Soul
Singing with Anne Marie |
Hi! I'm
Anne Marie, the creator of KaleidoSoul.com, and a
SoulCollage® facilitator in Massachusetts. If you're just starting
to sing your song with SoulCollage®, this column is especially for
you.
Playing with a Full Deck
There's an old expression that I remember from my childhood. If someone wasn't acting "normal," people would say he "wasn't playing with a full deck."
Back then, the only "decks" I was aware of were playing cards. Early on, I learned how to play "Go Fish" and "Crazy Eights." I knew that a complete deck of playing cards had hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs, ranging all the way from Ace to King. Plus a couple of Jokers thrown in for good measure!
So the play on words was a good one. You couldn't really play a game of cards unless all the cards in all the suits were there. A full deck meant a balanced deck, a whole deck, a complete deck. If you weren’t “playing with a full deck,” then there was something missing, you were out of balance.
Seriously now… how balanced, how whole, is your SoulCollage® Deck? Are
you playing with a full Deck?
I would define a "full deck" of SoulCollage® cards as one that contains cards representing all four of the suits: Committee, Community, Companions, and Council. You can choose to call these suits by other names; that's perfectly fine. Seena today says that she wishes she had not named all of the suits beginning with the same letter as it can be confusing for beginners! So call the suits whatever you like, but in the name of balance and wholeness, do try to include some cards from each one.
To me, including all four of the suits in my deck makes it more well-rounded, more whole, more balanced. This is because each suit represents a different dimension of my own world/life. Committee cards portray the psychological dimension: my inner voices.
Community cards represent the communal dimension: those people, places and pets whose energy has touched mine in powerful ways over the years.
Companion Animal and Council (archetype) cards give image to that third dimension of mystery- the unseen energies and spirit guides who are invisible but nevertheless very real.
If I created a deck that only had Committee and Community cards, then my readings would not reflect wisdom from those mysterious unseen realms. If I created a deck of only Council cards, then I would be missing out on the wisdom that my inner parts and community members could give to me.
The beauty of SoulCollage® is that it's so flexible. It's not like a deck of playing cards where you have to have 52 cards before you can play a real game. You can have as many or as few cards as you like. But do try to keep a reasonable balance/wholeness to your deck by including cards from all four of the suits. Seena created the process this way for a reason, and that reason is wholeness and balance.
Anne Marie Bennett is a writer, self-taught artist,
website goddess, cancer survivor, and SoulCollage® Facilitator /
Trainer who was mentored directly by Seena Frost. In 2005, she fell
in love with SoulCollage® and was inspired to use her professional
experience along with Internet technology as a means to serve the
world by putting SoulCollage® "out there" in a really big way with
KaleidoSoul. Anne Marie
lives in eastern Massachusetts with her middle-aged husband, an
elderly dog and two adolescent felines who keep them all young. You
can read more about how SoulCollage® assisted her on her cancer
journey on her website SOS Cancer
Journeys.
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OUR NEXT
TELE-CLASS |
Feng Shui Meets the Soul
60 minute SoulCollage® tele-class
with SoulCollage® Facilitator
Nancy Dadami in California
Sunday - April 26, 2015
7 pm Eastern
When Feng Shui (the art of creating flow, fun and ease in your life) meets the Soul, magic happens. You know the Soul speaks to you through images, offering insights and personal growth. In this class you'll have the chance to explore the area in your own home where the Soul is nourished. You'll learn where and how to use your SoulCollage® cards and readings to boost your inner awareness, wisdom and Soul connection.
Easily
Accessible from Anywhere in the World!
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Guest Columnist: Cat Caracelo
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I am Cat Caracelo, M.A., a SoulCollage® facilitator, depth coach and artist from Petaluma, California, offering my work individually and in global teaching forums. This column is for all of you who are exploring your creative and ready to discover more depth your SoulCollage® journey.
Embracing Wholeness
Wholeness...such a big word to embrace. What is it?
Wholeness is everything that is contained within, present and acknowledged to be part of or held within the space of something: a whole day, a whole book, a whole loaf, a whole life.
