From the "Prologue"

“Fat Soul philosophy can then serve as a kind of wide-angle lens through which to examine life, love, meaning, and spirituality.  But Fat Soul is not just a lot of abstract head-talk, but rather mirrors actual life:  it is shot through with feeling; it is earthy and active and poetic and whimsical and messy.  It is never quite finished, and has a penchant for improvisation.  It dares to cross borders, to speak new languages, to color outside the lines, and to laugh and play and think and dream and form rock bands. . . .

To be a Fat Soul simply means that we are willing to let go of the rigid, false borders that alienate us from each other and from the earth and within our own psyches.  It is to let go of self-righteousness and absolutism and mindsets based on fear; in this way, Fat Soul can serve as an antidote to fundamentalism.

To be a Fat Soul is to embrace a wider, more elastic sense of self based on the reality of our profound interconnection in the web of life; it is to live deeply, expansively, imaginatively, and courageously.  Best of all, a Fat Soul philosophy of life dares us, despite these difficult times, to be stubbornly and undauntedly drenched in delight.  As the celebrated writer Elizabeth Gilbert says, “Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us.”[i]

To be a Fat Soul is to stretch toward this wider beauty, which includes not only intense delight, but also intense caring for the darkness—and there is much of that in our hearts and in the world.  This means we must first make plenty of room in the soul for self-compassion, especially for the shadowy and broken parts that need space and caring in order to be transformed; then we are free to widen the circle of compassion to include friends and strangers and trees and cows and the whole wide earth.  We are all connected, we all deserve compassion.  We all belong.”

[i] Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (Riverhead Books), Kindle Electronic Edition, Location 2439.