*WHAT SETS YOUR SOUL ON FIRE? *WHAT SMOTHERS YOUR FIRE?
Those were two questions we asked our students last week.
My friends Tina, Meg and I team-taught a graduate course called Post Jungian Psychology:
Marion Woodman and the Embodied Psyche.
Using the ancient fairytale, THE SELKIE, we explored how it feels when the soul gets dried out, parched, lost, stolen . . . How the heart becomes rigid and the mind closed. How life seems futile, empty of vitality.
We designed exercises that recalled the sheer joy of a 'soulskin' nourished and moist and receptive - and the sadness and emptiness of a dried-out or absent soulskin. We also explored how attacking energies like 'negative mother' and 'the critic' get activated when we seek to claim new life.
We demonstrated the need for each of us to first recognise the loss and then fight for the retrieval of our 'soulskins' - our true selves.
We sought the wisdom of the body - through movement, voice, dreams, art, as well as lecture and discussion.
Our wonderful students "got it".
Here's what kindles my soul fire -
*dancing - although my knees are shot
*singing - to the top of my lungs in the car
*laughing - every single day (almost)
*playing with photographs and design - whenever I grab time from email and chores
*being real with friends - deep, funny, vulnerable, professorial, searching, playing . . .
*reading - all over the map
*walking in nature
So why don't I do those things all the time?
What smothers even the embers of my soul fire, robs me of my 'soulskin'?
*scads of unread emails *clutter *resentments *lack of exercise *inner critics . . .
*you name it!
*WHAT SMOTHERS YOUR FIRE? *WHAT SETS YOUR SOUL ON FIRE?