Anne Marie is busy preparing for the annual KaleidoSoul Summer SoulCollage® Retreat, so she is bowing to Cat Caracelo’s wisdom in her column below.

Anne Marie Bennett is a SoulCollage® Facilitator / Trainer, published author, website goddess, and two-time cancer survivor who was mentored directly by Seena Frost. In 2005, she fell in love with SoulCollage® and was inspired to use her professional experience along with web technology as a means to serve the world by putting SoulCollage® "out there" in a really big way with KaleidoSoul. Anne Marie lives in eastern Massachusetts with her middle-aged husband, one adolescent feline, and a treasury of birds, squirrels and chipmunks who keep them hopping. Her other books about SoulCollage® are available here.

Date: Thursday, June 9, 2022

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Like you, I have long admired the potent ways of using art, image and collage to explore and express what is hidden within. The brilliance of how it becomes a life-affirming practice is illuminating. This is what we seek and find in the practice of SoulCollage®.

What is revealed in the layers and images as we create, is the voice of the Whole-Soul offering deeper expressions of Self.

Much like the serpentine path of a labyrinth, there are spiraling circuits and cycles that seem to express different layers of experience:

Standing at the edge of life, we seek something that is missing or unexpressed.

Not yet ready to enter, we wait and observe the pathway, both where it begins, and all of its twists and turns.

The Human Self wants to predict; it wants to know what to expect and how to protect.

Here is where we sense that a Sacred Source is held within the Whole, yet we may feel distant or detached. Our Human Self can be fearful, scared or scarred, and will tend to react, reject or protect.

Stepping into Soul Work is like opening a window to the wind. We feel blown away, yet it is undeniable that the increased energy and movement being generated offers new awareness and access.

“Soul” refers to the immaterial aspect of being human, the connection between individuality and humanity, the confluence of consciousness, psyche and self. It offers a powerful way to explore our stories, experience increased access and embrace potential.

Many of us have experienced soul loss, which can leave us feeling bereft while navigating so many changes in our lives and in the world. There is no doubt that the anima mundi or soul of the world is moving through a time of dramatic and dynamic shifts, leaving many of us shaken. Even so, this is a perfect time to consider, listen, and be called to return to the center where we can seek our sacred source.

Our perspective is short and it’s hard to get our bearings around our emotions when pushed and pulled into new situations. It’s always possible to use the power of our creative energies to initiate awareness and activate change that will transmute our own soul growth.

We are being called back to the Sovereign Soul, the Source within. Notice where and how you are moving from Role to Soul, where fragmentation or disruption can be restored to flow, flexibility and freedom.

This type of traveling, with your own soul, is a viable and deeply meaningful relational pursuit. Regardless of the energies and circumstances that disturb us, the answer is often sourced inside our own lives. We are often led back to the presence and essence generated in relationship with our sovereign soul in times of transition.

You are traveling with your own cycles of self-awareness on the labyrinthine path of life. To understand more of where you are in the journey it can help to recognize:

In each spiral of life there is risk in the entering, yet with defined soul work and practice we are able to see each layer of learning as a new experience. Fear is released and freedom is received.

The overwhelm from the world can lead us to dissociate, drift and disengage, but the creative process brings us back into a relationship with the Human Self, Soul Self, Whole Self, Sacred Self and Sovereign Soul in ways that provide deep healing, solace, connection and direction . . . freeing what was healed to be able to take new shape.

To know the soul’s sovereignty, we must also know the shape of our stories. These expose what has already brought us back to the path of inquiry, expression and soul-work.

To be sovereign means to possess one’s own independent power, freedom and ability to live from within. So many of us have lost connection with our sovereignty, feeling marginalized by life. This is where creative process offers a new lens and leads us back to ourselves.

Art as ritual and creative process are ways that we can connect with our soul, our sovereignty, our sacred center.

It is through soul growth that our sovereign selves can rise. Maturity and awareness will assist us in relationship with our own sovereign soul. The sovereign soul may feel somewhat archetypal, and yet it is deeply rooted, innate in us and in our life-path awareness.

The sovereign soul has its own identity, knowing, and source. It lives within you. Art as process guides us all in excavating, cultivating, and relating to our own inner knowing.

Seek your inner source to Freedom, Expression and Peace.

Soul is the window to the Self that is Whole.

Create and explore where your own Sovereign Soul is awakening.

Cat Caracelo, M.A. is a SoulCollage® Facilitator since 2007. Working with Jungian Depth, archetypal awareness, expressive arts and transformative process she guides individual and group process internationally. Cat is the founder of JourneyPath® Institute where her dynamic eCourses, Trainings, Programs and Retreats offer art as process and mythic themes to enrich and expand experience. Please visit Cat’s website to find articles and information about programs and more.

 Goddesses of Self-Care: 

This beautifully illustrated self-care manual introduces you to goddesses from around the world to help you better care for your Self and your Soul.

Goddesses of Self-Care is a great resource for your self-care practice, complete with relatable stories, therapeutic tools, creative activities, and journal prompts.

I am the character Sarah Adams from the Australian TV show, A Place to Call Home. I am fictional but I have taught you much about being authentic and living close to your soul. I am the one who always stayed true to my roots and my spirituality, no matter what anyone thought of me. I am the one who always stood my ground and lived from my center.

July: Inner Children

August: The Fool

World of SoulCollage®- The official website of SoulCollage Inc.

KaleidoSoul - Spinning the fragments of your world into wholeness and beauty through SoulCollage®.

Click image above to download this fr*ee Intro to SoulCollage® e-book now.