SoulCollage® Evolving – Going Global

Catherine Anderson

SoulCollage® Evolving – Going Global 

through Catherine Anderson

Napkinwriter shares this message from Catherine Anderson, artist, photographer, author and evolutionary leader with you of her work in South Africa. When I took her SoulCollage course in Charlotte, NC a few months ago, she shared with me all the blockages, doubts, and just plain physical travel circumstances she had to overcome to stay true to her commitment to give of herself on this level.

This is worthy for you to know.

“How each of us nurtures, heals, and explores Soul will have impact on the vast cultural changes beginning to manifest.”   Seena Frost

Dreaming into Being: Bringing SoulCollage® to South Africa

by Catherine Anderson

 

Everything we do begins with a dream. In 2005 I offered the first SoulCollage® workshop in South Africa and I sensed that the process would be a wonderful tool to be used in healing and reconciliation work in the country. I knew that people working directly with the communities were needed for SoulCollage® to be most effective. And this year my dream became a reality when I held the first SoulCollage® Facilitator Training on the continent of Africa in Durban, located in the Province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. I think there is some magic that takes place when we, through our thoughts, put a dream out into the universe. It is almost as if we dream our vision into being.

                                Enjoy Catherine’s video of the new South African Facilitators.

 New Facilitator Alan Hofland, who works with the non-profit community care and support center, Woza Moya Project, held his first workshop with their staff members two weeks after his Training. This workshop is a pilot to work out any cultural nuances that might arise before he shares SoulCollage® further in the rural community. Alan will be sharing with people whose first language is Zulu, who have had limited educational opportunities, and who live in a rural area where there is no running water or electricity.
Annabel Morgan, a “humanitarian clown” working with Clowns Without Borders South Africa, also trained as a Facilitator and will be taking SoulCollage® into the rural areas of South Africa and Swaziland. Annabel has already shared SoulCollage® with a group of her fellow clowns who do not have English as their first language and who live in rural areas. She reported that one of the clowns even used his images to generate ideas for a new clown routine! Annabel felt that the SoulCollage® session also contributed a new depth and honesty to the interactions of the group during their week of training together.

 

I’ve also learned about the concept of “ubuntu” from these African communities. Ubuntu is a way of living that acknowledges that we are all interconnected, that I am who I am because of everyone else who touches my life. Archbishop Desmond Tutu describes it like this: “A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.”

 

Many times it is those with the least that can teach us the most. I know that the time I have spent with the people of Woza Moya has taught me gratitude and a deep appreciation for the people who make a difference in the lives of others. I also believe that our own self-discovery through the process of SoulCollage® can bring us closer to living with a sense of “ubuntu.”

Catherine Anderson is a SoulCollage® Facilitator and Trainer in Charlotte, NC. She is the author of “The Creative Photographer” and in addition to SoulCollage® offers photography, visual art journaling and creativity workshops. Email Catherine.

Woza Moya Welcome

 

Visit www.soulcollage.com to learn more about SoulCollage® and experience a personal card reading.

   Train as a SoulCollage® Facilitator with Seena Frost in Santa Cruz, CA (a few spaces still available) on September 7-9.

Look to This Day!

Here are some thoughts shared by Christine Whitelaw, of Australia. She mindfully has given her gifts of words, and photos for nearly two years now. With her permission, I share just a few of the breathtaking photos she brings to us who read and visually enjoy her blog.

I tell her that because of her, every day, I get to take a walk in an abundantly beautiful and precious Australia, enjoying the innocence and beauty of nature.

http://dadirridreaming.wordpress.com

“Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life,
In its brief course
lie all the verities and realities
of your existence:
the bliss of growth,
the glory of action
and splendor of beauty
are but experiences of time.

For yesterday is already a dream
and tomorrow is only a vision,
but today, well-lived, makes
yesterday a dream of happiness
and tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well therefore to this day!
Such is the salutation of the dawn.”

Kalidasa, Sanskrit poet and writer 4th C  AD

From dadirri7  Post –  June 1

“We live in community, or do we? Are we aware of where we are and what we are doing? Are we aware of others and the living world we share? Awareness leads to wisdom, compassion and happiness. Astrology points to a new opportunity this week to make a big difference through our own small action in mindfulness.

