Surrender To The Call, Living An Authentic Life

Awaken to your Authenticity

2010-05-12T06:32:00.000-07:00

Authenticity cannot emerge in our lives until we are able to observe with clarity the powerful archetypal forces that have been dictating our choices.

Objective psyche's voice is like a low frequency, always humming in the background, often unobserved. It is within the symbolic language of our dreams that we can begin to tune into that frequency and establish a solid connection.

When this connection is made it has a profound impact on us! We wake up. Vital energy is awakened and we become unstuck - able to move into the next phase of our life with increased clarity and focus.

The discipline involved in reading patterns is essential to our awakening.

Too often our subjective lens dilutes the power of the symbolic language, much like the volume of our T.V. drowns out the hum of our refrigerator, or the ticking sound of our clock. Though the refrigerator continues to hum in the background and our clocks continue to tick.

Visit http://www.surrendertothecall.com and learn how you can begin to tune into the frequency of objective psyche's presence in your life.

If you live in Rochester, New York you can join us at our Monthly Workshops, or you can purchase the audio recordings. Private consultations can also be arranged by phone.

Each one of us has within us the capacity to live our lives with mindfulness. To be awake and aware. The first step is surrendering to the call of a more authentic presence.

Best to you all,
Colleen

Dream Translation NOT Interpretation

2010-05-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

Precise translation of dream content is a major key to unlocking the hold that an alignment to an archetype can have on our lives. Recognition of archetypal patterns and how those patterns express themselves is a major step in self realization.

Carl Gustav Jung named this conscious act of self-realization, Individuation. The life-long process is a continual unveiling of how the objective psyche is at play in our day to day and how we interact with our Selves, our communities and our connection to the divine.

Our Self actively communicates with us on many levels – vying for our attention amidst the onslaught of information that is modern life, and human mind.
Self reveals her most urgent interests in a profound manner through dream. It is rare we come upon a human being that has not had a dream that made an impact on their waking moments.

Humankind has been fascinated with these night time dramas forever. From ancient Samaria to the Americas, dreams have been seen as navigators through the treacherous territory of our interiority.

What causes them to occur?
What do they mean?
Where do they come from?

Want to learn more? Visit me at www.surrendertothecall.com, and submit the Contact form and I will send you my full essay on Dream Translation Not Interpretation.

That Moment of Clarity

2010-04-23T10:33:00.000-07:00

Last week in my Dream Translation Workshop, participants spoke of an elusive quality to their understanding of Jungian concepts, such as archetype.

Archetypes are not something that we can see, feel, touch, point to and say "There it is!" It is the energy expressed by the presence of an archetype that is the thing we point to - not to the archetype itself. So naturally, a deeply rooted understanding depends upon an "Aha" moment of clarity that etches itself in our experience. We are not able to will this moment of "Aha!", though, like synchronistic phenomena, we are able to prime ourselves for those moments.

We are not all naturally receptive to thinking in metaphor, to webbing together ideas from varying disciplines to create an experience of interrelatedness. I am inclined toward experiencing the symbolic and even though I can recall many instances in my youth when I understood this, I also know that there were learning situations along the way that developed this way of thinking for me.

One experience that stands out profoundly is my professional association with the Aesthetic Education Institute here in Rochester, New York. Along with an incredible group of artists and educators, I designed and implemented residency work in K-12 classrooms through out the region in the 1990s. On any given day you could find an artist linking Math concepts to poetry, dance to physics, theater to science, and so on. In the summer months we focused on teaching the academic teachers the essential elements of the arts.

This experience was always dynamic, engaging, curious and full of "Aha!" moments. We were, as a group, invited to be alive on so many levels, to be open to new ways of perceiving and new ways of offering information to each other and the young students whom we shared our enthusiastic approaches with. We lived and breathed interconnected.

A very significant portion of this work was to be able to view art objectively. Not to decide it's value with negatives and positives, not to compare, but to instead seek to understand the symbolic language and therefore the core of expression being offered. We sought essence.

Surrender to the Call seeks to follow this discipline. When reading the symbolic language of myth, arts, dreams, and the wisdom traditions, we are first asked to step aside from our subjective, emotional connections in order to decipher the dominate core of the symbol. Then we are ready to view our unique and individual alignment with the dominant essence of the symbol.

It is that dominance, that essence, which is archetypal. The energy generated from our relationship to the archetype is what we can hold in our hand and look at. For instance, the archetypal essence of a bridge is to connect, while our subjective feelings constellated around "bridge" are expressions of our alignment to the idea of connection.

