Life gives us opportunities to sort, clarify, refine

Today Thomas Moore (@thomasmooreSoul) tweets:
"The story of Eros and Psyche suggests that deep pleasure comes only after life has been sorted out — the goal of therapy, to sort not to cure."

Watch a 48-second video of  Thomas Moore that echoes this theme: sort things out.

Moore shares his psychotherapeutic approach

For the 2012 Osler Symposium site Thomas Moore offers his approach in the section introducing faculty and storytellers.

Thomas Moore
Author, Care of the Soul and Care of the Soul in Medicine
Peterborough, NH
"As a psychotherapist I’ve been in a healing role for thirty-five years. In all that time, my practice has healed me as well as my clients. I also know that if I do any good, it is because of how I have tended my life and person. I truly believe that everyone — parents, teachers, lovers and friends — is called to be a healer."

Moore describes soulful approach to healthcare

On Thursday 12 April 2012, Thomas Moore is the keynote speaker at the Medicine and Spirituality Conference hosted by Boonshoft School of Medicine, Wright State University in Dayton Ohio. Moore describes his work in healthcare for a separate site, The Conference: Who's Who Doing What, under the headline "Care of the Soul in Medicine", updated 11 September 2011. This site promotes people actively engaged in sharing their work in medical fields. Moore writes:

"There is a clear movement in many countries today toward expanding our view of medical care. Integrative medicine, alternative therapies and the spirituality of medicine are becoming common themes in hospitals and schools. I have seen firsthand how pastoral care and counseling have grown and changed in medical settings.
[. . .]
But my work moves in a somewhat different direction. While spirituality concerns itself with meaning in life, prayer, meditation, belief and ideas about the afterlife, soul is almost identical with psyche, having to do with the deep emotions, relationships, work, home, family, memory, beauty, attachments, symbol and dream. I follow an ancient tradition, often referred to as Platonist, that considers these issues of great importance to the health and well-being of persons. In an age of “whole person” medicine, I want to speak for the deep soul. For example, while most hospitals today try to give a patient’s family consideration in such things as visiting hours and treatment discussion, they don’t go far enough, in my view, in thinking of the family as an integral part of illness and treatment. I go so far as to say that a person’s family is part of his or her identity and plays a central role in illness and healing."

In this summary of his approach Moore includes, "With the soul in mind, I think the Buddhist ideal is a good foundation: heal first with your presence. If you are present, if only momentarily with a patient or family, and not thinking about the many other things on your schedule, you will probably know what to say. 'Mindfulness' is a key word these days. It applies to being with patients. Remember that he or she is a human being with deep and tender feelings, no matter how soft or gruff the patient may appear on the surface. In fact, a strong surface usually suggests and tender subsurface."

People v. The State of Illusion in N.Y. next month

EDITOR'S UPDATE: Variety posts review by Dennis Harvey 8 April 2012.

Samuel Goldwyn Films debuts Austin Vicker's new movie People v. The State of Illusion in May in New York City according to magazine Natural Awakenings' article, "New Film Explores the Nature of Perception, Imagination and Reality" today. This movie features Thomas Moore, Debbie Ford, Joe Dispenza, Peter Senge and others as expert witnesses, some of our "leading thinkers in the fields of neuroscience, biochemistry, psychology, and quantum physics... Their expert testimony helps answer the film’s central questions: What is real, and can we really change?"

According to the article, "Reviewers for The Huffington Post and others have called the film 'A Must See' and compared the feature-length film to What The Bleep Do We Know? hailing the documentary as a powerful and compelling exploration of the science and power of perception and imagination, as well as a treatise on how habitual thoughts shape our reality." Vickers claims viewers are "given a way to transcend their illusions."

Barque coverage:
10 Feb 2012 "Samuel Goldwyn Films to release Vickers movie"
4 Oct 2011 "Our deep inner source guides us to the edges of life"
28 August 2011 "Film featuring Thomas Moore opens next week "
24 June 2011 "Moore has expert role in film about imagination"

Friendliness in relationships helps with loneliness

Today Thomas Moore (@thomasmoore Soul) tweets, "The solution to loneliness is to enjoy a friendship with all beings, demonstrated in a habit of friendliness. You reach out. You don't wait."

This approach echoes his observations shared in Care of the Soul, p.94-96:

"Many people wait for members of a community to invite them in, and until that happens they are lonely. There may be something of the child here who expects to be taken care of by the family. But a community is not a family. It is a group of people held together by feelings of belonging, and those feelings are not a birthright. "Belonging" is an active verb, something we do positively. In one of his letters Ficino makes the remark, "The one guardian of life is love, but to be loved you must love." A person oppressed by loneliness can go out into the world and simply start belonging to it, not by joining organizations, but by living through feeling of relatedness — to other people, to nature, to society, to the world as a whole. Relatedness is a signal of soul. By allowing sometimes vulnerable feelings of relatedness, soul pours into life and doesn't have to insist on itself symptomatically.

Like all activities of the soul, community has its connection to death and the underworld. ... From the point of view of the soul, the dead are as much a part of community as the living. ... Outward community flourishes when we are in touch with the inner persons who crowd our dreams and waking thoughts. To overcome loneliness, we might consider releasing these inner figures into life, like the one who wants to sing or cuss in anger or is more sensual or more critical or even more needy than "I" would like to admit. To "admit" who I am is to "admit" those people into life, so that the inner community serves as a start for a sense of belonging in life. I "remember" people I met for the first time because I am in touch with the archetypal world of my imagination, and on the basis of that self-knowledge I can love anyone I meet and be loved in return. The roots of community are immeasurably deep, and the process of belonging, dealing actively with loneliness, begins in the depth of the soul.

Love keeps the soul on the track of its fate and keeps consciousness at the edge of the abyss of the infinity that is the range of the soul. This doesn't mean that relationships between people are not important to the soul's loves. Quite the opposite: recognizing the importance of love to the soul, our ordinary human loves are ennobled beyond measure. This family, this friend, this lover, this mate is the manifestation of the motivating force of life itself and is the fountain of love that keeps the soul alive and full. There is no way toward divine love except through the discovery of human intimacy and community. One feeds the other.

Care of the soul, then, requires an openness to love's many forms. It is no accident that so many of the troubles we bring to therapy have their roots or manifestations in love. It may help us, in those times of trouble, to remember that love is not only about relationship, it is also an affair of the soul. Disappointments in love, even betrayals and losses, serve the soul at the very moment they seem in life to be tragedies. The soul is partly in time and partly in eternity. We might remember the part that resides in eternity when we feel despair over the part that is in life."