Wholeness includes the pieces and parts of the thing, ingredients that have come together as parts of the whole. Wholeness continues as long as the active ingredients are being experienced, still actively happening, growing, baking, being created and experienced. Parts of the whole can also fragment, break off and leave spaces that may be seen and felt, or not. Wholeness is hard to embrace because brokenness often feels more overwhelming and painful, yet brokenness is a natural state of wholeness that is not well understood.
We are never not broken. As the goddess Akhilandeshvari teaches, it is the broken places within that teach us how to be whole in our humanity, to have compassion, empathy and to learn how to grow. As much as we are never not broken, we are also never not whole.
We are Never Not Whole.
I share about my own journey in my book
Gathering Wholeness. I reclaimed art as a personal language during a time that my life was falling apart. I had lost track of myself over the years of living, struggling through a complex marriage, landing in work I did not love, raising children, and navigating illness within my family. I was consumed by a need to fix and protect that verged on martyrdom. A serious back injury stopped me in my tracks and during the long wait for surgery I had to acknowledge that I was broken and lost.
I was afraid to be broken. I saw weakness in my brokenness. I did not learn to know my whole self until I could acknowledge my fragmented, shattered and unexpressed self. This took time. It was intense work to delve into my shadow stories: seeking the things that helped me to reclaim, bring together parts and experience the edges of my whole self. Healing and wholing happened through the process of facing fear and developing trust, which in the beginning was in very short supply.
Lousie Erdrich shares this wisdom: Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart, you are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.
The broken self does all that it can to avoid pain. If there has been trauma, brokenness can feel more acute and sometimes take more time to work with. Safe companioning and guiding is very important to the healing and wholing process.
Brokenness is hard to embrace, and therefore so is Wholeness.
They are a spectrum experience; one cannot exist without the other. Through accepting, trusting, feeling and expressing one, the other comes into clarity, fullness and expression. SoulCollage® can be a valuable modality for this kind of process because it makes visible that which is not always seen, known or heard.
Look to your own SoulCollage® deck to see where your broken self is reflected. Then look for the healing/wholing parts of self, life and experience. Put these two card groupings into adjacent areas and place a post-it with each group naming it. Notice what you see.
Next, shift the groups, placing them into the opposite position with the original post-it remaining in the space. What do you see now? Where is the wholeness in the brokenness and vice versa?
Now remove the labels and place all of the cards, intermingling them into a large mosaic pattern. What do you see reflected through the combined images? The whole self is ever healing and wholeness comes through knowing, truth-telling and creating a catalyst for change. How do your SoulCollage® cards as a whole serve this purpose in your life?
Cat Caracelo, M.A. is a Depth Coach and SoulCollage® Facilitator, working with expressive arts and transformative process guiding individuals and groups internationally. Cat is the author of Gathering Wholeness: The Art of Identifying and Exploring Parts of Self
and the creator of JourneyCircles™ Creative Mapping process. Cat has been facilitating and working with SoulCollage® since 2007. Her dynamic retreats and eCourse offerings combine thematic journeywork and art-as-process to explore personal myth and conscious life design. Please visit Cat's website to find articles and
information about coaching, classes and destination retreats.
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ONLINE VIDEO SERIES
WITH ANNE MARIE
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Introduction to SoulCollage®
Two Week
Online Video Series
with Anne Marie Bennett
Are you new to SoulCollage® and wondering how to get started?
Or maybe you'd like a simple, inexpensive refresher course to get your creative juices flowing again?
Look no further! We've got a two-class online series just for you!
Saturdays- May 16 and May 30, 2015
4 pm Eastern * 3 pm Central * 1 pm Pacific
90 minute classes * We'll send recordings if you can't attend "live."
Investment: $55 - Includes both classes, recordings of both classes, lots of support from Anne Marie, and a SoulCollage® Starter Kit (50 images,
8 mats, 5 handouts, and a layout frame) PLUS Fr*ee Shipping in the USA.
Kindred Spirits: Save $10
Use your special Coupon Code for your discount. Send a reply email to this newsletter if you are a Kindred Spirit member and need your Coupon Code.
Visit this KaleidoSoul page for more information now.
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CONTACT
US |
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KaleidoSoul Creations |
As promised, we are featuring
SoulCollage® cards from our readers in each issue.
Each card below is a card that represents Wholeness from one SoulCollager's Deck.