Mindfulness is not difficult. It means paying attention to where you are and what you are doing. It entails taking your surroundings in instead of shutting them out. Sure, you can text while climbing a flight of stairs, but do you know how many stairs you just climbed? That’s an example of a small thing that can have a big effect in a positive way. If you start paying attention to the number of stairs, you might become conscious of the number of trees, then all of a sudden birds will start singing out of nowhere and you’ll feel your heart beating and actually taste your food and maybe even notice the fragile, precious beauty of other people. There is no limit to how far you can go with mindfulness, but it does place a limit on what you are capable of — the kind of limit that makes the world safer when we are self-compelled to simply love”

A article by Len Wallick at Sense from Senselessness — Venus, Mercury, Pholus and Ixion

Here are a few photos from Christine from her mindful walks and experiences in nature in Australia. Because the photography is so exquisitely beautiful and the shared information about the nature scene so soulful and soothing, Christine now has lots of viewers following her travels.

I hope this does not interfere with the beautiful privacy  and communion she shares with nature. Somehow, I don’t think we do. We, her followers, are very grateful, but quiet as we gaze with her.

grapeleaves

Spikey Whiteface in Thorny Bush

I thought you might like to see the marsupial wildlife for a change. These are our lawn mowers and hedge trimmers! In the mornings and evenings they gather on the grass around the house and in the orchard, looking for sweet pickings.

Little Wattebird in the Grevillea ‘Moonlight’

by watching you see how the plants and birds work together

The sand is soft, short rushing waves aerating the beach so that our feet sink in deep with each step. I think of Good King Wenceslas, and how it helps to walk in the footsteps of one who has gone before and firmed the way for you. I often do it on the beach, follow my own steps home.

I reflected that it is tough going first, leading the way, opening a path for others to follow. We see it in families, the first child has the hard battles and the others find an easier path through growing experiences, simply because someone else has gone first. In any field of endeavor it is the the way showers who have the lonely job of creating something, a new way of seeing, or doing. Of course it is also exciting, and I hope now that so many of us can see a better world is possible that we can stick with our vision, our new way of doing, to bring it into being.”

Thanks for the walk, Christine. We love following your footprints.

About dadirri7

Christine Whitelaw is having fun with her new camera, a Canon Powershot SX40 HS; spends far too much time blogging, and otherwise teaches yoga, practices craniosacral therapy, plays with two year grandchild, grows waterlilies and walks on the beach.

The Birds Do It, The Bees Do It

Photo by Christine Whitelaw – Australia 

In his writings, his Holiness, the Dalai Lama says, “…taking care of the planet is nothing special, nothing sacred, and nothing holy. It is something like taking care of our own house. We have no other planet or house except this one…we have no alternative, we have to take care of this home.”

“After all, the human being is a social animal,” I tell my friends.

“They have no need to study philosophy, these professional , complicated subjects,” he continues.  “By simply looking at these innocent animals, insects, ants, bees, etc, quite often I develop some kind of respect for them. How? Because they have no religion, no constitution, no police force, nothing. But they live in harmony through the natural law of existence or nature’s law or system”

“We human beings, what is wrong with us? he ponders. “We have such intelligence and human wisdom …so often used in a wrong way or direction. As a result, in a way, we are doing certain actions which essentially go against basic human nature….”

He calls love and compassion a universal religion…”if we look closely at human nature, affection is the key to a good heart. I think the mother is a symbol of compassion. Everyone has a seed of good heart.”

“Science and technology, together with human compassion with be constructive. Under the control of hatred, it will be destructive.”

The Dalai Lama began this topic by telling his audience that they may have come there that evening with some expectations, but that essentially “I’ve nothing to offer you.” He said he simply wanted to share some of his own experiences and views.

He said that from a certain viewpoint, religion is a bit of a luxury. “If you have religion, very good; even without religion you can survive and manage, but without human affection, we can’t survive.”

The Dalai Lama

There is a Global Coherence Initiative, which is a science-based, co-creative project to unite people in heart focused care and intention. It aims to facilitate the shift in global consciousness from instability and discord to balance, cooperation and increasing peace (www.glcoherence.org).

One of GCI’s roles is to provide education and technology for increasing heart coherence in individuals and teams.

Increasing heart coherence creates an alignment of body, emotions, mind and spirit that increases balance and effectiveness in individual groups and contributing to global coherence. This, in my opinion, is a technique needed to catch the attention and commitment of today’s leaders, powers of state and corporate and political structures. It is simple to learn, it may not be easy to effect the desire for change.

