Code of the Soul

Code of the Soul

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© October 2005Note


In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the
essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted.

Carl G. Jung

In his book The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, James Hillman encourages us to grow down into earth, as an acorn does when it becomes a mighty oak tree. So many fail either to “grow down” or to “grow up,” and instead look for others upon which to project their sense of failure or incompleteness in life: Hillman writes:

The more my life is accounted for by what already occurred in my
chromosomes, by what my parents did or didn’t do, and by my early
years now long past, the more my biography is the story of a victim.

He argues that character and calling are the result of the particularity you feel to be you, and reproves those who blame childhood difficulties for their problems as adults. Hillman continues, The victim identity is the flip side of the coin whose head brightly displays the identity of the heroic self-made man or woman, carving out their destiny with unflagging will.

The acorn is metaphor for the lot your soul chose before you ever took a breadth. Hillman believes each of us is born with two potential outcomes: destructive or constructive. What we are to become is coded in this acorn.

We need to find the courage to accept and live consistent with our own unique talents and limitations. Whether we are aware of it or not, we all choose our own destinies. We say yea or nay to our most essential selves.

Regarding our parents, they are not equipped to perceive clearly our specialness. We must discover this on our own. This means we must engage mentors who recognize our genius and help persuade us to look in the mirror of our lives to see a visible image of our inner truth. Our senses may be attuned to this code of the soul, this roadmap or blueprint for our own personal growth, but our culture distracts us by encouraging us to listen to foreign calls rather the music of our own hearts.

Each person enters the world called. The idea comes from Plato, his Myth of Er at the end of his most well known work, The Republic. To put this abstract almost mythical notion into firmer language, consider my personal confession. It is offered as a stimulus to introduce you to your own soul’s code.

Envisioning the Soul
As a lad, I was taller, bigger, stronger and faster than most my own age. Coaches found me and athletics followed. I didn’t seek athletics. Athletics sought me.

In St. Patrick’s grammar school, I won the spelling bee for the school, but the good Sisters of St. Francis, who saw me as primarily a “jock,” thought it was a fluke even though I was a good student. John Knoerschild, however, was a “scholar” and a child prodigy having played concert piano in symphonies although only 13. They prevailed upon me to accede to him representing St. Patrick’s in the citywide contest, which he lost in the first round. Clearly, John was more gifted than I but he wasn’t conditioned to competitive situations as I was in sport.

Recruited by coaches to the public high school in the area, I was an unknown entity other than “one of those Catholic boys” brought in to play sports. From my perspective, it was cultural shock from the get go. All my education to that point was in the Catholic parochial school system under the watchful eye and nurturing patience of the good nuns. Now, I was in a public high school, a culture totally different from my own experience. I had no portfolio, no connection to the public school system where junior high and high school teachers were well aware of the “who’s who” list of budding scholars. They saw this six-one, 170 pound 14-year-old blond boy with the piercing blue eyes, and nothing in his countenance, manner or demeanor suggested “a student.” On the contrary, a natural enmity seemed to develop between freshman teachers and me, as I was slow to acclimate to their authority. One incident stands out which has followed me through life.

My freshman English teacher was attempting to diagram a complex sentence on the board, and she got lost and confused in the subtext of the diagram. I went to the blackboard, picked up a piece of chalk and diagramed the sentence correctly, smiled, and returned to my seat. My teacher wrote something on a pink slip, walked to my desk, handed it to me, and told me to give it to the principle. That pink slip kept me out of National Honor Society, although I was eligible for it from my sophomore year on, and would graduate in the top ten percent of my class. It was considered insubordination, while my restless spirit saw it as incompetence. Years later, when I was researching a book of my youth,1 I learned that my teacher was a guidance counselor and not trained to teach English. The good Sisters of St. Francis drilled us on English relentlessly, perhaps contributing to my frustration. Obviously, it wasn’t the appropriate behavior, but looking back on a long lifetime I see that I’ve never chosen discretion over directness.

Fortunately, in subsequent years, a history teacher in my sophomore year, a math teacher in my junior year, and a chemistry teacher in my senior year singled me out to discover who and what I was. We don’t know who we are until someone tells us. The history teacher told me I had “conceptual skills.” She saw this when I could translate the seed of class discussion into its crystallized essence. She encouraged me to compete in an oratorical contest by writing an essay. The speech instructor upon reading it told me I had a talent for provocative expression and clearly an ability to articulate my point of view. I proved less skilled, however, at oratory.