Wholeness
Suit Unknown
Nancy
New Jersey
I am the one who rises out of the multicolored flames of who you are. I am the one who celebrates all the pieces that come together to form the whole. I am the one who knows that the one can't exist without the many.
Ever Whole
Suit Unknown
Cat
California
I am the one who is never not broken. I am the one who is ever whole. I am the one who is shattered and scattered, lost and found, soul born and soul worn. I am the She of Broken-Wholeness, gathered in the forest of misperception. Blinded by the brilliance of fractured perfection, I am She, truthsayer, soothsayer, half-healer, laugh-stealer; ever healing, ever wholing, ever knowing...
Goddess Akhilandeshvari
Council Suit
Jennifer
Oklahoma
I am the one who is never not broken. I show you the strength and freedom that comes from the mobility of all your shards of stability laying at your feet ready to be cobbled into the viable and vital woman of today. You don't need to be hindered by what feels like damage and loss. These are the moments that show you that you are alive and growing. You hold the map to yourself. You own the parts. I promise you that stress, pain, pressure, loss, grief and fear will not end you. I am the one who is more than the sum of my parts!
Openly Whole
Committee Suit
Jennifer
Oklahoma
I am one who is whole but permeable. I am one who can never close the door on what defines me. I am one who has an open door to new ideas and influences. I contain worlds and have room for so much more.
Wholeness
Council Suit
Anne Marie
Massachusetts
I am the one who is made up of light and dark, male and female, inside and outside. I am the one who inspires wholeness in your life and in the life of others. I am the one who embraces shadow because I know it is part of being whole and balanced. I am the one who is not complete without the light or without the shadow. Each balances the other and creates a whole.
Wholeness
Suit Unknown
Diana
Minnesota
I am the one who is waiting for the pieces to drop into place to reveal my real identity. I am the one who is just a sketch of my whole self. I am the one who is opening the curtain to reveal what is backstage.
Please feel free to submit one of your cards for a
future issue by sending a reply email to this
newsletter.
Future themes include:
May: Community Suit- Teachers
June: Celebrating Summer
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KaleidoSoul Notes
Noteworthy
resources for anyone interested in SoulCollage®
Facilitator
Trainings: Information about content and
dates/locations of upcoming trainings of SoulCollage®
Facilitators.
SoulCollage
website - Seena Frost created the process of
SoulCollage®, and this is her website.
KaleidoSoul -
Spinning the fragments of your world into wholeness and beauty
through SoulCollage®.
Kindred
Spirits Join our fast-growing worldwide
membership of people who put the "soul" in SoulCollage®!
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BLESSING BUNDLE WINNERS! |
Congratulations to Our Winners!
Christina Wilson
from Poway CA
Karen Gregaitis
from Higganum CT
Tricia Hildebrand
from Johnston PA
each won a Blessing
Bundle for
joining
Kindred Spirits in June.
Congratulations, and enjoy your membership!!
Winners were chosen using the Random Number
Generator at random.org.
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Upcoming SoulCollage® Retreats
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MASSACHUSETTS
Mirrors & Windows: Using SoulCollage® to Explore
Relationships Westfield, MA May 2-3,
2015
Facilitators: Brother/Sister Team:
Anne Marie Bennett & John Pacheco, LICSW
Use Coupon Code 50MAY and save $50
This retreat will be helpful for you if:
- you want to give yourself
some calming time and space to get away
- you are longing to
connect with others of like mind and spirit
- you want to learn how to
strengthen relationships with yourself, others, and
Spirit
Early Bird Pricing & Easy
Pay Plan Available
Visit this
page for more information.
CALIFORNIA
The Muse and the Creative Wild Retreat Sonoma,
CA July 7-10, 2015
Facilitator: Cat Caracelo
This all inclusive creative retreat is offered in a lush Sonoma
Retreat space nestled in the oaks, surrounded by gardens, water,
trees and sacred space where you can travel into the dance of life
as you explore the many faces of your creative wild. Seek
archetypal energies of your muse and find the language of your
soul's path through SoulCollage®, mixed media and assemblage. Find
enchantment and delight as you gather your gypsy stories and
connect to your mythic self in the Valley of the Moon. Pay in four
smaller payments if you like.
Visit this
page for more information.
