Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: stage archetype, wild self, prajna paramita, Loyal Soldier, Wild Orchard, Joanna Macy (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In his magnum opus more than 25 years in the making, psychologist, eco-therapist, and wilderness guide Plotkin (Soulcraft) brings forth a new model for the whole of human life and spirituality in our world in dire ecological need, spoiled by patho-adolescent society. Beginning fittingly with elder eco-sage Thomas Berry, Plotkin calls us to a fresh circular conception of individual and collective evolutionary life genuinely reconnected to the wild of nature. Using the indigenous template of the four compass directions, his eight stages on the wheel of spiritual development are the Innocent, Explorer, Thespian, Wanderer, Soul Apprentice, Artisan, Master and Sage. The Wheel is a deep-structure portrait of nature-and-soul-oriented cultures, a portrait that encompasses child-raising practices, core values, stages of growth, rites of passage, community organization, and relationship to the greater Earth community, he writes. Leaning heavily on psychology, Plotkin also draws upon a heavenly host of the rich sources that inform a lifetime including poetry, global cultures and much more. Graceful prose is counterbalanced with diagrams and clear chapter structure. Plotkin offers an essential, weighty book for our perilous times. (Jan.)
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Review

-Plotkin brings forth a new model for the whole of human life and spirituality in our world in dire ecological need, spoiled by -patho-adolescent society.- . . . Graceful prose is counterbalanced with diagrams and clear chapter structure. Plotkin offers an essential, weighty book for our perilous times.- - Publishers Weekly (starred review) -With Nature and the Human Soul, Bill Plotkin once again works miracles. This vital book provides a road map to help us remember how to be human - which means how to be a human being in relationship to the natural world, to our home. We owe Bill Plotkin a deep debt of gratitude for this important work.- - Derrick Jensen, author of A Language Older Than Words and coauthor of As the World Burns -Nature and the Human Soul offers a consolidated and invaluable template for psychological and social development - not only personally, but collectively as well. Bill Plotkin defines the eight stages of human life and describes the cultural and individual tasks for each stage in brilliant, insightful, and masterful ways.- - Angeles Arrien, PhD, cultural anthropologist and author of The Four-Fold Way and The Second Half of Life -Bill Plotkin enhances our grasp of the stages of life we are born to pass through by weaving into them themes of meaning, soul, and spirituality. This is a rich offering not only to the field of psychology but to a world torn from its roots.- - Chellis Glendinning, PhD, author of My Name Is Chellis and I-m in Recovery from Western Civilization -Brilliant, accessible, respectful, and compassionate, Nature and the Human Soul weaves a practical path for anyone from any culture to become whole, leading a soul-centered life that will benefit themselves and everyone and everything around them." - Dan Popov, PhD, cofounder of the Virtues Project and coauthor of The Family Virtues Guide --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: New World Library (December 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1577315510
• ISBN-13: 978-1577315513
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #20,249 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compassionate and Masterful, February 28, 2008

By	Katie Davis "Author, Awake Joy, www.KatieDavi... (USA) - See all my reviews

Nature and the Human Soul is a compassionate and masterful handbook to living the Heart's way. Bill Plotkin respectfully points to our ultimate wholeness and the maturing wisdom of the real human being that naturally flows when we are open to the wonderment of our natural world and truly realize the depth of the soul. This important work lights the pathway for all world cultures and offers essential guidance for our children, the future stewards of life on earth. Perhaps humanity is ready now for our impending transformation and a new world. If this is true for you, Bill is a brilliant signpost. Also by Bill Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche.
- Katie Davis, Awake Joy: The Essence of Enlightenment

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eco-centric Individuation, February 28, 2008

By	Randy Morris (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

To individuate is a subversive act. It requires a person to move against their habitual ego notions about how things are and to reject many of the accepted norms of their culture. Individuation is made more difficult in a time of what Jung called 'kairos', a time of the "changing of the gods", a time when the worldview of a culture is itself undergoing a rite of passage. In such times, when the myths of our culture are not adequate to lead us into a new way of being, and new myths are not yet here, we have to return to what Thomas Berry called `genetic guidance', the spontaneously creative and mysterious impulses of the world unconscious that originate in the same instincts through which the earth came into being. In short, we have to return to nature. But where can we find guidance that is not itself coming out of the old Cartesian, nature-phobic fantasy that is the problem? To read a text on individuation that is not grounded in such assumptions requires that the author be `cured' of the disease of Cartesianism and have enough of the Bodhisattva in them to want to share their insights in a labor of love, a book. I am pleased to report that Bill Plotkin's second book, Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World, fits this bill.

Nature and the Human Soul begins with the idea that humanity is engaged in the process of the Great Turning, the move from an ego-centric industrial growth model of civilization to an eco-centric earth community model that is sustainable into the future. The question is then asked, "What does it mean to become fully human in an eco-centric world?" At a time when most therapeutic models are about coping with the dire consequences of our current circumstances, this is an especially generative question, one that is filled with hope for the future. To answer this question fully, Bill Plotkin dives deeply into the structure of the medicine wheel, the wheel of life, to create one of the most innovative and healing imaginations of the process of individuation that I have ever read. What brings this model to life is Plotkin's 25 years of experience as a depth psychologist, wilderness guide and eco-therapist, leading individuals into the wild to seek their destiny. The abstractions of life-span stage theory are given pulse and beauty through the soul-stirring stories of the individuals whose experiences illuminate the phases of the wheel of life. More than just another developmental theory, Nature and the Human Soul has the potential to be a foundation stone in the New Myth that we so desperately seek.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Deep and Sustaining Book for the 21st Century, January 25, 2008

By	Matthew Cochran (Patagonia, Arizona) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As with Plotkins first book (Soulcraft), I found Nature and the Human Soul to be an incredible map but better than that, more like a constellation of stars that allowed me to see/feel/experience a forgotten story that is our own. It is a glimpse of a great and wild ecological pattern. In fact, I can say that he has succeeded yet again in creating a cocoon on a collective level, one that serves humanity in its full maturation. I think it is a book that will have profound impact and is critical to the 21st Century and all its dangers...I've certainly been sending it to all my friends.

As important as it is to both Depth Psychologies and Eco-Psychologies, this book is also fresh and readable, poetic in its imaging and easily accessible to everyone. The weaving of interviews into the text with elders Joanna Macey and Thomas Berry are startling and poignant as we get to experience their far reaching wisdom. As well, Plotkins own storytelling masterfully draws one into the natural world showing us how nature can teach us and mirror our own humanity. He brings the soul's logic into view. The confluence of this organic developmental model of being fully human (the soul-centric developmental wheel) with ones own personal world is not constraining but rather frees us into our full imagination, expression and potential. It is a message that is highly original, vastly unique, and mysteriously familiar in its deep truth.