REDONDOWRITER'S SACRED ORDINARY

Reviewing Your Life With Rear View Mirror Meditation

One of my plans beginning now and into the new year, is to actively stay in the moment and regain spiritual practices that I seemed to have let fall by the wayside. Because I'm so darned curious about everything, I get easily side tracked. 

I belong to Spiritual Directors International and when the monthly newsletter "Listen" recently came, I was excited for a variety of reasons. One is the annual conference which will be held in Louisville, KY in the spring with a focus on Thomas Merton. I have long been a Merton lover and actually did my M.A. thesis on Merton. The second reason was on their Field Guide page and a "Rear View Mirror Meditation." 

It reminds me of some of the exercises in the National Intensive Journal that I taught for many years, but it also seems like a perfect option for my monthly journal group that meets on Dec. 29. 

Because I have been posting at Sacred Ordinary blog more frequently lately, I'm going to try to get back to that at least once a week. 

Here is the meditation: 

Rear View Mirror Meditation (from Spiritual Direction International “Listen” newsletter, Dec. 2014 –www.sdiworld.org)

Set aside a half an hour or more, have paper and pen, or a writing device nearby.

Breathe deeply for five or more minutes. Feel into your physical self. In your body, where are you tense? Spacious? Flexible? Are there spots of bliss or resistance? Simply notice any sensations without judgment or analysis.

SHIFT

Allow your attention to travel your life timeline. Recall age five, or the youngest age you remember. What energies, sensations, or memories surface? For what are you thankful, grateful, and least grateful? Acknoweldge without judgment, and move on…

CRUISE

Recall age ten…

Recall age fifteen…

Recall age twenty…

Pause for a minute, and fast track into present time. On this present date. Acknowledge the road you’ve traveled, together with any consistencies and incongruities.

Now recall age twenty-five…

Recall age thirty…

Recall age forty…

Continue to your present age (or stop if you’ve already reached it.)

TUNE INTO YOUR BIRTHDAY AGE, THIS YEAR

Pause to idle in the present time: what reveals itself to you about here and now, the life you live, the silence you do—or don’t—cultivate, the kindness you embrace and share, and life blessings for which you give thanks.

REFLECT ON THE YEAR AHEAD

Choose one aspect of your life to tend to with care and compassion. Be willing to give permission to fine tune the necwssary actions and changes to involve all the best parts of yourself to engage and shift into gear.Who and which activities fuel your creativity, compassion, kindness? Can you create a roadmap?

STOP

In your own words, on paper or in the silence of your mind and heart, give thanks for life in all of its beauty, complexity, and simplicity. Then, park all your thoughts, and simply attend to the present moment.

KEY

The next time you meet with your spiritual guide or companion, give permission for this reflection to become part of your exploration and inquiry together. (If you don't see a spiritual director, share this with a close, trusted friend.) 

 

Dreaming of Saying My Prayers on a Vintage Prie Dieu

Long, long ago I had a dear Catholic nun for a friend and a journal mentor. She was the late Sister Mary Patricia Sexton, CSJ. She lived at Carondolet Center at Mt. St. Mary's in Los Angeles when I went for journal workshops given by Dr. Ira Progoff of Dialogue House. She loved to tell the story of giving Dr. Progoff, who was Jewish, his own prayer kneeler and she called it a prie dieu. He cherished it. There were many beautiful prie dieus in Carondolet Center as well as at most retreat centers I've frequented over the years. I've always wanted one for home, but assumed they were too expensive to own personally and simply dismissed the thought as frivolous.

This is the prie dieu in the chapel of Christ Episcopal Church where I worship now. It is so beautiful and when we had the Redondo Beach Home and Architectural Tour last weekend, I photographed all our beautiful, but modest treasures to include "in the cloud" with a lot of other historical material I have been gathering. We are celebrating our 120th anniversary this year. 

