Soul-searching.

THE EDITORS INTERVIEW THOMAS MOORE

"You are always going to do the work of a priest," a coworker at a chemical lab told Thomas Moore some 30 years ago, after the former altar boy had mentioned to the chemist that he had spent 12 years in the seminary but had opted to leave just before ordination. That mysterious statement from a stranger turned out to be prophetic.

Today, Moore is a spiritual guru to millions. His work as a therapist, writer, and lecturer all centers on trying to teach people how to care for their souls-originally the work of a priest. "All of our problems, personal and social, are due to a loss of soul," writes Moore, author of such international bestsellers as Care of the Soul (HarperPerennial), Soulmates (HarperPerennial), and The Soul of Sex (HarperCollins). His new book, Original Self: Living With Paradox and Authenticity (HarperCollins), has Thomas Moore revisiting that familiar--and holy--ground.

Moore's brand of spirituality integrates Jungian and archetypal psychology, classic mythology, and Eastern philosophy, but it is also grounded in good old Roman Catholicism. Raised in a fervent Irish Catholic family, Moore now refers to himself as a "radically reformed" Catholic, but acknowledges that the church's teachings are still the ultimate source of his own spirituality. The former Servite monk, who has degrees in theology, musicology, and philosophy, now lives with his wife and two children in New England.

What does our soul search for?

Our soul longs to be its original self. To be original is to be able to step outside society's expectations and have the courage to be somebody. In spite of the fact that we talk about how wonderful the individual is, in practice we really don't support that. As soon as a person steps outside the narrow confines of what's normal and expected, there's pressure. Magazines tell you exactly how much you should weigh, exactly what food you should and shouldn't eat, how much money you should make. They create this environment of hyper-normalcy.

At a certain level, it's fine to be normal. I've worked with people in therapy who would give anything for a day of feeling normal, but there's a way in which normalcy gets out of hand.

Do you think people realize how much pressure there is to be normal?

It's largely an unconscious thing. No one comes out and says, "We are against your being yourself." It's just the opposite. It's concealed and hidden. A thing that I've come across over and over again is that as soon as someone begins to feel they're becoming a real person, they wake up--it's an awakening process. And when a person wakes up, one of the first things they do is change jobs or careers.

Usually their shift in work is toward something that gives them more. They go into crafts. They become musicians and artists. It's a move toward something on the edge of what is socially acceptable.

There's pressure to make a living in a certain way, to make a certain amount of money, to adapt to the work ethic, which is very deep and unconscious. People talk about the work ethic as though it's part of culture, but it's a very insidious, profound fantasy we have that we justify our existence by working. And that misconception can block originality.

How can a person live more originally?

You can't make originality into a program. When I first Care of the Soul, people called me and said, "I'd like to set up a training program for care of the soul." And I had to say that making a program out of it would contradict the very thing I was talking about. Some people have taken this notion of care of the soul and made it into part of their personal fitness program--you get your body in shape, now you can get your soul in shape. What I'm trying to write about is a radical alternative. If we lived more originally, then we'd be in touch with that deeper source of vitality, and things would change.

One thing you have to do is step outside. You have to say that you're not going to participate 100 percent in a culture that is largely without a soul. Americans have really accomplished a great deal, socially and technologically, but we haven't accomplished much in terms of the interior life.

There are many images for the soul, and one that I like is that it's like a spring, like water coming up out of the earth. It bubbles up from an unknown place, and it's life-giving. That's why we're afraid of soul sometimes because it's so much easier not to have so much life. It's easier to be deadened and numbed, because then you don't have to constantly be arranging your life to fit the soul. That's threatening, and that's why we don't have a lot of soul. We are a pretty numbed people.

How do you know if you're caring for your soul properly?

For one thing, you don't feel a great deal of inner conflict. Not that life becomes easy or simple, but there isn't that awful struggle of great opposites. Soul is a resolver of opposites. When there are great oppositions in life--between work and play or marriage and individuality and solitude--the soul is not in place.

Another would be connections. In our spiritual tradition there's an essential connection between soul, desire, and love. The soul-filled life is not dry and detached, it's a life of connections. For example, you're connected to work, and there's some love and desire for work. You're not just trying to achieve some goal that never arrives, but there's a real love right now in work, and the ability to connect with people is part of it.

The soul-filled life also offers a deep sense of meaning that is not defensive, where you don't have to try to make sure everyone else believes the same thing you do. I think a sense of humor and sense of irony are important, especially the ironical sense that even though you're totally committed to the way you see the world, it's probably wrong. There's always more to learn no matter how much you know.

You see a lot of the ironic in great spiritual figures. There's some irony with Jesus, too. He has this profound teaching, but he lives in such a limited world, and he's always speaking in paradox.

What role does mystery play in a person's spiritual life?

