Soul Treasures
Discovering the depths of our precious inner beauty through SoulCollage®
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KaleidoSoul's Members-Only Weekly Newsletter
Issue #13- June 26, 2006
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Quotation of the Week
Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding.
---Yehuda Amichai
Inner Journeys
with Anne Marie Bennett
Integrating the Practice of SoulCollage® into Your Daily Life
Resisting Freedom
Last night I noticed a large brown moth at the top of our kitchen window that faces the sink. He seemed to be asleep at the top of the blue and yellow curtains, wings folded inward. It crossed my mind to chase him away, but something told me to let him be.
Then late this afternoon, washing some squash and broccoli for dinner, I observed that same moth now sitting on the windowsill. Delicate front legs flexed, still a dry chalky brown color. The window was open and a beautiful soft sunny breeze was coming through it the screen.
As I continued preparing the food, the moth began making small flying movements near the window. I certainly love my kitchen, but it was definitely not home to this small insect who now obviously was ready to leave. Gently I moved my hands towards him, my intention pure. He, however, did not know this, and fluttered his wings madly away from me. So I let him be.
A bit later when I found him sitting on the sill again, I surprised him by cupping my hands lightly around him and moving as fast as I could towards the kitchen door, intent only on giving him his freedom. But fear gave him the power to escape my loving hands yet again. This time he flew madly around the kitchen several times while I stood by watching helplessly. The next time he headed towards the door, I quickly opened it, and then he was finally free.
As I watched him soaring through the early summer sunshine, something lifted in my heart. I almost felt Spirit putting her loving hand on my shoulder, thanking me for taking the time to give this tiny sliver of Her creation its freedom..
And I also had several flashbacks to times in my own life when freedom was right in front of me, yet I resisted any loving hands that were helping me towards an open door. Memories of fears that held me back over the years fluttered through my mind as that moth had fluttered around my kitchen.
I realized that freedom is almost always right in front of us. And the choice is ours- we can either allow our fear to beat so loudly in our bodies that it stops us from moving towards it, or we can relax with faith, and trust in the loving Hands that are leading us to the open door.
P.S. I thought it was a moth because when its wings were closed, it was a dull brown color. But when I watched it rise through our backyard on the wind of its freedom, I noticed that it was a gorgeous orange and brown butterfly, not a moth at all.
Reflection activity of the week: Do you have a SoulCollage card in your deck for the part of you who resists freedom because of fear or lack of faith? Perhaps you also need one for the part of you who does live in faith and trust that Spirit's Hands know what is best for you at all times. Both of these voices inside of us are real and valid, and worth getting to know.
SoulCollage Expressions
Idea of the Week
For me, an essential tool is an exacto-type small sharp art knife/blade, with a small self-healing mat to cut on. Great for cutting out detailed images but also excellent for trimming off edges when card is done. I use it on every card. --from Emily in California
We'd love to hear from you!
Question of the Week
I made a card a few months ago and I thought it was a Committee card. Today I did some more work with this card, and when I read back what I'd written, it seemed more like a Council card. What's up with that?
Great question! This is a wonderful thing, because you are so in tune with yourself and your cards. It happens once in a while that the voice of a card changes as time goes by and that is perfectly okay. Nothing in SoulCollage is written in stone (except for the Principles of SoulCollage) just as nothing in our souls are written in stone.
Have a question about SoulCollage®
that you'd like answered?
Send your questions to members@KaleidoSoul.com.
We'll try to use your question
(along with an answer, of course!)
in an upcoming issue of Soul Treasures.
Soul Friends
The voice of a different Kindred Spirit each week!
Sue Volpi Gelber
Davis, CA
My name is Sue Volpi Gelber, and I live and work in Davis, California. Responding to Seena Frost's invitation, I Am One Who brought the SoulCollage WaterBearer: Archetype of the Aquarian Age exhibit to Davis in June 2005--now on permanent, beautiful display at SoulCollagers' Respite (Mili Ballard's website). I offer holistic healing through Esprit Health Center-- and my suite is still reverberating with blessings from a personal visit by Seena and her friend at the time WaterBearer went home to Mother SoulCollage.