For some reason, I actually did a brief Google search tonight for a vintage prie dieu and was amazed to find there are many available though most are way beyond my price range. I'm envisioning one sitting at a garage or estate sale someday since I do frequent them to buy "junque" for my mixed media collages. If I were so lucky to find one, I'd sand it down, antique it, and then embroider a beautiful kneeler cushion. I have found that sometimes when I set an intention to trip across something in my journeys, I actually do. 

So, for the few people who read here, do you have an old prie dieu buried in your attic or garage you'd like to sell so I can recycle it and give it a new life? In the meantime, I'll keep haunting eBay, Etsy and some of the antique dealers online. 

 

SoulCollage® Card: Queen of Evil via Polyvore

For those of you who know me, I began dabbling in art about seven years ago, pooh-poohing myself all the way because I was a writer not an artist. Writing had long been my passion and I both wrote for a living as a PR person, and then fell in love with Ira Progoff's National Intensive Journal in the late 1970s. I studied with them to become a consultant and began offering workshops in 1984. I did that for many years and have long had general journal groups for psycho-spiritual exploration in my home and in the commuunity when I am asked.

Then I was introduced to rubber stamp art and mixed media collage. In 2003 or thereabouts, I first read about psychotherapist Seena Frost's method of SoulCollage® in an issue of Somerset Studio. A psycho-spiritual method in the Jungian tradition, I immediately ordered the book and self-trained myself to make cards for about a year. SoulCollage® cards are an excellent spring board to journal writing and I was able to combine both writing and art for the first time. Next I went to Santa Cruz for training as a SoulCollage® facilitator in 2005. 

Though I do not lead large groups, I do work with an ongoing small group and many of them use their journals to write about the cards they make. 

I've played around with digital collage in PhotoShop for years, but never became proficient in digital layers until Meri Magic introduced me to Polyvore in December. It was devised originally as a fashion site but many artists quickly came to find the site a real boon for digital collage art. I've written about it before here. 

So, this afternoon I came home and made a template for SoulCollage in the classic 5" x 8" format on the Polyvore site and made my first card above. The average person who uses SoulCollage will never want to create cards digitally, but it's one more thing I can do to continue exploring myself. You know the old saying, "The unexamined life is not worth living?" Well, I tend to overexamine. 

So, this card is called "The Evil Queen," an archetype card in the Council suit of SoulCollage. It could also be used as a classic death card. Using the "I am the one who" statements, I wrote: "I am the one who can cause havoc and doubt when trying to live a spiritual life, but I am also the one who makes it possible to tell the difference between good and evil. Yin and yang, anima and animus. Evil is a loaded word, and you could have named me more gently."

If I could ask a question of this card it would be, "OK, I named you too harshly, but can you tell me how I can sometimes kick up my heels and not be so preoccupied with outcome: death?"

She immediately answered with a laugh, "Check out Woody Allen's old movie 'Love and Death.' Both Woody and I have something to contribute to your question." 

By the way, when posting to Polyvore, several friends have told me my art is improving and I have to counter that doing art by hand and digitally are two entirely different things. Digitally I am largely using images of my own or others and digital effects, then altering them. My hand made art is still very kid-like, but very healing to me. It's just like writing by hand in your journal and writing journal entries in your computer. They are two entirely different things. Different parts of the brain are used and different outcomes happen; both can be beneficial for what I use writing and art for. But, if I really want to work something out in depth, I still have to handwrite in my journal or create art with my hands, paints, pens, pencils, etc. 

By the way, now I'm incorporating bits and pieces of both Polyvore and SoulCollage in another passion: art journaling. There simply aren't enough hours in the day considering I still work three days a week, volunteer in my community, take classes, spend time with family and friends, watch movies and love the Internet. But, you know what? I'm rarely bored. 

Amaria SoulCollage® Card for Haiku My Heart Friday

Mi Amaria

Wisdom guide, muse, cornerstone,

Who sees so clearly.

This SoulCollage® card in the Council suit depicts my more than 30-year wisdom guide who often journeys with me when I journal. Amaria first came to me in the early 1980s as I wrote next to a creek at a favorite place of mine, La Casa de Maria in Montecito.  She told me her name and she has been with me ever since.

