April 2005 Newsletter
Online Issue # 9

Good Books

Soulcraft
Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche
by Bill Plotkin
New World Library, 2003
paperback, $15.95

Plotkin is a depth psychologist, ecotherapist and the founder of an organization that offers "nature-based soul-initiation" programs, in which all the forces of the natural world freely and synchronistically guide and inform the soul's development.

Soulcraft reads like an adventure travelogue—an incredibly fascinating account of the inner/outer wilderness journey. Coverage is both in-depth and integrated across disciplines. Throughout the book Plotkin illuminates with poetry, dreams, myths, and engaging stories from the lives of participants on actual soulcraft journeys. There are ideas for journal work, imagery, rituals and more. The book also includes an excellent index which readers will find helpful, since this is such a comprehensive resource.

Soulcraft opens a way for readers to once again participate in the original, ongoing dialogue between the human soul and the natural world that has always been its home.

"The call to adventure is the prologue to the journey of descent. The call comes when it's time to inherit a greater life, to plunge yourself into the limitless expanse and depth the world affords. This is both a crisis and an unsurpassed opportunity. The old way of life has been outgrown. The familiar goals, attitudes, and patterns of relationships no longer fit your developing sense of who you truly are. The time has arrived to step over a threshold into a whole new way of being."

-Bill Plotkin

The Exquisite Risk
Daring to Live An Authentic Life
by Mark Nepo
Harmony Books, 2005
hardcover, $21.00

Mark Nepo is a poet, a teller of stories (both his own and those of others), a teacher of poetry and spirituality, a survivor of cancer, and a gifted writer. All this helps to make his latest book a fitting and inspiring companion to consider the living of your own life.

Listen to a few of the chapter titles from the table of contents: Holding Nothing Back, Steering Our Way To Center, The Struggle To Be Real, Going Beyond, and How Can We Go There Together? In truth, almost every chapter of The Exquisite Risk feels like an invitation to stop doing; each offers a quiet conversation, an opening to consider something of worth, a way to question or to remember, a moment to savor life's sweet imperfection.

Nepo's text is lovely, often dreamlike and poetic, as though it was written to secretly speak to some far region of your being, a place that can't be accessed directly. Poems often manage to find their way there, and so will passages from The Exquisite Risk.

"This is the purpose of faith: to believe that this current is there even though we can't see it. And this is the purpose of will: to correct our inevitable drifting with a paddle here and a paddle there, not trying to do it all ourselves, but trying to restore our native position in the ancient and immediate current so it can carry us into tomorrow... With discernment but without judgment, the human journey is one of steering ourselves back to center over and over."

-Mark Nepo

If The Buddha Got Stuck
A Handbook for Change on a Spiritual Path
by Charlotte Kasl
Penguin Books, 2005
paperback, $13.00

If you've ever been really stuck or if you're stuck right now, you'll appreciate this small, thoughtful book by Charlotte Kasl. In both the Introduction and the Afterword, Kasl writes reassuringly about being stuck herself; she even got stuck writing this book about getting unstuck.

Kasl hasn't taken a quick fix or surface approach to helping readers get unstuck. She begins by examining traits of people who are stuck and traits of people who generally remain unstuck. Then she asks readers to delve deeply into old, ineffective patterns of living and relating to themselves and the world. If all you want is to get unstuck right now, and painlessly, this book probably won't rescue you. But if you want to understand what is happening and what you're doing to both help and hinder yourself, and if you want to change things for the future as well as for now, then you've found a valuable resource.

Kasl structures the book around a seven-step process: Feel your longing - Notice where you're stuck, Show up, Pay attention, Live in reality - Listen to your truths, Connect with others - Connect with life, Move from thought to action, and Let go. As a practicing psychotherapist, Kasl includes valuable insights from her work and many helpful stories to illustrate the process of becoming both stuck and unstuck. She follows most chapters with several exercises / questions for readers to use to personally explore the concepts.

Throughout the book Kasl introduces Buddhist spiritual teachings that offer alternative ways of thinking and behaving—options that support the letting go of fear and attachment, two key ingredients in remaining stuck.

"We leap into knowing and not knowing all at once. If you sense a possibility but want all the details and guarantees of "success" in place before moving forward, you may never move to action. You often have to take a first step before the next one presents itself. You break free when you take a step, any step, and see what happens.

This doesn't mean you are passively blown around by whims or external events; rather, you listen with all of your being and follow where you are called. It's about dedication and a deep desire to be who you truly are."

-Charlotte Kasl

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