Soulcraft Musings

Friday, April 24, 2026

An Introduction to the Work of Animas Valley Institute

—Bill Plotkin

Part III

With the April 10th Musing, I began a three-part introduction to our Animas mission: the generation of healthier and more mature societies by supporting what we call nature-based, full-spectrum human development (NB-FSHD). I began a list of 18 distinctions we’ve come to believe are essential for doing a better job with human development and that illuminate how our work contrasts with what is more commonly found in most contemporary human societies. The first eight distinctions I described in the first two Musings. Today we’ll finish up with the final ten distinctions.

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9. The personal ambitions of most contemporary humans in industrialized societies versus primary human satisfactions: The ambitions of too many humans today (not counting the billions who are simply struggling to survive) seem too often to be what has been called “compensatory ambitions” or “pseudo-satisfiers” — for example, the ambitions to shop, acquire, accumulate wealth, or gain power over others, ambitions for fame or “higher” socioeconomic or political status or for what might appear to be glamorous memberships. Primary human satisfactions, in contrast, include making and deepening friendships, singing and dancing together, art-making, praising the magic and miracles of this world, storytelling, preparing and sharing meals, creating and participating in ceremonies to grieve our losses and to celebrate our good fortune, making love, the joy of growing children and in turn being grown by them, our daily awareness of grace received, and, most fundamentally, the arts of not just sustaining but enhancing the life of the more-than-human world (the world that includes us humans but so much more.)

10. Contemporary understandings of adulthood versus what I call soul-initiated adulthood. More generally: Contemporary understandings of maturity (what Steffi Bednarek of the Centre for Climate Psychology refers to as “being functional, productive, and socially acceptable — a form of adaptation to a world that is unraveling”) in contrast with ecocentric and soulcentric understandings of maturity. These two continua of maturity are different and mostly unrelated but both valid. The eco-soulcentric continuum of maturity might be eco-poetically approached by asking: What kind of human would a buffalo experience as mature? Or that a wild river would? Or that human children seven generations from now would as they look longingly back at us from the future, hoping we’ll make the choices that will allow them to be born someday? At Animas, we define an adult as someone who experiences themself, first and foremost, as a member of the Earth community, who has had one or more revelatory experiences of their unique place in that ecological community, and who is embodying that unique place as a gift to their people and to the Earth community. (All this is discussed in depth in The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries.)

11. The difference between an older human and a true elder. (See Nature and the Human Soul for an in-depth definition and portrait of true elderhood.)

12. Contemporary egocentric communities versus healthy, mature, ecocentric communities or in Rhianne Eisler’s words: Dominator societies versus Partnership societies) (or, as I see it, patho-adolescent societies versus societies with 25% true adults and 25% genuine elders).

13. A life-destroying society versus a life-sustaining society versus a life-enhancing society (which is to say, an egocentric patho-adolescent society versus a healthy ecocentric adolescent society versus a truly mature society). To get from our current life-destroying societies to possible future life-enhancing societies, we will first have to create life-sustaining societies, which will require the creation of a great variety of transitional social systems and structures (all of them ecocentric) not found in because not needed in mature societies of the past, present, or future. Plans and strategies for navigating this long road is what I call The Chrysalis Project.

14. Psychological or theological definitions of soul versus an ecological definition of soul. At Animas, we define soul as the unique ecological niche of any creature or species. Psychological and theological definitions of soul tend to see soul as some kind of object. An ecological definition of soul sees soul as a set of relationships. (See Soulcraft, Nature and the Human Soul, and/or The Journey of Soul Initiation).

15. Eco-niche versus mythopoetic identity versus “soul names” versus delivery systems for soul. Mythopoetic identity is the metaphorical way a person on their journey of soul initiation or a soul-initiated adult learns to consciously understand their unique ecological niche. A “soul name” is a shorthand way of pointing to mythopoetic identity. A delivery system for soul is a social role, vocation, or creative project that enables an initiated adult to embody their ecological niche. (See The Journey of Soul Initiation.)

16. Egocentric leadership versus ecocentric leadership versus soul-initiated leadership versus councils of true elders.

17. Models versus theories: A model (also known as a conceptual system) identifies the range of possible facts within a certain domain (like the domain of human development). A model is a pre-empirical, theory-neutral framework that defines and organizes essential concepts with the goal of mapping out all the possible facts within that domain. A theory, in contrast, is an empirical, falsifiable explanation that attempts to help us understand specific observed phenomena. Our Animas maps are primarily models, not theories. If the conceptual models available to us for human development are inadequate — if they do not afford us systematic, coherent, and comprehensible access to all the possibilities inherent in growing whole as a human person, we end up in muddles when thinking about, conversing about, theorizing about, and attempting to be in relationship with our own psyches, each other, and the more-than-human world. Conceptual inadequacy is, I believe, a common phenomenon in modern (Western) psychology. The reason it is common is SHDO (systemic human development oppression).

18. Models versus praxis: To support our own and others’ NB-FSHD, we need specific effective practices and the skills to use those practices. My four books are filled with such practices. But every bit as much as a set of excellent practices, we need models that help us see which practices would best serve which people or communities under which circumstances. I believe our models are Animas’ primary contribution to human development and to the generation of healthier and more mature human societies. These models are described in Nature and the Human Soul (an eight-stage model of optimal, nature-based human development as well as an eight-stage model of the limited, egocentric human development typical in modernity), in Wild Mind (a nature-based model of the human psyche including the four innate facets of wholeness as well as a model of the four clusters of our Inner Protectors), and in The Journey of Soul Initiation (a five-phase model of the Descent to Soul).

“We must go far beyond any transformation of contemporary culture. We must go back to the genetic imperative from which human cultures emerge originally and from which they can never be separated without losing their integrity and their survival capacity. None of our existing cultures can deal with this situation out of its own resources. We must invent, or reinvent, a sustainable human culture by a descent into our pre-rational, our instinctive resources. Our cultural resources have lost their integrity. They cannot be trusted. What is needed is not transcendence but ‘inscendence’.”

“The entrancement with industrial civilization . . . must be considered as a profound cultural disorientation. It can be dealt with only by a corresponding deep cultural therapy.”

— THOMAS BERRY, The Dream of the Earth

To read the whole essay in full now on our website, click here or on Substack.

Photo: Preparing for the Descent While Living in Industrial Growth Society/Trauma Culture [Collage]. Doug Van Houten

To read previous musings click here.