SoulCollage® Community Update
September 2014
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Painful Belief Dissolved, Magical Garden Revealed
Pat Schneider
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This July, I co-led a workshop with SoulCollage® Facilitator Sue Reynolds that combined writing with oh-my-god ART. To understand exactly how brave an act this was, you need to know this: I was ten years old when a so-called "art teacher" killed the part of me that might have become an artist. She walked the aisles looking over everyone's shoulder, grabbed my miserable drawing off my desk, and walked to the front of the classroom. I thought she was going to praise me. She had told us to "draw night." I had made a little square house with two windows and a door. I colored the windows yellow and the air around the house black. In retrospect, I realize now that I did exactly what she had asked for. She held my page up so all the children could see, and she said, "This is the way NOT to draw night." Of course I didn't hear anything else she said. And I never again tried to draw night. Or, for that matter, anything else.
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Card by Sue Reynolds
| HEART DOOR I Am One Who is trying to open the door behind my heart that the mystics speak of.
As I said in my book How the Light Gets In, there was a day almost a life-time later when my little granddaughter, Sarah, was at my house and said, "Draw with me, Grandma." She was sitting at the kitchen table with paper and crayons. I answered, "Oh, Sarah, I can't draw! All I do is make messes."
She drew herself up in a big intake of breath, as she was wont to do before delivering an important message, and said, "GRANDMA! When you draw you don't make messes! You just squabble around!"
I squabbled. And I wrote the incident in my book. The first person to see the finished manuscript was an agent. Her agency sent it out to one reader. The reader responded that they should not publish my book, and said, "This writer says herself that she just squabbles around." (Later, the book was published by Oxford University Press!)
OK-hopefully you will understand that when I led a writing workshop for Sue Reynolds in Canada, and she asked if I minded if she used an adjoining room to make it possible for people to make SoulCollage® cards in their free time, I lied. I said, of course I didn't mind. But what really rose up in me was the back of that teacher marching up the school-room aisle. I knew immediately that to be polite, if nothing more, I would have to sit down and make at least one "soul card."
On about the third day of my workshop I did it, with help from patient, compassionate Theresa Dekker, and it not only didn't hurt one bit, it actually was like putting a rusty key into a rusty lock that opened into a secret, magical garden. No meany-monster art teacher. Just another way to play-this time without words-at least in the beginning. I loved it. I was given a clean little 5x8 card, a clear plastic envelope that fit it exactly, a pair of scissors, glue, and a big stack of magazines. Theresa said I should just think of a subject-maybe an important person to me, or something on my mind-and look for images in the magazines that had something to do with that image. Cut and paste and make a small collage.
Well, just one card, and I was completely hooked. I learned something about myself and something about my much-loved mentor, Elizabeth Guest Berryhill, to whom I owe my sanity, if not my life. The card is rather sloppy in its cutting, but it made me amazingly happy:  |
Card by Pat Schneider
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MENTOR
Making this card opened a door that I wanted to go deeper into with guidance by Sue Reynolds. So I said, "Hey, Sue! Let's do this together at my house-let's invite other people to join us, and you lead the full SoulCollage® experience and we can lead the writing together."
Twelve of us gathered. Sue guided us to create cards, making visible to ourselves things we might not have been able to put into words. Then we did put them into words in writing sessions. I created this poem in response to my own cards:
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Card by Pat Schneider
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I have looked into all of your faces, ghostly now as twilight touches the tall spruce tree and gathers in the corners of the porch. You were so close there in the middle of the day - your faces in photos spread across the table. You, visible and invisible in the face of a fox -
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Card by Pat Schneider
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ALCOHOL You, half-hidden in a row of bottles of beer, You, set free by a hand releasing a white dove, You, ancestor without a name, upside down in your right-side-up white dress. By finding each one of you in images, I found myself finding you but now that twilight gathers in the branches of the spruce, what am I to do?
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Card by Pat Schneider
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POWER
This last card shows my sense of the mystery, this not-knowing, in which we live and move and have our being. And the weekend was so wonderful, we're talking about doing it again.
Pat Schneider is a poet, playwright, librettist, founder of Amherst Writers & Artists and author of ten books, including Writing Alone and With Others and How the Light Gets In: Writing as a Spiritual Practice, both from Oxford University Press. Contact her at: http://patschneider.com.
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Learn More About Your SoulCollage® Cards
A Live Webcam Online Course
Your SoulCollage® Cards: Keys to Transformation Audrey Chowdhury, M.S., ATR-BC, SoulCollage® Trainer October 16 & 23, 2014 - 4:00-6:00 pm Pacific Time 4 CEUs available (learn more...)
Our outer world often reflects our inner world. When our SoulCollage® cards help us understand our interior lives, they can begin to help us transform our daily lives. In this course, you will:
- Experience how working with your cards can bring clarity, focus, and healing to your life.
- See others' cards, share your own if you want to.
- Explore the power of the SoulCollage® process, in particular the Suits, to bring structure to your inner and outer realms.
- Delve into the dynamics of the relationships between the Neters in your own deck.
- Learn how the Neters' interactions can influence your inner and outer experience.
 | Audrey and her training group March 2013 |
Audrey has learned much from Seena about the suits and explored new dimensions of them in her own process. She will talk about how to work with resistance and conflicting energies that show up among our cards, and how to bridge the divide between Neters of different Suits. We will explore relationships among Neters, and how those can play out in your daily life. In other words, we will discover how our cards are, indeed, "Keys to Transformation." For More Information: Learn more about this class
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Gives us ideas about how to use SoulCollage® to make energy magic, heal our pasts, get our lives unstuck, flow with change. For basic information about SoulCollage®, also select SoulCollage® Evolving, by SoulCollage® Founder, Seena B. Frost.
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A SoulCollage® Learning Moment: Writing from a SoulCollage® Card
 | A SoulCollage® Learning Moment: Writing from a SoulCollage® Card |
Laura Lyon shares how the three-part Journal to the Self® writing process broadened her work with SoulCollage® and, in a personal story, facilitated a deep release of grief.
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Join the SoulCollage® Facilitator Community around the world... a place is waiting for you. |
Photo by Diane Karen Born
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California (Santa Cruz) - FULL - Contact us for waiting listMassachusetts (Westfield) - Genesis Spiritual Life Center Washington (Vancouver) - Inn at the Quay The Netherlands (Groesbeek) Missouri (near Kansas City) - Unity Village Australia (Melbourne)Portugal (Cascais)Arizona (Prescott) - 2KatStudios North Carolina (Charlotte) - Catherine Anderson Studio Brazil (Racife) - The Ecopousada Meteora D'Aldeai - In English and Portuguese Contact & RegistrationWisconsin (Madison) - Holy Wisdom Center Argentina (Buenos Aires) - In Spanish *The only requirements for the SoulCollage® Facilitator Training are your own active practice of SoulCollage® and your enthusiasm for sharing it with others, as well as reading Seena's book and listening to her CDs: Introduction to SoulCollage® and Facilitating SoulCollage® in Groups.
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Just go to www.soulcollage.com, scroll down the right column and click the link to Amazon.com there before you start shopping. Thank you!
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