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ditors' Note; This article is a follow-up to the May 2017 SCU article which presented some of the material from Seena's Frost's CD SoulCollage® and the Paradigm1 Shift, plus material from Seena's columns on this topic in our monthly newsletters. Here we share more of Seena's thoughts on how SoulCollage® can play a vital role in our individual and collective engagement with the Paradigm Shift.
SoulCollage® is a process built on three magical "Is"... Images, Imagination and Intuition. People find images, cut them out and collage them on to mat board cards. Simple, creative and fun. Gradually, over time, each person creates a personal deck of these imaginal cards. Each card represents one vital energy within its creator's wholeness. In supportive, receptive groups, we use our SoulCollage® cards to get to know our diverse inner guides, allies, and challengers, apply their wisdom and creative answers to our life questions, and find remarkably reliable direction in navigating our turbulent times.
Many of the ancient prophesies declare that we are at the end of one era or earth cycle and at the start of another. You have probably heard of the Mayan culture's calendar, dated more than 1500 years ago. Based on the earth's orbiting path through the Milky Way and astrological alignments, Mayan astrologers recognized exact cycles of human existence lasting 5,127 years. On December 21, 2012, they predicted, the earth would begin to circle back around in its orbit through the Milky Way galaxy and come gradually closer to its core energy, affecting everything about our planet, including its weather and the health and temperament of its species. They expected a time of extreme chaos and breakdown in these transition years, but they also predicted that the new era dawning in 2012 would eventually be more peaceful and unified than this ending one.
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Eagle and Condor by Seena Frost
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A remarkable parallel to the Mayan prophecy was made by ancient Incan astronomers, who divided time into 500-year eras called
pachacutis
. Looking far into the future, they saw that one of these
pachacutis
would end around the year 2000, and a new era would then begin. The years between 1500 and 2000, says this prophecy, would be dominated by the Eagle, a symbol for what we would now call the logical, scientific, and technological brain of humanity. Throughout these 500 years, the Eagle would gradually dominate more and more, and repress and minimize the Condor, a bird that, in this prophesy, symbolizes the intuitive, creative, and heart energies of humans. In the new
pachacuti
that began in 2000, this prophecy predicts that the Condor will rise up to fly wing tip to wing tip with the Eagle. And the Eagle will welcome this change. Such a balanced formation will eventually bring about a more peaceful 500 years, because neither Eagle nor Condor will seek to dominate the other. Rather they will fly as partners, yang energy with yin energy, logical knowing with intuitive wisdom, Masculine partnering with Feminine.
I like to think about this prophesy. I am amazed that it was envisioned over a thousand years ago, long before automobiles, cell phones, or computers. One of my SoulCollage® Council cards shows an eagle and a condor flying wing tip to wing tip, with a butterfly flying toward planet earth. When I draw this card to consult it, I step into these images for the evolutionary shift. I truly believe that metaphors like this one, along with visual images, have great power to touch and change our hearts... perhaps more power than concepts put forth in abstract words.
Once adopted as a life practice, SoulCollage® lets people use powerful images as springboards for their intuition. Images let intuition dive down into soul wisdom and bring back surprising answers. These answers will release and balance energies first of all for the individual, but then also they may be answers that can serve to solve community and world problems.
Right now, in the chaos that has spread across the world, SoulCollage® is one creative and evolving practice that people can choose. Let's return for a moment to Barbara Marx Hubbard's metaphor of imaginal cells mentioned in the May, 2017 issue of the
SoulCollage® Community Update. Imaginal discs are highly organized groups of cells within the mush of a butterfly's pupa, each bearing the pattern for an adult butterfly body part. Developing rapidly, they can then link up with other imaginal discs, using the mush as fuel to form a butterfly. The human analog for this is the thousands of groups around the world that are working in various ways toward living in fuller harmony with Nature, integrating yin with yang, logic with intuition, science with spirit, female with male in full partnership. Thinking and intuiting together, we will join energies and imagine ways to manifest this butterfly of the human spirit.
Competition among all the imaginal cells won't help; we must cooperate and work with each other to create the shift we all envision. As soon as we are clear about this and begin to practice it, we already have shifted 180 degrees away from the dying mush of the old paradigm where competition has been a primary rule of the game. This is not an easy shift for most of us to make. Competition is a survival element, embedded in our primitive human form, and it's an energy that helped our species survive. There's a drive in most of us to compete for what we believe we must have to be happy and also for safety of self and family.
However, when the eagle is willing to fly wing tip to wing tip with the condor, we begin to see that real danger is minimal and that there is an abundance of essential resources, both in nature and in human hearts -- if we partner, share, and think outside the box.
It is not that we can, or should, get rid of our Competitor Self, or really any one of our inner ego parts. We just need to recognize them consciously and work with their energy so they can benefit self and others in our communities.
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Bert the Beat by Seena Frost
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I made a SoulCollage® card for my Competitor Self years ago,
Bert the Beat. The football player on a sideline bench looks bruised and beaten up. He's available to go back into the game, if some Coach part of me insists, but he's tired of it. Bert was a good player; I respect him. However, he came to dominate my inner parts. It was important for me to win, to be first in many endeavors. This took tremendous effort and created a sense of being alone on my life course -- outweighing his positive energy, until SoulCollage® helped me become more conscious of him. His drive and focus then helped me write my books and train SoulCollage® Facilitators. Now I reserve Bert for an occasional game of ping pong or Scrabble!
So, to summarize this element that SoulCollage® offers: it is the opportunity to be in a
community where we create with images and imagination and intuition... and where we refrain from acting out our competitor parts and our judgmental parts. Here we can show all our inner parts and let ourselves be vulnerable without fear of rejection. We find ways to share our deep wisdom, as well as our inevitable stupidities. This is one integral element in SoulCollage®, as in the many other communities where a positive shift of human consciousness is happening.
1 Random House Dictionary defines
paradigm as "a cognitive framework containing the basic assumptions and ways of thinking commonly accepted by a [...] community.