Mystery means that you don't try to explain everything. There's a nervousness in modern life to explain everything.

I was talking to an audience last night about prayer. When I pray, I pray the way my mother taught me. I don't have to understand how prayer works in order to do it. I don't need someone to tell me how prayer works technically and how it is measured. There are so many mysteries out there, and we don't have to see them as threats to our understanding.

I think that's the religious point of view: You don't need to understand everything. You can live by faith, and when you do that, then the soul comes more into play. If you don't, religion itself becomes secular, and I think there's been a great deal of secularization of religion.

Once you have gotten away from mystery, you're talking about deifying your own ideas and your own agenda and acting out of your own insecurity--and that's where we are today, in some respects. In mystery, we acknowledge divinity. Deep soul is nurtured and fed by mystery.

What does that religion without mystery look like?

We don't know how much we're influenced by the idea that our salvation comes from understanding. We have all these scientific investigations of everything. We study everything, and in some ways it does bring us closer to the natural world. But we're still killing ourselves as we kill nature. The study of nature hasn't translated into a love of nature, except maybe among a few specialists.

There's a paradigm from the Middle Ages that says our experience is body, soul, and spirit. Today a lot of people talk about body and spirit, but they leave out the soul. It's possible to do religion from only a spirit point of view--which emphasizes truth and teaching and understanding, and even self-development, enlightenment, and salvation.

Deep soul, however, is different. From the soul point of view, atmosphere is important. What is the atmosphere of a church when you go into it? What do you feel? What does that architecture do to you when you step across the threshold? What about that sanctuary being lit, kneeling, genuflecting, and the quiet? All of that is the soul of religion.

If in our spiritual practice we ignore these soul issues, we can be hyperactive in our spiritual practice, but then we ignore the needs of the deeper soul for beauty and image, atmosphere, and the sense of the holy.

How can people foster greater sensitivity to mystery?

You turn in two directions that are very closely related. One is art and the other is ritual--that's where traditions have always gone in the face of mystery. Ritual is a positive, constructive way of being in the presence of great mysteries death, birth, marriage, illness, suffering.

But religion can get to the point where ritual has been tamed so that it is less mysterious and more understandable. I don't go along with that. Now, that might put me in a very conservative place. I think we shouldn't try to be so understandable but rather recognize that the whole point of art and ritual is to place us in the realm of mystery.

Spiritual practice can also be a valuable way of dealing with mystery, and so can theology. I believe that all of our social problems and problems of peace and violence are theological questions.

For example, what is the gun? I would say the gun is a fetish: It's an object that is overvalued, in which power and aggression are focused. People use this object because they find power in it. And if you're talking about fetishes, that's a religious issue. If we can't discuss the problem of violence in the United States theologically, I don't think we're ever going to deal with it adequately.

How is your work on the soul rooted in Catholic tradition?

I base all of my work on the Catholic tradition, really. My work extends to the Greek religions and Zen Buddhism and Hinduism, but primarily it's Catholic--and that tradition is completely adequate to offer full direction to anybody. It's all there.

I try to make it explicit that I'm speaking as a Catholic--but I'm speaking to a world that is not just Catholic. I've studied religion, I've had experiences in many different religions, and I've been a therapist for 20 years, and these have had a big effect on me, too. As a Catholic, I first heard about the soul when I was about 3 years old; some people think it's a new word, but it's never been a new word for me.

In my monastic and seminary days, I used to study the usual sources of Catholic wisdom, like Saint Thomas Aquinas, asking what the nature of the soul was and what all the parts of the soul were. When I found Carl Jung talking about soul from a psychological point of view, it added an exciting new dimension for me because when I studied the soul in Thomas' philosophy, it sounded like some abstract system of thought. But when I read Jung, I realized he was quoting the same authors, but he was making it so vivid and alive in having to do with the way we dream and live and relate to people.

How can institutional religion--and more specifically the Catholic Church--help people to live in an original way?

They could be the most important source, but I realize there's also a retrenchment going on in religious institutions, almost a return to authoritarianism. It's exactly the wrong direction--that's not what religion is. Holiness can teach everybody; you can follow someone who is really a holy person, but authoritarianism is a betrayal of that. It is a crutch for inadequate leadership. Leadership comes from personal example. People can recognize someone who is a worthy leader.

The Catholic Church is identified in most people's minds as an authoritarian structure, and it's very hard in that structure for the heart and the soul of religion to show itself because it's covered over by anxiety. Authoritarianism is nothing but anxiety raised to a huge level. We're all worried about homosexuality. But who cares, in a way? That has nothing to do with people's holiness.

I remember once speaking to a social justice conference at a Catholic college near where I live, and a priest in the audience raised his hand and asked, "What should I do as a priest to contribute to social justice?" And I said, "The only job of the priest is to be a holy person." Not a psychologist or a counselor or a social activist, but a holy person.