Light to you all,
Colleen

Please visit my new website!

2010-04-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

I offered my first Dream Translation Workshop Monday, April 19th in Rochester, New York. We look forward to continuing the work one Monday evening each month.

Visit http://www.surrendertothecall.com for more details.

Archetypal Pattern Recognition and Dreams

2010-01-05T06:05:00.000-08:00

Chauncey Hare's "Protest Photographs."

Gifted photographers have captured images that convey an astonishing understanding of an event, location or person.

A dream is like that; a snapshot of a psychic reality that conveys a gestalt-like understanding.

Dreams are not offerings that we can subjectively interpret to gain understanding. Dreams are created from a symbolic language that is dramatically constructed with specificity. The language of dreams must be translated objectively.

Working with our dreams, that is, bringing them into our consciousness and heeding their call, allows us the opportunity to have a fuller dialogue with our inner landscapes and to heed an inner truth.

If you are interested in finding out more about archetypal pattern recognition and the teachings of Carl G. Jung, visit http://surrendertothecall.com.

Be well,
Colleen

Constellations

2009-03-03T15:42:00.000-08:00

Looking up at the sky on a clear, bright night the constellations can be vividly seen. The conditions must be right for this crisp view. One must first be conscious enough to observe nature, the stars must be bright, and the sky clear. Yet the stars are there, whether or not we are able or willing to view them.

Alignments and constellations (patterns and arrangements) are the foundation of our lives, and they, like the stars, are there, regardless of our ability or willingness to view them.

We are all constructing, and at the same time contained within, a constellation of energies. These constellations are created by our relationships, our work, our thoughts, our emotions, our consciousness, our complete engagement with our interconnected world.

Our lives don't happen to us. Our souls gather what is necessary to create the conditions for a clear, crisp view of the constellation called our life. Everything there is necessary for our journey into a deeper alignment with the eternal.

How do we create the ideal conditions to view what we are in the midst of?

Individuation—the process of becoming one’s Self—is a radically different growth process when consciousness is applied. We all age and move through the stages of life according to our culture. As a collective we choose a career, marry, parent, take care of the old, and become old. An acorn becomes an oak. It is in itself the seed and the tree and the seed again. It's internal code directs it toward it's next stage of growth.

Humans too are the seed, the tree, and the seed again. This is the eternal return. A conscious individuation process allows our soul's internal code to guide us forward. Our soul's codes are archetypal, and archetypes can either act as guides and sages, or as possessors, depending on our ability to differentiate from their power.

And the energy of an archetypal alignment is a most powerful force to be honored.

Light to you all,

Colleen

2009 Surrender To The Call Workshop Series Begins March 29th!

2009-03-02T03:13:00.000-08:00

I am really excited about announcing the 2009 Surrender To The Call Workshop Series!

For those of you new to the work, the series explores key concepts of Archetypal Pattern Recognition through lecture, discussion and inter-disciplinary experiences, such as West African drum, movement, visual art and writing.

Anyone interested in profound personal growth and self-reflection is welcomed to attend. The work that we do assists those seeking greater meaning in life, authentic relationships to self and others, and clearing the web of expectation in our lives that blur our most profound callings.

If you are interested in learning more about the work and the inter-disciplinary nature of the workshops, or if you want the 2009 Series schedule and reading list, you must visit the http://www.bushmango.com/colleen.html.

I will continue to write frequently about the concepts being explored in our sessions on this Blog.

Reflections

2009-02-26T05:01:00.000-08:00

All that is within us is mirrored back to us from the external world—our lightness, our darkness, our conflicts, our compassion.

Our mirrors come in many forms. Co-workers, children, parents—everyone we relate to—are in some way a reflection of who we are, as is the natural world, seen and unseen.

It is in our most charged relationships where there exists the most potential to dig in deep and begin to assimilate some of our projections. Yet the relationships that are most charged are often those in which we are most invested, and therefore vulnerable.

And where we are most invested and most vulnerable is too often where we project as a way to protect our egos from having to deflate in order to assimilate more understanding and acceptance of who we fully are.

Assimilating newly conscious material tests our capacity to hold the unknown, “to hold the tension of the opposites,” as Carl G. Jung would say. Being in a place of non-resistance to deeper understanding occurs only when we are willing to surrender our ego's needs to be safe, right, and static.

Our call is to nourish our dynamic and evolving selves. The projections that act as barriers to our relationships with our selves and others need to be digested once they have ripened to the point of recognition.

