Soul Work
As I already outlined in my last blog, soul work is difficult, it's messy, it's emotional and tumultuous. And really, there is simply no way to move through this journey than to move through it. Coming back from my disorienting dilemma experience in Central America, I found a world where my paradigm clashed with the world that I stepped back into on my return.
Dirkx (2008 & 2012) reflected on three aspects of soul work; emotion, imagination, and story-telling. As I reflect back to this time in my life, I remember it as a moment of time where my perspective of the world shattered and fell away. The image above was taken at this place and in this moment in time - representative of what I was going through on my transformative journey. Highly emotional is what I remember most about this time and being extremely frustrated with myself and my world. What I did not understand at the time was that these emotions were not simply psychological reactions to a difficult challenge, these emotions, messengers of the soul, were my conscious awareness of an subconscious process - my soul was transforming, my old ways of thinking were falling away, and I was in the process of creating new stories about my world through imagination and struggle. It was through these emotional reactions that the old was shed and the new created. After all, my deeply felt emotions were really sources of energy disguised as "disruptions of consciousness" (Dirkx, 2012, p 120). These disruptions are the gateway to unite the conscious and subconscious realms.
"Beautiful are those whose brokenness gives birth to transformation and wisdom." John Mark Green
References
Dirkx, J. (2008). Care of the self: Mythopoetic dimensions of professional preparation and development. In T. Leonard & P. Willis (Eds.), Pedagogies of the imagination: Mythopoetic curriculum in educational practice (pp. 65-83). New York, NY: Springer.
Dirkx, J. (2012). Nurturing soul work: A Jungian approach to transformative learning. In E. W. Taylor, P. Cranton & Associates (Eds.), The handbook of transformative learning (pp. 116-130). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Holland, P. E., & Garman, N. B. (2008). Watching with two eyes: The place of the mythopoetic in curriculum inquiry. In T. Leonard, P. Willis (Eds.), Pedagogies of the imagination: Mythopoetic curriculum in educational practice (pp. 11-30). New York, NY: Springer.
Lazardsfeld-Jensen, A. (2014). Telling stories out of school: Experiencing the paramedic's oral traditions and role dissonance. Nurse education in practice 14 (pp. 734-739). DOI: http//dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2014.10.001.
Dirkx (2008 & 2012) reflected on three aspects of soul work; emotion, imagination, and story-telling. As I reflect back to this time in my life, I remember it as a moment of time where my perspective of the world shattered and fell away. The image above was taken at this place and in this moment in time - representative of what I was going through on my transformative journey. Highly emotional is what I remember most about this time and being extremely frustrated with myself and my world. What I did not understand at the time was that these emotions were not simply psychological reactions to a difficult challenge, these emotions, messengers of the soul, were my conscious awareness of an subconscious process - my soul was transforming, my old ways of thinking were falling away, and I was in the process of creating new stories about my world through imagination and struggle. It was through these emotional reactions that the old was shed and the new created. After all, my deeply felt emotions were really sources of energy disguised as "disruptions of consciousness" (Dirkx, 2012, p 120). These disruptions are the gateway to unite the conscious and subconscious realms.
Through our imagination, we explore new insights and meanings. Holland and Garman (2008) describe the process of using our imagination to create new understandings as duality of sight; we use both 'eyes' to develop new growth. Through one eye, we destroy the symbols and myths of the old, false realities - we strip away what we previously believed in a process called demystification. Through the other eye, we find new or previously hidden sources of meaning (symbols and myths). The authors propose that this two-eyed duality is the process by which we gain fuller understanding and create new personal stories and myths.
Stripping and discovering meaning is in no way an easy process, definitely not meant for the faint of heart. The image above was taken in such a moment, lost within myself and exploring my world using both eyes, as Holland and Garman refer. I stopped at this point on a trail through the Canadian Shield and dropped to the ground on my stomach. I must have spent hours laying there, lost in the miniature world of the forest floor - mosses, lichens, insects, needles, leaves, cones. In this place and time, I was given a moment to dissect my messy, emotional stories and begin the process of reflecting, creating, and discovering the new world. Within my soul, hard at work, I was discovering new stories. I found new symbols and myths to describe what I was experiencing.
"Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed." Thich Nhat Hanh
It was time to change my story and as Dirkx (2012) identifies, story-telling and myth making are one of the fundamental dimensions of spiritual learning and transformation. Lazarsfeld-Jensen (2014) and Holland & Garman (2008) describe the power of story to create or destroy the status quo and the individual's inclusion or exclusion in social circles (note that this theme of social circles will be emerging in future blog posts in a significant way). Story-telling is firmly rooted in the work of the soul. Myths are embedded within both the conscious and the subconscious realms of knowledge and these two realms are brought together through story-telling, myth construction, and revision of understanding...or as Dirkx calls it - soul work.
References
Dirkx, J. (2008). Care of the self: Mythopoetic dimensions of professional preparation and development. In T. Leonard & P. Willis (Eds.), Pedagogies of the imagination: Mythopoetic curriculum in educational practice (pp. 65-83). New York, NY: Springer.
Dirkx, J. (2012). Nurturing soul work: A Jungian approach to transformative learning. In E. W. Taylor, P. Cranton & Associates (Eds.), The handbook of transformative learning (pp. 116-130). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Holland, P. E., & Garman, N. B. (2008). Watching with two eyes: The place of the mythopoetic in curriculum inquiry. In T. Leonard, P. Willis (Eds.), Pedagogies of the imagination: Mythopoetic curriculum in educational practice (pp. 11-30). New York, NY: Springer.
Lazardsfeld-Jensen, A. (2014). Telling stories out of school: Experiencing the paramedic's oral traditions and role dissonance. Nurse education in practice 14 (pp. 734-739). DOI: http//dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2014.10.001.
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