By Michael Meade

As we all face the fear and uncertainty that spread along with the global pandemic of the coronavirus, I keep thinking of a wise old idea about the human soul. The old notion states that when we experience a life crisis or a meaningful loss we become either a smaller person or a greater soul. If we are the same after a challenging time, it was not a true life crisis.

For healthcare workers, other first responders and those infected by the disease it is literally true that their lives will have changed forever. They experience the crisis at the level of life and death and all deserve our support and empathy as well as our prayers. We don’t have to know them personally to know the pain and tragedy they must bear each day. 

At the same time, because this is an unprecedented, worldwide collective crisis all of our lives are turned upside down and altered in some way. For most, that means having to drop our daily lives and stay home to stop the spread of the virus. We experience the fear and disorientation that also spreads with the virus. And, we suffer our own conditions of separation, isolation and loss. In that sense, we have all entered a collective rite of passage that must alter us in some way; that might transform our souls and that can change the world in meaningful ways.  

The insight about becoming a smaller person or else a bigger soul is connected with the old idea there are two essential arcs of life. Each life project must begin with the initial arc that involves “growing up” and eventually stepping out into the world at large. On this outward arc we must “make something of ourselves.” We establish ourselves, for better or worse, in the daily world and we experience the times in which we live.  

The second arc leads another way, it turns inward and goes downward to illuminate a path of awakening intended to connect us to the hidden spark of life that brought us into the world to begin with. In following this inner arc, we grow deeper within and learn more of the true shape as well as the greater aim of our lives. This is the soul’s great project that involves a descent to the depths of our being, where our natural nobility and genuine life purpose wait to be found.

Because the fear and the uncertainty of life have become so present and palpable, the soul imagines that we want to touch again the inner spark that first brought us to life. The problem is that in modern societies this inner arc of life is undervalued; it is less understood, and often ignored. Mass cultures that focus on material goods, technical achievements, and economic goals can have little interest in the individual soul with its hidden longings, its desire for depth and its expectation for genuine transformation. 

An old parable comes to mind; it tells of a man who happened to come upon a tall ladder leaning against a high wall. He took the appearance of the ladder as a challenge to climb all the way to the top of the wall. He wanted to reach the peak and see what it felt like to be on top of it all. Putting all else aside, he began to climb and continued rising rung by rung until he reached the pinnacle. Only after attaining that height was he able to see that the ladder was leaning against the wrong wall.

Higher and higher he had risen, all the while imagining the fulfillment of reaching the top and achieving a great goal. Instead, he found himself at the height of disappointment because his soul was secretly aimed another way. Only on the way back down did he begin to consider that his life might have been pointed at something different all along. That secondary recognition opens the inward arc of descent that can lead to the ground of being where the true aim of the soul and its deep resources become revealed.

The point of the story is not to avoid all the ladders that promise success or be absolutely sure to climb the right one. That would lead to avoiding the first arc in hopes of succeeding at the second one.

The problem isn’t that the instinct to climb is simply erroneous; rather that the soul expects us to experience both the ups and downs of life. We enter the world wherever we happen to be and learn to work our way out or climb our way up. Something has to be attempted in the outer world. 

Yet, the soul desires more than the trappings of outer success. If the issues of our inner life and the deeper project of the soul are repeatedly put off in favor of the next rung on the ladder, then the inevitable fall can be devastating when it finally does come.

By now, most of us feel the sense of a great descent as we suffer the ups and downs of the pandemic and the upheaval of entire cultures. In a sense, the whole world is in free fall. Nature is in free fall because of the climate crisis. The economy of the world is in free fall because of the crisis of the coronavirus and there is a crisis of truth and meaning that threatens to derail all attempts to find both the solutions we desire and the cures we need. 

There are times when, no matter what we do, the world goes out of balance. At such times the inward path of awakening becomes more important than ever. For, the soul tries to awaken exactly where and when we fall out of the daily rounds of life. Soul names that which is ancient and timeless within us that cannot simply be overwhelmed. The soul sees life from below and therefore is the source of all understanding as well as the root of humanity’s instincts for survival.

In the crucible of a great dilemma the idea is to descend consciously, to turn the sense of loss and disorientation into a form of seeking to realign with the inner gradient of the soul. 

For, there is an in-born code that provides a gradient or guide line that can aim our energy as well as protect our life. This inner gradient shapes a channel within us, an invisible pathway of essential value and enduring purpose. The gradient involves the inner pattern that can lead each of us to a path with heart which aligns us with our natural dharma or way of contributing to life and serving the world.  

When in touch with our souls we can draw upon the deep resources and endless imagination that are the inner heritage of humanity. When out of touch with the inner gradient we fall into darkness. We experience a loss of soul and suffer greater than necessary fears and confusion. Not only do we fail to find our way, we also loose the natural vitality of our being. 

Each time we realign with the inner gradient we can restore the flow of vital life energy. And each re-alignment with our natural way of being can produce an awakening of imagination as life takes on new meaning. From the view of the enduring soul, the purpose of a true crisis can be to realign us with the instinctive gradient and aim us at our true life purpose. 

This is a time of radical change throughout the world and alteration at all levels of life; the pandemic says that, the climate crisis proclaims that, and the crisis of truth and meaning in life underlines and underlies all of it. As the danger of collapse and dissolution grows, the balancing imagination and energy for healing tries to awaken in the soul.

When the world is in upheaval, the soul is closer to the surface of life as our deepest sense of humanity must become activated and be lived out as the only viable method for bringing people together and forging a new view of the world. The awakened soul becomes the source of genuine vision and creative agency that can inspire a genuine collective transformation. 

Ultimately, the heart of the human drama concerns the question of whether we are moving toward a greater life or away from it. Either we are growing more soul and becoming a greater vessel for the flow of life, or we wind up shrinking from life and becoming a smaller person. The inner gradient is through-line, and a true line, an invisible umbilical that connects us to the ground of our being, but also connects us with the soul of the world. 

Since nature only makes originals and each person born on earth is unique, there is no “normal” human soul. In that sense, the point of recovering from the pandemic cannot be to go back to normal. Rather, the point of each experience of descent is to return to life as a greater soul with a more clear sense of purpose and a greater knowledge of how to serve the world at this time of radical change.