As of this writing, I've created 145 SoulCollage cards. I invite you view the SoulSlides(TM) of my own story as imaged through SoulCollage--early memories interspersed with and enriched by the soil of my more recent experiences. The SoulCollage cards from my personal deck--those that I share in the slide show--were collaged from the living well of my life's journey thus far. They speak from a place deep within. SoulCollage provides a forum that unites myriad artistic endeavors in which I've engaged since childhood: Photography, poetry, writing, and painting. I am grateful to Seena and Kylea Taylor for sharing Seena's inspiration with the world.
February 28, 2004 marks the day that I unwittingly crossed the threshold into my personal journey with SoulCollage. Little could I have imagined how my life was about to unfold in dimension and possibility. I signed up for my first SoulCollage workshop based on an intuitive attraction alone and, later understood, came away with my Witness card. Then, within two months, I experienced a sudden change in life situation that remains big for me. SoulCollage facilitates staying with my experience as an increasingly whole person--supported by various healing relationships, yet unsurpassed by any other in breadth or depth. In the spirit of Clarissa Pinkola Estes' Women Who Run with the Wolves, I collaged a range of "pieces" of myself that had been without voice for much of my life.
At the time I had been SoulCollaging for about a year, I read When the Heart Waits, a spiritual memoir by Sue Monk Kidd (who later authored the more well-known The Secret Life of Bees). The way in which Kidd shares her personal journey helps me understand my own experience as imaged through SoulCollage. Similar transitional stages came to light as I later reflected upon my deck as a whole in the order my cards were created. I am indebted to Kidd for sharing her spiritual journey and have incorporated her stages of spiritual development.
My professional background and current vocation are in the field of classical homeopathy. My interest in alternative and metaphysical healing and health care modalities began in early childhood and includes informal study, teaching, and continuing practice of yoga, meditation, whole foods nutrition, herbology, shamanism, and classical homeopathy--for both people and pets. SoulCollage complements homeopathy, increasing homeopathic effectiveness with clients, as well as the breadth and depth of healing available to clients. Experiencing its healing value firsthand, I trained with Seena as a facilitator in June 2004. Each SoulCollage card a client makes is an imaged homeopathic remedy, often telling me what his or her words cannot. When the process is fully engaged, SoulCollage facilitates a quickening in graced human ownership and a return to the heart. The Source-inspired method Seena has created invites conversation with one's soul and provides the foundation and freedom to create a truly unique, life-restoring endowment--in a way that speaks individually to each person, yet will also facilitate healing for generations to come. It's a lovely gift that this process is so incredibly individual and able to be tailored from person-to-person, group-to-group, moment-to-moment.
Personally, I carve out the making of and journaling about collages as a prayerful contemplative time and space--in the first minutes of awakening, with a warm drink and a lighted candle. I will pull a card for insight about my response to a particular situation, if anything acute is occurring in my life--even hurt in response to something a family member or friend may have said. Otherwise, I pull one as a general message or guidance for the day. Sometimes I do this daily; at other times, once every week or two, depending on the depth of what comes up for healing and processing. While my voice has been long-silenced and deeply-buried, even an awkward, unsatisfactory beginning of the "I Am One Who..." exercise leads to increasing clarity. The discipline of journaling is always rewarded with long-buried "aha's"--sometimes within the same session, sometimes over the next few days--proportionate to the time and space I have been willing to commit to discerning my inner knowing.
Understand that writing is like pulling teeth for me--my enduring comfort with silence the reason I was attracted to SoulCollage in the first place. I found I was able to express myself through images, if not words. I like and continue to use the "interpretative reading" method as outlined in Seena's book, SoulCollage: An Intuitive Collage Process for Individuals and Groups. Moving through each facet of journaling in this way (card description, its core meaning/energy, "I Am One Who . . .," what do you want from me, how will I remember, the shadow, a quote, etc.) has been more than worthy of my time and effort. SoulCollage has restored my SoulVoice. It is for this reason, in particular, that I am eternally grateful and committed to "paying it forward" to others who may be similarly searching and not yet know it.
Each SoulCollage card carries a special, identifiable energy. The meaning of each card is personal and evolves over time, providing access to parts of Self and personality long-forgotten or even abandoned--at times, manifesting otherwise unnamable facets of who we were, who we are, and who we are becoming. SoulCollage images our unspoken and, often, unknown voices--from passions and dreams, to losses and unresolved experiences, to personality traits at once beloved and frustrating, to those people and pets (alive or deceased, related or unrelated) upon whom we rely for support. I spent almost a full year making collages/cards, with mostly a "sense" of and few notes jotted down about the voice/gift/message each image contained. At some point I knew I was entering a phase in which I needed to give formal voice to the majority of images already collaged before going forward--healing/integrating one developmental milestone for me on the threshold of entering another.
