Seane Corn - Revolution of the Soul: Awaken to Love Through Raw Truth, Radical Healing, and Conscious Action

To my sainted mother, Alice, my most beloved angel.

Thank you Ma for guiding my soul the way you have.

You encouraged me to trust my path, and I soared because I always knew you would catch my fall, celebrate the lessons learned, help me laugh at the weirdness of it all, and love me fiercely no matter what.

I honor you for the vibrant, steady, funny, badass, wild, and wonderful woman you are and for the deep amazing soul connection we share. I love you. This book is for you.

CONTENTS

Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!

The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!

Everything is holy! everybodys holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everymans an angel!

The bums as holy as the seraphim! the madman is holy as you my soul are holy!

The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!

Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cassady holy the unknown buggered and suffering beggars holy the hideous human angels!

Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks of the grandfathers of Kansas!

Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana hipsters peace peyote pipes & drums!

Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!

Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the middleclass! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebellion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!

Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria & Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow Holy Istanbul!

Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!

Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucinations holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the abyss!

Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! bodies! suffering! magnanimity!

Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!

ALLEN GINSBERG

Footnote to Howl

INTRODUCTION

HOLY IS RIGHT! What an intense and wild time to be alive. There is much conflict and division in our world, but as difficult as these times are, they are also exciting, invigorating, and abundant with possibility. People are speaking out and rising up. Its inspiring, its hopeful and when so many lives are at stake utterly necessary. As musician and poet Patti Smith says, The people have the power to unite, organize, and create real social change. Change that benefits everyone. Change that leads to liberation, to Oneness, to God. And that power is love. That is the revolution of the soul. But how can we harness that power? How do we awaken to love? How do we honor, as Allen Ginsberg said, all moments, beings, and experiences as holy? It begins with our own spiritual evolution. It begins by embracing the holiness in our own ever-evolving consciousness.

I wrote Revolution of the Soul in part to inspire, and provide the tools for, anyone who desires to participate in creating a better world. My hope is that these pages will encourage you to look beyond your limited perceptions, and the stories the ego so carefully curates, so you can get to the truth of your soul. This book is intensely personal and, hopefully, universally applicable. Each chapter has a story from my own healing journey and spiritual path, accompanied by a vast array of teachings both practical and spiritual that Ive been exposed to over the years, including traditional yoga philosophy, modern psychology, metaphysics, and social justice methodology. I use these teachings to unpack the deeper complexities of each story and how it can be applied to your own experience. As James Baldwin says, In order to have a conversation with someone you have to reveal yourself.

This book demanded vulnerability and raw honesty in a way I hadnt expected and frankly, I wasnt so sure I wanted to comply, at least not publicly. But I quickly realized that I couldnt ask you to do the brave, messy inner work of transformative change and opt out myself. I couldnt ask for a revolution, then not show up! Therefore, as you will soon see, I chose to pull the veils back and expose the tender, hidden parts of my journey. I tried to model what it means to do the work of inside-out change without apology, without thinking that it should have been different than it was. The experience of unpacking certain aspects of my journey was humbling, to say the least, but also incredibly liberating. I hope the process can be that for you as well. I believe strongly that to heal the planet, we must be willing to heal the parts of ourselves that contribute to its suffering. Personal accountability is hard, but necessary. Its easy to tell the world to change its ways and values; its another thing to have to change our own.

Therefore, to do the work, we must unwrap all of our stories the highlights and the lowlights and the what-the-fucks and take a long, loving look at each one of them. Why? So we can unearth the angels buried within the narratives and the teachers weve long forgotten or refused to acknowledge and repair any separation weve inadvertently caused within ourselves and toward others. Separation that may be blocking us from our deepest Self. To participate in the change we want to see in the world, we must investigate, learn from, and release everything that gets in our way. In other words, we must set a place at our hearts table for all that we are our joys, sorrows, unprocessed emotions, and individual and ancestral traumas so we can see, acknowledge, and love others for who they are. So that we can embrace the holiness within all. So that we may serve.

I hope that by sharing my stories with you, youll be inspired to look at your own, unfiltered. Youll notice that I dont sugarcoat anything. My stories are raw, revealing, intimate, and very human at times. Yours may be, too; theyll definitely be unique. But I can almost guarantee if you commit to diving deeply into those narratives and no editing allowed! youll uncover the key to breaking shame and discovering the origins of your own limiting beliefs and biases, and better understand myriad pathways that lead to unification... and to love.

That is our deepest work. We must commit to love ourselves, each other, the planet, the light, and the shadow each moment and every experience, and know, that in love, we are unified; we are whole. This is what leads to peace.

of this book is about looking within, cultivating various traditional and contemporary tools for personal transformation especially yoga and taking responsibility for our own healing, awareness, and growth. This pathway, and the soulful exploration that guides it, leads to our spiritual maturation. The evolution of our soul. Personal development is essential, but its only one part of the journey toward wholeness. Action must follow.

expands our awareness beyond individual growth. It asks us to explore how, through radical accountability and compassionate, informed action, we can use what weve learned about ourselves to change this world and to understand the interdependency that demands we do so. It means being a co-conspirator on the path committed to the freedom and rights of all beings and developing the skills to approach social change and justice through the framework of self-responsibility, understanding, and love for one reason only: because our collective liberation depends on it.