SoulCollage Begins

I signed up to participate in an on-line group, the SoulCollage Discovery Circle, a group which will be covering the book SoulCollage: An Intuitive Collage Process for Individuals and Groups, by Seena Frost. Our hostess is Carla Kurt at Wings 4 You. Week 1 began Sunday, but I didn't have time to begin looking/reading until last night, as I was sitting in a salon chair getting my hair permed. [Anyone who is interested may sign up at any time -- there's no cost other than that of acquiring the book itself.] SoulCollage really is one word, as introduced by its creator, so I intend to honor that.

Ai yi yi, off to a tangled start. Because I was on salon chair lock-down, I could only read, and ended up finishing the first 7 chapters of the book. Then I began to stew & exhale in exasperation. You see, only about 5 weeks ago, I finished what had been a 7 month in-depth, personal, and private journey through Carolyn Myss' book and CD series, The Language of Archetypes, a journey that involved choosing a wheel of archetypes, defining them, defining their shadows, their subtleties, their branch-offs, a journey which filled 4 written-only composition books. In reading the SoulCollage chapters, I felt like -- ohmygod, it's the same thing all over again! Such similarities in the prompts, the reading material supporting the chapters, the questions, the suggested lists. "AARGGGHHHH!!!" I thought, sitting there with stinky perm solutions dripping through the cotton wrapped around my skull.

But 3 hours later, at home in the tub with candles lit and a quiet mind, again, I realized that the reason I responded to Carla's SoulCollage workshop is probably founded in the same seeker-base that led me to Carolyn Myss, and if I'm in similar surroundings, it means there is more to discover, more to learn, more to uncover and dig out. Surely I don't think I did EVERYTHING already, just because I took such care with the Archetype process? Maybe that was just my introductory phase.

Carla's opening questions had to do with asking ourselves what we want to get out of this workshop ... then we were to start going through magazines for images that we respond to. I found, instead, that I was in a mental place requiring a huge purge. I can't open myself to SoulCollage if my brain and heart are filled to capacity with 'what I think I already know' ... I don't want to just repeat what I did with the archetypes. And while I have NO intention of dismissing those lessons or my archetypal 'family', I do, now, want to ask them to please step out of the SoulCollage room, so that I can start fresh, be responsive without predetermination, and be able to listen for and HEAR the learning to be found here. I'll be having that dialogue, internally, over the course of the day here at work, and I want to take some quiet time on the patio tonight to make a more focused, thoughtful request as well.