But just look at today’s world view –torn, fragmented by wars, unthinkable genicide of innocents, the hungry and homeless, the scarred Earth. Someone — somewhere– has to start doing something different from the way we’re doing it now. And I don’t think that boils down to the differing political parties.

I think it has more to do with the individual heart and mind consciousness that will rise up in bigger numbers than the individual alone and change whole systems in doing so — and there is no better place to start than in the heart.

We are studying and practicing the simple technique  of Heart Resonance in our Birth 2012 on-line course with Barbara Marx Hubbard.  The course also offers a glimpse of other styles of leadership, reaching group agreement, not by the battle of wills and egos, but by truthfully searching for the highest good of the individual, community, country or world. I don’t think these methods have much chance of success and use in the world unless we sincerely do the heart work first and are willing to commit to this for the good of humankind.

Can anyone watch the news these days and not have their heart tugged on a little bit or a lot. There’s too much that goes against nature going on in our world, and it would be a shift, indeed, if each human looked into their own heart and soul and discovered what it is that would be natural and in harmony (like the birds and the bees) for them to do — in big or little ways — that will increase the amount of goodness in the world on a daily basis.

The attitude of “I can’t do anything about it” is just not viable today in our world.

The technique of Heart Coherence was developed the Institute of Heart Math by Doc Childre. It is a simple, yet powerful technique to release stress, bring more coherence into your heart rhythms and build resilience. Once you’ve learned it, the technique only takes a minute to do and you can do it anywhere, anytime.

By the way, this is just not a “do-gooder” ideal. Simply by incorporating this as part of your life and prayer practice, the Institute has demonstrated by scientific tests, that you are creating goodness and health in your own body. Your own self-healing   powers (which many of us do not know we have; the birds and the bees know it!) will activate on many levels.

Physically, you may heal a wound, unblock a blockage, or intuitively know who you want to bring your treatment needs to; mentally, you may lighten up and find paths to uncomplicate complicated issues you wrestle with; spiritually, you will, for certain, develop a taste for this compassion that the Dalai Lama says is so necessary. And you will find a sense of connectness to others that most likely did not exist before.

I intend to bring Heart Resonance into my teaching workshops in the fall and spread its availability to learn in my little portion of this Earth.

This is science and technology with compassion and it works.  I can do my little part in nature to encourage harmony and love.  These qualities do need to be birthed into our world in ever increasing numbers. Our planet and its people are depending upon it.

For further information, www.heartmath.org

Afraid of the Page

I’ve been afraid to come to the page lately. I wonder how it will turn out if I just begin…..

Begin where? To connections  that date back to my earliest days with my two  brothers — and connections being disconnected now in our later lives. I am not sure where I go with either but the waves are touching within me at a great depth of sadness.

I am at a distance and not of help to either one — only my love can touch them and I have to trust that that connection still does, in truth, touch them.

I have stood on a moon-light beach and listened and felt the rolling wave wash in across my feet. I have taken in the glory of the star-lit sky above, and I have wondered where that wave goes as it rolls back out into the dark. I have wondered what it’s journey is.

Maybe, like aging, the rhythm of the shore-lapping waves, holds all of our lives in the coming and the going.  Brothers and sister, growing up apart from one another, we have shared in the glories and the tempests of the seas in our individual, ordinary, yet unique lives.

Occasionally we have connected and touched each other with love, like the splashing delights of the bubbling surf rolling in upon the beach. Sometimes the thrill of the spray coming unexpectedly but aimed right at you.

Yet so much is lived secretly at sea with just a slight awareness that we are at sea together.  Sail on, dear brothers, the light is still upon us all and I Am still a spark for you within that light.

Remember

REMEMBER
Memorial Day 2012

Remember the men and women who have served our country in the Armed Forces and say, “Thank You.”

Remember those brave men and women who have died fighting a war they wished had never happened.

Remember the men and women who braved the battlefield and returned home wounded in body, mind, and spirit.

Remember the sufferings of families touched by the forever loss of their loved ones in service to their country.

Remember Mother Earth and all her mutilations from all the wars.

Remember the good people who rebuild her and comfort her and bring her back to rest.

Remember the beauty of freedom the next opportunity you get to drop a ballot in a voting box.

Remember that we have a choice.

