Soulcraft Musings

Friday, March 27, 2026

Cultivating Our East Facet of Human Wholeness

In honor of and in alignment with the spring season in the northern hemisphere, here is a spotlight on our capacity for both innocence and wisdom, as articulated in excerpts from Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche (Bill Plotkin, 2013).

The Nature-Based Map of the Psyche highlights our positive, life-enhancing resources and perspectives and extols them as foundational to our humanity. The accent is not on our fragmented parts or wound stories, or how our psyches stall out in neurotic patterns, or how we might merely recover from trauma, pathology, or addiction; rather, the accent is on our wholeness and potential magnificence, how we can enhance our personal fulfillment and participation in our more-than-human-world, and how we can become fully human and visionary artists of cultural renaissance.

The facet aligned with Springtime is the East Facet — the Innocent/Sage. This is the aspect of the Self that grants us access to the purity and grandness of life lived simply, spontaneously, gratefully, and joyously. When we haven’t cultivated this East facet, our lives are liable to turn humorless, stress-filled, heavy, perhaps even gloomy.

The love emanated by the East facet of the Self is a spiritual love that instantly dissolves our defenses, sees us to our core, and embraces our deepest human nature. East love nudges us out of our relatively small, everyday story and helps us grasp and celebrate a bigger, transpersonal narrative, a story whose sweep gathers up all the historical epochs, all species, the great array of cultures, the pathos and rapture of being human — indeed, the very space-time continuum and vast imagination of the cosmos.

Innocence implies and requires present-centeredness and receptivity —being here now, fully and simply, in relationship to each thing wholly in the way it is sensed and felt in the moment. The Innocent facet of our psyche is permeable, completely open to the world as it is — not ruminating on past hurts or successes or future consequences or aspirations — and living as if the world will take care of us.

Our capacity for present-centeredness is essential to our psychological health throughout life. Innocence is akin to what Buddhists call “beginner’s mind” allowing us to see with fresh eyes, respond with a young heart, act without guile or deception, love like we’ve never been hurt, and dance like nobody’s watching.

With our innocence intact, we plunge ourselves into the now — in a spring meadow, during an embrace with a lover, or while absorbed in a work of art.

Throughout the year, there are numerous opportunities to practice honing the East Facet of our Psyches, but how delicious to do so in alignment with the season and all its many wonders: dawn, sunrise, dew, blossoms, new beginnings.

You might wish to try the Sunrise Practice: Arise early, while it is still dark. If possible, find a place with a low eastern horizon, a place from which you can watch the Sun rise. Be in silence as you wait for dawn. Let all your senses take in the unfolding miracle: the very gradual return of light, from gray to first colors, birds beginning to sing, subtle changes in the movement of the air, the first rays of sunlight peeking over the rim of the Earth and lighting up your face, the first sensation of the Sun’s warmth on your skin, the colors on the clouds and clear sky. Greet the Sun with whatever simple movement, gesture, or dance occurs to you in the moment. Let any emotions, memories, or symbols emerge in your awareness. If you’d like, remind yourself that the sun’s apparent movement actually reveals the revolution of the planet you’re standing on, as you and Earth slowly tilt forward toward the Sun. Experience fully, purely, and simply the sunrise. Allow it to reverberate through you.

For more, see Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche (Plotkin, 2013).

Photo: Woman Sitting in Front of Lake [Photo]. The Video Collection

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