Rising Above Adversity

Rising Above Adversity

When I studied at Ocean Seminary College, I took a very interesting course, “Goddess Archetype: A Psychodynamic Thealogical Perspective,” as part of my Feminine Spirituality Masters degree.

The last lesson of the course had us looking at the big picture of how Goddess had influenced us in our lives. I’m uploading my response to it here because it relates to how we as women face adversity in this patriarchy-based world today. The three books I cite are:

Bolen, Jean Shinoda, Goddesses In Everywoman, Harper-Colophon Books, New York, 1984

Spretnak, Charlene, Lost Goddesses of Early Greece, A Collection of PreHellenic Myths, Beacon Press, Boston, 1992

Stevens, Anthony, Ariadne’s Clue, A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1999

At first when I started reading this book (Goddesses in Everywoman) I wondered why the author had chosen to depict Goddesses who became popular after the Greeks changed the pantheon, not only to include male gods, but also to make the pre-existing Goddesses subservient to them as well. I would rather she have chosen the pre-Hellenic Goddesses as Spretnak shows in her book, ‘Lost Goddesses of Early Greece.’  For me, this was almost like a supportive gesture to the patriarchy. But then I read this passage on page 24:

“Thus the goddesses represent patterns that reflect life in a patriarchal culture.”

I realised that this is still the case today with all women: we still live in a culture that elevates the male as all-powerful while the female is downgraded to a lower level in all aspects of our society. It is, after all, a “man’s world.” It was then that my perspective on this book did a complete three sixty degrees.

Archetypal images inform our relationship to the universe and to all other human beings who have lived before, who live now, and to those who will live tomorrow. The Archetype of the Goddess in Every Woman teaches us to see the Bigger Picture of what we go through in our lives as women in a patriarchal world.  As Bolen concludes so brilliantly in her last chapter,

“To be a heroine on her own heroic journey, a woman must begin with the attitude that her choices do matter.”

This, in my opinion, is the crux of the larger lesson to learn from in this book, in Jungian psychology and indeed, in a woman’s life, my own included.  When we believe that what we are undergoing can be related to an archetypal purpose, we are more likely to be able to bear it with courage and hope for the future.

It wasn’t until I started making my own choices that affected my life in a larger way, and that had nothing to do with others, especially men, that I started becoming responsible for myself and living a self-generated, happier life. How was this possible after fifty-nine years of doing the exact opposite?

I met Goddess and I placed my trust and faith in Her ability to help me better my life in an authentic way, seeking integrity more than security.  I had been a “non-heroine” all my life, going along with somebody else’s choices, but now I was making my own decisions from the deepest part of me that I had not been aware existed before. When I met Ocean Seminary College, my life changed for the better because I dared look deeper and larger than what I had so far experienced, which had only brought me dissatisfaction. In the ensuing years I also studied Jungian psychology to understand more of what these archetypes had to teach me. Now Goddess is a personal spiritual reality for me, and my dreams are my teachers and leaders, guiding me to clarity and a peaceful state every night that I encounter them along my journey. I don’t see myself alone and pitiful anymore. Instead, I am strong and decisive.

I love that Bolen illustrates a woman’s encounters with adversity in this patriarchal world with dream symbols of the snake, the bear, the predator, the darkness, etc. For I too have had all those dreams! In Jungian dream analysis, the one who “interprets” (I prefer to call it “deciphering”) the dream looks much farther into the psyche and the unconscious than just relating it to the day’s mere details being relived in the dream. It is that, but the dream is also so much more than just that. The dreaming self does take random thoughts and events from the dreamer’s experiences to bring up elements that are familiar but for a larger purpose: to relate these events to issues that the dreamer has yet to confront or resolve in her emotional, conscious life (Stevens). We all live so much on the surface that dreams seem alien, but they are simply the details of the depths of one’s psyche in need of being made conscious to the ego-mind.

As we relate goddesses, snakes and dragons to what we live in our outer, waking reality, we get a glimpse of the bigger things that life has in store for us: to be forever learning, growing, and shedding the old learned prejudices for a larger psychic perspective that encompasses so much more than our individual life. We are all part of the Collective Unconscious and our individuation adds to its rich wealth of knowledge and symbolic library. If we stay small and don’t accept this fact, then we contribute little. But if we see the archetypes in our lives as catalytic agents that transform and enlarge, then we have so much more to contribute to the world’s Collective Psyche. I for one need this more than ever since I was recently diagnosed with ovarian cancer and heart problems.

