SoulCollage®

I was ridiculously excited going into my first Soul Collage class on Saturday. Art combined with a self-exploration journey? Count me in! The frosting on the cake was that it was a free offering by the Jung Center of Houston.  People who know me know that I can be very spending-conscious when it comes to certain areas, like....myself.  I was looking forward to this afternoon for weeks!  

The prep part was to clip images that spoke to one's soul.  The magazines I had on hand from which to clip weren't all that full of compelling imagery, so I mostly clipped words that jumped out at me.  If I clipped one, I clipped 25.  Armed with coffee, I cut and cut and cut... by the time the 2 o'clock Zoom meeting started, I was ready!

I shortly found out, however, that words-- being less malleable, less open to interpretation as differing situations may call for different "messages"--are discouraged. Being an Enneagram 1 and wanting to do things the "right" way, I promptly gathered up all the word clippings and all the time they represented and put them to the side, leaving only my images.  

We were given instructions to go through the pictures, pick out certain ones that spoke to us, and arrange them on a sheet of paper. Rearrange, remove, and add clippings until the collage felt complete or rather "complete in its incompletion."

From what I gleamed, Soul Collage can become a very addictive hobby.  The first collage can grow into a whole deck of collage cards, each card with its own theme.

I considered the small sampling of image clippings I had in front of me. I felt that the sad, weird images I had gathered were much more interesting and could have more of a common theme than did the others, so I worked with those.

Each of us participants worked away.  When I felt I had gotten as far as I could go, I offered if I could share what I'd put together; however, the host wanted to give the group a little more time so I waited and glued down the images onto the paper.  When sharing time did come, I decided not to be the first one to volunteer.  This little eager beaver needed to give others the opportunity to share first.   This had felt interesting, but not magical.  I was on board, but not sold. I thought perhaps I had a grasp on what SoulCollage was; however, the real magic was yet to happen. We were instructed to let each one in our small group speak with interruption and without commentary (no expressions of either approval or disapproval). We were asked to withhold judgement, to suspend our disbelief, for the duration of the sharing time even if someone said something bizarre. If it wasn’t our turn to share, our job was simply to listen, and thereby holding space for that individual to express themselves and be heard, truly heard.

Side note here, I recently read a profile in which someone wrote, “If you use the phrase, ‘holding space,’ we can’t be friends.” I suggest that perhaps that individual feels that way because space was never held for her. Her feelings were never validated, she never felt seen, she was always a pawn in someone else’s game. Perhaps that’s why she had grown into the competitive, physically aggressive, very un-mushy person I saw her portraying herself to be.

As others shared, one by one, looking at the images on their papers and having to say from the viewpoint of those objects, "I am the one who...", I felt my excitement fade and apprehension take its place. I wasn't so sure I wanted to share at all anymore.  

One said from the perspective of the cactus on her collage, “I am the one who holds healthy boundaries.”

Another, of the scuba diver among her images, “I am the one who likes to dive deep and explore life fully, but I am also the one who is alone and remains unseen under the surface.”

The facilitator would ask which of the images one was drawn to the most and what they felt it was saying to them.

Once the participant felt like she had explored and verbalized all the “I am the one who” messages that her collage was telling her in the moment, the one designated as the group’s scribe would read back to her what she had said. It was pretty powerful for the participants to hear what their inner self was telling them, but in a different voice. Hearing their own words verbatim in someone else’s voice made them feel heard—acknowledged—and able to absorb the truth of the words in an entirely different way. Like, “wow, I said that. My inner wisdom spoke that.” The message was internalized. Some of the truths were affirming and positive, but all were empowering.

Even if the statements were not true of the soul’s essence (some hold that in our truest state, we know no fear or pain, and that we have simply forgotten our wholeness), they were definitely true of the human experience. Just having the experiences of loneliness, confinement, or dullness acknowledged and given voice was in itself freeing, productive. I felt in that in those pivotal moments of each person’s sharing, a missing piece was forged, a cog in the mechanism of remembering.

My turn came. I hadn’t said a handful of words before I lost it. I spoke from the POV of the images before me. Part of me is strong and connected, but that part didn’t need to be heard this particular Saturday. What was screaming to be heard were the parts of me that have felt vulnerable, scared, disconnected, and uprooted. I wept. Growing up, I had found that people were often uncomfortable around strong feelings, especially tears, and would sometimes accuse the expresser (spell check says this isn’t a word) of being weak or “playing it up.” In the quiet listening of the others, I found my eyes fixed on the number of participants in the virtual room. My social conditioning told me that the others would leave the meeting. Any moment now, someone would get uncomfortable or disgusted and leave. But they didn’t. More than anything else in that meeting, that fact stayed with me. The number stayed at 10. No one was going anywhere. They were here to listen… to me. And then…the tears dried up. As has happened so many times before, I had lost control to the sadness but after just a few moments of intense feeling, I disconnected, and in the numbness that followed asked myself, “What is wrong with me that I was so emotional just moments before, and now…nothing? Had I been putting on a show?” The facilitator asked if I could stay with those sad feelings, and I told her I would try. It was difficult and uncomfortable trying to reconnect with that part of myself that had made itself known so strongly but had slipped away, as easily as someone switches a mask.

The facilitator was great. She asked all the right questions, nodding her head in encouragement at just the right times, giving me time and making me feel understood. I didn’t feel rushed. At length I felt I had gleaned all the messages the images had for me that afternoon. Complete in its incompleteness. For, oh, life is never Point A to Point B, but rather a cycle of forgetting and remembering, pain and pleasure.

“I am the one who is scared, unprotected, vulnerable. I am the one who can connect with my body, who wants to feel special, who wants to be planted and to grow, who wants meaning, who wants the pain to not mean nothing, who is still seeking answers.”