The sacred soul
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'... there is in all things... a hidden wholeness.'
Thomas Merton
Like many of us who have a Christian faith, I was introduced to a particular strand of conservative Christian teaching that I wrestled with for many years. I was taught that human nature is inherently sinful, that all of us are born into ‘a state of sin’. I vividly remember struggling with a deep sense of shame week after week on Sundays as the words we recited together spoke of our ‘manifold sins and wickedness’ and of our unworthiness ‘to gather up the crumbs’ under God’s table. What I knew so well as a therapist is that being bombarded with such negative messages over and over again is highly unlikely to help us to engage in the process of becoming more fully human. Indeed such teachings are far more likely to cause us to shy away from the inner journey altogether for they distort the way we see ourselves and effectively trap us in a destructive inner battle which is deeply wounding of our humanity. When we are given to believe that we are by nature corrupt and sinful, we lose any sense of our own value and worth. We become unhealthily obsessed with our sinfulness. We live in fear of judgement and struggle to hold onto the hope of being able to redeem ourselves.
What I have come to know through my experience as a person-centred therapist is that being bombarded with such negative messages over and over again is highly unlikely to help us to engage in the process of becoming more fully human. Indeed such teachings are far more likely to cause us to shy away from the inner journey altogether. For they distort the way we see ourselves and effectively trap us in a destructive inner battle which is deeply wounding of our humanity. For a time, they left me unable to see anything good in myself. I became preoccupied with what I saw as my inherent badness and with praying for forgiveness for failing God over and over again.
Had I not been introduced to humanistic philosophy in my twenties through the writings of Carl Rogers, I might have found myself struggling with the impact of these teachings for much longer than I did. For in contrast, person-centred philosophy is one that affirms our inherent worth and dignity as human beings. As a result of his many years of experience as a therapist, Rogers came to believe that the innermost core of our being is essentially positive. His was not, he said, ‘a Pollyanna view’ of human nature for he knew from experience that all of us have flaws and all of us are capable of behaving in irrational and destructive ways. But his conviction that human nature is positive at its core, never wavered.
And since encountering his teachings, neither has mine. As all of us are, I too am well aware of how destructive human behaviour can sometimes be. Like Rogers, however, I have learned to hold this awareness in tension with what I have learnt about the essence of our humanity from my deepest encounters with others. Over the years, these encounters have led me to believe that our capacity for destructive behaviour flows not from the soul, but from the depths of our human brokenness and woundedness. It is when we are wounded and hurting, when we are lost and broken that we sometimes lash out at ourselves and others. And the wounding we have suffered also disconnects us from that which is deepest within us. It distorts our perception of ourselves, others and the world in which we live and, in an effort to survive, causes us to behave in ways that inflict more damage, both on ourselves and others. This is the tragedy of human existence.
And yet at the same time, we are capable at our best of doing so much that is good. Any philosophy of human nature must also grapple with its positive side. It has to be able to account not only for human nature at its darkest, but also for the countless acts of honour, integrity, altruism, generosity, self–sacrifice, compassion and loving tenderness of which we are capable. And it has to account for the longing to do what is good, to be ‘a better person’ that most, if not all of us, will have experienced at some point in our lives.
It was not until I discovered the Celtic spiritual tradition within Christianity, however, that I came to think of the soul as sacred. When we call something sacred, we are holding it in the highest esteem. We are honouring it as something that is worthy of being approached with reverence and awe. Celtic wisdom teaches us that each one of us is a unique expression of the More, the sacred essence of everything that has being. As writer Philip Newell puts it, each one of us is 'an utterance of the divine, a sacred sounding, each creature and life-form a unique and unrepeatable expression' of the More. And so the soul – the essence of who we are and the hidden wholeness within us – is also sacred. Hindus have a wonderful way of acknowledging this inner wholeness in each other. When they meet, they press their hands together at the chest and with a slight bow, they greet each other with the word 'namaste'. It means 'I bow to you.' It is a gesture of deep respect which recognises the divinity we all share and the sacredness of our inner being.
When I came to see the soul as sacred, something changed within me. This deeper knowing opened my eyes to a more balanced and compassionate way of seeing myself. Despite the woundedness in the outer layers of my personality, perhaps for the first time ever, I was able to sense something of the hidden wholeness within me. I came to understand that the human soul is not sinful, but sacred. It is not ugly but beautiful. The truth is that it is the soul that gives us dignity and worth. For each of us carries within us what Hindus call ‘a spark’ of the More. What is deepest and truest in us is both most sacred and most fully human.
Biography and notes
The strand of Christian teaching that I refer to above is known as the doctrine of original sin. It was developed in the 5th century CE by a theologian called Augustine. It is still prominent within some fundamentalist and conservative evangelical Christian traditions today.
Thomas Merton (1994) A Thomas Merton Reader. Bantam Doubleday Dell. From the poem ‘Hagia Sophia’
Philip Newell (2021) Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul. William Collins
©Copyright Kaitlyn Steele 2025
Kaitlyn Steele
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