In progress here on this site is a new workshop depicting 13 different Goddesses, each one studied individually for one complete month of the calendar year, or as some call it, the Wheel Calendar Year. The workshop will have a duration of 365 days, enough time for careful study of each Goddess, and will include correspondences, rituals, activities, a private community, tests, a certificate and much more. I hope you who have enjoyed this article will come and join us in the workshop, its debut predicted for March 20, 2023.

Blessings!

#goddess #spirituality #survivor

Living Your Purpose

The Creative Motivator # 34 – A Sample

A Compilation of Quotes and Images
to Keep You Creatively Motivated

Reconnect With Your Purpose

Find your own quiet centre of life, and write
from that to the world.”

~ Sarah Orne Jewett

Reconnect With Purpose

“As artists, we have a vocation. There is something that ‘calls’ to us to work. There will be bleak seasons and fruitful seasons. There will be successes and there will be failures.
We cannot control the reception of our work. We must find the dignity in the doing. We must learn to say that our work,
even if unsung, does count for something.”

 ~ Julia Cameron

It is an archetypal necessity for human beings to seek out, and to nurture, a purpose that supports their life with meaning and fulfillment. If we don’t have a purpose in life, we suffer from within. A gnawing and yearning fills us, and we feel that something important is missing. Creatively speaking, having one or more specific purposes can enhance and enrich our life in ways that nothing else can.

Journal and/or Art Journal Prompt

If you have found your purpose and are living it, then you are one of the blessed ones. If, on the other hand, you are still seeking what it is that you feel will make your life complete, be comforted in the knowledge that you are not alone.

Let’s say you have either not yet found your purpose, or have lost it or it has, for some reason unbeknownst to you, disappeared off the face of your creative world. What to do? How to reconnect with your creative purpose?

This Week’s Play “Homework:”

“Every day that I write, I am keeping my side of the bargain. In order to write, I must be willing to write badly and to have the faith that if I go forward ‘writing badly,’ some purpose is still being served.”

~ Julia Cameron

Being in touch with your purpose is akin to touching the Light that resides in all of us, at the centre of our beingness. One’s purpose is derived from the streak of spirituality that flows in nature, in dreams and in our psyche’s resilience and need to play. We are all connected to that. Be in touch with that. Be aware and conscious of that streak in your life, wherever it may appear, however fleetingly.

Connect with what stirs you to shivers, tears or momentum forward in your creative endeavours. Where are you being led to go, walk, drive, when you let your intuition guide you? What are you drawn to? Muse on the places that you’ve visited or lived that have nurtured your imagination and sense of belonging, and list them in order of how much or how little they matter to you.

What matters to you? Ask yourself if what you do, or want to do or be, has special meaning, and only for you? That connection is linked to your purpose. Pursue it until you have a firm grasp of it. And don’t let go.

Try this exercise. Get a blank sheet of paper or a cardstock page, as well as different coloured markers or pens or pencils, whatever your favourite writing, ‘art-ing’ instruments are. Settle in for a small seeking session with yourself. Before you start, take a few deep breaths and close your eyes. Think thoughts of grounding yourself to Mother Earth, and to your centre, that part of you that is, as Rumi puts it, beautiful:

“The very center of your heart is where life begins.
The most beautiful place on earth.”

Give yourself positive affirmations about your self, your life and your creative/life purpose. Once you feel ready to begin, open your eyes. Step 1: Pick up a marker or pen and in the middle of your sheet of paper, write “Purpose,” and put a circle around it. From this circle will emanate all your thoughts and ideas on this very pertinent subject.

Step 2: Pick up another marker of a different colour and make a short line from the middle circle’s edge, at the end of which you will draw another circle. It doesn’t matter toward which direction this second circle points. Now comes the hard part. Well, somewhat hard. Let your intuition tell you how to proceed next. Inside this second circle write down one word that relates to your purpose.

It will come to you, if you give it access and time. Is it “create,” or “helping others?” Or perhaps, it’s “write a book!” Repeat Step 2 until your page is brimming full of ideas about your purpose. You may generate enough ideas that lead to a decisive “Yes!” about the specificity of your purpose, who knows? This “cluster” exercise can then be used to move forward to put all your purposeful details into action.

“When we become clear about what it is we need and hope for, help comes to hand. Clarity triggers manifestation.
Willingness and humility open the door to diversity.”

~ Julia Cameron, Finding Water

Inspiration

Blessings

When you find yourself holding something
you’ve wanted for a very long time
That is a Blessing

When your mornings kiss you
with enthusiastic expectations
That is a Blessing

When a dream comes around
for a second and even third time
That’s a yearning from deep within

The Universe speaks in multiplicity:
Loudly whispering its gifts onto your path
Giving sight to your blind denials
Only wishing you to see
Yearnings for the Blessings they can be

“Creativity lives in paradox: serious art is born from serious play.”
~ Julia Cameron ~ The Artist’s Way

Soulful Blessings for a purposeful week!

