Spring Hare Moon
We’re at the mid-point of the workshops, currently in the depth context focus. This was the one that stimulated my desire to attend a journal workshop again. My spiritual life, meditation in particular, but also working with images and dreams had gotten shoved aside as I cranked up the creative side of my life.
This was not a conscious act, just a gradual slipping away, until I had become unaware of its absence. Odd to think of it that way, but it’s what happened. Progoff has a method called process meditation and that’s the focus of the depth context workshop, learning how to engage dreams, imagery and other key sources of meaning in your life.
A mantra developed in my first journal workshop in 1981, I have used ever since. That’s 33 years. Process meditation works and more than met my needs when I engaged it regularly, but, like any discipline, it requires attention and I’ve let mine slip.
The workshop is both reinforcing and its own complete journey. I’m working with an incredible experience I had while in college. Some of you know about it.
I had just finished a class in metaphysics. When I opened the door of the humanities building and began to step out into the quad, a visceral feeling gripped me and I became all interior. My interior in turn became all light rushing out in all directions and receiving light in from all directions. For a brief moment I had a physical experience of my relatedness to everything in the universe.
Then it was over and the sunny fall morning in Muncie, Indiana came back into focus, I stepped out onto the quad and walked away.
I can recall this event very well. We’ll see where the workshop process takes it. I’m interest in its connection to reimagining my faith. This is the sense in which the workshop is its own complete journey.
But it has also reminded of the role and the way meditation and work with dreams and images can reenter my life.
