Mindfulness Meditation (For Everyday Life)

The soul feeling is rooted in multiplicity rather than
oneness, grounded in complexity and ambiguity,
eachness and Suchness. Soul stories are stories of
the quest, of risking one's life, of enduring darkness
and encountering shadows, of being buried
underground or underwater, of being lost and at times
confused, but persevering nevertheless. In
persevering, we ultimately come in touch with our
own goldenness as we emerge from the darkness
and the submerged gloom of the underground that
we most feared but nevertheless faced. This
goldenness was always there, but it had to be
discovered anew through this descent into darkness
and grief. It is ours even if it remains unseen by
others or even at times by us ourselves.
Fairy tales in all cultures are for the most part soul
stories rather than spirit stories. The dwarf is a soul
figure, as we saw in "The Water of Life." Cinderella is
a soul story. The archetype there is ashes, as Robert
Bly pointed out in Iron John. You (because these
stories are all about you) are kept down, in the ashes,
close to the hearth, grounded but also grieving, your
inner beauty unperceived and exploited. During this
rime, inwardly, a new development is taking place, a
maturation, a metamorphosis, a tempering, which
culminates in the emergence of a fully developed
human being, radiant and golden, but also wise to the