A choice to choose and not criticize.
A choice to build up and not tear down.
A choice to believe in the good, not the terrifying.
A choice to unify and not divide.
A choice for peace and not disruption.
A choice for joy, not dispair.
A choice for gratitude in place of grumbling.
A choice for community and not dissention.
A choice for understanding our fellow human beings.
A choice to choose honor and human dignity in our own lives.
A choice to place top value on life which nothing can surpass.
A choice to know we are all One, not two.
A choice to shorten the long journey between head and heart.
A choice to listen for the purpose of our life and follow that path.

My friends, I believe that war is obsolete and within that belief I remain patriotic to and loving of my country and grateful for the freedoms we share as Americans.

It is my vision that these freedoms continue in our country through many of my grandchildren’s future generations and that these freedoms spread around the world to the rest of Earth’s citizens. Mother Earth is the only mothership we have….and we need to know how to navigate her seas in a peaceful spirit with compassionate hearts and willing hands to serve the total ascention of humankind.

Remember Peace. Remember Love. Remember Life.

Another year since I posted this in May 2011. May we all have come closer in our lives to living  personal peace on a daily basis and let that peace flow over into our world.

Thanking our veterans for the courage and bravery it takes to serve on the world’s battlefields and thanking each Earth Citizen for their courage and determination to hold the ideal of Peace in their heart and their  will to see Peace come true and take place on Earth.

 

It Might Not Be About the Cushion

“True meditation practice becomes how you live your life, not how well you sit on a cushion.” That is the conclusion of author, Barbara Stahura in her article “Changing the World, One Brain at a Time” in the May 2012 edition of Science of Mind magazine.

Asserting that that the practice of Mindfulness has the power to heal us emotionally and physically and thus changing the world individually and collectively, Stahura sites the present scientific and medical research findings that point to empirical proof that contemplative practices actually produce healthy physiological changes in the body –  and specifically in the mind and brain of a person.

The Dalai Lama is one of the world’s best known meditators. He is also a life long student of science. He has explored environmental crisis, human rights and neuroscience with his curious and brilliant mind.

Neuroscience research is in its infancy but the Dalai Lama has been involved in a series of dialogues with leading researchers in neuroscience, medicine and psychology since 1989.

His purpose is to serve humanity through the promotion of awareness.  One of his aims is to try to bring to people’s awareness the correlation that medical science is finding between positive mental states and greater health and well-being.

In the 1950′s, the promotion of exercise was not even in the daily mindset of people, for the greater part like it is today. Maybe the black and white television advent of Jack LaLanne and his message began to change that as we sweated in our living rooms while he performed on the sultry island beach.

It is likely that within fifty years, the same thing will happen with meditation. People will come to see it as mental exercise.

The most recent dialogue occurred in 2005, co-sponsored by The Mind and Life Institute, John Hopkins School of Medicine and Georgetown University Medical School.  One of the researchers present in these dialogues is Jon Kabat-Zinn, a pioneer in neuroscience and the clinical uses of meditation.

A transcript of the entire 2005 conference, with intriguing research findings, is included in his book, “The Mind’s Own Physician.” He believes inquiry into both the mind and meditation will continue to open the door on the real nature of the mind and the ways in which training in mindfulness can change the physical brain and also the ways the roles of the mind affect our overall health.

Kabat-Zinn allows that the word “meditation” can be a loaded word for many, who do not want to bring a spiritual connotation to the practice. He states this is not a barrier.  Meditation, he says, is about the cultivation of attention and awareness with an openhearted and non-judgmental attitude.

This, I note, is the same thing that Barbara Marx Hubbard, is describing in the process of Emergence — which she calls going from (and beyond Ego, where all judgment lies) to Essence, where the True Self in peace and grandeur is — and you do this in regular quiet time in your “inner sanctuary.” There you will learn and be all you need to be — and you can bring this gift of your Essence into your world of experience from your time of communion and union in the quiet.

Now, I can see that as changing the world, one person at a time — starting with myself. That seems to be just the exact way it is happening, not only for me but for many others.

Garage “Sailing” on Purpose

Photo: from The Shift Birth 2012

Last Saturday Tom and I went to a garage sale in the neighborhood community where we attend a Monday night Christ Circle Prayer Meeting. We didn’t go by rocket ship, but rather in our Kia.

I have been so involved in the big ideas and the practices and the work of Barbara Marx Hubbard’s Emergence and Birth 2012 course, that I wanted to break out and just do some ordinary “down to Earth” things.

