Dear Dream Tending Community,
This week’s Tending Tuesday continues the exploration of the foundations of the Dream Tending and Deep Imagination Certificate I program, which is currently accepting limited applications. Today’s topic, The World’s Soul, follows The Living Image, and The Intolerable Image.
On Sunday afternoon, I spent a precious few minutes sitting on my screened-in back porch and noticed the life all around me. The life hosted by several acres of woods in eastern North Carolina. I noticed the shades of green in the grasses, bushes and tree leaves that were just hinting at the turn of the seasons with their yellow and orange hues.
I could hear birds call in a chorus, some soloists and several notes of call and response. I watched the wind rustling the leaves in the trees. My wind chimes sounded from time to time. There was stillness, then movement, then stillness again. Tiny yellow butterflies and a male cardinal hopping from branch to branch caught my attention. My inhales grew longer and deeper, and I could feel the tension draining out the soles of my feet. The just beingness of it all touched me deeply.
Yet, I also sensed a sadness in myself as I wished that I could just stay in that place for the rest of the day without the pressure of schedule and obligation. Like most, I rarely take the time to just sit, be and notice the aliveness all around me, and sense the world behind, beyond, betwixt and between the world – the world’s soul.
The world’s soul nurtures our own soul. These glimpses, hints and intimations of the ensouled world – the anima mundi – can happen spontaneously or can be intentionally sought out when we need refreshment and renewal.
The concept that the world is alive and animated is at the heart of the Dream Tending approach. When we attune to an animated world, through noticing and listening, we can tend to the essence, to the “soul-spark” of all things including our own dream images. This is what makes Dream Tending so unique and special.
As I paid attention to the beingness of everything around me, I savored the world’s soul, my and our place in the grand scheme of things. People, creatures, environment, all interconnected and interdependent with the soul, web, and weave of life coming to a gentler, kinder tending of our own, other’s and the World’s Soul.
EXERCISE:
1. Take five minutes today to sit quietly and wake up to what’s alive and animated around you.
2. Notice sound, temperature, creatures, colors, and what’s happening inside the body and the imagination.
3. Stay with the experience of just beingness. Within this ecosystem, experience belonging.
In dreamtime,
Rev. Kathie McCutcheon
Interfaith Minister/Chaplain
Mentor of the Academy of Imaginal Arts and Sciences
Interfaith Minister/Chaplain
Mentor of the Academy of Imaginal Arts and Sciences
Inside The Curious Mind
This is a quote that resonated with me this week…
“Our deepest suffering comes from feelings of separation, and as a species, our great task is realizing our belonging—to our bodies and hearts, to each other, to the living web of all beings, to formless loving awareness.”
-Tara Brach
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Stephen Aizenstat
Stephen Aizenstat, Ph.D., is the founder of Dream Tending, Pacifica Graduate Institute, and the Academy of Imaginal Arts and Sciences. He is a world-renowned professor of depth psychology, an imagination specialist, and an innovator. He has served as an organizational consultant to major companies and institutions, and as a depth psychological content advisor to Hollywood film makers. He has lectured extensively in the U.S., Asia, and Europe. He is affiliated with the Earth Charter International project through the United Nations, where he has spoken. Professor Aizenstat is the Chancellor Emeritus and Founding President of Pacifica Graduate Institute. He has collaborated with many notable masters in the field including Joseph Campbell, James Hillman, Marion Woodman, and Robert Johnson.
