There is an indestructible nature that lives beneath the stories we've been given about who we are and how we get to be in the world.

In the old stories, the bones represent this enduring nature of the soul. The part of us that remains intact, even when the circumstances of our lives have made it difficult to remember, inhabit, or express our nature in its full fidelity.

Sometimes the awakening begins with a yearning. A deep desire that will not leave us alone. A dream that continues to call to us, even when the life we've constructed has little room for it.

In our opening contemplation, we begin to listen for these stirrings of the wild nature. We explore the soul bones as an image of our indestructible nature, and the longings that begin to awaken us from the compulsory stories of our lives.

What is stirring beneath the surface of the life you've been living? What part of your nature is longing to be remembered?

Beneath the stories we've inherited about who we are, who we get to be, and how we get to move through the world, there is an original nature of the soul.

A particular soul shape. A natural blueprint. An innate orientation toward life, creation, and expression that belongs to us before the world begins telling us who we ought to become.

In this contemplation, we begin to listen for the soul story beneath the inner myths that have shaped our identities and ways of being. We explore the natural inclinations of the soul, the dreams and desires that persist throughout our lives, and the stories that have kept us from following them.

What is your soul naturally drawn to create for itself? What kind of life would allow your nature to find its fullest expression? What inherited stories are standing between you and the deeper truth of who you are?

We turn toward the soul's original nature and begin to recognize the life that is longing to emerge from it.

There comes a moment in the soul-led life when a longing for something more becomes impossible to ignore.

In the myth of Psyche and Eros, this awakening begins with an act of sacred transgression. Psyche dares to look upon the face of her beloved, setting into motion an initiatory passage that will ask her to encounter the depths of her own nature.

Mythos-Eros is awakened through this encounter with truth and desire. It is the force that compels us to follow what we know, somewhere deep within ourselves, belongs to the nature of our soul, even when doing so requires us to transgress the stories we've been given.

In this contemplation, we explore the awakening of Mythos-Eros as an inciting incident in the life of the soul. The moment when desire becomes a summons, when the familiar story begins to break apart, and when the longing to become who we are draws us beyond the boundaries of the compulsory life.

What happens when we dare to look upon the truth of our own desire? What begins to awaken when we can no longer turn away from the life that is calling us?

Once the familiar story has been disturbed, we may find ourselves standing at the threshold of a life we do not yet know how to inhabit.

The old ways of understanding ourselves begin to loosen. The identities, roles, and stories that once organized our lives may no longer be sufficient, and what waits beyond them has not yet revealed its shape.

In this contemplation, we explore the realm of mystery as an essential passage in the initiatory life of the soul. We enter into relationship with the unknown, with the images and symbols that arise from the depths of the psyche, and with the strange intelligence that accompanies us when we begin to follow the soul beyond the familiar.

What does it mean to remain in relationship with a mystery we cannot yet resolve? How do we listen for the soul's direction when the old maps no longer tell us where to go?

We practice inhabiting the threshold, allowing the deeper story of our lives to reveal itself in its own time.

In the old stories, the path toward the soul often leads us into the wilderness.

In the tale of White Bear King Valemon, the heroine must venture beyond the world she has known, entering into a long and difficult passage through which her familiar ways of being are stripped away. In the wilderness, she becomes creaturely, encountering the wild and instinctual dimensions of her nature.

The descent is an initiatory encounter with the depths of the psyche. A passage through which we are asked to relinquish the stories, identities, and ways of belonging that have kept us estranged from our own nature.

In this contemplation, we explore the descent to soul through myth, the wisdom of the wild nature, and the creaturely intelligence that lives beneath our cultivated identities.

What must be relinquished for the soul to find its fuller expression? What medicine lives in the parts of our nature we have been taught to abandon? What does it mean to survive the descent and retrieve something essential of ourselves?

We turn toward the depths, where the indestructible nature of the soul waits to be remembered.

The soul's return is an invitation to live in greater fidelity to the soul nature.

Each of us carries a particular soul shape, a particular medicine, a way of seeing, creating, and participating in the living world that belongs to the larger ecology of life.

The work of soul remembrance eventually asks something of us. How will we inhabit the life that is ours to live? How will we give expression to the desires, gifts, and visions that have been calling to us? How will the nature of our soul find its place within the greater story of the world?

In our final contemplation, we explore the mythocultural role as an expression of the soul's particular nature in relationship with the living Earth, our communities, and the stories of our shared futures.

What does it mean to become who we are and allow that becoming to shape the way we live, create, and relate? What is the deep song that only your soul can sing?

We return from the depths carrying the medicine of our own nature, and the invitation to sing that song through the life we live.