© 2023 Raymonde Savoie

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Nature Inspires Me

Mossy Haven   Morning Light   Kennebecasis River

Nature Inspires Me

What inspires you? To think, muse, write, create, love and laugh? Every day is a new opportunity to open wide the senses, take it/breathe it all in and absorb every morsel from out there… Let it sink in deep in here.

A meditation to honour the morning, nature and her children…

Ritual of the Morn

Poised on the opening edge of the day
As a little kid sits on a rock by the river bank
dangling my feet in moist free air
I watch the river rush by
images flash reflections to capture

The first meal is to scoop up a bit of the river
with my pen-line, the flow as bait:
writing is like feeding myself
the ink life-serum for my soul
the page, the ever-hungry
always-thirsty, receptacle blotter leafs
that line my pantry shelves

I am always hungry in the early morning
my dreams have tantalised my imagination
with apéritifs that pique a curious appetite
so I nibble, listening to messages
the birds bring on their wings
hearing the wind whisper about the night
gazing at what the trees are wearing

Never exhausted by the rushing gushing river
never satisfied, never satiated
A ritual to open wide my hours
A spiritual reconnaissance
A hearty feast to start the day

RS

Weekend in Rothesay

Weekend In Rothesay

Good Morning Touch

We had a wonderful time on our weekend getaway retreat. The 2022 Rise Up! retreat for women cancer survivors was organised by the New Brunswick Breast Cancer Network. I’m so thankful that I went, stayed, danced, laughed, cried and basically had the time of my life.

Casual deer browsing...

Surrounded by acres of woodland, mostly Eastern White Cedar, Spruce and Maple trees, the special event took place at the Villa Madonna House in Rothesay, New Brunswick, a most welcoming and well-run gathering place. It was not only peaceful, but conducive to meditation and introspection. Though we were kept busy with different activities and delicious meals, I took some time alone to contemplate Nature as she presented herself to me unencumbered, free and decidedly inspiring.

I wrote down what I loved about my surroundings, a prompt from my new Mindfulness Journal.

1) I’m surrounded by forest: beauty, natural cycles, tall trees and luscious moss

2) I have my own room that’s private and quiet; the window looks out on the courtyard

3) The scent of the Eastern White Cedar is intoxicating!

4) I am in the midst of women who are undergoing or have undergone the same things I did last year: cancer diagnosis, chemo treatments, scans and x-rays, etc. We are survivors…

5) Photo opportunities abound

6) Art is everywhere and we can colour all we like – colour pencils and drawing papers provided

7) There are books in their library that I can read. Meaning: they are interesting!

8) There are walking paths into the forest and down to the shore

9) Here I can be in solitude for my rest and relaxation or I can be my social self and join in the fun – it’s an 80’s soiree Saturday night, or as listed on the agenda: a Kitchen Party!

Kennebecasis River

 

Kennebecasis River

A short walk downhill and the Kennebecasis River streams by at the foot of the hill on which rests the Villa Madonna House. I enjoyed strolling down with my companions. The scent of natural decay from fallen leaves, mushrooms and ferns wafted up at us from the adjacent forest. But the most primitive scent of all which I still inhale in my memory was that of the many Cedars we passed along the way.

 

Cedar

How can a tree’s resinous sap be so pungently intoxicating? Maybe it was the unfamiliar surroundings, or the fact that I was enjoying myself so much, but I don’t remember the Cedars back home around Moncton being so aromatic. And there were so many of them! What a great advertisement for Shinrin Yoku, or Forest Bathing, beckoning one to linger and absorb the magnificent smells and sounds of a Maritimes Autumn forest jaunt.

The nights brought on deep sleeps and the mornings refreshing, renewing energy that coursed through me and prepared me for the new day. What I wasn’t prepared for at all when I arrived there on Friday were the feelings of belonging, support, joy, and empowerment I experienced from then until Sunday at noon. Then it was time to leave and go back to our regular lives. But, surprisingly enough, those feelings have not left me. Something tells me I will have them for a long, long time.

Welcome

To my writings and musings from my little corner of nature. This is a new format for me, so I’ll try not to muddle things up too much. On offer are poems, articles, meditations and images gathered together under one cover for your perusal. Some are free to read, to fill yourself up with inspiration; others are take-aways for your personal use only. All content is authentic and created by myself alone. The timeline for my creations varies from 1960s to 2023, with enough variety to keep you engaged and encouraged to create your own expressions.