Soul Initiation: Finding your Unique Niche
Bill Plotkin: a conversation with a visionary
The deepest and most fulfilling meaning in life comes from discovering the unique individual place we were born to take in the greater Earth community, and then embodying that place as our gift to others and to the world.
-Bill Plotkin
Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., is a depth psychologist, wilderness guide, and agent of cultural evolution. As the founder of the Animas Valley Institute he has spent nearly 45 years guiding thousands of women and men through nature-based initiatory passages.
Plotkin describes an essential developmental process that is missing from modern culture. Beyond merely diagnosis, he also provides a map and mechanism to reincorporate greater meaning into our lives. Our conversation is an introduction to his work [You can listen to our conversation on Spotify and Apple Podcasts].
Through his study of other cultures, Plotkin believes healthy human development means reaching a breaking point where our culturally-defined definitions and roles fail us. We then undergo a Soul Initiation from adolescence to true adulthood. This involves a process by which you discover your unique ecological niche in the web of life. In his framing, “Soul” is primarily an ecological concept, not a psychological, spiritual or religious one. His work is therefore primarily focused on exploring what you are meant to do for the collective, rather than exclusively your individual growth or healing journey.
Both this diagnosis and prescription have basically disappeared from Western culture. Over literally thousands of conversations over the last decade I can confirm the truth of this statement. Many people I speak to express shame and bewilderment when their objectively satisfactory life and professional identity suddenly collapses. And yet, according to Plotkin’s analysis of other cultures, it’s what’s supposed to happen.
Once you look at modern society through Plotkin’s lens of being stuck in adolescence, a lot more makes sense. Many of our most visible public figures are transparently driven by a need for social proof and material success. Both are highly necessary developmental stages, but we’ve forgotten how to transcend them. In fact, Plotkin believes that less than 10% of contemporary humans ever mature to the point where they’re psychologically prepared for the journey of Soul Initiation.
One of Plotkin’s key additions to developmental frameworks is the “Descent to Soul.” It has five phases, with the “Soul Encounter” as its pivotal moment. The Descent is typically a difficult phase that lasts weeks to months, as a part of the longer Journey of Soul Initiation that can last several years.
Since 1980, Plotkin’s Animas Valley Institute has developed a series of nature-based practices designed to facilitate Soul Encounters. It often includes a multi-day vision fast, alone in the wild. These can involve everything from dramatic storms, uncanny interactions with animals, synchronicities, life-transforming dreams, and visions.
Why are Soul Encounters more likely to occur in wild or semi-wild environments? It’s because we can only understand the messages from our souls indirectly, or “mythopoetically.” The world mirrors it to us by way of nature-based metaphors, human archetypes, or other mythic or poetic symbols. This means that Animas’ work inverts a lot of developmental processes. For example, they engage in dreamwork, but almost never from an analytical perspective. Instead of working on a dream by interpreting it, they ask “what is the dream wanting to do to me?” This reframing opens us up to the idea that there are greater powers at work in our lives, powers that are guiding us toward our ideal niche.
The Soul Initiation process doesn’t tell you how to embody your soul; what professions or skills to pursue. Plotkin calls the how the “delivery system.” His own soul’s purpose is to “weave cocoons” and his delivery systems have been as a psychologist, vision fast guide, author, and soulcraft facilitator. As we discussed in our conversation, Carl Jung also undertook the hazardous path of the Descent to Soul on his own, as documented in the Red Book. He ended up revolutionizing depth psychology as well as fulfilling a prophetic role in diagnosing the spiritual sickness of modern humanity.1
“Am I Held?”
The open question, one we explored in our conversation, is if the soul-initiated adult can return and thrive within a decaying adolescent culture. In my own experience, most conversations about life transitions have one core question at their heart: “am I held?” If I make that transition from adolescence to adulthood, can I still survive and feed my family? I viscerally understand how it’s one thing to suspect that benign guiding forces really do exist, and another to bet your safety, comfort, savings, career and family’s future on it.
As our relationship with “nature” specifically, and the divine feminine in general, has basically collapsed, so has our faith that there’s an intelligence strong enough to help us overcome the forces that are destroying us.2 And, like any adolescent, we are secretly afraid to offer our truly authentic selves to the world in case we get rejected.
Bill is optimistic, but realistic. He thinks there can be three outcomes from a Soul Initiation:
It works out beautifully. We discover our gifts, find a way to deliver them to the world and achieve a personal fulfillment that’s deeper than we even thought was possible.
We get stuck in the cocoon. Unfinished business from earlier stages, usually childhood, means we need to spend longer in transition or need support from soul-initiation guides.
We die in the initiation process. This is obviously more common (although still rare), in intact nature-based indigenous cultures of the past and present. But it’s accepted as an unavoidable risk; the societal risks of having no initiation process are infinitely worse. In my experience it’s not a straightforward choice either. I’ve regularly seen those that refuse their purpose descend into resentment, addiction, health crisis, or even suicide.
It’s easy to look at dreamwork, vision fasts and alternative indigenous cultures and assume what Bill and Animas are doing is backwards-looking. But he continually emphasizes that this is a process for birthing something entirely new; a culture populated by revolutionaries; the “visionary artisan.” When your work is in service of life in a destructive culture, your work will necessarily be transformational. Many of the case studies in Plotkin’s work end up in healing, guiding, or ecological professions.
One purpose of founding The Leading Edge was to create a digital cocoon for people to discover their soul’s purpose and then experiment with different delivery systems. As Bill and I discussed, he thinks we will increasingly see the emergence of different communities that develop their own versions of practices and ceremonies that help people through the Journey of Soul Initiation.
The role of stewarding of those networks, especially digital ones, is also one example of a relatively new delivery system. I had my own vision in 2017 about being a node in a network that would help catalyse social evolution. Writing, interviewing, and running the community are different delivery systems I enjoy doing simultaneously. Perhaps most importantly: this combination also allows me to flourish with a modest lifestyle in Manhattan.
But the plural of anecdote is not data. I don’t think we can ever be sure if a vision fast, Soul Encounter or life transition will be a guaranteed success. And I think if we were certain of success going in, we wouldn’t learn the lessons the transition requires. The question then remains if the pain of stagnation outweighs the risks of the adventure.
[You can learn more about the Animas Valley Institute here, and listen to our conversation on Spotify and Apple Podcasts].
If you’d like to dig deeper into Bill’s work his 2021 book Journey of Soul Initiation is a great start. Here’s a helpful glossary of Bill’s terms, and a couple of excellent articles with more on the Soul Initiation process. The Realm of Purpose Least Realized (But Most Essential in Our Time of Radical, Global Change) and The Journey of Soul Initiation: Q & A with Bill Plotkin.
See my article Revolutions, Prophets and Superpowers about Peter Kingsley’s compelling argument that Jung was a prophet using the medium of science and psychology.