Soul and Inspiration
Inspiration happens from deep within the visionary world. While reading, sensing spontaneous intuitive flashes, and dreaming with vivid imagery, we experience the world of the spiritual imagination. CG Jung called the soul a vessel filled with grace or spirit, energy dramatized in literary images, intuitive flashes, and nightly visions known as dreams. Dramatic images encountered during reading and spirit-filled dreams while sleeping are inspirations from the visionary world’s wellspring known as soul.
We are soulful beings. When reading, we knock on the door of soul and quietly enter, words and story leading us to nourishment for the day. Daily reading nourishes the mind and heart as much as food does the body. I find that my soul, composed of both my intellectual mind and emotional heart, grows hungry to read. I can read myself full and satiate my literary appetite by taking an hour a day to open my books and savor words, story, and meaning.
Visions while Reading
As we settle into the beat and rhythm of reading, we enter a visionary state. It’s a trance state that ushers us into another world. That world is as real as the one in which we spend our waking hours. Regardless of the story, memories and unexpected images well up and sometimes bring us to tears or passionately convict us. Well-crafted stories open our minds and hearts to new perspectives on old problems or relax us into a sleep populated by spirits in various guises.
Spirits are archetypal, ancient energies that incarnate in the visionary/dream world. In soulful stories, ones birthed from a free flow of images from the unconscious mind, there is a world of spirits at work. They inhabit the images of the protagonist, antagonist, and supporting characters. Reading suspends the ego mind so creative energies can make their way up from the shadowlands of the unconscious and touch our consciousness. Life is better for the time taken to tend the soul with heartfelt words and mysterious narratives.
Spirits Inspire and Transform
When reading and entering the spirit world of imagination, there is potential to feel changed. Sometimes it’s movement into relaxation. Other readings mean shock and necessary unsettledness about how we have seen the world. Soul growth unsettles entrenched states of mind that now need to be examined in a new light.
Inspiration means to be filled with spirit. I remember learning this understanding in my undergraduate days studying ancient Greek. Spirits of the visionary world, what shamans and mystics call the spirit realm, are at work during storytelling and reading. Savoring a story each day is a powerful opportunity to drink from the wellspring of literary life. The soul, a vessel filled with spirit, hungers to read and discover nourishment, inspiration, and transformation out of what has once been and is now gone by, and movement into what lies ahead.
“Live Deeply…Read Daily”
https://www.pauldeblassieiii.com/blog/soul-reading-and-the-visionary-world/
