In this workshop we will make four books to use for recording our quest for inner wisdom concerning our selves.
By means of exercises and visualizations, we will recall the events and memories of our lives that led us to form our own unique spiritual lenses. We will discover the history of our unfolding awareness of mystery, spirit, life-force or God in our lives and become familiar with our own unique spiritual temperaments. Then we will be in a position to decide how to consciously pursue our individual paths. This will be done through visualizations, memories of childhood, events, places, objects, dreams and epiphanies in our lives.
The four different types of books we make will give us four different perspectives of our selves.
First we will make a journal whose stitched pages can be turned one at a time. This will help us to see a chronological vista.
Second we will make an accordion book whose unfolding pages will give us a view of the unfolding stages of our lives.
Third we will make a scroll that, through its motion of unfurling, will allow us a more organic view on our life, beginning as a tightly furled bud that gradually opens and flowers. Beginning as embryos, we are born and grow through life stages of infant, child, adolescent, adult, and elder.
Fourth, we will make a moebius strip that will provide us with away to see the magical continuity of “inside” and “outside.”
You Receive: 1. Writing Your Spiritual Autobiography (the book) 4. Accordion book kit - "unfolding life" 2. Visualizations (CD or Download) 5. Scroll kit- "unfurling life" 3. Journal kit - "turning the pages of life" 6. Paper trim for pages
EXERPTS: Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Making the Book 6. Dreams 2. Childhood 7. Inner Guide/higher self, unconscious… 3. Important People 8. Life Map 4. Healing 9. Sacred Texts 5. Crisis or Despair 10. Taking Stock
Bibliography
From the INTRODUCTION:
As we approach the task of unearthing the treasures of our own spiritual lives, it is fitting that we dip into the ancient tradition of making a beautiful, durable and unique book to hold them. You have chosen either a simple blank journal to cover or a cross-stitched journal to create. This will be your basic book. The trim on the cover of your personal treasure chest will be a unique never-to-be-duplicated design. Each of us will find our own beautiful, durable, meaningful and interesting materials.
In my own evolution as a bookbinder, I have come to treasure materials that had a former life. To create the original "old leather books" I used old leather jackets and purses, old jewelry, fragments of antiques and other found objects, using the interesting properties of the original items to dictate the style of each one-of-a-kind book.
The material you choose will be unique to you. Like early quilters who used pieces of old clothes or household items, it is meaningful to use materials with a history. You might want to use gorgeous handmade paper or fabric you love, a fragment of lace, an earring whose mate go lost, a piece of an old photograph that evokes a certain feeling - the possibilities are endless. I have always found that the "right materials" will come to hand if I relax my mind and allow them to surface.
After we assemble and trim our personal books, we will go through a series of exercises that will help to mine our life experiences for hidden nuggets that make up our spiritual identity. Each exercise has four parts. The first is to consider a particular aspect of our lives. The second is to listen to a taped meditation or visualization that will help us bring life-material to the light of consciousness. The third is to write and sketch the fresh material into a chapter of our life book. And the fourth is to reflect on some words of fellow pilgrims who have written their own spiritual autobiographies. At the end of this workbook, you will find a bibliography. It includes the actual spiritual autobiographies of people from different times and places as well as a selection of other books on writing spiritual autobiography.
Throughout the following hours or days, notice what you are drawn to on your treasure hunt, and collect items you are drawn to. Continue to add to your pile of possible trims. When you feel ready, see which objects you really love, and lay them out on your book cover until you achieve a satisfying design. Glue them on.
The book is ready to write in. We will begin during our next session. Before starting you'll want to consider whether you want to write directly from the exercises, or, if you want your book to be a "final draft" or polished set of writings and sketches. Feel free to write directly into your book, or using a spiral notebook or writing paper for your first thoughts, you can then transfer your favorite insights to your special book.
Words of a fellow pilgrim
From Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindberg
"At first, the tired body takes over completely. .. One is forced against one’s mind, against all tidy resolutions, back into the primeval rhythm of the sea-shore. Rollers on the beach, wind in the pines, the slow flapping of herons across sand dunes, drown out the hectic rhythms of city and suburb, time tables and schedules. One falls under their spell, relaxes, stretches out prone. One becomes, in fact, like the element on which one lies, flattened by the sea; bare, open, empty as the beach, erased by today’s tides of all yesterday
"And then, some morning I the second week, the mind wakes, comes to life again. Not in a city sense – no – beach-wise. It begins to drift, to play, to turn over in gentle careless rolls like those lazy waves on the beach. One never knows what chance treasures these easy unconscious rollers may toss up, on the smooth white sand of the conscious mind, what perfectly rounded stone, what rare shell from the ocean floor. Perhaps a channeled whelk, a moon shell, or even an argonaut.
"But it must not be sought for or – heaven forbid! – dug for. No, no dredging of the sea bottom here. That would defeat one’s purpose. The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach – waiting for a gift from the sea." Pp 10-11
"The shell in my hand is deserted. It once housed a whelk, a snail-like creature, and then temporarily, after the death of the first occupant, a little hermit crab, who has run away…Had it become an encumbrance? Why did he run away? Did he hope to find a better home, a better mode of living? I too have run away, I realize. I have shed the shell of my life, for these few weeks of vacation.
"But his shell – it is simple, it is bare, it is beautiful. Small, only the size of my thumb, its architecture is perfect, down to the finest detail. Its shape, swelling like a pear in the center, winds in a gentle spiral to the pointed apex. Its color, dull gold, is whitened by a wash of sale from the sea. Each whorl, each faint knob, each criss-cross vein in its egg-shell texture, is as clearly defined as on the day of creation. My eye follows with delight the outer circumference of that diminutive winding staircase up which the tenant used to travel.
"My shell is not like this, I think. How untidy it has become!…
"… I would like to achieve a state of inner spiritual grace from which I could function and give as I was meant to in the eye of God.
…" One is free, like the hermit crab, to change one’s shell.
"Channelled whelk, I put you down again, but you have set my mind on a journey, up an inwardly winding spiral staircase of thought." From chapter 2.
