November, historically, is a time to remember our ancestors and to engage with any healing our relationship with them needs.
Families carry histories, traumas, cultural ideas; they carry stories of joys and fears, of what is correct and what is taboo. We are born into already created worlds and sometimes need to sift through the ancestral influences to come home more fully to ourselves.
Positive or negative, ancestral influences can impact our lives deeply.
They may give us a sense of belonging, of being held by a long line of people who walked this earth before us and thus increase our sense of self-worth here and now. In other words, they gift us with something enduring and healing.
Or, there may be injuries and hurts, in the family lineage, that have not been healed, and that still impacts who we are. The need to heal the apparently ‘negative’ impact from ancestral injuries can be a gift from our ancestors. Through working with and through these events we can gather our power. By fully ‘digesting’ whatever we have been born into, by healing it so that it doesn’t pass on to others, we can become more completely ourselves, no longer caught by unresolved ancestral or cultural energies and supported by our family line.
In this circle, we will journey to whatever ancestral or cultural event is most in need of our attention and is ready to heal.
This presentation will be given during Imagery International’s 2024 Conference: Birthing a New World through Imagery. Visit ImageryInternational.org for information
A Journey to the Celtic Otherworld epitomizes the birthing of new realities and new worlds through imagery. Otherworld Explorers encounter realms of richness and abundance and return transformed with gifts that facilitate self and cultural renewal, allowing their (re)birth, return, re-emerging into a new
existence.
This workshop delves into the rich mythologies of the Celtic Otherworld, where journeys to realms of renewal and transformation are central. Celtic lore features diverse Otherworlds accessible to humans, often depicted as paradises abounding with music, feasting, and eternal youth. Participants will explore entrances to these realms, focusing on the transformative gifts obtained from such journeys.
In tune with the theme of birthing a new world, participants will have the chance to identify what needs (re)birthing and renewal in themselves. They will have the opportunity to uncover their personal symbolism of psychopomps, gateways, and transformative gifts inherent in these experiences. Through guided visualization, participants will embark on an inner journey to retrieve gifts crucial to their current and future needs. The workshop intertwines Celtic narratives with personal exploration, offering insights into the timeless themes of (re)birth, regeneration, and the quest for wholeness inherent in the Celtic Otherworld tradition.
My pondering on the distance learning training was partly prompted by the questions I have been asked on occasion. Mostly, people wonder about how they can connect with each other, a topic I dealt with in part one of my reflections.
Sometimes the questions are more about the difference between a long residential format and the shorter, monthly sessions. I have always been taken by the idea of the peripatetic monk or nun, who, rather than shut themselves away in a monastery, instead, live their spirituality out in the world. I mention this, as it is part of the sensibility I try and bring to the Distance learning training.
In this training, we do our work, in the midst of living our everyday lives. Not all our meetings are at such a great distance. We have at least one residential planned for the trainings. But, in general, we are apart, living our lives and weaving our experience of imagery between the comings and goings, the doings and happenings of every day.
Participants have dealt with so many crises: deaths of partners and friends, loss of income, relationship issues, children, work and all that. Moreover, they have had to work with it, as it happened, in the moment, as they were also scheduling journeys with fellow trainees, and attending group sessions as well as dealing with whatever else was happening.
The training has been a great gift in these situations. Imagery work helps integrate and heal whatever is happening and participants experience how deeply supportive their inner guides are, right in the middle of these events. It is wonderful learning to have, as they go forward to work with others.
Sometimes people ask me but which training is better? That question is not the question that needs to be asked.
Returning to your deep self
Returning to your deep self and trusting again your own core wisdom or guidance, is what this work is about. So, perhaps the question about which training format to attend is where you begin to really pay heed to that inner guidance.
It is not a question about which training is better, in an objective sense but it is a deeply subjective question: which training is the one that I need to attend?
If someone tells you that one format for the training is objectively better than another, be a little cautious. They may have thoughts and may be very convinced by their own thoughts, but that doesn’t mean they are correct. Imagery is not confined to what we think, and Imagery doesn’t judge. Instead, it takes every opportunity offered to draw us deeper into the richness of our inner life, whether we connect through phone, internet or sit side by side with each other.
I have experienced both residential trainings and distance learning trainings. The trainings I did over the first 20 years, were all residential. The last 2 have been distance learning. Both have their strengths and their unique characteristics. Both hold you beautifully and can guide you to where you need to go in yourself. Both allow you integrate and grow more and more in your wholeness.
Of course, both depend on you being a full participant in your own growing. There is no magic formula. You need to seek your own growing and healing with all of your focus and in the trust that you will be guided in that along the one, unique path that is yours. Your inner guides know the destination and the pacing of that journey. All deep imagery trainings will allow you to grow in trust of the inner process that is yours, and no one else’s.
People do, of course, have preferences. They have needs that may be met better in one format rather than another and better with one trainer, rather than another. One way of training may indeed suit you better than another one and that is something for you to engage with as you make a decision.
My advice is that you pay attention in this time of choosing. Obviously, the work appeals to you. So take the time to ask your guides, to journey a little and to come home to yourself as you make the decision.
