The Orphans of Soul

Paper Dolls

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Listen Here- Podcast Style

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The greatest blessing a society can confer on its young
is to turn them into the heirs, rather than the orphans,
of history.

Robert Pogue Harrison

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Paper Doll

In the darkness at the edge of the fire
what is under the callus of skin?
There is a door through which we howl
where place tells us what it needs to say.
Presence and absence
are the same thing in the distance
of what is moving away
that is coming near.
One becomes the other.
A chipped yellow cup
in a hand never needing to know
what it came for.
Gods and graves.
Laws and legacies
Guard the libraries of meaning.
Some words cling. Others cut.
The unspoken ones bleed
the most. In the invented stories
how long does it take before a lesson
decides it wants to be learned?
What cult has this become?
The orphans of soul.

 © Jamie Millard

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Have we become paper dolls? Cut outs in a two dimensional world? Black and white. Wrong and right. Win and lose. Bad and good. Day and night.

What cult are we in when actors are the face of wisdom? Entertainment the new religion. The young and the pretty ones, the face of knowledge. Bring on the Botox for the weak. For the wrinkled. Hollywood the new church of the soul. The pulpit speaks from the art of the deal as the new art of war. The new holy book. Behold. Are we now orphans of soul?

Why must we learn the same lessons over and over again? Fire and time. Floods and killings. Arrogance and greed. It will leave us destitute. Destitute of wisdom. Destitute of knowledge. It will leave us to begin again like children who know nothing. Who have no memory of what came before. Who never knew the lessons of the wars. The ignorance a pestilence. This cult of amnesia. Orphans of soul.

What age are we in?

Author Robert Pogue Harrison in his book Juvenescence, claims time is making us younger now. A juvenescence. He says to look at the eighteen year old’s pictures now versus thirty years ago. Versus seventy years ago. The drastic differences beg to speak to much more than just better digital filters. Harrison says, that here in the west, there is a biological cultural transformation that is turning large segments of the human population into a younger species. Younger in looks. Younger in behaviour. Younger in mentality. Younger in lifestyles. Younger in desires.

Ironically this youth, obsessed society is harming the very youth it appears to be worshipping. Harrison feels that youth are being deprived of what youth needs the most. Creative imagination. Have we deprived our youth of spontaneity, of wonder, and of the freedom to fail? Have we deprived our youth of the continuity of the past? A past whose future this same youth will soon be called on to forge. Harrison asks if this storm of juvenescence will lead to a rejuvenation or a mere juvenilization of culture.

Are the poets dead?
Where did all the elders go?

To me, this intersects the work of writer and wilderness guide Bill Plotkin who feels that very few modern adults in the west, have ever gone past true adolescence.

Are there any real elders left? Will there be any in the future if most of us have never truly even developed into adulthood? Bill Plotkin writes to this well in his book, The Journey of Soul Initiation. Plotkin feels, “Optimal human development ,every child, woman, and man progressing through the eco-soulcentric stages of life is the foundation for cultural transformations that are profound, generative, and life enhancing.”

The Eco-Soulcentric Developmental Wheel created by Plotkin, is a model of what the stages of human life look like when we mature in full resonance with both nature (eco) and soul. This occurs when we are in a continuous process of becoming fully human throughout our lifespan. Plotkin shares eight life stages on the Wheel. There are two stages each for childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and elderhood.

The eco-soulcentric stages contrast with the egocentric stages that Harrison also eludes to in which most contemporary people are encumbered. Egocentrism. Living as if the ego is the core of our psyche and that the ego will decide what’s most important in life. Plotkin writes that this may occur due in part to the loss of effective rites of passage but also more generally may be due to the loss of healthy cultures and the resulting erosion or disappearance of the practices and perspectives that support optimal human development.

Plotkin says that many of us in the west may never even get past the rites and passages of the early adolescence stage, let alone, late adolescence. This will leave most of us with four crucial stages to never be developed. Most of us will never fully develop into adulthood.

Where have all the elders gone? Orphans of soul.

We may just be the youngest society in the history of human civilization, says Harrison. Ironically, we are also the oldest. Is age to time what place is to space?Harrison writes that what we used to call the soul has now curled up and has essentially disappeared from the scene of history.

“The most sophisticated philosophers think of age as a function of time, yet a careful phenomenological analysis reveals that we should instead think of time as a function of age. After all, any concept we may have of time has a way of growing old, of succumbing to an aging process”

We may be growing old but are we growing wiser? Wrinkles unfold in a gift of being. Rivers creasing the floods of awareness that smile out from the hands of time. Age gives birth to time. In the poetry of life, in growth, in transformation, our time will unwind. Our time will unwind the wrinkles of the wise. Wrinkles of face. Wrinkles of heart. Lines of soul. The well earned wisdom of age. Rivers. Sail well. It has always been a cuoreodyssey.

It is time to trade in those paper dolls for a journey of soul. It is time to age.

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Photo by J.Millard

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Sources:

1. Robert Pogue Harrison. Juvenescence. A Cultural History of Our Age. University of Chicago Press 2014.
   ISBN 9780226171999

2. Bill Plotkin. The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries. World Library 2021.
   ISBN 1608687015

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   Thank you for reading.
   Thank you for Being- Here!

   Let us grow old together as elders.

   Let’s leave our children the gifts of the past.

   Let’s guide them back to a creative imagination.
   Let’s teach them how to grow old.
   Wisdom of Ageing.

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   The full audio can be found above under the main titles.
   Blessings,

   Have the best of days

   Lots of Love,

   Jamie