I have made several images of her in SoulCollage® and art, but none ever really depicted her as I saw her in my mind’s eye. By the creek she came to me in what appeared to be coarse, brown monk’s robe with her face only partially exposed. In the National Intensive Journal work of Ira Progoff,which I’ve used since the mid-1970s and that I taught for many years, there is a section called Inner Wisdom Dialogue.

That’s usually where I would turn when life was rocky and I had big decisions to make. Her divine feminine voice is strong and gentle,  low and a bit husky. She was a crucial companion when my marriage came unraveled and ended. She was a rock during both my breast cancer treatments.  She often visited when my grandkids lived with me in high school. She has never been a form of God to me, just someone to bring me strength, a pilgrim with me on the journey. By making SoulCollage® cards for her, she draws out feelings I don’t even know I’m hiding. She becomes even more tangible than when she speaks to me in the journal. She is a clarifier.

In the language of SoulCollage®, I am the one who often feels alone, a kind of orphan. I am fearful and tend to hide in the ruts of routine. I am the child-like one who needs a mystical mother, a loving sister, an affirmer of my femininity. I am the one who is often reminded by Amaria that it’s safe sometimes to be alone. She puts her steadying hand on my back and sometimes even holds my hand, ever reminding me that I just feel alone, but I never am. I am the one who is reminded by her to start each day with intention and to look for the sacred in the ordinary. “Amaria,” I say to her, “I am the one who will carve out time this weekend  to spend with you—not for comfort so much, but to say thank you for giving me such blessed support which I've largely taken for granted. You are pure gift."

A question I could pose to her? Not a question exactly, but certainly a request at another of life's intersections.  "Amaria, please remind me of past ways you’ve taught me to be comfortable and safe on my journey and show me even more ways to live with intention and gratitude at this stage in my life. I am so forgetful." 

Thanks to Rebecca at Recuerda mi Corazon for hosting all of us at Haiku my Heart Friday. This image came from Google images an was attributed to Buddy the Buddha of Missississipi, but when I asked for permission to use it, he said the universe provided it and to feel free to display it publicly. 

 

 

SoulCollage®: Feminine Freedom

In my SoulCollage® cards, I often find myself working in certain colors much more than others. Many of my cards are purple, although I personally don't wear purple often. The other colors I use a lot are red and black together. 

I'm not a color analyst or symbolist, at least not consciously. I find purple to be a mysterious color, but I know this color often connotes both nobility and spirituality. To me it has always meant freedom.

Using SoulCollage terminology, I am the one who often feels stifled, shy, railed in, particularly about my body--largely because of my own fears and more recently because of the limitations of age. I was the one who was always chosen last for sports teams and sat in the corner at dances because I was simply terrorized I'd be discovered as a klutz. I am the one who always needed a drink or two to really relax enough in public to dance decently. My husband and I often danced; he was a great dancer but I was too self-conscious. I am the one, when newly separated and divorced more than two decades ago, would turn up the stereo at home blasting my favorite rock music and dance until I dropped--alone. I found freedom in the dancing--and I haven't done that for a long, long time. 

I am the one who then loved Mariane Athey-Levy's Movement Expression and used to attend her Santa Monica Friday evening classes in the 1990s. The dance studio was darkened and people of every age gathered and we moved, each in our own rhythm, getting used to our bodies. And then I discovered Gabrielle Roth's method, which I assume Movement Expression came from. I often danced to my video of "Sweat Your Prayers." But, I am also one who tires of the discipline of such classes and Santa Monica was so far. And dancing alone at home gets old after a while.

And now I am the one who hasn't danced in ever so long, alone or in a ballroom or studio. I am the one who feels sad that I have reverted to the woman who is no longer at home in my body.

I remember leading a Progoff National Intensive Journal workshop long ago where "Dialogue With the Body" was one of the exercises. When people read back, I was so deeply moved, but I particularly remember a woman in a wheelchair who wrote about the dancer she once had been. 

