1 - The Rediscovery of the Soul

You don’t know that you have a soul until someone tries to steal it. That, I think, is the discovery that an increasing number of postmodern people are making. It is the victims of trauma who are most aware of the theft – or attempted theft – of the soul. PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) was first defined and classified by psychologists counseling Viet Nam War veterans (and more recently veterans from wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere). PTSD has since been diagnosed for many other victims of abuse and violence: children who have been sexually, physically, or emotionally abused; women and men who have been raped; women and men beaten down in domestic violence; undocumented immigrants enslaved by profiteers; teenagers trapped poverty and violence; addicts who have been coerced into dependencies and then manipulated to entrap others; the list goes on. 

The number of traumatized victims grows exponentially, both because victims are becoming bolder to overcome social stigmas to go public, and because despite media attention the violence (and particularly sex-related abuses) keep growing. My demographic and lifestyle research work has trained me to listen more closely for the existential anxieties that drive behavior, and the more I observe the more I become aware of the chronic victimization that is escalating. 

This is especially true in supposedly enlightened western cultures. Westerners are quick to condemn attitudes toward women, youth, and children in other cultures, and astonishingly indifferent to traumatic violence in homes, schools, churches, and supposed “safe” environments. As I write this, Harvey Weinstein has just been sentenced to 23 years in prison for sexual offences revealed in the context of the “Me Too” movement. In theory, this sentence is supposed to “give notice” to other abusers that they will be held accountable. In practice, abusers remain protected by all of our institutions (churches, corporations, schools, etc.) and innumerable live in chronic shame.

My point, however, is not to just to reinforce the call for justice. I am impressed by the spiritual repercussions of trauma. Traumatized people tell very similar stories about shame, self-hatred, chronic insecurity and fear, and inner wounds that don’t seem to heal. Many intuit that there is more here than just threats to health or identity – something deeper. Life is utterly changed. It is an awareness of “paradise lost” … a loss of self, of self-worth, of any hope for healthy relationships, and separation from all that is holy and sacred in life. Traumatized people habitually dissociate from people and events, especially when there is some spike in emotion (both positive and negative). They struggle to maintain eye contact, fearful that others will see the great empty hole left behind by abuse. It is the place of the soul. It is the sense that some essence vital to our lives has been stolen and cannot be regained.

We know there is a soul more by its absence than its presence. That was not true in previous centuries. The ancients recognized the presence of the soul in many erotic and agapic ways, but mainly it was present as an abiding sense of unity with the natural world and humankind, and the link between human reason and universal order. That horizontal and vertical sense of unity was lost in modernity, and especially as the result of secular amorality and capitalistic individualism. To modern people, there was only the self, the ego, at the center of the universe. The sense of awe, mystery, and humility … along with the instincts for learning and compassion … were missing. The inevitable result of modern life is that people become commodities, objects, ideologies, competitors, or opponents and are no longer seen as human beings. The moral imperative is lost. Postmodern people are learning that this blindness to the soul has reduced the world of competing individuals to a chronic repetitive cycle of victims and victimizers, where rage and revenge force people to be one or the other.

The existential question for our time is this. Has your soul indeed been stolen … or has it just been damaged? And if the soul is still there in some fractured way, is there any hope for healing? This is more than just psychological healing that achieves some stability and balance in life. It is a spiritual healing that restores self-worth, inner meaning, and purposefulness toward all that is good, beautiful, and true. Some traumatized people trend toward self-destruction through addictions, rage against society, crime, and suicide. But there is another path! Traumatized people can crave the recovery of their souls. They can engage in a spiritual quest to restore wholeness to their fractured souls.