beliefs. In the chaotic, less controlled moments when our beliefs, values and securities are challenged, our soul emerges. At these times our imagery, emotions, desires and values are heightened bringing our fullest awareness of the psyche in its essential form into the foreground. Hillman sees the soul at work in imagination, fantasy, myth and metaphor.