The math teacher recognized that I had a knack for quantitative thinking, but was emotionally inconsistent. He proved his point by giving the class the same national test at the end of the year as in the beginning. I had performed poorly in the first exam and was in the 90th percentile in the second; never realizing it was the same test. When I discovered this fact from classmates, I went to him and asked if it were true. He admitted it was. “You are an emotional guy, but I couldn’t believe the results of your first test. I wanted to confirm my suspicions.” He went on to say I must be aware of this aspect of my personality, as “it is what makes you but could also break you.”

The chemistry teacher noted how naturally I thought with symbols, inspiring me to read more outside class on chemistry. “You have a knack for theory,” he observed, “though not a burning desire for lab work. You could have a promising career in theoretical chemistry, playing with molecular models, and not having to worry about titrations.”

Instead of accepting a full athletic scholarship to college, I took an academic scholarship that paid only tuition but allowed me to concentrate on scholarship. I majored in chemistry.

I was blessed with several mentors in my early development. The university was next. There I confirmed my high school chemistry teacher’s awareness of my affinity for theory and abhorrence of the lab. Then one day everything changed for me.

It was in my sophomore year taking a “core” course for undergraduates titled “Modern Literature, Greeks, and the Bible.” Virtually everyone in my class was much more conversant with the subject matter than I was. It was embarrassing to feebly participate in discussions. Then one day we were assigned Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man, the biographical novel of the great Irish novelist James Joyce. I was unable to take the written examination as I became ill and was hospitalized for a week in the university’s infirmary. When I returned to class, my professor decided to have me take the examination orally.

He started to ask me questions as if it were a written exam, when I suggested boldly, “I’ve read this book three times, Dr. Armens, and have it practically memorized. Can I tell you how I see Joyce?”

He put his hands on his hips, with a cigarette dangling from his lower lip, an amused expression on his face. “You’re going to tell me about Joyce? Is that it?”

I had no idea that scholars had pondered this author for years. “Yes, sir.” And I did, for more than an hour without interruption. Concluding with these remarks:

What may be even more confusing is why such a person so naturally horny would be attracted to the celibate life of the religious, as Joyce was, I mean Stephen, when the director of his school suggested he would make a good Jesuit. Stephen was overjoyed. He could visualize himself in that role, an automatic reprieve from debauchery and guilt, and a clear invitation to salvation. I went through a similar drill. I had serious thoughts of becoming a priest. My mother wanted me to be a Jesuit, my da a New York cop – in a way they are the same thing.

You may not get this impression because I don’t say much in class but I am a talker, like Joyce, a dreamer, schemer, fantasizer and fatalist. Stephen’s two friends, Davin and Lynch were his sounding board like Eric Chalgren and Bobby Witt were mine. Stephen is a talker. He needs an audience, not a large one, but an audience just the same to hear his own mind working. My doubt is that Joyce at this early stage knew as much about the world as Stephen professes to know. Doubt is a powerful force in the emerging young Catholic mind I can assure you, whereas memory is faulty.

The discussion about beauty and the working of the mind, which are obviously central to his art, and the reason for the title, were for me a cover for Stephen’s sense of displacement. When Davin challenged Stephen’s ideas and suggested that in everything Ireland should come first, and Stephen answered that Ireland was an old sow that ate its own children, he was actually describing the devouring nightmares of his own doubt.

Then Emma, his sweetheart since he was a boy tells him he is a fraud. This hit home as I think he believed himself to be one as did his friends. They saw him hiding behind high-minded talk to justify his desire to break links with Ireland.

To prove them and himself wrong, he had no choice but to become a nomad, a man without a country. Only by leaving Ireland could he sort everything out. He needed space and a place to do this. He promised never to return but to write a book that would make clear his views on Ireland and the Irish. The arrogance of this is quite telling, and I must confess compelling as well. This is the book; a book I believe was written more to quiet his Irish soul than for the Irish. Don’t get me wrong. I loved the book but I doubt very much if it gave Joyce any peace.

When I finished, he shook his head, “Do you know something? I had a clue you were like this when I read your paper The Influence of Religion on My Life.”

“But you didn’t read it in the class like you did the others,” I complained peevishly. I wanted so badly to be accepted by my classmates.

“No, I didn’t,” he confessed, “and I’ll tell you the reason. Yours was totally without guile, so incredibly intimate, perhaps naïvely so that I couldn’t share it. I’m not used to such student candor.” Then he added, “Then there was the matter of your confidence. You write in a way that may be offensive to some of differing views on the subject.”

