What is a Good Life? #58
Exploring Soul with Dan Lawrence & Johann Botha
On the 58th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I am delighted to introduce our guests, Dan Lawrence and Johann Botha. Dan is a Jungian Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and a Social Dreaming Consultant, a former derivatives trader, and a lifelong practitioner of Zen and contemplative traditions.
Johann is managing director of GSA Mindworks, a company cultivating a personal, participatory and measured approach to human integrity. A former, filmmaker, storyteller with an enlivening interest in human character.
I asked both of them to join me because all three of us have been exploring a sense of soul more closely recently, and I wanted to share those musings with you all to see if these types of conversations resonate with or add to your own explorations in life.
In this conversation, we explore what soul means to us, where we get glimpses or senses of soul in our lives, and how soul can move or call us to action. We talk about the significance of the soul regarding how we engage and participate in life, our relationships with others, and our work, as well as the places and spaces around us.
We also explore how experiences of dread can lead to both a feeling of soullessness and a lack of presence, and how we can cultivate space and awareness for more connection with soul.
If you feel like your existence or life is lacking soul, whether that is in your work, relationships, or with a sense of mystery with the world we inhabit, this episode will give you plenty to contemplate, as well as images and metaphors for re-invoking more soul in your life.
The weekly clip from the podcast (6 mins), my weekly reflection (3 mins), the full podcast (67 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
📣 My weekly conversation group takes place every Wednesday at 7pm (CET) on Zoom. It incorporates silence and authentic communication - sharing thoughts and experiences from what is emerging in the moment. It is completely free for now as it’s for a course I’m designing and I’m experimenting with different themes. Message me here to find out more or sign up.
2. My weekly reflection
There's something I find extremely enlivening about discussing themes, words, or topics that are generally better understood, appreciated, or attuned to in silence or merely by observing. It's a combination of my inability to explicitly define what I am talking about while simultaneously reaching for it.
Particularly with words used in everyday parlance that we rarely check with ourselves to understand their actual meaning to us, take "soul," for example. We often say something or someone has soul, or it's good for the soul, or that a place, institution, or person feels soulless, etc.
I am asking these questions now as much to myself as anyone else: What does the word mean to you? Are you born with it? Is it personal? Is it communal? Is it owned? Is it shared? Do you build it over time? Is it always there and revealed over time? Can we hide from it? Does it call us to action? Is it eternal?
I feel a couple of years ago I would have had far more certain answers to these questions, which is kind of ironic given that this year I've been reading books on soul, engaging in and organising conversations around it with groups, individuals, authors on the topic, and multiple psychotherapists who work with their clients around soul.
In whatever way I seek to define it for myself, I do get a strong sense that the soul is something we are greatly missing in our lives, both in our personal pursuits and in our collective dealings with one another. As I suggest in the clip above, I feel the soul is the contact point of life with aliveness, in our interactions and relationships with anything and anyone.
I feel the soul is that which breathes more life into existence, be it a life, a job, a relationship, a journey, a mission, a building, a location, music, food, an old jumper maybe. While there is an elusiveness to the word for me and its meaning that I cannot quite pin down, which in itself adds to its aliveness.
Whether using the word soul, love, or engaging with our emotions in our daily vocabulary, there is a lot to be said for using words or metaphors that point to things rather than trap them and, in some cases, deaden the meaning or aliveness with our sense of certainty around the use of a label.
In one of my weekly group conversations, a participant noted that in referring to other people as souls, they felt far more open to even politicians they strongly disagreed with or disliked. It made me wonder about our use of language in deadening relationships, groups, and individuals with our triggering, reductive, and divisive language. For example, if you hold one opinion on a specific matter, I can assume what your opinions are on several other matters.
It also gives me a sense that, although we are trying to avoid our own ignorance of not knowing so much in this universe (it consists of 95% dark energy and matter, about which we haven't got the foggiest idea) and our fear of uncertainty, by acknowledging only what can be measured and sticking to our narrow lanes of knowledge or expertise, it is through exploring in the fields of the unknown that we can connect more naturally or with less resistance. Perhaps because the unknown is more our reality (?).
I see it on a weekly basis at my conversation groups when people are trying to define things that are not so easily definable, and they are exploring in the moment and are thinking out loud in front of the group. Something about that experience makes it somewhat irrelevant to the group dynamic, atmosphere, or interpersonal dynamics whenever the next person’s exploration completely contradicts what has just been shared by the last person. The spirit of inquiry becomes more important than the words.
Which makes me think we could really benefit from exploring more in life, and it need be not at specific retreats, reading books, on far away trips, or on courses, etc., the opportunity is there with each dialogue we encounter.
If you’d like to work with me individually as your coach, to awaken your own self-inquiry, message me here to a arrange a free 30-minute 1-on-1 consultation
3. Full Episode - Exploring Soul with Dan Lawrence & Johann Botha - What is a Good Life? #58
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4. This week’s Questions
What does the word soul mean to you?
What feels soulful and soulless in your life?
About Me
I am a Coach based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I left behind a 15-year career in Capital Markets after I became extremely curious around answering some of the bigger questions in life. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed around 200 people, to provide people with the space to reflect on their own lives and to create content that would spark people’s own inquiry into this question. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience, beyond the facades we typically project.
If you would like to work with me, or you simply want to get in touch, here’s my email and LinkedIn.