Soul Dive

When the stomach is full, the dishes clean, the bills paid, and the workday over, we are left with roughly two options: watch the latest permutation of the same tired garbage on tv, or go diving.

I'm not talking high diving, swan diving, or skin diving. You can wear swim trunks if you want, but you won't necessarily get them wet. I'm not talking sky diving. No parachute required. I'm not talking about muff diving either, although sharing your experiences with someone special is highly encouraged. And I'm not suggesting you frequent a dive bar. For the love of all that is actually worth having on this alternately beautiful and revolting revolving space rock, if you're gonna get trashed, get trashed with class.

Yes, I'm talking soul diving.

I mean, what else are you going to do? You've got what the outspoken Czech psychoanalyst / witch doctor Stan Grof has dubbed a holotropic mind buzzing around inside your skull: a cosmos cleverly and elaborately folded into a fleshy origami lump receiving warped broadcasts from the transdimensional radio prematurely dubbed 'reality'. The outside material world reflects the inner spiritual realms, and vice versa, like the perpetually spiraling coitus of the yin and yang. To keep your gyrating firefly of a consciousness from being completely overwhelmed, you're only capable of examining an infinitesimally small portion of the cosmic transmission at any given time. Much like the endlessly unfolding galaxy in which we dwell, the soul is a massive labyrinth, complete with secret passages, hidden treasure, and stalking minotaurs, and you're bound to wander its vastness by baby steps.

But for the genuine explorer, for the heartfelt aficionado of conscious experience, the handicap is a blessing in disguise. To sprint through the caverns and jungles of inner perception is to miss the rippling emotional waters, exotic intellectual beasts, and aromatic flowers of perception revealing strange, spiritual secrets that could alter our meandering trajectory in ways we can't even imagine. The allure of the unexpected draws the exuberant soul diver ever deeper into the swirling chaos that lurks just inside every seemingly orderly pattern.

And how does one soul dive?

You're doing it already. Reacting to experience, formulating opinions, making decisions, and – provided some sort of action is taken – receiving feedback, and then starting the whole crazy cycle over again. You are soul diving just by reading this essay and responding to it intellectually and/or emotionally. It is not a question of how to soul dive, which is an inevitable process, but how to soul dive deeply. Many of our kind live superficially. They make up their minds and stick to their guns. Time and time again, the same emotion or the same fear bars their path, and they simply accept this as another dead end and continue their circuitous rambling of the shallower tiers of the conscious maze. The longer they circumambulate, the deeper they dig their groove, until they've finally dug a trench from which they cannot escape.

But you and I, we are different. We know better than to trap ourselves that way.

The first step to deep soul diving is to decide to both accept and surpass every obstacle to come our way. Nothing can be denied (not even nothingness! Oh, the limitations of language) and everything must be overcome. This includes every emotion (no matter how childish), every thought (no matter how ludicrous), and every desire (no matter how perverted). The hallmarks of the soul diver are curiosity and open-mindedness. We approach each new manifestation on our path from every possible angle, study its contours and behaviors, and ultimately discover the inevitable passage through and beyond. We love equally the obstacle and that which it obstructs.

Emotions are beautiful, demanding, tempestuous nymphs; do we submit as their slaves or embrace them as lovers? Neuroses are intricate algebras; do we marvel forever at the symbols, or extract the shrouded variables to complete the equation? Dreams are entrancing castles in the sky; do we dwell alone within them or use them as blueprints for something tangible we can share?

The second step is to build a substantial toolkit, and master every tool in it. A good diver never discounts a potential tool, even while selecting favorites. Tools, in this case, are methods for engaging and focusing some part of our massively capable minds: art, meditation, sports, music, certain psychoactive substances, sex, cooking, dance, conversation, martial arts, mathematics, gardening, chemistry, yoga, starting a family, basically anything at all that demands your active engagement. Many people choose to specialize with a small handful of tools, and the interpersonal world tends to reward this sort of behavior. For the sake of preserving one's tenuous sense of identity, it can be much simpler to limit one's expressions to the familiar and established. Furthermore, in the context of career advancement and public recognition, virtuosity and proliferation garner the most attention and approval. Soul diving, however, takes place in a realm where attention and approval are simply another set of obstacles to approach, admire, and overcome. In this context, specialization holds no particular advantage over a broadening of one's abilities and interests. More often than not, open-minded pragmatism and lateral thinking triumph over stubborn habit. Either the key fits the lock, or it doesn't, and it goes back into the pocket until a need arises.

For example, a talented athlete might acquire significant acclaim on the field and make a lot of personal progress through that form of expression. They may develop a high degree of confidence, but that confidence is limited to athletic performance; the phantoms of humility and self-doubt still lurk in the shadows of the psyche. But if that athlete were to take up painting, they would rediscover what it is to fail. The old tricks that worked during gametime have no application on a canvas. They would start at the bottom all over again, working their way up from nothing and struggling until stumbling across the right paradigm shifts. Similarly, an introverted musician who expresses him or herself solely through performance might discover a whole other dimension of their personality coming to light during an intimate conversation or sexual intercourse.



It's a simple equation. This is really all there is to it. Decide to explore, and then do so, by any means necessary. And yet humans with the adequate leisure time necessary for the process rarely choose to embrace it to it's fullest. Futhermore, the practice is rarely encouraged by the pompous shepherds that we wide-eyed wonderers so often look to for guidance. In fact, many people recoil in fear at the very thought of the minotaurs roaming the psychic labyrinth, and vehemently deny the existence of the intriguing treasures the beasts guard. Although fear in one form or another invariably pulsates at the heart of this behavior, those frustrating humans in question express it in a variety of ways. The skeptical scientist derides the value of imagination and the presence of the soul. The puritanical preacher condemns personal exploration as indulgent hedonism at best and the unraveling of the mind at worst. The college professor insists on narrowing scope and limiting pursuits. The ascetic Buddhist reserves his attention for the creamy nirvana at the core of the psyche, throwing away the rest as though it were nothing more than a tacky plastic wrapper. Inevitably, they attempt to create for themselves an atmosphere of emotional comfort by minimizing variables; and, of course, as soon as new variables enter the picture their delicate shelter crumbles like a house built out of graham crackers.

The soul diver, however, is neither delicate nor fearful nor defined in such ways at all. All is intrigue. All is game. All is flavor. All is treasure. Of course, you have the option of coming home at the end of the work day, turning on the television or opening a book, and allowing your mind to idle. And in moderation, certainly, this sort of rest can be beneficial. But just as your body becomes hostile and irksome when denied stretching and exercise, so too does your spirit turn sour without stimulation and exploration.

When born into this existence, we are given the charge of our selves. Our primary goal is to protect and nurture the being that we are; all other tasks are extraneous. Although this work may seem a burden, really it is a privilege, a joy, a blessing. Endless adventures await in your world and in your mind; all you have to do is take a deep breath and dive in.