Rainn Wilson Gets Deep & Campy With Soul Boom
The existence of humanity is on the line, Rainn Wilson asserts in his 2023 book, Soul Boom. The panacea? It’s right inside of you.
📚
Society today regards religion as anachronistic and irrelevant, Rainn Wilson asserts in Soul Boom. And he pleas for a reevaluation.
As all the existing organizational systems around us break down...humanity...needs a total shift in perspective and a seismic change in how it undertakes pretty much everything.
Only by recognizing that we are, in fact, spiritual beings having a collective human experience will we be open to the kinds of soul-level transformations we’re going to need to make.1
This “collective human experience” is the fusion of spirituality and religion. In the chapter “Hey, Kids, Let’s Build the Perfect Religion,” Wilson lists the attributes of his ideal religion, which include service, justice, humility, morality, prayer, compassion...and potlucks. “Bring on your grandma’s recipe for baked ziti as well as that damp tossed salad from a bag. And don’t forget to take your serving bowl back home with you!”2
This isn’t Wilson’s first foray into these topics; indeed, in the book he reveals how philosophizing was integral to coming-of-age. He also wrote the 2010 book, Soul Pancake: Chew on Life’s Big Questions, and co-founded the now-defunct production company, SoulPancake, which created hundreds of uplifting videos aimed at social change. In Soul Boom, Wilson recounts childhood trauma that led to addiction and mental illness and eventually a healing spiritual journey. His father’s Baha’i faith was instrumental in his spiritual formation as well; a faith he adopted as his own in adulthood.
That is to say, Soul Boom reads a little like the stream of consciousness ruminations of someone who’s thought and prayed and studied a whole lot about Life’s Big Questions. And through this delving, Wilson has rejected the superficial cult-of-the-self that so often passes as spirituality. There is wisdom in his stories and insights. And a lot of the same wit and verve he brought to his much-loved performance as Dwight in the American version of The Office. His anecdotes include his pilgrimage to the Baha’i Shrine of the Báb in Israel, an exchange with actor André Gregory, who implores him to fight temptations to cynicism and despair, and a memory of his father welcoming Protestant evangelists into his childhood home to discuss respective takes on heaven.
Wilson hopes to spark a larger conversation around religion and spirituality, and his book offers plenty of tinder from a variety of sources. He distills spiritual lessons from the 1970s shows Star Trek and Kung Fu, and incorporates the writings of a multitude of religious texts, religious leaders and poets, including the Bible, Quran, Bhagavad Gita, Baha’i texts, Gandhi, Buddha, Black Elk, William Carlos Williams and Rainer Maria Rilke. And he has an uncanny ability to wax poetic on obscure topics. Take this passage on consciousness, for example:
My consciousness, as well as yours, is a mysterious, ineffable, dancing diorama of emotions, memories, perceptions, triggers, and thoughts. We take in, blend, and yet transcend senses, creating a peculiar alchemy of the awareness and sensation of being a human, of having a moment-by-moment experience of living.3
If you’re looking for a tonic from the deluge of doom-and-gloom headlines, Soul Boom offers one. It doesn’t provide an escape, but rather a means to face the oftentimes grim circumstances of our present age with hope and optimism.
📚
Wilson, Rainn. Soul Boom, Hachette Book Group, Inc. 2023, xxi and page 213.
Soul Boom, page 191.
Soul Boom, page 49.