What is the meaning of our lives? What are we here to accomplish during our brief visit between birth and death? How do we know if we’ve achieved our purpose? There may be no more important questions we can ask of ourselves and they’re a necessary part of living an examined life. Yet, many of us have lost the answers to these questions.
In Living Between Worlds: Finding Personal Resilience in Changing Times, James Hollis doesn’t offer answers to these questions. Nor can he. Our own responsibilities, and the challenges that come with them, are deeply personal. But what Hollis does do is provide a compass, helping us find our own path and chart a course of action.
I’ve taken Hollis’s writings and turned them into six insights, starting with the problems we face in modern society, followed by valuable advice on navigating the occasionally treacherous waters of life. All the thinking that follows is from Hollis. His exact words appear in quotes and italics.
Insight #1: There’s something vital missing in our lives.
There’s a common malady in today’s world: The deep-seeded feeling that something isn’t quite right. Call it a hole in your center, a yearning you can’t adequately describe, yet know is there. As a culture “we are swimming in malaise,” despite the fact we live with the kind of creature comforts our ancestors would envy and technologies they could not even imagine.
For all the cacophonous distractions of the hour, we all know something is missing, something aches in our souls, something longs for linkage to that which is larger.
Insight #2: We are no longer connected to something bigger.
The field of psychology wasn’t developed until the late 20th century and for good reason. There was a void to be filled. At one point in time, myths, the gods, and then the world’s religions offered a path to understanding life. But as Julianne Stanz points out in Braving the Thin Places, “religion does not seem to offer the release, the comfort, and solace that it once did.” The scaffolding that once supported our lives is gone. We are no longer connected to a tribe or something greater than ourselves. It has led to a lack of meaning in life, and a sickness of the soul.
As Jung noted we have no schools for 40-year-olds. Our religions were always such schools in the past, but how many people regard them like that today?
Insight #3: We need to begin listening to our souls.
We are too often led by the ego, which is heavily influenced by societal pressures and demands, ignoring the needs of our souls. As a result, we often get stuck in a hole of our own making. As the blogger known as The Hood Healer wrote: “There’s a reason burnout is at an all-time high. Most people are exhausted because they’re building lives their souls never agreed to. And the spiritual cost is enormous.” The only solution is to listen to what the soul is saying to us.
The ultimate decisions of our lives are made by some higher agency than the ego. Ego intentionality is tasked with the governance of daily life. It must work with the Self to achieve a profound sense of rightness, of peace.
Insight #4: The answers are within us, if we choose to seek them.
If we had access to a wise sage who knew us better than we know ourselves, and was invested in our well-being, would it not make sense to seek the advice of that sage?
Hollis tells us that the soul, the inner most part of our selves, is that sage. When we can transcend the ego, there’s something inside us that knows what path and decisions are right for us. All that is asked of us is to dedicate the time and space, away from the noise and distractions of everyday life, to find the soul and embrace it.
We must realize we have an internal guidance system. Most of us really know what is right for us though we may be frightened or intimidated to know what we already know. As Jung put it, most of my patients knew the deeper truth but they did not live it—because of the bias which makes us all live from the ego. A bias which comes from the overvaluation of the conscious mind.
Insight #5: Once we find the answers, we must act.
Our identity is defined by the alignment of our values and actions. Yet, we frequently struggle to find the courage to act on our deepest desires. Whether through inward reflection or outward exploration, we must find the resolve to honor our soul. What is right for us is close to us. The growth of the psyche may involve learning new things, in travel and exploration, or simply in sitting with ourselves and listening to our souls from time to time.
Each of us must remember that we were sent with the gift of our personhood, and if we fail to embody that in the world, we have failed our mission. Whatever the impediments that life brings, the soul is forever seeking to work its ways through all barriers, not unlike that blade of grass that emerges from the concrete.
Insight #6: We’re called to give life our best effort.
Listening to the soul may not sit well with the ego. It may put up a fight. Come up with excuses. Cause you to be fearful. But to honor the soul and find your true path, you’ve got to “throw yourself into it.” The going may occasionally be difficult, “but since when is that an excuse for not showing up in life?” Hollis advises us to go easy on ourselves as we embark on the soul’s quest. “Just do it as well as you can. That is all anyone can ask. Try to forgive yourself from time to time along the way.”
Only you can take the journey, only your map is right for you. Others have to find their way. But you must know there are many others on the same voyage, facing similar fears, riddled with similar self-doubt. And still the realm of the limitless beckons us. All we can do is show up.
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