Medicine for The Soul

Teaching Plato in World Philosophies at CSU (PHIL 170) and reflecting on the Enchantment, Meaning, and Purpose of life: what Plato calls "the Soul".

According to Plato, The Form of the Good is the true source of all existence, and the Soul is the true source is "our" existence. And now I put 'our' in quotation marks because it is not at all certain that our existence actually belongs to us. Perhaps we're the property of existence, and not the other way around. In either case it benefits us to ask:

What exactly is the Soul? And if the Soul is the well-spring of our very being and life, how can we maximize its force and relevance? In other words, what does it mean to "care for the Soul"?

This is an area of inquiry that is very important, for the health of our Soul dictates the health of our existence, just as the choices we make and the habits and friendships that we form dictate who we are.

There seems to be a lot to say about how to properly care for the Soul, to listen to the Soul's urgings and prompts as they make their way into conscious awareness. Thomas Moore has done much interesting work in Care of The Soul (Harper, 1994). From the standpoint of a psychologist, Moore shows how what we see to be troubling symptoms--those of depression, anxiety, stress--are really often quite healthy indicators that we need to be paying attention to and nourishing our Soul's expression rather than some other apparently important but ultimately insignificant trivialities of "our" lives.

Moreover to the point here: The Soul comes through in many ways. Lets focus on music. The caliber of the musician dictates how proficient, or GOOD, they are making the Soul audible for an audience. And this, like all else in life, requires practice. Good Harpists come about from good practice, as Aristotle says.

My preliminary prayer to this thought is thus:

May all beings become proficient in the expression of their Soul's yearnings. May all musical Souls make music. May all Artistic Souls make Art. And may all Souls find healthy and full expression in their embodiments. Let it be so. Rock and Roll. www.woodstackrecords.com.