Where the Soul is Hidden
By Linda Mason Hunter
© Linda Mason Hunter, 2004; May not be reprinted without written permission from the author.

"If you can't find where your soul is hidden, for you the world will never be real."
-- Rumi
 

Photo:Patrick J. Adams

Houses are my business, and have been for the past 20 years. Since 1980 I've been writing about, scouting for, and styling photographs of houses for publication, first for Meredith Corp. (publisher of Better Homes and Gardens magazines and books), then for Rodale Press (publisher of Organic Gardening and my first book, The Healthy Home), then for nearly a dozen books. I've been in countless houses and seen up close the myriad ways people from different walks of life the world over choose to shape their environments. One common thread emerging through this career experience is the importance of ensouling your surroundings--of having a home that not only functions well for the way you live, but one that feeds the soul, as well.

The word ensoul embraces an esoteric concept. Not only does it mean something you take in to your deepest level, it means pulling something up from deep within yourself and giving it away. Give and take. Few single words in the English language express such paradox. Its richness is its circular nature. The more you take in, the more you have to give away.

At this moment in America's evolution, I believe each of us needs to personally experience the meaning of soul. We need to integrate it into our daily lives, express it in our every action, and remake our houses in its light. As the world tugs hard on our serenity, we need to create a hearth in which the spirit is made clean and calm.

Ensouling our surroundings is ancient wisdom. Though the Chinese philosophy of feng shui touches on the subject, the Japanese Buddhist philosophy of esho feni expresses the concept more precisely. According to esho feni living beings and their surroundings, while different, are two sides of one entity. Life and environment are one. The house is a mirror of the soul.

The time is ripe for we live in an era of great confusion. Many of us live hollow prescribed lives, often run at a sprinter's pace. We hurry through our days doing several things at once, intent on the next step without living fully in the present. Our corporate culture clutters the outskirts of our cities with identical strip malls, chain restaurants, and commercial establishments, leaving us suspended in a dreary homogenous limbo. A vast number of us live in tract subdivisions where each boxy structure mimics the next, stuck in a numbing cycle of work-spend-consume, then in rare quiet moments wonder why we feel empty.

Where is the grace in this way of life? What does it do to our spirit? Nowhere do we find an attitude of reverence, a respect for the high truths and qualities that inspire a feeling of awe and worship in the human soul.

It is ironic because, though America is more prosperous than at any other time in history, a sense of reverence is needed for psychological well-being. Noted author and Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson believes if a person has no sense of reverence, no feeling that there is anyone or anything that inspires awe, it cuts the conscious personality off completely from the nourishing springs of the unconscious. It cuts the mind off from the spirit.

The solution calls for a new focus. We need to redefine the personality of our culture beginning with each individual. We need to rebalance the way we spend our money, our time, our energy. We need to focus on compassion and dignity rather than on competition and self. We need to develop reverence for all life, and strive to live sustainably. We need to focus on biology, walk a soft path, and create conditions conducive to life. We need to live imaginatively, getting outside of society's prescription and forging a new way.

The essays contained in my e-book Where the Soul is Hidden offers examples of how to do that. It profiles women artists from the American Southwest, women who dare to live courageously and whose lives are richer for it. In each case the artist’s place of refuge is a kind of stand-alone art, a mirror for her soul.

Why profile artists? The artist’s role in society is to transcend the role of ordinary citizens--the here and now, the madness of the world--and to give us beauty, laughter, passion, surprise, drama. Perhaps because art is the language of the soul, artists seem to ensoul their surroundings intuitively. The art an artist creates is practically indisguishable from who that artist is. Their surroundings reflect that wholeness, that discipline that comes from continuously evolving the integrity of their perception.

Why profile women? Because women point the way to a more compassionate (rather than competitive) future, a future of hope and dignity, rich in meaning.

I’ve chosen to focus on the American Southwest because that area--with its rich culture, timeless landscape, and cut-glass clarity of light--has historically lured artists, strong-minded women, and other refugees from the dominant culture. At this point in history America’s Southwest holds the heart of a new artistic movement. Made up almost entirely of women, this movement strives to create the spiritual in art in our time, whether the medium is paint or film, clay or performance, organic building materials or food.

Each of the women profiled in this book infuses her daily life with reverence, purpose, and spirit. Each has made her own way and, in doing so, has formed a core of beliefs that guides her choices and decisions. Some come from prominent East Coast families. Others have rock and roll roots set down in 1960s California. Several are well-known, or linked to people whose names we’ve all heard of. These are their stories gleaned from lunch table conversations. 

We each have a bit of the artist within us whether we choose to tap into that rich well or not. Through the imaginative lives of these women we learn lessons in how to create richer, more meaningful, more satisfying lives. We learn the importance of reverence and begin to believe again in magic. And that's the way it should be, for in our private lives we should connect the seen with the unseen. It is there we find our souls.

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