My heartfelt desire is to offer inspiration and encouragement for any individual who wishes to take responsibility for increased consciousness and relationship to his or her Personal Destiny.
Such an expansion of awareness begins with consideration of and respect for the Shadow aspects of one’s life, one’s limitations and vulnerabilities, and, most especially, with the less accessible, contra-sexual dynamics in the Collective Unconscious–the Anima of the man and the Animus of the woman.
The opportunity for this profound emotional and spiritual awakening is available through the personal and impersonal information mirrored within the Color Consciousness of an Aura-Soma selection. A synthesis of previously disconnected, unknown aspects of oneself can begin. Through Nature itself, one is given the view and opportunity to welcome home and accept heretofore unknown aspects of one’s soul. This threshold of color puts in motion a crossing over into deep sacred spaces in oneself that assures a safe return to lost allies of one’s Destiny.
The hints to one’s Destiny hide in the ordinary and non-ordinary realms of our lives–in the pain, illness and shadows, in the tense, unknown, mysterious turning points within our choices, in fate and circumstance, in the “bearing” and in the “unbearable,” in the body and in the shapes, colors and structures, both inner and outer, that we have been given and that we have created and live in. Furthermore, consciousness of dreams and synchronicity will guarantee flowering and the promised fruit.
In this sacred space of soul choice selection in color is born the potential to come to enough freedom for choice of attitude to be strengthened, along with the capacity to receive genuine instinct and intuition.
Here, then, is a portal to Beauty, Grace and Elegance, feminine and masculine able to come into harmony within oneself and with others.
I offer the definition of “elegance,” by Heraclitus
“Elegance (man’s proper abode) is Being intently wakeful, is dealing with what is in proper fashion. To be ethical is to follow the norms established by society, having then its measure within itself; to be elegant is to follow the gathering of the logos, having its measure within the interplay that bears up the elegance of man.” p.59 Heraclitean Fragments
Aura-Soma offers a monumental shift into the possibility of greater Joy and Peace, into an understanding and appreciation of the that each one of us is. Here the foundation is given for discovery and expression of one’s giftsin the world.
The reflections available through the soul’s choices within the 116 Aura-Soma Color Jewels, along with the numerological birth information, opens a window into individual personal expression of one’s archetypal calling. With responsibility taken to shake and apply the contents of the bottle, the individuation process is supported with energy, strength, understanding, and focus. New growth and potential are released in safety within inspiration.
This process of self-selection, and the use of the Aura-Soma energies invite the unfolding of Nature’s promise into our personal and cosmic evolution.
Conscious willingness to work with one’s personal/impersonal, mysterious, invisible, alchymeic transformation opens the secret door to participation in the depth process of unfolding towards an individual, spiritual expression and purpose. Here it is that we become a true ally and partner with our highest Destiny.
With new tolerance for relationships to change, and with the development of new trust of that unfolding supported, comes patient and compassionate understanding, love and respect for the “undergoing of one’s own process.
Synchronicity and the unknown begin to escalate in this new life possibility and expression. A new sensitivity to “what is “ becomes possible. With “the obvious” no longer veiled and with the “bearing” of “what is,” real choice becomes possible, because a new level of trustworthiness in oneself has formed.
Synchronicity’s immediate reward brings that moment of awe, that pause of deep remembering and knowing, communicating “how can there be any doubt” moment. One is placed in the value and possibility of holding the tension within the opposites of all life —-the dark times, alongside the reprieves of light, life and death, the ups with the downs.
In a letter to his brothers, George and Thomas, poet John Keats wrote about this as “Negative Capability.” He described the experience as “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason—–“ It is here, he believed, that art was possible, and I will include the art of living.
The truth of the existence of paradox, of a polarity between inner and outer reality, (of some “Other” ) came to me at a very young age. One astonishing image after the other would rise up from the linoleum into my toddler eyes from the floor designs and shapes. It was my personal secret enchantment, a wonder that I had no way of communicating. In that time of innocence was born some secret understanding of the possibility of the existence of two worlds.
At three years old, following my parent’s divorce, this magic was interrupted. I was placed in a foster home in order that my mother could return to school to complete her Certification in Public Health Nursing.
