by Mary Diggin Ph.D. | Dec 11, 2024
Celebrating Light in the Darkness: An Online Winter Celebration
Fee $0
All are welcome. No imagery experience needed.
Register on Zoom to receive the event link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUude2rpj0qGdfQ3pzN9z4f6ECOfd9_18S4
As the Winter Solstice approaches, Mary invites you to an online gathering to honor the timeless themes of light, hope, and renewal. This short online workshop goes beyond stories and traditions to focus on an inner journey—an opportunity to connect deeply with your own light through the transformative practice of imagery and visualization.
Throughout history, fire and light have symbolized warmth, resilience, and transformation, guiding and uniting people across cultures during the darkest days. From ancient bonfires to modern celebrations like Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, and Kwanzaa, light has been a universal emblem of hope and renewal. These traditions remind us that even in times of stillness and shadow, the cycle of rebirth is always underway.
In this celebration, we will reflect on the ways diverse cultures embrace light as a symbol of faith and festivity. More importantly, we will embark on an inner experience through guided imagery, exploring how to nurture and rekindle our own inner light. This visualization practice will help participants connect with their deeper selves, fostering resilience, wholeness, and a renewed sense of purpose as we move through the year’s darkest season.
Join us for storytelling, reflection, and a collective moment of radiance as we honor the sacred energies of the season. Bring your favorite candle or light source to illuminate our shared journey as we kindle optimism, connection, and gratitude together.
Celebrate with us as we cherish the power of light, the promise of renewal, and the magic of inner transformation during this enchanting season!
Register on Zoom to receive the event link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUude2rpj0qGdfQ3pzN9z4f6ECOfd9_18S4
by Mary Diggin Ph.D. | Sep 29, 2024
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.
Everyone is Welcome
by Mary Diggin Ph.D. | Sep 29, 2024
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.
by Mary Diggin Ph.D. | Mar 12, 2019 | musings
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!
