Zayin Neumann, M.A.

Bill Plotkin's consideration of Eco-Soulcentric Human Development provides us with many keys to our journey.  One that I find most fascinating is that when our ancestors initiated children, they came back adults.  There is a subtle point here, namely that adolescent or teenage years are something new on our horizon that we have not quite figured out how to manage.  Adolescents, he tells us, holds the key to our next leap in maturation...  but we haven't made it yet. 

As we look around it becomes rather obvious that we live in a world of teenagers that never grew up.  If we are going to find out way through the variety of challenges that face us as a species, and as a planet, we will need to learn how to effectively initiate children into adolescents and adolescents into adults.

I am currently working with people at various stages of Plotkin's eight stages of maturation, apprenticing myself to various persons and traditions that I know can help me with this work.

Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche
by Bill Plotkin, Thomas Berry

Hillman's work can be uniquely challenging, as it explores something of a process-based (Whitehead) aperspectival (Gebser) psychology of the Soul.  The challenge comes as he forces us to step outside of our thing-based way of experiencing the world, opening the door for real magic and myth to come s

A Blue Fire
by James Hillman