The Trainer
Sometimes the question is about which is the better trainer? To answer that, you need to know what a trainer goes through to become a trainer. It is not a case of attending a few workshops, reading some books and then, getting certified. Anyone who is recognized as a trainer in this work has spent many years working with Deep Imagery. They know the power of it in their own lives and can draw on that trust and knowing as they work with others. They have, most likely, attended numerous trainings as a participant. (People do that, even without wanting to become a trainer, because of the depths it brings them to and the continuous integration that occurs in their lives).
Trainers also will have taken Workshop Leader Training and worked with groups of people. And, finally, they will have apprenticed with a trainer and attended a number of trainings as an apprentice and co-trainer. In other words, our trainers are dedicated to the work and know the power of it for themselves, in their own lives. They have spent many years gaining experience with the work so that their knowing is deeply integrated into who they are in themselves. That is the key element in getting permission to train others: You have done your own extensive deep work. You understand the processes of the deep imagination but that understanding has been gained through continuous, dedicated attention to your own deep healing.
So there is no trainer I would not trust. There is neither better nor worse here, but there are people with deep and vast experience in the work, who have an ability to share it and to lead someone through the process.
There are of course differences in trainers. The nuance they give to their teaching is their own because it is grounded in their own personal experience. All our lives are different, and so we have learned to meet and trust our inner guides in varying situations, for ourselves. It doesn’t mean we are limited to our own life experience but it does mean that we have a particular experience to draw on.
My own experience includes the death of my baby; of illnesses; the experience of being an immigrant and living in varying cultures; my experience in learning Jicarilla medicine; my love of myth; my working through my childhood. … there are many, many things I draw on.
I know grief, trauma, love, joy, illness, loss as all humans do. I know how the many negatives and positives of my life have impacted me and I know how deep imagery has helped me integrate my experiences. The great wonder, of course, is that I still live and experience, and daily have more and more to integrate.
Life with Deep Imagery is an ever-evolving adventure!
As a new group begins to gather to take part in the three year Distance learning program, I have begun to reflect on the depth and beauty of this work and how tremendously powerful the distance learning program is.
We are blessed to live in a world that provides relatively easy technology, through which we can connect with each other, across many miles and even many continents. But the technology is not what makes the program powerful. The program works because of the power of the deep imagination and the dedication of the participants; the willingness they have to go deep, to hold space, to guide each other and to trust the deep imagination.
Many times, over the last few years, my trainees have spoken about the depth of connection they feel with each other; the marvel of trusting in such a theoretically nebulous space; the beautiful synchronicity in the experiences they have, the discovery of their own depths and the depths they find in each other. Their deep imagery guides are there, waiting and willing to guide them to where they most need to go, whenever they open themselves to that space.
To work at such distances is quite a blessing in many ways. To work successfully, one needs to truly ground oneself, to find that connection to earth and self and inner wisdom. It asks one to relentlessly pay attention to one’s own process. And then, with great trust and skill, to reach forth from that place within and hold space for another human being. It requires attention. It requires tenderness. It requires trust in the inner guides, trust in deep imagination, and trust that what needs to happen, will happen.
Above all, for those participating in the program, it requires cultivation of presence and depth; a willingness to encounter the deepest parts of your self and to root yourself there. For without that, you cannot guide. Even when sitting in the same room with another person, if you do not connect to your own depths, you cannot guide well and even more so, when the distances are so great.
If you were to ask me what one of the greatest strengths of the distance learning program is, I would say it is this: It creates a situation where one has to learn very quickly to develop presence, to be able to hold space, to be able to reach out and hold another person with safety, tenderness and compassion; It calls forth one’s fundamental trust in the inner guides of the deep imagination.
As we move through this program, year by year, I myself continue to learn and expand. I learn to trust more and more. My own journeys deepen. I am often in wonder at the beauty of the journeys and the depth of the healing. I shouldn’t be, perhaps, as I have worked for almost 30 years with deep imagery. But the work continuously surprises me and delights me.
At my core of cores, I trust the wisdom of the deep imagination. It is not bound by thinking that suggests this may not work. Deep Imagery, after all, doesn’t confine itself to our thinking patterns! Instead, it consistently takes every opportunity to become our companion and to guide us exactly where we most need to go, at all times and in all ways, for the sake of our wholeness.
And maybe that is the truth of the program: The deep imagination will always work towards our wholeness and healing. All we need to do is give ourselves the opportunity to meet with it, to allow it guide us through our healing in exactly the timing that is best for us, and through this, for each of us to come to experience our inner beauty.
When the avenue for our connection is via the internet and phone, our deep imagination does not judge. Instead, it takes the opportunity to bring us healing, and to tend to our wholeness, in a way that is uniquely and tenderly crafted, so as to gift us with exactly what we need for our growing.
The beauty of the Deep Imagery training is not rooted in the vehicle we use to deliver it but in the power of the deep imagination and the willingness of the participants to engage fully in their process. Those who have experienced the training are witness to that beauty.
Thank you to all who accompany me on this great adventure. Thank you, Steve Gallegos, for your companionship and support on this trail. Thank you, Barbara, for your heartfulness. Thank you, Kristyn and Susi, for risking the great adventure…and to my other fellow travelers on the path, love, gratitude, and more love!