Often, by the time we are able to recognize a projection we are also able to see long-held patterns we have established around it. We realize the projection has become a belief system. We realize that we have needed it in order to know our role in the drama.

Letting go of a projection leaves us with having to redefine ourselves and become responsible for our own choices.

I think that most conscious adults understand this on some level. Yet how many of us still find that we hold expectations of others, in some form, for our psychological well-being? How many of us are still living with cultural expectations, such as the expectations of gender placed upon us by Patriarchal Society, or the expectations of Logos over Eros placed upon us by Newtonian Physics?

We live in a web of projections cast upon us and reflected back to us daily. If our intention is to engage authentically with our universe we must learn to distinguish “you” from “me” and “me” from “it” as we move deeper into our interconnected universe.

Light to you all,
Colleen

Projection

2009-02-24T18:52:00.000-08:00

"Projection [of our own shadow] makes the whole world a replica of our own unknown face."
Carl Gustav Jung

When we are not conscious of our inner landscape (and we can never be totally conscious of that dynamic spiral of self) our unfinished business appears in others.

Projection can be very subtle or carry with it an emotional charge, like when someone attracts or repels you strongly.

Ah, there's a clue that projection is engaged!

Falling in love is a projection. Many times the relationship ends once the projections are torn way. The other person emerges as he or she truly is and doesn’t live up to our expectations. The man who in the beginning made you feel desirable and secure isn't doing the things you expect him to do to sustain that euphoria of a new relationship. The woman you fell in love with for her independent nature begins to want more of your time and energy.

Once we begin to tear down the projections we have placed upon others and unburden our selves of the projections placed upon us, relationships come to a crossroads. Seeing our selves and others for who they truly are can be frightening, because it asks us to let go of the perception that another will complete us, instead of complement us.

Deep and nourishing relationships can develop only when we are actively and consciously engaged in the process of becoming our authentic selves and inviting and allowing the other to be his or her authentic self.

Projection can occur in all relationships—romantic, parent/child, friends, authority figures, celebrities, world leaders. Even our relationship with God brings projection into the mix.

Projection often leads one to view others as responsible when you are not getting what you need or want, because along with projection comes a heavy, heavy dose of expectation.

Projecting responsibility on another to make our lives right robs of us of the power we have to take full and radical responsibility for our own life and choices!

Shadow

2009-02-21T07:13:00.000-08:00

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

~ Carl Jung
Alchemical Studies, Vol 13, paragraph 335
(pg 265)

Do you remember when, as a child, shadows were play mates? I remember running from my shadow, making shadow puppets and using pencils to create shadow in drawings.

Shadow remains my playmate in that she teases out the unrealized aspects of my personality that are mirrored back at me from others, or more precisely, my emotional reactions to others. She shows me secrets of myself that lie dormant in the creases and folds of my humanness. Sometimes she shows up as the antagonist and pokes at every bit of soft tissue available and other times she slips in and allows me a glimpse at what it is I have the potential to embody, should I find the courage.

Shadow makes it self known when psychological growth is available to us. Yet that budding pushes our comfort zones and resistance is often the response. Our jealousies aroused rarely act as an immediate and open door, inviting greater self realization or actualization. Instead, our shadows often close doors and incite feelings of loneliness, shame and guilt and their contents are more than our egos are prepared to digest.

Too often we tuck away aspects of our selves in the back of a drawer, in the corners of our attics, among the cobwebs in our basements. We silence our unrealized potential, and all of the "little things" are put aside to deal with when the time is right. Somehow that drawer is eventually pulled open and the contents fall on the floor, the attic corner is revealed by a leak in the ceiling, or that basement shelf is rattled, demanding attention.

The material of Shadow asks us first to identify that the discomfort is not from an external source, but instead an unconscious part of ourselves seeking to awaken from slumber. Once awakened, Shadow asks us to "play", to engage in dialogue, without expectation or judgment. And finally, it asks us to digest the contents of that dialogue and to assimilate it into our dynamic and evolving understanding of our selves.

People have shadows. Families have shadows. Organizations and even countries have shadows.

When we take radical responsibility for our lives (no small order!) we must encounter our shadow, or our shadow will eventually eat us alive.

In our resistance toward Shadow we find many tricks to deny its existence.

Projection is a tool in everyone's tool box. It is readily available to cast blame or adoration!

I'll write more on that soon.

Wishing you all light,
Colleen