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“Don’t Go Up, Go In”: Finding Soul in a World of More

“Don’t Go Up, Go In”: Finding Soul in a World of More

Last updated on: September 14, 2026 at 3:01 pm by Tom Rapsas

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“Don’t Go Up, Go In”: Finding Soul in a World of More 2026-09-14T15:01:58-06:00 Tom Rapsas

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

One of Anna McCracken’s favorite pastimes: slowing down, looking up, and watching the movement of the stars. Image created by Gemini.

Reflections on Anna McCracken’s “DO/WILDNESS”—and what happens when we stop climbing society’s ladder and start paying attention to the sacred right in front of us.

For me, the best biographical writers get you thinking about your own life. You read about their experiences and compare them to your own. You notice where your journeys aligned, and where they zigged while you zagged.

The new book DO/WILDNESS: Myth, Mystery and Mischief (part of the DO series of inspirational books) offers that kind of mirror*.* The Aussie author and storyteller Anna McCracken does a deep dive into the human experience, wading into waters that I’ve only observed from the shoreline.

Like me, Anna found that the dream life we were sold on by society—a job with an upward trajectory that affords you a car, a house, and an endless stream of stuff—was ultimately a false promise. It did not address the needs of the soul. In her words:

I was doing everything I thought I should be doing. Climbing as high as I could on a career level and saving for a house while ignoring the queer woman bursting at the seams to break out. I had the belief that success meant going up and up and up, while watching the dollars in my bank account accumulate.

She found herself going through the motions, living a life that was not fully her own. And here’s where our paths diverge: While I stayed the course with my career as I pursued a spiritual awakening, Anna took a far different route. One day, a voice in her head told her, “Don’t go up, go in.” She takes the words to heart and quits her job, gives away all her belongings, and “starts wandering and starts listening.”

The important part is the listening

As Anna embarks on her quest for what really matters, she finds that the noise in her head begins to settle. She starts “listening, really paying attention” to the world around her. She determines that the “going in” part of her mission was dependent on two things: attention and showing up. She writes that when this happened:

I started to notice the signals, symbols and synchronicities, and the abundance of them made me trust that they were not just random one-offs, but a constant communication from the forces around us.

And:

The world no longer felt like a backdrop to my life, but something I was in conversation with. Something that could touch me, rearrange me, speak to me, and that I could speak to in return. There was a growing sense of being inside life rather than watching it from the outside.

Four passages that got me thinking

This little book is full of wonderful observations. Here are four passages, lightly edited, that especially resonated with me. My own thoughts follow.

What are you connected to? Where do you come from? What are your responsibilities? What are you in relationship with? These questions drew me back into the wider web of something far greater than I was and asked me to pay attention in a whole new way, different from the one I had been taught.

As Anna points out, we often go about our lives with a set of assumptions that were handed to us—without ever looking within to determine if they’re important to us and our own personal calling. Ask yourself: What am I called to be, to build, to explore? What lights my inner fire? Your answers to these questions are as unique as you are. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to life.

2. Show up and make the commitment to something beyond you. Showing up leads to deeper relationships because of more understanding, more noticing, more listening and more learning.

What are you curious about? It might be your invitation to a deeper sense of wonder. Anna suggests we consider things like “the dawn sky, birds, the moon, the ocean.” It can be activities as diverse as gardening, learning to bake bread, or becoming an amateur astrologer. Whatever you choose, “commit to it a couple of times a week, if only for 10 minutes.”

3. We use phrases like ‘the sun is rising’ when actually the sun isn’t rising, it is us who are turning very fast toward it, as it stays still in space. A separateness from nature’s cycles and rhythms has contributed to a collective amnesia of movement. This amnesia takes away the intimacy and awe of living on a planet in constant movement.

This passage stopped me in my tracks. While I knew what she said was true, it had been decades since I thought about the fact the sun isn’t moving. We, on our little planet Earth, are! Anna suggests we “start noticing where the sun rises or sets. Over weeks and months, you’ll see the slow slide of the earth’s body doing what she does.”

4. In the West, we have largely severed the dead from our lives. Western culture seems largely untethered from what came before us and unaccountable to what comes next. It has been normalized to be unaware of where we come from or who we belong to beyond our immediate family and beyond the human.

Lately, I’ve been digging into my family tree. A century ago, my Lithuanian ancestors fled poverty, famine, forced Russian military conscription, and deadly epidemics. They crossed the Atlantic in steerage and endured back-breaking factory labor so future generations could thrive. Without their courage and sacrifice, I wouldn’t be here today. (Thank you, Ignatius, Justina, et al.)

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