Lesson 10

SOUL-MAKING
 What is Soul-Making?
by Michael Bogar

“If there is a soul…It is created here, throughout a whole life.

And living is nothing but that long and painful bringing forth
- Albert Camus –
About the Author
Michael D. Bogar is authentic. He has carried two master’s degrees and framed house
for a living. He has experienced failure and success; has walked and sometimes crawled
through the valleys of life to the other side.
His approach is from a full-life experience and he can relate to a wide range of
human beings. He has a way of communicating to those at the top of their game and
those ready to quit. Life is educational, each morning presents an opportunity to begin
anew. We are on the planet to make our souls by fully participating in all arenas of life-
body, mind, and spirit.
Soul Is Beyond Definition
Soul-making cannot be defined. The Greek philosopher
Heraclitus said. “You could not discover the limits of soul, even
if you traveled by every path in order to do so; such is the
depth of its meaning”.
According an English poet John Keats, he explained that soul-
making is a process where the basic seed of divine intelligence in
all human goes through necessary experiences, especially
suffering, that transform the intelligence into a unique- Soul.
Soul-Making is a Metaphor
The term soul-making is a metaphor. The word “metaphor” is
composed of two Greek words – Meta above and Phero- to carry. So,
metaphor is an image or phrase that carries the reader above the
literal sensory realm into the realm of invisible imagination.
Like myth, metaphor enlists the truth of imagination over the
truth of literalism.
‘Deep”, Mario Sanchez Nevado
(2012)
 Soul-making is a metaphorical term. Therefore, the term will never
be
adequate for those logical positivism or rationalistic materialists, like
Richard Dawkins of “The God Delusion, who exclude all non-material
or “non-sensical” words.
One has to wonder what they write in their Valentine’s Day card;
perhaps
“Dear Valentine. I am experiencing unusual levels of oxytocin and
serotonin in my neuro-chemical synaptic connections when I am
around you.”
Soul Making Is Poetry Making
The word ‘making’ in “soul-making” comes out of the Greek
word ‘poieo’ which means ‘to be the author or maker of something’ .
Our English words poet, poem and poetry come from this world. The
reason for that term, for example rather than soul-builder or soul-
power, is that the emphasis is on creative, intelligent authorship.
The making is not done by impersonal processes, but by
Intelligent Forces. So, then, soul-making is really psycho-poeisis or
soul-poetry.
The poetic aspect is critical to understanding soul-making. The
Universe is not a lifeless debris field resulting from the Big Bang but a
living organism.
The Universe contains Intelligence beyond our current scopes and
research methods. Some Quantum physicists are hypothesizing in
that direction, but we have yet to ‘prove’ it with instruments.
• The universe is animated, human exist in this psyche.
Humans beings don’t contain souls any more than a fish.
• We swim in the Sea of Psyche comprised of many brilliant
aspects – ranging from numbers and geometrical shapes, to
qualities like –
Life and Death, Chaos and Order
• These are archetypes or the original qualities which are
universally recognized by all human beings
The Poetry of Psyche
One way to understand this is to imagine the Universe as
an immense dictionary filled with an infinite number of Living
Words (archetypes). Your individual life is like a page upon
which the Universe composes a poem.
Your soul is a poem in the process of being composed or
authored These Universal Words or are Archetypal energies
are Creators, sort of like radio signals entering our minds via
the receiver we call brain. As they are experienced, we turn
them into spoken sounds and written words. Nouns and verbs
do not come into existence by our speaking or writing them.
We speak them and write them because they have always existed.
Christianity got it right when it said, “The Word became flesh…”

