Where is it taking us?
An awakening can break the authority of an old identity while establishing a new authority in its place. A person can leave the office, surrender a title, discover a larger belonging, and still organize the soul around something within creation. ## Two destinations This is where The Godward Way parts company with ecological awakening. Stafford describes Earth and her beings becoming the center of his consciousness. Animas Valley Institute, whose work informs his approach, defines soul through a creature’s unique ecological niche: its particular relationship with the living world. In this account, spiritual maturation involves discovering and embodying that place.1 The destination is clear. One awakens into belonging to Earth and discovers a unique way to serve her. The Godward Way directs the offering toward the Creator. The forest can open the heart. The soul’s final allegiance remains Godward. A river can arrest our attention. A mountain can expose the absurdity of our self-importance. A tree can become the setting in which grief finally moves. Creation can receive our care and draw us into wonder. Yet none of these experiences gives creation ownership of the soul. ## Stars that set The distinction has deep roots. In the Qur’an’s account of Abraham, the star, moon, and sun enter the question of ultimate devotion. Each sets. Abraham turns his face toward the One who created the heavens and Earth. The movement carries attention beyond the splendour of what appears toward its Creator.2 Deuteronomy makes a related distinction. The people are reminded that they saw no divine form at Horeb, then warned against being drawn into worship of the sun, moon, and stars. The beauty and power of the visible world do not establish it as the recipient of ultimate devotion.3 These passages speak directly to the temptation in nature mysticism: to encounter creation so intensely that the encounter becomes a reason to stop there.The Godward Way keeps the offering moving.
That includes the visions. ## Receiving a vision, granting it authority A grandmother figure appears. A voice announces that a career is finished. A butterfly brushes a face, and a phrase arrives with the force of revelation. Such experiences can reshape a life. Their power does not exempt them from discernment. There is a difference between receiving an experience and granting it authority. “I felt welcomed” describes an encounter. “Earth herself welcomed me” interprets it. “Therefore, Earth is my deepest spiritual home” establishes a destination. The movement between those statements can happen almost invisibly, carried by tears and certainty. The Godward Way catches that certainty too. The image, the tenderness, the sense of recognition, and the conviction that something sacred has spoken all remain offerings. Calling something divine does not establish it as God’s will. Feeling that a message comes from beyond oneself does not settle who, or what, has spoken. Stafford offers a particularly revealing description when he discusses approaching nature as sentient: people can begin by pretending, and through pretending, the experience happens. Imagination has enormous power. A ceremonial setting, a story, an expectation, and an emotional need can shape what becomes present to us. That is precisely why the resulting experience cannot be allowed to authenticate itself. The Father cannot be contained within an appearance that consciousness can hold. Even a beautiful appearance remains something to offer. ## The need to matter There is a similar danger in the search for a deeper identity. Stafford’s account promises that each person has a unique place in the cosmos, a gift no one else can give. The language is attractive, especially to someone exhausted by conformity. At last, perhaps, there is a life that belongs to me. Yet the hunger to become someone can survive the abandonment of an old career. Once, the question concerned professional distinction. Now it concerns a soul name, a sacred role, an irreplaceable contribution. A person can exchange the desire to be an exceptional executive for the desire to possess an exceptional destiny. The spiritual biography grows where the professional biography once stood. This is a risk within any vocation, including teaching The Godward Way. A guide can become attached to being a guide. A teacher can become attached to having a teaching. A person who speaks of surrender can quietly require an audience for the story of having surrendered.Burning a CV does not burn the need to matter.
That need, too, belongs in the offering. A calling may emerge. Work may change. A new responsibility may become clear. But the soul’s orientation need not wait for a complete explanation of its uniqueness. We can receive life without possessing a final account of who we are supposed to become. ## No occupation reveals the soul This matters especially when Stafford describes the familiar progression through promotion, management, and retirement as “absolute failure” from the soul’s perspective. Here, a journey away from imposed expectations produces another standard by which an ordinary life can be condemned. Someone may spend forty years in the same profession while holding it with an open hand. Someone else may cross continents, enter ceremonies, and speak fluently about awakening while remaining captive to recognition. No occupation reveals, by itself, the direction of the soul. A parent in a crowded apartment, a physician returning to the same ward, a worker answering another routine request: each can remain turned toward the Father. Their offering may have no memorable landscape, no initiation story, no name that would interest a spiritual audience. Their lives cannot be ranked beneath a wilderness experience merely because the wilderness produces a more compelling narrative. Once a spiritual system declares that a particular transformation makes someone a “true adult,” it acquires the power to describe everyone else as unfinished. The person seeking freedom may find a new demand waiting: discover the mission, undergo the initiation, become the person you were born to be. Fear enters through the promise of fulfilment. What if I miss the call? What if my life becomes a waste? What if I never discover the gift only I can give? The soul can become anxious about destiny in much the same way the mind becomes anxious about success. The Godward Way offers that anxiety. It offers the wish to secure the meaning of a life in advance. ## Surrendering the reward This brings us to the strongest part of Stafford’s account: his willingness to release what he had built. Gratitude, relinquishment, and an openness to losing a cherished future are serious spiritual movements. The question concerns how far that openness extends.Can the anticipated transformation also be surrendered?