My advice would be to journal the moment a Neter is born, even if yet to be imaged. "SoulJournaling" will take you the pulsing heart of SoulCollage: The portal to accessing the Mystery of creation and more clearly understanding one's sacred purpose in the world--one's destiny. Each card contains a message of jeweled wisdom, the various facets of which are glimpsed over time. The newborn skeleton of each SoulCollage message--your inner silence gaining voice--incarnates even if limited to just the following three barebones questions:
- Who are you and what do you have to give me? (Thus begins: "I Am One Who . . .")
- What do you want from me?
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How will I remember?
Here are 2 of my favorite SoulCollage® cards:
 Interior Revolution
Suit- Committee
I Am One Who refuses to compromise my soul-felt values. When I claim my inner authority and say No with intention, my approval is what matters, not yours.
Demeter's Dream
Suit- Council
I Am One Who wants for you what you want for yourself. I release you to your relationship with the world . . . your destiny to choreograph in step with your evolving desires . . . your voice in Creation. May yours be a path of freedom, on wings well-formed through intention, illuminated by the Light within, and graced into being through Divine Interior Flow. In so releasing you, will I be free to live out my own destiny.
Want to share your SoulCollage story and cards with other
KaleidoSoul Kindred Spirits?
Send them to members@kaleidosoul.com.
We'd love to hear from YOU!
Kindred Spirits Member News
Making the most of your KaleidoSoul Membership
Keep track of all of your member benefits on the Kindred Spirits Home Page.
If you're having trouble viewing the Home Page in the above link, try this Text-Only Kindred Spirits Home Page.
And remember, as a Kindred Spirit... everything in the Kindred Spirits Shop is 50% off!
The next Tele-Playshop is on July 12 at 7:30 pm (EST). Our theme for July is the Companions Suit, so this Playshop will help us tap into the power and energy of our animal totems.
More details in July....stay tuned!
 Soul Nourishment
Books, movies, music, & websites to support your inner work as you dive deeper into your soul....
Books:
Setting Your Heart on Fire: Seven Invitations To Liberate Your Life, by Raphael Cushnir. The author offers seven simple pathways to freeing yourself to live a loving, joyful life. Briefly, these invitations are: Feel Everything, Question Everything, Resist Nothing, Live Like You're Dying, Live Like You're Dreaming, Love Like You're Dancing, and Widen Your World. Much truth and heartfelt wisdom can be found on these pages and by accepting these seven invitations.
Altered Art for the First Time, by Madeline Arendt. If you've been longing to get started with altered books (or altered anything for that matter), then this is the book for you! I borrowed it from the library, then had to get my own copy! It's full of great ideas, and simple, amply photographed instructions.
Music:
English Ladymass, by Anonymous 4. I listened to this the other morning while journaling and felt my spirit soaring. This is a female quartet performing medieval chant. Simply divine!
Eden, by Sarah Brightman. Several years ago I was driving to work and I heard this artist on the radio. She sounded like an angel. I'd never heard anything quite so beautiful. When I got to work, I called the radio station and asked what the song was and this is the album. A classic. Her voice is crystal clear and warm at the same time.
Movies:
Whale Rider- this one can be seen again and again. It's about a young Maori girl who seeks her own freedom from prejudice by following the call of her heart. Not just for children! Her story will resonate somewhere deep in your own soul.
Websites:
Are you having fun? We don't have enough fun in our lives. Fun's the pinch of salt that brings out the flavor, the backbeat that gives the song its rhythm. You don't HAVE to have fun ... but life is better when you do. The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun is a short internet movie that's been seen by 50,000 people in 125 countries around the world. Join them and take a look.
Visual Aids Gallery- Browse beautiful online art galleries featuring the work of various artists who live with AIDS. Who knows, you may find inspiration for a SoulCollage card here.
Spirit In Gear- Blog from a professional therapist and life coach that has some thought-provoking articles on following Spirit and intuition.
Spinning the fragments of your world
into wholeness and beauty
through SoulCollage®
Published by KaleidoSoul.com
and Anne Marie Bennett.
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Inner Journeys, copyright 2006,
Anne Marie Bennett
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