Serge Beddington-Behrens - Gateways to the Soul: Inner Work for the Outer World

For my darling Irena and Martina

Gateways to the Soul

In this wise and compassionate distillation of his life journey, Serge has given us an invaluable handbook for spiritual and psychological health and development in our complex era of unparalleled challenges and opportunities. He provides a series of gateways and key insights into essential aspects of life, such as courage, forgiveness, joy, and work, along with extensive practical reflections and exercises to do at the end of each chapter. A hugely enriching and rewarding read.

DAVID LORIMER, program director of the Scientific and Medical Network, UK, and author of Resonant Mind and Science, Consciousness and Ultimate Reality

This book is a vast compendium of ideas and exercises that can help us take the next steps in our own soul awakening in ways that also make them a contribution to the further evolution of the human species.

THOMAS YEOMANS, Ph.D., founder of the Concord Institute and co-founder of the International School for Psychotherapy, Counseling, and Group Leadership in St. Petersburg, Russia

In a time of unparalleled crises, Gateways to the Soul uncovers with laser-like precision the soulless, amoral, ruthless dynamic that drives our so-called civilization. Knowing that nothing will change in the outer world unless changes are made in our inner one, it then leads us gently but firmly into the neglected chambers of the soul, bringing clarity, insight, and the possibility of transformation to entrenched unconscious patterns of belief and behavior. This book heals, informs, and enlightens, releasing us from the corroding power of old wounds and old habits, some of which may have festered inside us for centuries. A brilliant manual that teaches us how to live life in a different way, engaging with its abundant energy, discover its secret intention for us, which is to consciously embrace the freedom to be who we are meant to be.

ANNE BARING, Ph.D., Jungian analyst and author of The Dream of the Cosmos

In this book about wisdom and compassion, Serge introduces us to practical gateways to walk through into our shared future. A spiritual classic.

DALE MATHERS, Ph.D., Jungian analyst and author of Alchemy and Psychotherapy

Serge Beddington-Behrens is a wise and inspiring soul. His new book is full of insights and provocations that will stir you and help open up your heart and mind.

WILLIAM BLOOM, Ph.D., founder and co-director of the Foundation for Holistic Spirituality and author of The Power of the New Spirituality and The Endorphin Effect

Serge is absolutely right in saying that we cannot retrieve our individual or our collective souls without also retrieving the soul of our beloved earth, with its every molecule as alive as we are. In the harm we have done to our world and in this great storm of crises we have currently unleashed upon ourselves, we can only successfully navigate our way forward and start melting our blockages by realizing our unity with all life.

ELISABET SAHTOURIS, Ph.D., evolutionary biologist, futurist, professor in residence at Chaminade University, Honolulu, Hawaii, and author of EarthDance

An excellent guide for breaking out of the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and how the world is that will help us become more alive and awake to the untapped potential we all have to create a better world.

PETER RUSSELL, futurist, eco-philosopher, author of The Awakening Earth, Finding Your Own Happiness, and The Global Brain, and co-author of The Consciousness Revolution

If you savor this book by Serge Beddington-Behrens, your life will be enriched. You will hear and feel one of the kindest and most beautiful voices of personal and spiritual wisdom from a man who has dedicated his life to serving and uplifting his fellow human beings and this planet that we all share.

STUART SOVATSKY, Ph.D., author of Advanced Spiritual Intimacy and former president of the Association of Transpersonal Psychology

Acknowledgements

I AM VERY GRATEFUL to the thinking of Scilla Elworthy and Satish Kumar; I have learned much from their views of the world, from which I have also had their permission to quote. I am also grateful to Charles Eisenstein and Naomi Klein, whom I have also quoted from quite extensively, and whose ideas have also inspired me.

I am also grateful to my friend Anne Baring, whose great book The Dream of the Cosmos: a Quest for the Soul touched me very deeply, and for the many people who have worked with me over the years and from whom I have learned so much about what it means to be human.

I also want to thank my wonderful editor, Jacqui Lewis, who at all times has handled me with so much patience, graciousness and wisdom. And I would like to acknowledge my darling wife for tolerating long absences of my disappearing into my office; and my friend Ian Smith for reading an early draft of this book and allowing me to realize that what I say may well be seen as preachy to those who are not interested in changing themselves and the world.

But I do not apologize. We all are as we are and the archetype that I have always most resonated with is that of the priest. But not of the churchy variety. I prefer to see wildernesses and oceans as my temples.

What is needed is a correction of our civilization and a new vision for inhabiting our planet.

If there is the vision it can be realized.

DIETER DUHM

A change of meaning is necessary to change this world politically, economically and socially. But that change must begin with the individual...

DAVID BOHM

Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in our being as humans, and the catastrophe towards which our world is headed... will be unavoidable.

VCLAV HAVEL

Love is necessary for the transformation of the world. It is the only force that can bring peace between the nations.

PETER DEUNOV

Salvaging our society requires nothing less than a wholesale transformation of dominant cultural patterns, a dramatic shift in the very design of human societies.

ERIK ASSADOURIAN

Serge Forward

A Foreword by Steve Taylor, Ph.D.

SOME PEOPLE BELIEVE that, in order to evolve as human beings, we have to disconnect ourselves from the worlds problems, and even forget about the world altogether. You can go to a monastery, a hermitage or a desert retreat, far away from worldly concerns and ambitions. Or you can just stay in your room meditating, and pretend that the world out there is an illusion. Then you can give yourself wholeheartedly to your spiritual development in peace, without being disturbed by the complexities of politics, social problems and family life.

In this book, my friend Serge takes exactly the opposite approach. We are not separate from our fellow human beings or from the world around us, and to believe that we are separate is a sure way to feel unhappy. We must not disconnect from the world, for the simple reason that we are an integral part of it. Since we have caused many of our problems, we are also called to try to heal them. It is our responsibility to respond with compassion and altruism to the suffering of others, to help the human race recover its lost soul. As Serge suggests, it is impossible to separate the current state of the world in social, economic and political terms from the inner state of human beings. If the world is insane, it is because we are insane. This is because we have become alienated from our own souls, the souls of others and the soul of the world itself.