A person may enter the fire willing to lose a career while remaining determined to emerge with a deeper identity. The ceremony then has an expected reward. Something must be relinquished so that the authentic self can appear. Godward surrender includes the desire for that reward. It leaves room for a life that remains outwardly ordinary, for a calling that develops slowly, for prayer without a vision, and for an answer that does not explain us to ourselves. ## What the traditions ask us to surrender Religious traditions contain richer accounts of this movement than the interview’s broad division between ascent to spirit and descent to soul allows. The Bhagavad Gita directs ordinary actions, eating, giving, and austerity into an offering to Krishna. Devotional orientation is central to that passage. It cannot be adequately described as an experience of being one with everything.4 Jewish kavanah likewise brings directed attention into prayer. Maimonides describes the person praying as attending to standing before the Divine Presence. The question of whom one addresses remains essential.5 In Luke’s account of Gethsemane, Jesus, praying within his Jewish religious world, brings his desired outcome before the Father and yields it to the Father’s will. His prayer gives spiritual expression to a desire that remains real while surrender reaches beyond it.6 Even Buddhist texts resist treating extraordinary consciousness as its own final authority. In the account of the Buddha’s search in the Majjhima Nikaya, advanced meditative attainments are distinguished from the liberation he seeks. The traditions differ profoundly, but this distinction matters: a remarkable state does not establish the completion of the path.7 Their differences deserve to remain visible. Gathering them into a single map of upper and lower worlds can obscure precisely what each asks a person to surrender. Jonah offers another useful correction. In the biblical story, Jonah identifies the One he serves as the God who made the sea and dry land. The sea, storm, and creature belong within the drama of his relationship with that God. They do not replace its addressee.8 A descent can become the setting for a Godward return. The depth of the descent does not determine the direction of the return. ## The grief is present, the direction remains The same principle applies to emotion. Grief, desire, anger, tenderness, and fear can enter consciousness fully. They can carry information about our lives. They can expose what has been suppressed. But an emotion’s intensity gives it no automatic right to govern the soul. In Catch and Offer, recognition and Godward intention happen together. Awareness catches what arises while remaining directed toward the unknowable Father. There is no need to establish grief, the body, or the observing self as a temporary ultimate center. The grief is present. The direction remains. And if the mind produces an image of the Father, a picture of the observer, or a satisfying explanation of a higher spiritual state, that appearance enters the offering too. This discipline belongs as much to The Godward Way as to the paths it criticizes. Its words can harden into possessions. Its explanations can become objects of loyalty. The desire to prove it right can compete with the very orientation it names. The teaching must remain available for offering along with everything else. ## Back in the forest We can enter the forest with gratitude. We can allow the tree to shelter us, the silence to unsettle us, and the beauty of the living world to loosen our grip. We can care for Earth without requiring her to answer the soul’s ultimate longing. Then, while all of it is present—the branches, the grief, the welcome, the need to belong—the offering remains directed toward the Creator. The forest opens the heart.The heart remains Godward.
--- ## Sources 1. Animas Valley Institute, founded by Bill Plotkin, describes soul as a person’s unique ecological niche in the more-than-human world. [animas.org](https://www.animas.org/). 2. Qur’an 6:76–79. Abraham sees a star, the moon, and the sun set, and turns his face toward the One who created the heavens and the earth. [Quran.com](https://quran.com/6/76-79). 3. Deuteronomy 4:15–19. “You saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb… And when you look up to the heavens and see the sun, the moon, and the stars… do not be led astray and bow down to them.” [Bible Gateway (NRSVUE)](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+4%3A15-19&version=NRSVUE). 4. *Bhagavad Gita* 9.27. Whatever you do, eat, offer, give, or undertake as austerity, do it as an offering to Me. [Holy Bhagavad Gita](https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/chapter/9/verse/27). 5. Maimonides, *Mishneh Torah*, Laws of Prayer 4:16. The one who prays should clear the heart of all thoughts and see himself as standing before the Divine Presence. [Sefaria](https://www.sefaria.org/Mishneh_Torah%2C_Prayer_and_the_Priestly_Blessing.4.16). 6. Luke 22:42. “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done.” [Bible Gateway (NRSVUE)](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+22%3A42&version=NRSVUE). 7. Majjhima Nikaya 26, *Ariyapariyesana Sutta* (The Noble Search). The Bodhisatta masters the meditative attainments taught by Āḷāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta and leaves them, because they do not lead to liberation. [SuttaCentral](https://suttacentral.net/mn26/en/sujato). 8. Jonah 1:9. “I am a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” [Bible Gateway (NRSVUE)](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jonah+1%3A9&version=NRSVUE). ## Frequently asked questions ### How does The Godward Way differ from ecological awakening? Ecological awakening, as described by Brian Stafford and the Animas Valley Institute, awakens a person into belonging to Earth and a unique way to serve her. The Godward Way directs the offering toward the Creator. The forest can open the heart, but the soul’s final allegiance remains Godward. ### Should a powerful spiritual vision be trusted? There is a difference between receiving an experience and granting it authority. The image, the tenderness, the sense of recognition, and the conviction that something sacred has spoken all remain offerings. Feeling that a message comes from beyond oneself does not settle who, or what, has spoken. ### Does finding a calling free us from the need to matter? Not by itself. A person can exchange the desire to be an exceptional executive for the desire to possess an exceptional destiny. Burning a CV does not burn the need to matter; that need, too, belongs in the offering. ### What does Catch and Offer do with grief and strong emotion? Recognition and Godward intention happen together. Awareness catches what arises while remaining directed toward the unknowable Father, with no need to make grief, the body, or the observing self a temporary ultimate center. The grief is present. The direction remains.