However, it was there in the garden that the seed of the earlier experience of two worlds was to find further nourishment. While “Grandma” Hendrickson (not my real grandmother) hung out the laundry, I made magical dolls with flowers and clothespins . All of Nature participated in my personal engagement with “the other”—–ants, bugs, dragonflies, shadows, the wind—nothing was excluded—my exciting world had returned.
My father visited a few times, then re-married and moved away. I last saw him at the age of 7. This void of the personal father in daily life would subject me to a particular fate, especially the lack of an anima experience as a young girl and no personal masculine life model or feeling of safety. Since all actions resonate effects, specific archetypal demands would inevitably occur for me. Paradoxically, we are each uniquely called to the archetypal challenges that bring us to our specific destiny opportunities. Very early, I could feel a demand to understand the bigger picture through many modes of “seeing.”
In first grade my mother and I moved to Cloquet, Minnesota where she was the Public Health Nurse of Chippewa County. Her territory included the Indian reservation. It was in the nature of those Northern woods that, once again, I was nourished and brought in touch with the “other,”—-the Bluebird’s song, the smell and whisper of the pines, the berries gathered for wreath-making, and the smell of my treasured deerskin doll from the reservation, Stardancer. Once again, I felt held within a Nature field and Wonder was sustained.
In the Third grade we moved to Mason City, Iowa where my mother became the Director of Public Health Nursing. Here I was provided with 9 years of stability and safety in the outer world, before beginning the exacting days of college and university. There I roamed freely, built meaningful friendships, immersed myself in any musical endeavor I could find and enjoyed my young life.
Books were precious friends and one, especially, was to open a door of Destiny at age 16. The autobiography of Clifford Beers, A Mind That Found Itself, opened a compassionate respect for how an individual with an extremely difficult life was able to relate to his healing process and ultimately find meaning and purpose in the world. His remarkable Destiny was to form the basis for the Mental Health Movement in the United States.
Seeds of inspiration and awe for the possibilities in all of Life had been planted.
The further unfolding of my journey was to be deep and colorful.
In the early 90’s, I was gifted with Aura-Soma bottle #1 by Camila Martinez, a shaman and medical anthropologist. I am forever grateful for the experience and reflection offered from this gift and for this twist of fate that opened a new facet of my personal Destiny.
Inspired, I began a personal adventure with Aura-Soma through Vicky Wall’s book, The Miracle of Colour Healing.
I was fortunate to be living in Austin, TX at the time. In 1995 Aura-Soma USA was opened by Trish and Will Hunter in nearby San Marcos, and the first United States training in Aura-Soma was held there with Mike and Claudia Booth.
Tears flowed as I experienced the resonance from my first Aura-Soma reading there with Dominic Yoeman. I knew I had to somehow include this revolutionary way of understanding a person’s soul into my psychotherapy practice.
My professional career had begun as a Psychiatric Nurse, then as a consultant in Preventive Psychiatry.
Later, in 1971, the call to undertaking Jungian analysis and training began with an illness. Following another illness experience in 1982, synchronistically Shamanic and Alchymeic energy work were to open “ the song of my soul,” along with supportive dreams. In 1995, Aura-Soma called me to some unique synthesis.
I began integration of the Aura-Soma consultation into my practice. The “seeing” of understanding and working with Shadow, Anima and Animus through color came to me while attending the Intermediate Workshop at Dev Aura in 1996. Through the numerology and soul affinity teachings within the four-bottle selection, I perceived the possibility of understanding the Personality in relation to the Archetypal world of the Collective Unconscious more clearly.
The interpretation of what I called this “Inner View of Soul Affinity” became that synthesis and was shared at the next Aura-Soma Conference in San Marcos in 1998.
It was my purpose by including Aura Soma in my practice to offer the profound opportunity for a person to become their own best Destiny Ally, assisting the grounding of Awe, Wonder, Beauty and Elegance in the Soul’s experience on this earth.
Poet Robert Duncan wrote:
Let my awe be steady
In the rude elements of my household
At the window, the rose vine.
Sage Architect, you who awaken
the proportions and scales of the soul’s wonder
of stars and water,
paeans of color
that bathe the cumulus at the horizon, yet
direct
discreet light
defining the lintel
Bells tied in the foliage ring as the wind rises.
Loci S. Yonder
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