WISCONSIN
Finding Your Inner Compass with SoulCollage®
and Musical Soul Journeying Willard,
WI July 24-26, 2015
Facilitator: Audrey Chowdhury
If you are feeling lost during these times of great transition…This
is your chance to stop, reflect, and recover your inner wisdom.This
retreat is designed to help you reconnect with your heart's desire.
You will have the opportunity to:
- journey through the realm
of the soul through Integrative Breathwork, or musical soul
journeying
- create SoulCollage®
cards
- create mandalas (circle
drawings using pastels)
- share with kindred
spirits
- walk in the beautiful
wooded grounds
- eat delicious, organic,
nutritious meals
- meditate in the exquisite
chapel
The Christine Center is
such a spiritual place. I immediately felt calm and centered when I
arrived….Audrey's skill at facilitating a workshop and making
everyone feel inclusive is outstanding. -- Sherida W., participant
in 2013
Visit this page for more information.
PORTUGAL
SoulCollage® Facilitator Training Cascais,
Portugal October 8-11, 2015
Facilitators: Linda Woolfson
Visit this
page for more information.
MASSACHUSETTS
Autumn Transformation: Learning to Let Go
Westfield, MA October 22-25, 2015
Facilitators: Anne Marie Bennett, Anne Boedecker, Jeanne Marie
Merkel
The card making tables will be set up ‘round the clock all three
days, so you can make SoulCollage® cards while the optional
breakout sessions are going on, in the middle of the night, or in
your jammies by the light of the moon if you want!
The focus of this retreat will be on using the process of
SoulCollage® to help us let go of anything we are holding onto too
tightly. This could be a loved one, a lifetime pattern or way of
thinking, old memories that no longer serve us, or even clutter in
our homes.
Visit
this page for more information.
ILLINOIS
Playing with a (Your!) Full Deck -
A SoulCollage® Retreat for Facilitators and Friends!
Chicago, Illinois October 23-25, 2015
Facilitator: Michele Manos
Yearning to dive more deeply into your SoulCollage® practice rather than just skimming the surface? On the shores of Great Lake Michigan, rediscover and renew your relationship with your cards and deck! This beautiful autumn weekend in the Windy City will include explorations of your deck (and you) as a whole - integrating your aspects into revealing and effective inner teams of allies. This opportunity to learn meaningful "Card Games" with Michele is for Facilitators AND others who have a SoulCollage® deck that is organized into the 4 suits and transpersonal cards.
Please visit this
page for more information now.
PUERTO RICO
SoulCollage® in the Caribbean! Vieques, Puerto
Rico December 5-12, 2015
Facilitator: Kat Kirby
Spend your mornings making SoulCollage® cards, doing readings,
journaling, sharing and deepening your relationship with your deck.
Then… spend the afternoons exploring various unspoiled beaches,
nature preserves, markets, restaurants, and more. Join Kat on the
island of Vieques, off the coast of Puerto Rico, for a week of
SoulCollage®. We will stay at a small compound of cottages
surrounding a swimming pool, and will have the place to ourselves
for a whole week! Please contact me for more information.
Please email Kat Kirby for
more information.
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Soul Songs
Back Issues - Read back issues of Soul Songs on this
KaleidoSoul page.
Just look for whatever SoulCollage® topic you are interested
in,
and read to your heart's content!
SoulCollage® is a trademarked process created by Seena B.
Frost.
For more information about Seena and the origins of SoulCollage®,
please visit her
website
SoulCollage® cards are made either from one's own art or
from images found in materials which have been bought by or given
to the SoulCollage® card maker. These collaged cards are used only
for the cardmaker's own inner exploration. SoulCollage® cards are
not sold, traded, bartered, or copied (except as a back-up for the
cardmakers own use) as is stated in the "Principles
of SoulCollage®." Where SoulCollage® cards are available to
be seen by others, it is for the purposes either of demonstrating
the SoulCollage® process or of sharing the cardmakers' inner
process in the context of community. SoulCollage® is grateful to
the artists and photographers who make this deep awakening process
possible and in all ways SoulCollage® seeks to be respectful of
their rights.
All articles in SOUL SONGS are copyrighted
2015,
by Anne Marie Bennett and
Cat Caracelo, Imelda Maguire,
Kat Kirby, or Catherine Anderson.
Articles may be reprinted by permission
only.
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