That's what some spiritual leaders are: holy people, and you can see it by the way they are, the way they work. There are so many other spiritual leaders who have some big agenda to create large organizations, which is the great problem in the Catholic Church. It focuses more on its organization than on its holiness.

I would substitute holiness as a goal rather than health. I think health is way overrated. You can be very unhealthy and still be a person of great soul. A lot of spiritual writing also seems to be about health, and I think that's a big mistake because then the mystery's gone.

It's awful that a lot of people are turning away from the church and are hunting around. You see people on Sunday mornings driving from one church to another to find some place where they feel that they're going to get something for themselves.

What does care of the soul have to do with the work of justice?

You have to ask, "What is the myth of social justice that we operate on?" That's the question I always ask as a therapist: "What's the story we are in--but not aware that we're in?" And, if we become aware of it, is it possible to move to another story that might work better for us? If your fantasy is to save the world, you have to ask yourself, "Do I want to be a savior? Is the savior fantasy the best way to go?"

To be a prophet doesn't mean you have to go around being the one who shouts at the current system, "You're wrong, you're heartless"--that's not the only way to be a prophet. Another way would be to have a different idea for what our society needs and where it's heading.

We need to realize that if we are going toward some great technological future, then a lot of our citizens are going to get in the way; they'll be expendable. What we need is beauty in this world--a beautiful life and a beautiful culture--and then those very people we're putting on the margins will come to the center. You don't have to have just one fantasy in doing social justice. We can have an altogether different imagination that would allow us to be a more just people.

What do you make of today's new spiritual renaissance?

America has gone through many spiritual awakenings--it's not a new thing--and usually they don't last a long time. Our real love is technology. We imagine our future as a technological one.

When we think about the century we're just starting, we think in terms of what kind of machines we will have and how perfect they will be. We don't ask the important questions like what will our children be like. Will they have more opportunity? Will we still have hungry kids? Will we still have communities in the world that will be living substandard lives? Will we always have international conflict?

It seems to me that we are caught in the myth that our progress is technological. Now, technology is one of our great achievements, but it's the story our technology is set in that worries me. I just picked up a magazine about computers, and I noticed that there's nothing human in it; it's all about machines. There's nothing about the human being, and yet it's a human being using the machine.

One of my concerns about the spiritual movement is that it tends to be very sentimental. When I read that people are concerned about spirituality, they usually mean being enlightened, having the truth. That's an old idea I hope we would get out of--possessing the truth.

In the best circumstances, this latest spiritual movement would be an alternative to what is truly a materialistic view of the human body and of our progress. We've had 100 years of focusing on the technological world and machinery, and now a lot of people are saying, "There's more to life. These machines are not giving me the deep satisfaction I need." What we're searching for is a more soul-filled life.

HOW YOUR SOUL IS LIKE A GRAPE

[Speaking to the soul:] "You taste like a grape."

--Mechthild of Magdeburg

Mystics like Mechthild of Magdeburg and Hildegard of Bingen often use poetry to describe the soul and its relation to God, and that poetry is often sensuous in its imagery and allusions. The soul is indeed like a grape, just as a grape is like the soul.

Each has an envelope, a skin that holds it together and gives it form, while inside is a mouth-watering, tingling, sweet softness. Certainly the soul sometimes has a deep purple exterior, but even within that bitter skin lies a sweet meat....

The grape, like the soul, has many levels. It can be eaten whole and is often used as a symbol of sensuousness--grapes dropped indulgently into an open mouth. Its juice is nectar, but when it is allowed to ferment, it becomes the source of deeper pleasure and intoxication.

The grape, like the soul, has a whole culture around it, as well as art and imagery inspired by it Jesus says, "I am the vine," and wine becomes the centerpiece of his Eucharist. Elsewhere, as in the Jewish Purim and Greek libations, it calls forth the religious spirit.

The shadow of the grape is its being crushed to make wine, the insides forced into view and squeezed dry. The soul, of course, also knows what it is to be squeezed painfully. "I'm crushed," we say when the world has fallen in. But even then there is redemption....

We can find the soul in sensations of taste and intoxication as well as in the kind of crushing that resurrects in character. When we eat a juicy grape or take a sip of wine, we are, as the Catholic Mass exemplifies, taking in a god. The sweet taste and tangy feel of juice from the grape and the tingle and nose of the wine tell us what we need to know about a certain quality of existence, a divine layer of meaning made accessible through sensations.

This is real mysticism: not a flight from ordinary existence, not a purely intellectual attempt at transcendence, but the discovery of the awful interior of the world and the self within the simple sphere of the grape, the world in miniature, the microcosm explored appropriately and effectively on the tongue.

--From Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality, [C] 2000 by Thomas Moore. Published by arrangement with HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.