Soulcraft Musings

A Fourth Dimension of the Great Turning

Part III

by Bill Plotkin

Friday, January 17, 2025

This is the third part of a multi-part Musing (one per week).

The loss of the journey of soul initiation (or, more generally, of the initiatory practices that support people to achieve true adulthood, however that looked or looks in their culture) is, I believe, the root cause of all our current global crises, including racism, sexism, genderism, classism, endless war, nuclear weapons, the sixth mass extinction, the pollution of our air, land, and waters, political corruption and ineffectiveness, widespread deterioration of psychological health, profound social divisions, and climate disruption. When there are few true adults and genuine elders, there are few mature leaders; and there are also few truly mature parents, educators, and clergy. This results in children and youth with significant developmental deficits, children and youth who never reach true adulthood — or even late adolescence. The societal oppression that is the foundation of all others is systemic human development oppression (SHDO), which is endemic in all contemporary industrialized societies — and has been for many hundreds of years, probably thousands.

We know from the historical record all over the world that one of the first things that dominator societies (colonialists, settlers, imperialists, invaders) do after conquering an intact indigenous tribe or a healthy nation of mature people (in addition to taking their land and enslaving them) is to murder their elders, shamans, medicine people, and initiators — and then eradicate their practices for supporting the full maturation of their youth. The latter is commonly achieved through residential/ boarding schools that the children are required to attend, thereby separating them from their land, their people, their language, and their cultural practices. After a few generations, the old ways are mostly forgotten, especially the initiatory traditions — the ways to recognize when a youth is psychospiritually ready for a hazardous underworld journey of many months or years, the preparatory practices, the methods for shifting consciousness, the ordeals, the rituals and ceremonies, the portals into the mysteries of nature and psyche, the associated stories and myths. This, of course, is cultural genocide. Dominator cultures hone their sadistic methods for perpetrating cultural genocide because it eliminates the true adults and elders. It’s as simple as this: Children and psychological adolescents are much easier to threaten and control than adults and elders. Colonialists, then, minimize the chance that their subjects fully mature — just as the colonialists had done, centuries earlier, to themselves.

Every community needs its full share of adults and elders in order to transition into a life-enhancing culture, the ultimate goal of the Great Turning. It’s my understanding that Joanna herself, at the time she envisioned the Great Turning, had, many years earlier, made the passage from adolescent ecocentrism to initiated adulthood. [12] This alone may be a reason enough for embracing the journey of soul initiation as a fourth dimension of the Great Turning.

* * *

The reinvention of the journey of soul initiation (with a unique set of practices crafted by every culture and possibly every sub-culture) is an essential feature of the Great Turning but, conceptually, it does not fit easily into the first three dimensions. The facilitation of this initiatory journey is not a direct “holding action” to slow the damage to Earth and its beings (although initiated adults may be more effective at such holding actions than children and adolescents). It is not an analysis of structural causes and the creation of alternative institutions, at least the sorts of institutions Joanna and Molly note (economy, education, conflict resolution, nonviolent defense, energy, non-individualized forms of land ownership, collaborative living arrangements, cooperatives, agriculture, watershed restoration, medicine, communication systems). Nor is it eco-awakening, the fundamental shift in worldview and values that “bring us home to each other and our mutual belonging in the living body of Earth,” as Joanna and Molly put it. [13] The journey of soul initiation is distinct, a fourth dimension — an undertaking essential to the organic creation of truly mature, life-enhancing societies.

* * *

Recently, The Work That Reconnects community has proposed their own version of a fourth dimension of the Great Turning: “Nurturing Life.” Examples they offer are “raising children with life-affirming consciousness, growing food and saving seeds, caring for the elderly and those in need, and restoring ecosystems.” [14] I resonate with this proposal in that these are all great examples of what a truly mature society does as a matter of course. And a truly mature society is the goal of the Great Turning.

This leaves the question of how we might get from here to there: from life-destroying societies to life-enhancing ones. In other words, how do we get from a society in which only a minority raise children with life-affirming consciousness, grow food and save seeds, care for the elderly and those in need, and restore ecosystems to a society in which everyone does these kinds of things? In a mature society, “olders” are distinguished from true elders. Everyone contributes to caring for those in need, and the elders care for the psychospiritual wellbeing of everyone else as well as care for the soul of the Earth community. Meanwhile, all the children, adolescents, and adults are caring for the everyday needs of the elders. How do we create post-modern societies that nurture all lives, both human and otherwise — and all the ecosystems that make these lives possible and sustain them? As I’m suggesting in this Musings series, I believe a core project must be the facilitation of full-spectrum human development (FSHD), which includes contemporary practices for eco-awakening and soul initiation.

If we think of soul initiation with a big-picture lens, we see that this journey begins at birth, or even conception, or, better yet, in the ways that the parents of that conceived child were themselves nurtured throughout their childhood and adolescence by true adults and genuine elders, enabling those parents-to-be to discover their original instructions before they coupled and conceived a child. In a mature, life-enhancing human society, each person contributes their authentic gifts to the community, and every member of the community possesses such gifts regardless of their age or stage. People in each stage are enabled and fulfilled by the presence and lives of people in all other stages. [To be continued next week … ]

References

[12] For a more complete account of Joanna Macy’s personal journey of soul initiation, see The Journey of Soul Initiation, pp. 172 – 177 and 323 – 327.

[13] Coming Back to Life, p. 22.

[14] https://workthatreconnects.org/dimensions-of-the-great-turning/

To read previous musings click here.