A change smoker, he crumpled up a pack he first opened when I arrived, opened a fresh one, pounded out one, lit it, took a long drag, and then continued. “What is your major?” I told him. “What are you doing in science? You belong in the arts.” I gave him an incredulous look. I was the least sophisticated person in my class. “I’m serious,” he insisted. “I’ve been teaching for twenty years and you are the first student I’ve ever had that understood Joyce. How do you explain that?”

I answered simply, “I am Joyce.” Then when he didn’t say anything, I continued. “I understand him, his pain in the classroom, anguish with priests, ambivalent lusting of girls, strangeness with his da, anger touched with disappointment for his da’s friends, sense of exile in the middle of his peers, sensitivity to everything and everybody, obsession with class, awareness of the power and corruption of money, and his growing contempt for the imprisoning lies and illusions of his family and Church.

“Of course, I understand Joyce. His life is my life. His desire to fly into the sun and into his greatness, to soar where he believed he belonged was his only escape and death as well. We Irish court death like a favorite relative. It is perhaps why we are obsessed in seeking the real parents of our soul. For Joyce it was through art. He never escaped his imprisoning ties to Ireland. I can relate to that. Beautiful as the book is, and as self-consciously posturing as his art is, I think the book was a great catharsis for him, and I envy him for having written it.”

Sitting on the edge of the desk, his head enveloped in cigarette smoke as if a halo, he said. “Here is what I want you to do.” He then outlined the Honors Program in the Humanities, a program involving tutorials, extensive reading and writing, the independent study of philosophy, theology, religion and psychology and other related disciplines in quest of artistic acumen in Arts and Letters. Dr. Armens compared it to similar programs at Cambridge in Oxford, England. “Before you say you’re not interested, discuss it with your parents.”

This I did the following weekend. My da an Irish Roman Catholic brakeman on the railroad claimed I didn’t even write a good letter. His first question was, “Did they revoke your scholarship?” Before I could “no,” he launched into a tirade ending with, “Can I ask you a question. I want you to answer honestly and I love you no matter. Jimmy, you’re not a goddamned fag are you?”

“What? No! What gave you that idea?”

“I see those characters on my trains, beatniks, loud, rude, long dirty hair, tennis shoes, unkempt, smell worse than goats, shabby clothes, reading filthy books, arms around each other,” then turning to my mother, “Dorothy, it’s disgusting. Is that the kind of people you want your son to hang out with? These characters tell me they go to Iowa, too. Dorothy, can you believe it? Can you believe our son has come to this? Honestly, Jimmy, I ask you again, are you a goddamned fag?”

“NOOO!” I shouted. It was too much. Even in the 1950s, I knew people of such persuasion, some were in my lit class, but I found them sensitive, and far more informed about the world than I was. But coward that I was I said nothing, went back to school, continued and graduated in chemistry.

After a career as chemist, salesman, corporate executive, consultant, and psychologist, bouncing around the globe in different jobs and industries, retiring once in my 30s and going back to school to earn my Ph.D., then retiring for good in my 50s, I turned my attention to writing articles and books in the genre of cultural and organizational psychology. Then by the serendipity of the electronic technology explosion, and the introduction of the Internet, I discovered a global audience for my ideas. Now, my laboratory wasn’t theoretical chemistry, but cultural behavioral patterns. Eight books and more than 300 journal and periodical articles later, I have written my portrait of the artist as a young man.

Like the Irish novelist James Joyce, I refused to confine myself to convention and continued to push the envelope. What was in vogue proved not sufficient to express the condition of my burning soul. Alas, after a half century of stumbling, bumbling along through assorted vocations, I discovered my calling. I uncovered the code of my soul. I am now no longer at cross-purposes with myself.

Imagine, if you well, at my advance age that I plow forward as if most of my life is ahead rather than behind me. Silly? Folly? I don’t think so. Nor is it for you whatever your age or circumstances.

This confession is not important in itself. What is important is what it tells you about yourself, about your character, about what your attributes keep bombarding your consciousness but which you ignore “because it isn’t safe.” Baloney!

Safety isn’t even relevant. We know when you press too hard you are likely to lose; when you play it safe you are more likely to embrace defeat; when you wait until all the conditions are precisely right for you to finally take a chance, you have already run out of life. Sad.

In one of my books, I write,

We are all authors of our own footprints in the sand, heroes of the novels inscribed in our hearts. Everyone’s life without exception is sacred, unique, scripted high drama, played out before an audience of one, with but one actor on stage. The sooner we realize this the sooner we overcome the bondage of loneliness and find true friendship with ourselves.2

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