I'm not even going to ask this card a question because I just want to prop it up next to my journal and next week I'll see where it leads me. It is really pulling at me and I'm just too weary right now to be insightful.

Returning to the National Intensive Journal to Get My Life Back on Track

Journal keeping is now very mainstream, but when I began keeping my "Dear Diary" at age six, it wasn't as common as it is today. Over the decades, I have expanded on the ways I write and keep track of my life. I have always written my life and will do so until the end. Blogging has actually become one of my tools and so has art journaling, but I am very eclectic in my journal keeping and teaching techniques using the methods of several of well-known teachers. However, it's Ira Progoff's National Intensive Journal method I return to again and again when I want to do depth work. I was certified to teach this method in 1983 and offered several workshops in the 1980s and 1990s. I went to workshop retreats myself in 2003 and 2004 and always tell everyone who wants to journal to take at least the first level workshop, Life Context, if they want to enrich whatever methods they use. I haven't taught the method for several years predominately because it takes so much psychic energy, but I'm even longing to teach again.

I have taken the time the past few months to review some of my old Progoff-style journals and actually was a guest on Exceptional Wisdom Radio talking about the Progoff method with Kay Adams, the Director of the Center for Journal Therapy in Denver, Colorado. (If you want to hear this interview, go to Kay Adams Archives. I was taped on Nov. 13, 2008.) Kay has taken several National Intensive Journal workshops herself over the years, and though she oversees the Journal to the Self training, she agrees with me that the Progoff method is a great foundation for any serious journal keeper. It was a casual one-hour interview and I haven't shared the link before because I've been a little embarrassed about my hemming and hawing when she asked questions. I was very nervous. In re-listening and reviewing my guidelines to teach the method, I discovered I had a few inaccuracies as well. But, because both of us urged people to explore taking a workshop or two of the National Intensive Journal, it served its purpose.

Frankly, I'm at a crossroads in my life. I've been partially retired now for 3 1/2 years and I love my part-time archiving job and I love the freedom I have to do "what I want" the other four days of the week. But--frankly--I've been procrastinating about what I really want to be and what I want to do with the time left to me. I've become a human doing once again and I swore I would try to live my life as the Buddhist Evening Gatha instructs us:

"Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! This night your life is diminished by one day. Take heed. Do not squander your life.”

I've been preoccupied with the aging process and why bad stuff is happening to so many good people. I'm at that age where I visit a lot of sick folks and attend a lot of funerals. I feel like I've lost my spiritual core.

Voila! The National Intensive Journal has gotten me back to some depth, structured journal work a little bit at a time. Most of my recent writing had been brain dumping or something akin to Julia Cameron's Morning Pages. Art journaling is fun, but I need to sort some stuff out. I'm at an intersection in my life.

The National Intensive Journal is a highly structured method, but there is no method like it to explore one's life in depth.

It is an integrated system using writing exercises in a setting of privacy and quiet to help you:

    * Gain awareness about diverse areas of your life.

    * Connect with your real self.

    * Develop a more meaningful life. 

More than "journal writing", the National Intensive Journal method is based upon principles of psychology, providing you with unique approaches to develop your life. At the company's website which is linked in my first paragraph, you'll find lots of information and a schedule of workshops and retreats through the summer. If you are serious about exploring your life, check this out. I have now set up my own National Intensive Journal as I was taught in the late 1970s and I feel like I've started to till some very hard soil I had seriously neglected.

Don't hesitate to e-mail me privately if you want further information I can help with, or call Jon Progoff, Ira Progoff's son, who directs the program at 800-221-5844. It's rare I give a pitch so directly, but I feel very passionate about sharing this information with you. You can also get the information you need from Dr. Progoff's book At a Journal Workshop, but a group workshop is the best way to learn it. He always referred to the work as "the solitary work we cannot do alone."

I hope I am not preaching to the choir. I usually write about whatever it is that I need to learn.