SoulCollage® Community Update
December 2014
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Why I Took the SoulCollage® Facilitator Training
Zoe FitzGerald Beckett
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As summer made a slow turn towards autumn here in my newly adopted home state of Maine, I found myself looking forward to the gift of time to turn inward that a true winter season provides. Just as the earth was preparing for slumber, my soul seemed to be awakening, calling out for attention and for connection. It had been a long time since I had answered that call. Over the past few years, life's rich pageant had included multiple family issues and several moves, until we finally found the place we could call home and make our own. None of which lent itself to exploring the inner life!
But a few years before all the upheaval, I did take a mini-workshop on SoulCollage®. It was love at first sight! Not just for the art form, but also for the message and meaning each card seemed to hold. Such a simple process, collage cut down to the basics, with only a few images on each 8" x 5" card, revealing a rich vault of wisdom and guidance. Each card seemed a gateway to a new way of being, opening my mind to the power and beauty, inspiration, and intuition available to me from my soul.
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One in Search of Self,
Always Going Forward
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However, I was soon to move one more time and had to pack away my cards without further exploration. Four years later, I was unpacking one of the last boxes in my new home and rediscovered those cards. I was astounded, and delighted, to see how they seemed to tell the story of my journey over the past few years, and how fully they reflected the soul-searching I had been doing on my own during that time, and where that had led me.
Looking at them anew, I recalled SoulCollage®'s I Am One Who... exercise. The first card-an image of a woman on the run -- with energy coursing in and around and through her -- introduced herself to me as One in Search of Self, Always Going Forward.
Another card was aptly introduced as One Beckoning You to set sail upon the seas of change; to step out of your boat and 'walk on water' when I call to you.
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One Beckoning You...
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My first Companion card appeared as Eagle, in front of an image of Saturn, as the One Who Is Here to Guide You During This Time of Great Change.
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One Who Is Here to Guide You During This Time of Great Change
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Another card reflected a new awareness I was coming into as a woman nearing sixty, the One Who is Divinely, Powerfully and Joyfully Feminine.
The last card is one I later determined to be one of my Transpersonal cards, for it revealed itself to me as the card for my SoulEssence, the Truth of My Being.
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One Who is Divinely,
Powerfully and Joyfully Feminine
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The time had come around again to further explore SoulCollage® and incorporate it into my life and my spiritual practice. After a bit of research, I found myself signing up for a Facilitators Training workshop run by KaleidoSoul® in
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SoulEssence, the Truth of My Being
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Massachusetts. I prepared for it through reading about SoulCollage® and making more cards.
It might seem a large leap straight into training as a Facilitator from my relatively small exposure to SoulCollage®, but the calling to do this was loud and clear
-- as is usual on my spiritual journey when my soul wants me to "get" something. Sometimes it feels right to explore my spirituality on a deeper level on my own, in solitude. This time, I felt a need to share the journey in community. The Training did indeed provide that instant community with a group of kindred spirits, also intent on learning all about the SoulCollage® process and how to share it with others, with two enthusiastic, loving and smart women as teachers and guides.
My SoulCollage® training experience was truly enlightening. I learned again that the search for answers outside of oneself can sometimes be a meandering means of self-discovery, often leading to dead-ends and detours, and much self-doubt that can stop us in our tracks. SoulCollage® revealed a new path forward, one where I could draw from a deep well of intuition and guidance within, accessing my authentic Self, and connecting to the Source from whence that Self originates. And I sensed again that everyone has this Source of wisdom and guidance within, available as a rich resource for living life fully and well. SoulCollage® offers a way to avail ourselves of it, if we choose to do so.
One of the most exciting things I found about SoulCollage® is its universality, the possibility of its appeal to just about everyone regardless of age, gender, race, religious background, education, income level, or life experiences. There are no pre-requisites, no art training, no therapeutic work of any kind that are needed before beginning to explore SoulCollage®. I feel that to benefit from it, one simply needs the willingness to listen, not to others but to one's own inner wisdom coming through each card one creates. When all of this became clear to me, the idea of facilitating that process for others became so appealing-a kind of great, good work I could do in the world.
In the meantime, I am excited to continue to make cards and to learn more about the four suits -- Committee, Community, Companion, and Council. I am particularly interested in exploring any shadow sides of my being -- the parts that challenge me-that reveal themselves to me through my card deck. The description of Shadow in Seena Frost's book, SoulCollage® Evolving, as "vital, primitive energy that is out of balance", has taken away the fear around and denial of these parts of myself that I subconsciously held.
As C. G. Jung said, "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."("The Philosophical Tree" (1945). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. p. 335) SoulCollage® seems to offer a way back to wholeness; a way to claim and embrace all that we are.
 | | Zoe in her Training group's final card circle |
SoulCollage® cards often remind me of stained glass-especially when laid out in a circle, as we did at the conclusion of the Facilitator Training. Everyone's cards were breathtakingly beautiful, full of color, shadow and light. As we walked around them, I noticed we all naturally fell into the same sort of hushed reverent silence that one can feel in a cathedral. Having lived in England for ten years, I am familiar with the story of the Great West Window in Winchester Cathedral and thought of it during this final ritual of the workshop. Cromwell's men destroyed the window in 1642. The story goes that the townspeople collected the bits of glass, saved them, and after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, collected them all together-but had to put them back higgledy-piggledy, being unable to reproduce the window's original form. The cathedral website says, "Out of necessity, Winchester Cathedral pre-empted collage art by hundreds of years."
This story made me think that perhaps there is a basic human need, showing up throughout history, to make whole that which has been rejected, destroyed, shattered -- to create a beautiful new whole from the bits and pieces of our lives. Stained glass or SoulCollage®, both bring together many pieces of art/self, connecting the One and the Many in beautiful, original forms. I find that a hopeful and happy thought.
 Zoe FitzGerald Beckett is a poet and writer, recently relocated to Appleton, Maine, where she is enjoying life in the country with her husband. She's trained as a holistic health counselor in New York City and as a massage therapist in London, and is quite happy now to add SoulCollage® Facilitator to her resume. |
 In this short video slide show you'll see what happens in a SoulCollage® Facilitator Training, where those who are already enthusiastic about using SoulCollage® for themselves learn how to share it with others.
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Join the SoulCollage® Facilitator Community around the world... a place is waiting for you.
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Photo by Diane Karen Born
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INTERNATIONAL
The Netherlands (Groesbeek)March 12-15, 2015 - Mariabruna Sirabella, M.S., LMFTBRAZIL Aldeia (Recife) - In English & Portuguese
United Kingdom, Hawkwood College, Stroud, GloucestershireUNITED STATES
North Carolina (Charlotte) - Catherine Anderson Studio
Washington state (Seattle)
California (Los Gatos)CLICK HERE for info and to REGISTER
Massachusetts (Andover) - Rolling Ridge Retreat Center *No degrees or certificates are required to attend the SoulCollage® Training. The purpose of the Training is to prepare people to share SoulCollage® with others. The per-requisites for the SoulCollage® Facilitator Training are your own active practice of SoulCollage® and your enthusiasm for sharing it with others as well as reading SoulCollage® Evolving by Seena B. Frost and listening to her CDs: Introduction to SoulCollage® and Facilitating SoulCollage® in Groups. We want you also to have a SoulCollage® workshop experience with a trained SoulCollage® Facilitator or listen to a recorded class Introduction to the Fundamentals of SoulCollage®, make some cards, do the exercise, "I Am One Who...", with your cards and do some SoulCollage® Readings, letting your cards answer at least one of your questions, before attending.
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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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