A Digital SoulCollage® Vision Quest

 

When Seena Frost conceived of SoulCollage® as a hands-on process the age of digital image-making was at its infancy, or in some circles unheard of. Even so, an image is an image, and in comparison when going digital, is the end result the same?

Positive images whether collaged, drawn, painted, quilted, photographed, or digitally composed, stimulate the senses through our bodily sensors and receptors. Positive images, in their silence, are visual emancipators of grace.

When created intentionally, images influence and impact health and wellbeing. The result of contemplating or meditating on an image makes it an entry, an access point, a gateway, a conduit and transmitter.

Upon perceiving and contemplating an image, we recognize and align ourselves with the source of its creation. The image touches and reflects, actually awakens us to what is already available within, already a part of our inheritance as human beings.

At this junction we are able to penetrate the spring of our inner healer. We activate the source of change, because images and the use of sight serve as links to what is Divine.

Regarding SoulCollage®, I want to try my hand at making a digital SoulCollage® card. I’ll retrieve images from Pixabay and Fotolia, and compose the cards on Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Just to let you know, this is not a digital lesson. I assume you have some knowledge of the desktop publishing process. You’ll see the first card and how it progresses. The rest I’ll only show the chosen images and their results.

Why digitally construct cards?

I want to experience what it’s like not to cut, paste, arrange on a board the images that attract me. I want to understand, sense, and see if the digital results differ from the hands-on version.

Also a lot of my clients would rather use online images than tote, keep a stash, and/or pay for magazine subscriptions. They also feel they are conserving a tree and preventing deforestation.

Needless to say, while we might be conscious of the obvious pollutants, let’s not forget the most destructive and deceptive of the lot: the kind that electro-magnetic radiation creates. That includes Wi-Fi, iPhones, iPads, Smartphones, GPS devices, that fitness watch, everything going virtual.

But in this day and age, who imagines life without them.

Moving along with the times and the rest of humanity, I disregard what I can’t see, and resort to my computer and the internet.

I’m going to create four SoulCollage® cards, one for each Suit: a Committee, a Community, a Council, and an Animal Companion.

For me, the Committee Suit is the most unique, the most personal, and intimate of the self-portraits. This Suit and its images represents your psychology: the manner in which you behave, act, react, respond or withhold.

These are character traits that are learned responses, habitually reinforced and influenced by family, friends, culture, tradition, race, creed, gender, education, poverty, wealth, and the casualties of war.

Whether you’re shy or boastful, jovial or depressed, seen as fearless or fearful, aggressive or passive, affectionate or cold, hateful or loving, angry or sad, each one of these expressions has a face, an image, a visible association that can be imaged on a card and has a place in your Committee Suit. With these thoughts in mind, I browse through the online images.

The following image attracts my attention and forms a background:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I choose the second and third images:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And drag them onto the partially transparent background:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I begin to see the advantages, the potential for creativity exercising itself intuitively, imaginatively as if by magic. A picture rising to the surface, developing, evolving, happening before my eyes, as I play and move images in space with reverence, and a depth of meaning words cannot describe.

The images:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the final development:

 

The Community Suit is your support group. Whether this involves family members, lovers, spouses, friends, writers, poets, spiritual leaders, organizations, school or work colleagues, healers, doctors, pets, a place, a book. You know he or she or them and their help, can be relied on, because they are there for you. Whoever and whomever inspires, supports, loves and cares and wants the best for you, and/or anyone you admire: this is the Suit where you honour their presence in your life with a card.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The end result:

The Council Suit images include recognizable universal archetypes derived from myths, legends, folklore, oral traditions, sacred rituals etc., etc., etc., that influence and challenge our lifestyles for better or worse. These include the hero type, the warrior type, the environmental activists, rebel, victim, saint, god or goddess, caretaker, advocate, the fashionista, any larger than life figure whose distinct way of dealing with life is reflected in your attitude and behavior. You recognize a Council Card by the authoritative tone of voice announcing its presence, stating its message.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Final results:

The Animal Companion Suit necessitates a guided meditation, as described by Seena Frost in her book SoulCollage® Evolving. We turn attention inward to meet the animal companions that reside in each one of our seven chakras (a disk-like field of energy ascending and located along the spine).

Our physical, bodily state is affected, nurtured by the dynamic, energetic, and vital forces of each one of our Animal Companions. We animate the vitality of these animal companions in our daily relationships, and intercourse in life.

To meet, identify, and befriend our Animal Companions, we realize our connection with Spirit and Form. We make allies of an instinct that exists to aide and guide us, which contributes to our emotional and physical wellbeing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Final piece:

 

An example of the seventh chakra Animal Companion. The lotus, a symbol associated with this chakra as well as violet, the colour of devotion. Whichever animal appears, ask what it means, and how it relates to that particular chakra. What gifts does it want to share, how it serves you energetically, and/or what can you do to support and strengthen the relationship?

So, how is this not a pipe?

Ultimately, I find the tools at hand enhance the emotional depth of an image that can’t be achieved with still-shots cut from its paper source.

The fact that I can manipulate an image, have it look at me with the qualities I intuit, because it portrays and says exactly what I’m feeling, is absolutely liberating, emancipating. How more self-defining can art be?

Alright, so I miss the physicality of actually thumbing through the magazines for an image. I lack the sensory perception of touch and feel, even scent (of paper) as I cut an image from its surroundings.

But I don’t miss the sticky, gluey smears on an image before I paste it where I want on the card. I like the transparency. I like the fact that I can see the parts of an image that attracted me to it. I like that I don’t have to cover areas of another image I want to show.

Yet the most defining factor is, will the card say what it needs to say when I ask the question. Or have I distorted the pictorial process, or broken the link, the connection to my higher self by composing a card digitally?

I grin, amused at the thought that my higher self would care either way. What difference does it make whether I cut and paste or digitalize an image, as long as there’s a bridge, I connect.

That we initiate and attempt is what matters here. If SoulCollage® card making is approached with intention and attention, sincerity and respect, our answers and the messages from the cards will speak from that source.

Still you might argue the point that a SoulCollage® digitally conceived card is just another photo montage, but I disagree. The basic principles to creating a SoulCollage® card remain rooted in the process itself through images, intuition and imagination.

Sure these steps can be applied to a photo montage composition, yet the major difference lies in the intention of the execution. There’s always an intention in the forefront when soulcollaging, which depends and relies on you.

You as the focus, the central figure even if you aren’t pictured in the card itself. You as the center of attention regarding self-discovery, and the evolving and changing spiritual, emotional, physical, soul self.

I’ve never asked anything of my photo montages; not like I expect and do from my SoulCollage® deck. In both instances, their reasons for being differ. In each case, the images serve a different purpose.

I make a photo montage and I hang it on the wall. It may serve as decoration, a memento, a statement, a sentiment, an accompaniment to a story like the photo montages in the flipbook A Fairy Tale, and the text pages in Shantideva’s Ten Stanzas. Or initiated simply because I want to make art.

I make a SoulCollage® card out of images, and instantaneously a relationship forms. A relationship which pierces deep within the core of my being, because the pictorial composition resonates with my soul.

The fact that these images are a source to my higher self, defines their purpose. A SoulCollage® image is not just another pretty picture to get stored away in a box or a drawer. Or like much to the dismay of many Instagram and Facebook followers, an image not to be put on display for the world to gawk at.

Treated as sacred, your deck of SoulCollage® cards, whether hand-built or digitally conceived, is an evolving vision quest of possibilities. A picture of your life waiting to be explored.