This is John Keats was talking about when he called this world a school for
soul making, or psycho-poetic composing. All emotions, human
institutions, feelings, ideas, pains and pleasures are the writing
instruments that compose our souls.
Co-Crating: You Are the Poet and the Poem
We are co-creators in the soul-making process. We choose the words
and the Words choose us. If you have seen magnetic poetry on refrigerator
doors, you have a good illustration of soul-making.
The refrigerator is like the Universe, the magnetic Words are the
archetypal or original energy. When you make a refrigerator poem certain
words jump out form phrases and then you make a poem.
 It may be silly or sublime, but it is an interaction between you and the
words. If you are observant, you will see that the Words chose you. Our
human desire for poetry comes from the Higher Realms, not vice versa; we
write and read poetry because we are poetry.
The eternal are infinite, interactive symbiotic energies. Our human
word and artistic symbols carry them from the heavenly realms into the
arena of soul-making. Anyone who has done any kind of art knows the
fascinating interaction that goes on as you dance with your creative
medium, whether it be clay, paints, ink, paper, musical notes, cloth, wood,
or drafting tools.
The Greeks called the mysterious process of inspiration (in-spiriting)
the “works of Muses” Have you ever wondered why the final product took
the form it did? There were Forces choosing you as you choose them.
The Analogy of Word Particles
Theory that the mind and symbols with which the artist works
• Emits something like particular energy that unites with his or her soul process
•Each soul formation is as unique as a snowflakes or fingerprints
• These universal patterns of uniqueness are being explored in the 0natural world in the
relatively new field of fractal geometry.
• These mental emissions project toward and attract the necessary objects, persons,
parents, education and experiences to complete our unique soul-poems.
• Like tiny magnetic fields, soul draws or repels according to our needs and necessities.
• Our partners, education, jobs, abuses, failures and whole host of “circumstantial”
coincidences are part of the poem.
• Philosophers and holy teachers have named this process variously referring to the Fates,
Destiny, Providence, Demons, Guardians Angels.
• The Stars and a host of other terms referring to a life guided by more than random chance.
• What these various terms have in common and remember that these notions are found in
every culture.
Night Poems: Soul-Making in Our Dreams
The Universe is an ocean of Living Intelligence, archetypal nouns
and verbs like Life and Death, Good and Evil, Beauty and Ugliness, War
and Peace, Love and Hate, Masculine and Feminine. There are just a
few of the words, on the door of the cosmic refrigerator door. It seems
that soul is made most substantially when we stop trying to reconcile
these opposites and experience their union.
Soul-making is not an empirical science: interestingly, many scientists
working at the level of quantum reality are wondering whether there is
such as thing as empirical, objective science, I don’t know enough about
what they are calling the ‘uncertainty Principles”, except to repeat what
I have read – that at the subatomic levels, the elements seem to be
influenced by the observer.
 Soul-making is beyond definition. I repeat what the Greek
philosopher Heraclitus said” You could not discover the limits of
soul, even if you traveled by every path in order to do so; such is the
depth of its meaning”.
Some form of mysterious intelligence encompasses the
seemingly random chaos and resultant order, an order that is beyond
our assumed understanding of ‘order’.
Each of us is a unique poem, gradually being weaved together
into a larger poetic whole/soul. Every incident and event are a part of
that epic poem.
While there is may be tragedies and betrayals, trouble and
failures, successes and victories – there are no useless words in your
poem and most of it goes on at levels we cannot see or understand.
Activity: Black-out Poetry
Blackout poetry is when a page of text, usually an article from a
newspaper, is completely blackened out (colored over with a
permanent marker so that it is no longer visible) except for a select
few words. When only these words are visible, a brand-new story is
created from the existing text (“5 Tips for Creating Blackout Poetry,”
2013). The goal of this activity is to encourage students to make
their own blackout poetry and share is with others.
Materials Needed
An old newspaper, permanent marker, a workspace and your
imagination
Method
1. Start the process by finding a word that pops off the page to you.
Use the pictures below to guide you in this activity.

2. Start looking for other words, to go along with it to form not just
a sentence, but a thought or an idea. Try to evoke an emotion with
your blackout poem.
3. Once you’ve found the words, grab your marker to outline the
words.
4. Create a fine border around your chosen words so you don’t
accidentally draw inside the border and potentially cover up the
words.
5. Start blacking out the rest of the page.
6. Snap a picture of it with your cell phone and share your
completed blackout poem to the class.
Quiz: Bucket List: 15 Best Things to Do Before You Graduate in College (Provide an explanation for each
number in 2-4 sentences only).

1. ______________________________________________________________________________________
2. ______________________________________________________________________________________
3. ______________________________________________________________________________________
4. ______________________________________________________________________________________
5. ______________________________________________________________________________________
6. ______________________________________________________________________________________
7. _____________________________________________________________________________________
8. ______________________________________________________________________________________
9. ______________________________________________________________________________________
10. ______________________________________________________________________________________
11. ______________________________________________________________________________________
12. ______________________________________________________________________________________
13. ______________________________________________________________________________________
14. ______________________________________________________________________________________
15. ______________________________________________________________________________________
Activity: Family Sculpture
Artwork # 4
Family sculpturing is the visual representation an
envisioned by one individual person pf their present family
situation as they experience it.
Three-dimensional representation of the family as the person arranges and places
members in relation to their own unique position within the family system. The
arrangement and placement of each family member will reveal emotional themes, alliances,
conflicts, distancing, and alienation as well as other valuable assessment information
(Michael R. Perkins, “An Introduction to Family Scupting”.1999)
Materials Needed
Modeling clay or plasticine (a non-hardening clay that comes in several colors).
Method
1. Make a clay representation of each of our family member – mother, father, siblings and
any other close or influential family members or relatives. The goal is not to make a realistic
image
of each family member, but rather an abstraction that reflects the individual’s personality
and role of each member of our family.
2. When all family sculptures are complete, arrange them in relations to each other.
3. Pick an event or an occasion that happened to your family members or relatives.
4. Snap a picture of your finished artwork using your cell phone and paste it in a
typewriting paper for submission.
5. Share your insight about the activity in an essay form to be written in a clean sheet of
paper for submission.
•
Thank you very much for listening and
participating…

MA. VICTORIA A. CABIGAN, Ed.D.