I am not a garage sale person, per se, having only held a very few myself and not venturing out to many others, but this one turned out to have a rather fascinating result for me.

The items I found were in my “wanna” sphere and all related to my work or relaxation in a very inviting way. It was not difficult to choose the items I did and it seemed even with the intention of having fun with this activity, my items confirmed both my work and purpose at this time.

The first item I found was at Karen and Robert’s home, where we meet for Christ Circle. She was paring down some of the spiritual figurines she had and on her table was a sculpture I had given myself and several other family and friends one Christmas. I think my own is still packed in a box from our moving and I am renewing the altar I have in my prayer space in our home. I love this sculpture and now I don’t have to go digging around in boxes to find it. I quickly chose to buy it for 25 cents.

We went across the street and there I found some easy, entertaining summer reading in paperbacks, also priced at 25 cents apiece. I scored twice with this buy. I have been raising Amazon.com stock price by constantly buying books that go along with my study and interest. These are usually not priced as high as in the store, but the amount of them usually evens out to approximately $30 per order. I have a need to know and a need to cut-back and they get mixed up, so the purchase usually wins out.

The second great thing about this buy is that I’ve been engrossed in heavy subject material both in ideas and in personal practices of self-improvement and awareness. Now, I have some easy reads in the fictional world. And with summer right around the corner after this weekend Memorial Day holiday, I am ready to —-relax and read!

Wandering just a little further down the street, I knew immediately what I wanted at the next garage where we stopped. I went straight to the globe sitting on a back shelf. It was a $2.00 buy.  I have had a globe on my wish list and “buy later” list from Amazon.com. It was on those lists because of the money I was spending on books. The globe would have to wait. I’m thinking now of a kaleidoscope that is also on that “wait list” — but I didn’t find one of those at the garage sale.

The globe is something I want to add to my creativity room, and place near my 2012 Intention Mandala which has a picture of the Earth in space and is very related to the work I am doing in the 12 week Shift course. The Equator line is a little rusty on this globe but I purchased it anyway.

We have a lot of “rust” in our world that needs attention from compassionate and willing hearts to give birth to a world that works for all of us.

Next, we traveled down a road where another friend of ours lives, not knowing whether she would be having a sale or not. Marcia has been recovering on a rough, but optimistic, path of breast cancer recovery. There was only one sale on the street and we weren’t sure if it was her home or not. But as we approached, we heard a voice coming from the shaded garage, “What are you two trouble makers doing here?” And there she was.

We had a great visit and gave her continued prayer and blessing for continued recovery, shared some laughs and family catch-up news. Then I told her I wanted the platform rocker, which was front and center on the drive-way, waiting for Sue to come for it.

I have wanted one in my creativity room. I have one in the living room, that is my official prayer chair, and has been with us for a long while. It is usually a favorite that visitors choose instinctively to sit in and comment how wonderful it feels.  It does –for it is prayer-charged for sure.

Again, I had not purchased one for my room, for the “disposable income” found many other higher priority needs to be spent on. Here was my chair for $10. Marcia told us some of its “flaws” and offered it for free — It was a perfect buy for me at the price of $10 asked.

Barbara Marx Hubbard has lots of new language for us to get used to in the way she explains co-creation and conscious evolution, and now that we are in the seventh week of the class, during our break-out phone sessions with other students in the last portion of the weekly topic, we are finding these new terms are more natural for us to use in our discussion with each other. They were awkward and hazy at the beginning.

Barbara says we are getting more comfortable with them because DNA is in our language as well as our cells.  From our continuing experience I can see how that can be true.

One of these terms is “compass of joy”. That feeling of joy is what gives us our direction. When joy emerges up from the heart — and we are in “heart co-herence”, we are traveling our evolutionary path in the right direction. When joy dissapates or disappears, it is a good time to re-evaluate something in our lives.

The home where I bought my fun reading books also had one more item that wanted to be mine. I passed it up, walking along with my books, but I had noticed it on the way in and it just definitely did not want me to pass it by on the way out.

I got as far as the street, then pulled a quarter out of my purse and went back and got it. A perfect size to put my books in. It was a plastic carrying bag that just made me happy to look at, in its bright pinks and varied colors. I could not avoid looking at it and noticing it gave me an immediate feeling of joy.

I’m thinking my garage sale experience was just plain FUN -  ON PURPOSE!