BOUNDARIES OF THE SOUL

we find in their responses evidence that each of us longs to transcend our ego
identity and assume another persona and that we often do this in imaginal reading
when we then experience an imaginal place, an elsewhere-place, somehow known
and familiar yet not actually visited? I f so, is this elsewhere-place archetypal,
revealing an archaic dimension of the human psyche, one that is as integral to
individual psychological and spiritual survival as much as ego-identity; perhaps even
the core identity? Finally, are these two elements, the de-centred-self and
elsewhere-place, consanguineous and indeed analogous to a shamanic state of
consciousness and how do they influence the narrative and boundaries of the soul?
Three events exacerbated my interest in what I see as a soul-life-narrative
and not merely biography; not that which one creates to share with others, but
rather the essential truth that one explains to oneself. The first occurred at a
performance by the Jewish storyteller Corey Fischer; the theatre lights dimmed and
I was soon transported to other times and places through the imaginal narratives. I
was no longer passively seated in the theatre, instead I saw, felt, heard and lived in
an extended reality, its time was of a different dimension and the ‘I ’ that
experienced the performance was different. The house lights came-up; two hours
had elapsed but the mythopoeic story-time seemed to be brief and yet, at the same
time, an eternity, immeasurable and related to something ineffable. The reading of
stories has always had the same enchanting effect on me and I wondered if it was
the same for others.
The second occurred when I heard Christine Kitch, the author of Pavement
for My Pillow (1996), respond to an television programme interviewer’s suggestion
that she must have felt ashamed of herself when she was living as an alcoholic in
the toilets at Piccadilly Station and to which Kitch replied, and I recall clearly, “ ...
Oh no dear, in fact, it was like living in a cathedral”.
Christine Kitch had previously written of this:
There were ten ladies toilets in Subway 4 of Piccadilly, and most
days, at least eight of these were filled with addicts in some state
of intoxication; either completely stoned, attempting to get a hit or
withdrawing from drugs.... We changed our clothes and washed
ourselves in the toilets. We washed our hands and faces in the
washroom and sometimes we washed the bottom half of our
bodies from the toilets ....The toilets were a world within a world;
people had sex, gave birth and died there (Kitch, 1996:87).