Healing the Soul of Humankind

Healing the Soul of Humankind
By Bill Ryan

Julian of Norwich, the 14th century mystic and anchorite contemplative spent the latter part of her life in her hermitage devoting herself to the healing of the soul. She said that human souls suffer because " we seek rest where there is no rest." The healing of the human soul begins with "oneing" of our own soul and heart or true spirit. But this is only the beginning. To be truly "oned" or in communion with the true Heart or Center within is to be "oned" with the Heart of the universe and in all beings. Hence mystic communion is not something we do alone but it is something that connects us to the All in all.

Humans suffer and inflict suffering on one another and the ecosystems that support planetary life because we believe ourselves separate from one another and from the beings who share the planet with us. This is the core wound of the human soul. The human family is faced with the devastating consequences of our lack of soul healing. Our economic and technological impact on the plant is destroying whole species and ecosystems, even threatening to destroy our own capacity to live and be supported by the planetary ecosystem. We are at war among ourselves with the most fearsome and destructive weapons imaginable. And we might ask, where are the religions of humanity? Are they doing anything to bring peace and healing to our world?

Communion Life not Mythical Division
We live in a time of global crisis when the ancient Wisdom streams of the great spiritual traditions of Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and of the indigenous peoples of the world are coming alive again to offer healing to the world. The Wisdom streams of the great spiritual traditions offer the hope of healing the soul wound of humankind. The answer is mystic awakening rather than retreating behind the hardened mythic dogmas, stories, and tribal consciousness of historic religious teachings. Only a breakthrough to the awareness of the Essential Unity of all Life, and our belonging and interconnection in the One Life that sustains and upholds us will heal the soul of humankind. Only a unitive awakening of the human soul will heal us, individually and communally, of the wounds of violence, hatred, and division between ourselves and the other beings who inhabit this beautiful planet we have been given.

Awakening to the Stream of Mercy
Mystic awakening means we join with the Stream of Mercy that flows through the created Universe, and all things, arising from and returning to the Source. It matters not which wisdom tradition we may personally find most helpful. What matters is that each of us take responsibility for the soul healing we must do both in our inner work, and in the life choices we make. We are here to bring forth that same Stream of Mercy in our own life, to make it present in the circumstances before us. Not everyone can, nor should be a Gandhi, or a Martin Luther King, or a Bishop Tutu. Each of us is called to nurture Unitive Life in ourselves, in the families and communities in which we find ourselves. And the inward turning towards healing in the soul of each of us, the cultivation of contemplative disciplines of awakening, the choice to extend our compassionate willingness towards the sister and brother beings who share life with us in each moment of life, matters always.

The "Little Way" of Mercy
The "Little Way" is what each of us can do. We are instructed and encouraged by the "Little Way" of the peace warriors of the indigenous peoples, the "Little Way" of mindfulness of our Buddhist sisters and brothers, the "Little Way" of reconciliation and justice of the activists of our communities, the "Little Way" of the gardener who creates space for growing things and the creatures of this world, the "Little Way" of the path of love and service of the saints and mystics among us. All of these beings of Mercy point us in the direction that our own "Little Way" can move us, and join us with the eternal Stream of Mercy that extends itself through the universe and in the neighborhoods and homes where we live. Being awake, and being given to the compassionate life are the "Little Way" and we can all do it.

Human Soul Development
What is it that brings such lethal and cruel divisions between peoples? The student of human spiritual consciousness, Ken Wilbur, has identified directions that human consciousness or soul is growing. We arise first from the instinctual roots of the reptilian brain of pure survival, we grow beyond the mammalian brain of emotion and attachment, we are then challenged to grow beyond the tribalism of herd consciousness that places our identity in mutually exclusive and mutually threatening groups and is at much the cause of today's ethnic and religious hatred and wars. We experience a longing to grow beyond the rational and individualist consciousness that initially gave us freedom from tribalism but later dooms us to the alienation of egoic isolation. We may then begin to taste the exaltation of the poet and artist that the freedom and hope of the path of intuition offers us. But most of all we are short of completion and are dissatisfied until we transcend our own lonely existence of separateness and find our true identity in the All, in the mystic communion within and not apart from the Greater Life that lives in and through each of us. We have come home when we join ourselves utterly with that One Life and therein find our true home and singular refuge. Then and only then will the fullness of that universal Stream of Mercy flow freely in us.

The Dream of the Universe
In human beings lies the potential of the Universe becoming fully conscious of Itself. As we grow and mature in the spiritual journey we come to realize that there is no separateness. Our healing is the healing of the universe. In each of us the soul of humankind, the soul of the Universe, has the potential to realize itself, uniquely in our history and circumstances. In each of us Love can live and express Itself. In each of us Love can be blocked or allowed. We must know that we have the freedom to be the guardians at the door and we open to the depths of this Stream of Life Itself, if we are willing. And the day may come when we realize that our true life is That True Life, Love Itself. There is nothing more to know, nothing to accomplish, nothing to be worthy of, just to be and live what we already are. In this way we live the Dream of the Universe.

I experienced this dream in a personal dream of striking imagery in 1986: I found myself on a great flat plain that was a barren landscape, gray and colorless in its appearance. I was running with a group of persons single file. At the head of this line we were running on something that looked like a tarmac or runway. I found myself encouraging the people to keep going. "It's not far now." Not far ahead opened up in front of us, an immense abyss, a chasm of unknowable depth and width. And we were running straight for it. A shudder went through the group of runners. I spoke out and said, "Don't worry, it will be all right, just concentrate and you will see!" At the critical moment to my relief at the edge of this abyss each of us began to lift off the ground. We began to circle rising upward above the huge blackness of depths. We seemed to be like a flock of birds gliding and spiraling ever upward into an endless sky. As I looked around me, the blackness began to turn a deep blue and radiated a warmth that extended toward us. At a certain moment I was overwhelmed with the understanding that this space I had thought was limitless blackness was in truth a universal Womb, and that we were all being birthed into a new Life. I awoke at that moment from my dream, with great amazement. Since then I have come to understand that this is the calling of human beings, to live this great birthing consciously, and to give ourselves, our lives to it, in entirety. A new soul is being born in human beings.

"Yeshua said, 'If your spiritual leaders say to you, 'Look, the divine Realm is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will get there ahead of you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. No, the divine Reality is within you and it is all around you.

Only when you have come to know your True Self, then you will be known, realizing at last that you are a child of the Living One.' " (Logon 3- Gospel of Thomas)