One of Jung’s students, when discussing Pilgrim’s Progress, asked him what his pilgrimage had really been. “In my case, Pilgrim’s Progress consisted of me having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am,” responded Jung.

“The little clod of earth that I am!” A far cry from the spiritual heights of positivism and perfection, the “be more, do more, achieve and know more, have more” mentality that many in the west see as a measure of material and spiritual success. This process of “growing down” is the very antithesis of the soaring heights of knowledge and spirit we assume make us worth something - and yet it is, and always has been, a very real call from the Soul.

A growing down so often necessitates a "sinking to the depths". If we do not consciously choose the journey, the journey will choose us on its own. The soul, weary and neglected, so often captures us in the only way it can - calling us into sickness or depression, perhaps some kind of fall or terrible grief, or a betrayal - even a lingering apathy; a "Dark Night of the Soul." At some point all the ornaments of self-image will lose their sparkle or even vanish, and it's often with great suffering we realise they no longer contain the meaning the world assured us they would have. Eventually we have no choice but to turn within.

The path of descent, of that “deepening into life” means letting go. At some point we must surrender - let our roots sink into our own darkness to weave and web their way into what lives in that dirt of self - what has been waiting. Here we can discover the deeper realities hidden within our own bodies, our circumstances, our experiences, let the old ways die. In this loss we can make space for Something Greater, for the soul to be reborn. It is from here that we can be re-enlivened like limbs warming back from cold or a lack of blood, returning not with the trappings of the world, but to an enriched, embodied life.

There is a profound legitimacy to this darkness that so often the world just can’t understand, and even sneers at. But it is this deepening that fleshes us out and makes us human. The very word “human” can be traced back to the ancient term for “of the earth" or "ground." Perhaps something like "the little clod of earth that I am." And like the spreading of roots beneath the Tree of Life we must sink into that earth within ourselves, weave roots into our own being, to awaken to the reality that those roots are connected to so many others. For it’s the "deepening down" that connects us to our own soul and to the souls of others - to the very Earth itself. And it is in the "dirt" that we find the true gold, that is: the embodied soul, and what makes us real.

~ Rachel Alana (R.A. Falconer)

Midwives of the Soul.