Just over a year ago, on January 13, 2016, our SoulCollage® Founding Mother Seena Frost left her physical form and, as she put it, let the Great Spirit take her home. Let's take some time this week to remember and to honor her. A psychotherapist in Santa Cruz County, CA with an MDiv, a questing mind, a creative spirit, and a lively sense of mischief and humor, she loved God, her rose garden, and poetry, and developed SoulCollage® as a way to support the awakening of the human soul. Seena wrote at length about the current Paradigm Shift that many observers see happening in the world.
|
|
| Martini Man by Anne Marie Bennett |
I Am One Who relaxes, enjoys the moment, and does not take myself too seriously.
One of Seena's favorite poems was "Song of a Man Who Has Come Through," by D.H. Lawrence, which he wrote during the years after World War I. I can still hear her particular voice reciting it from memory:
Song of a Man Who Has Come Through
Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!
If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!
If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed
By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world
Like a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted;
If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge
Driven by invisible blows,
The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the Hesperides.
Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,
I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,
Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.
What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.
No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them
I never talked with Seena herself about the imagery in this poem, so I won't presume to say why she was so drawn to it. For me, particularly striking was the admitting, the letting in of these uncanny, mysterious, otherworldly beings. The first two stanzas express the author's great longing to yield himself and be "borrowed by the fine wind ... blowing the new direction of Time." But when its messengers knock at his door, he fears they will "do us harm."
Then, though, comes the urging to "admit them, admit them." In order to be able to do that, I imagine that I for one would have to
trust that they are here for my own well-being.
Like Lawrence, Seena gave a lot of thought to the winds of change still moving through the world. SoulCollage® was her contribution to our finding and living our most fully authentic lives, including our becoming better able to "try on the lenses of many perspectives ..." in order to "discover the best ways to act as a human team, now that the world has grown so small yet full of so many different perspectives..." (Seena's Corner, "SoulCollage® and the Paradigm Shift,"
Neter Letter June 2011, Vol. 6, #6)
One aspect of this involves admitting into our awareness our inner strangers: thoughts, feelings, or actions of ours that we do not like, are perhaps embarrassed or ashamed or afraid to have, and try to avoid or hide at all costs. The same goes for beings in our social network whom we would not have chosen and don't like having in our family or our world. We all have cards in our SoulCollage® decks that represent these unwanted ones, along with the desirable aspects of our inner and outer lives.
Following Seena, I ask myself, can I move towards, open to, and invite in all of the many parts and pieces of myself, my inner Committee? Can I at least listen carefully to those in my Community, even if they are weird or scary? Am I willing to trust and open to the guidance of the archetypes - those universal patterns in human experience - that I may not want to embody in my own life? (D.H. Lawrence, for instance, had to struggle with the archetypal Wind blowing strange Angels of change throughout many nations in his day.) How about my instinctual energies? They are life-giving, but can also sometimes cause trouble. And finally, can I open to the stupendous Source of all things as much as Source has opened to me?
These are questions to consider as we each, in our own way, continue our own journeys with SoulCollage®. To further this process of Seena's, I invite you to use your SoulCollage® deck [if you have one yet] this week to admit your own "three strange angels":
- Set some sacred space, whatever that means to you.
- Pick three SoulCollage® cards at random, sight unseen, and lay them face down in front of you. (If you don't have many yet, you can pick from an assortment of images instead). This bypasses our relatively limited intentional mind and lets the wisdom of synchronicity (meaningful coincidence) speak to you.
- Turn up one card (or image) at a time and spend about 5-10 minutes with it, asking:
a. Who are you?
b. Why have you come to be my strange angel today?
- Let your imagination help you "hear the cards." Write down what each one tells you. (For future reference, you can number and briefly describe each card and date what you've written.) Read it over and give yourself time to absorb the wisdom from whichever beings showed up for you.
When I did this reading, perhaps the strangest angel to appear was my
Martini Man (above). I don't even drink! But despite these weighty themes, his message for me is all about relaxing and enjoying the moment, not taking life so seriously. My Seena card loved chatting with him.
Anne Marie Bennett trained as a Facilitator in 2005 and was mentored by Seena Frost directly in 2007-2008 to become a Facilitator Trainer. She lives, loves, laughs, sings, and makes SoulCollage® cards in Beverly, MA with her husband, senior dog, and two adolescent cats that keep them all young at heart.
Visit her website.
