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Fear seems to abound in this world for a variety of reasons. In my recent presentation at the International Plastic Turn Conference in Siliguri, India, I introduced the concept of pneumaplasticity, our largely underutilized ability to rewire our spiritual self and transform our fear.
This adaptability helps us to create new spiritual pathways, connections, and perspectives. It also allows us to evaluate and potentially reformulate how we construct meaning in our lives. This post delves into the main themes I presented: fear, spiritual rigidity, and how pneumaplasticity transforms our fear into curiosity, courage, creativity, and compassion.
Fear and Its Influence on Spirituality
Fear exists as an often unrecognized undercurrent in our lives, influencing our thoughts, actions, and interpretations of (and responses to) internal and external stimuli. I argue that the undercurrent of fear has shaped and continues to exert a significant influence on our spiritual identities and communities. Our desire for security and predictability leads us to follow familiar, reassuring spiritual pathways because they have protected us in the past. However, fear can also cause us to see these pathways as rigid and unchanging, leaving us without an adequate ability to adapt effectively to challenges working against our established frameworks.
Fear can reinforce a static worldview, making it difficult to utilize rituals as a way of coping with the uncertainty and ambiguity in our lives, or to view diverse others as potential collaborators rather than threats. Fear-based rituals that become rigid and exclusive limit our ability to adapt to evolving circumstances while they solidify unhealthy spiritual pathways. Consequently, I believe that this undercurrent of fear can hinder both individual and collective spiritual development over time.
What is Pneumaplasticity?
Pneumaplasticity is our capacity to rewire our spiritual pathways throughout our lives as we work to adapt and derive meaning from our experiences and emotions. It involves forming new and renewed spiritual connections, leading us back to our authentic selves and into an authentic community among our diverse neighbors. Pneumaplasticity transforms the energy of our fear into energy that we can use to build new and healthy spiritual pathways.
Cultivating Curiosity, Courage, Creativity, and Compassion
By engaging our pneumaplasticity, the energy of fear can be redirected into pathways of curiosity, which can then invite us to transform our fear into courage and, in turn, set our creativity free. Creativity then opens us to the possibilities that we may not have previously considered and helps us to remove the masks we have worn in an effort to protect our vulnerable, authentic selves. Gradually, as we regain access to our own hearts, we also utilize our renewed courage and creativity to have compassion for our neighbors.
Storytelling and Its Role in Pneumaplasticity
I emphasize storytelling as the central role in developing and facilitating pneumaplasticity. It helps us to process and integrate challenging experiences and emotions, as well as to assist us as we begin to identify both ineffective and emerging spiritual pathways in our lives. Storytelling creates a safe space in which we can imagine both hypothetical and possible ways to author our own stories, and it gives us a starting point from which to begin in real life. Storytelling helps us to trust ourselves and our hearts, and it also creates a greater sense of community through weaving our individual and collective stories together.
Forming Pneumaplastic Community
As storytelling facilitates the development of community, I beleive it also reveals how interconnected human beings are with one another and with the natural world. As we rewire our fear within a pneumaplastic community, we become more fully authentic. We support and empower the curiosity, courage, creativity, and compassion already present among us. Our stories continue to form and shape us, rewiring our fear and leading us to form new and renewed spiritual pathways together.
Conclusion
My presentation on pneumaplasticity provides valuable insights into how individuals and communities can approach the fear and rigidity in our midst. Tapping into our pneumaplasticity, we can transform and reform our spirituality, creating and renewing flexible, adaptable, and resilient spiritual pathways that will equip and empower us in authoring stories of meaning and purpose for our lives.
Together
Listen.
Stories abound among us.
They connect us;
they remind us
of our common pathways,
our connected hearts,
our collective hopes and dreams.
They remind us
that we journey together.
Together,
we create new pathways,
and make new meaning
of the old.
We find new ways
to listen;
to love our neighbor;
to live together,
with curiosity, courage,
creativity, and compassion;
to “flourish in love."
Rilke, Rainer Maria, “Turning Point,” The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (New York: Vintage International, 1989), 135.
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