Tag Archives: “Anne Marie Bennett”

SoulCollage® Weekend

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Cantor

It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression.  It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open…   There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.  There is only queer dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

–Martha Graham

Today I am joining 11 others, plus two facilitators for a weekend of SoulCollage® — how exciting!  I hope.  I wish that I felt a little better.  Nevertheless, time away is a good thing.  Time devoted to looking inward, is a good thing.  And I expect that the group dynamic will be a good thing.  I consecrate myself to opening up to what is there and exploring it.  I also give myself permission to share as much or as little of what comes up as feels comfortable.

The card above is one wish for the weekend — I am calling it “The Cantor” — but it is not just about the person who leads a group into sacred space, it is about the way each participant calls down the life that is truly theirs and occupies it.  It’s a bit of a paradox, isn’t it, how one must let the personal story go to find the deeper, truer story one is living?

If only it were as simple as dropping a pair of pajama bottoms to the floor!  We would all run around in our actualized selves (our butt-naked selves?!! — just kidding)!  Voices connected to diaphragms.  Actions stripped of hidden agendas.  Sadness, anger, despair, joy, humor  — there in their full capacities, running like electricity through a wire, instead of lined up neatly on a tray —  cubes of mashed bread meted out to orphans, and then judged, to boot.

How much more energy I  would have if the ongoing processes of judging, allotting, controlling, gauging, and doubting took a back seat to being curious.

But, if this business of stepping into the — let’s call it, the “mytho-poetic” —  is difficult, rare, perhaps even an act of grace and not of the will, in my experience it is MUCH more likely to happen in a group that has consecrated itself to a process like SoulCollage®  than in any other setting.   And here I must give a shout out to Barbara Zilber.

Curious?

The facilitators this weekend are Anne Marie Bennett and Jeanne Marie Merkel.

To learn about this remarkable process, go to SoulCollage.com, where you can find out about Seena Frost, who developed SoulCollage®. Or, dive into the amazing work and teaching of Anne Marie Bennett on her website, KaleidoSoul.  Anne Marie’s passion for this work is evident on her site.

SoulCollage : Intro

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Sand-Crab-more-sand

Companion Suit -- Sand Crab

It is not my intention to teach readers about SoulCollage®, but rather to simply share what is percolating in my studio, on my pages, and in my creative process.

To learn about this remarkable process, go to SoulCollage.com, where you can find out about Seena Frost, who developed SoulCollage®.  She has audio materials available, as well as a book, which I own and recommend (“SoulCollage“, available through Amazon).

Or, dive into the amazing work and teaching of Anne Marie Bennett on her website, KaleidoSoul.  Anne Marie’s passion for this work is evident on her site — you will find images, inspiring quotes, links, invitations to teleclasses and workshops, a huge archive of newsletters if you join, and much, much, more!

Here are two excerpts from Seena Frost’s website:

Seena B. Frost, M. Div., M.A. studied theology at Yale Divinity School, married, raised four children, and then received a Master’s degree in psychology from Santa Clara University. She is a California licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Special trainings with Jean Houston and Robin Van Doren inspired the combining of three of her life passions: spirituality, psychotherapy, and creativity. The SoulCollage® process and book have issued from this magical mix.

About the origin of SoulCollage™, Seena Frost says:

SoulCollage® originated in a program led by Jean Houston from 1987 to 1989. It was a time when I was immersed in world myths and archetypal psychology, and also I was exploring various spiritual paths. I was also practicing psychotherapy in my professional practice. The card-making process evolved over time with the aid of many women in my therapy groups. As they made their powerful, personal cards, shared them with each other and consulted them, we discovered the transforming possibilities of these images. In the book, SoulCollage®, I pass on to you what we discovered.

And from the home page:

What is SoulCollage®?

Seena Frost (photo by Susan Antelis)
Seena Frost (photo by Susan Antelis)

SoulCollage® is a process through which you contact your intuition and create an incredible deck of cards which have deep personal meaning and which will help you with life’s questions.

Following the simple SoulCollage directions, your hands move fragments of cut-out magazine pictures around, fitting them together in a surprising new way and gluing them down on a card. Cards containing the images you select — or the images that select you — come straight through your Soul, bypassing the mind.

This is a multi-leveled, creative process which anyone can do. All you need is a good pair of scissors, pre-cut mat board cards, and images you can cut out from magazines, greeting cards, personal photos, postcards, catalogues, and calendars. It is wonderful to have other people with whom to share the process. The cards are fun to take to a friend’s house, to work with in therapy or support groups, or to keep on your coffee table.

A Note About SoulCollage Cards:

  • 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 card makers 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 card makers’ 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.

I am so excited to have signed up for a weekend of SoulCollage® with facilitator Anne Marie Bennett in October.  The mere act of signing up has been energizing.  One obvious goal is to get all the nearly finished cards in my paper boxes turned into cards.  And to sit with them.  Lots of other goals — like reading through the archive of newsletters on Anne Marie’s site and exploring images I can find online — will also inform how I spend some of my time between now and then.

I will be posting about the process — what I am learning, how I adhere the images, copy/resize them, organize my materials, use the cards for guidance.  I will also, of course, share the collages themselves.