Images and Soul Retrieval   

Mikkal 



This little article discusses some things very useful for understanding and working with returned soul pieces, that come in the form of the shaman’s visionary images.



The crux of shamanic journeys and healing is, like Jungian psychology, image work; working with imagery as a portal to the various depths and possibilities of you and your life.



Images bring affectivity (felt-sense), bond us to reality, to Being (Sacred), and open new horizons, bring hope and novelty, (Ricoeur/Gendlin) and put us in touch with the deep invisible facets of ourselves, including mental capacities and sub-persons --capacities, facets and sub-persons we call ‘soul parts’ which mages help us get a handle on, keep a hold of.



New images can deautomatize consciousness, break the boundaries of our habitual self-image. They help create new neuronets.



The shamanic journey, the spiritual guides are, amongst other things, phenomenal images and what they bring back to us are phenomenal images, and they speak to us with more than words, drawing us nearer to the sacred or transcendent vision of ourselves, towards our essential being, towards are true selves. We are brought, in a fairly tangible form of images, the essence that wants to be actualized in existence.



The shaman by gift of his/her Guides, brings back fertile images.



Good images are fertile and arousing. They provoke inquiry, inner exploration, and move you beyond what you think or believe you know about yourself, or others.



They set before the ‘mind’s eye’ new horizons, and hence their value as ways to help you get a fresh or different point of view from your old habitual point of view



They are polysemic, bringing multiple meanings and opening up various dimensions



According to Ricoeur an image unites vitality (affectivity), psychic, and spiritual dimensions. Transform the directive image and you can trans form the person.



Be means of images our vision of things is increased, expanded,…new points of view, new horizons arise providing new avenues for finding and recoonecting with facets of you, with your own potentials. Fertile images from religion, poetry, arts or philosophy can actually jolt our habitual structures of consciousness, jolting the world of our manipulation and control—re-describing reality.



Images sketch new avenues or possibilities for life-energy to flow into, and thus are prime vehicles of soul retrieval.  -CMS



Soul retrieval brings back new images (i.e. the pieces)—the soul parts come as images that provoke new inquiry, hope, ongoing exploration to see how they may be true, or how they are meaningful…a process that moves you beyond your habitual and fixed mental structures and self-images, opinions, and beliefs.



Soul Retrieval Image Work

Some times returned soul pieces come packaged in images that have personal-biographical material in them, like the pajamas’s you worse when you are traumatized at age 5, or a necklace you wore when you had an accident, etc.. But other times the images are entirely symbolic of some aspect of You that has not been on line for a long time, or a mixture of biographical and symbolic references. It doesn’t matter. The returned soul pieces are exactly what my guides feel you need to get the message, to understand and receive what has returned. Often enough, there is an odd quality to the image or even bizarre quality. You are surprised or dumbfounded by the odd nature. Some clients receive back a mythological figure, and image of a unicorn, or of a faun, lets say. In the visionary planes all manner of beings and images show themselves that do not occur in the 3-D physical plane. The shamanic visionary planes are the source planes from which mythic images originate, and not vice versa. What is important to understand here is that the odd image or weird detail is precisely the point. You are surprised, shocked, meaning your mind is blown beyond its habitual expectations. The ‘old habitual knowing’ or expectancy has cracked you  open to a new way of ‘seeing’ or grasping some aspect of yourself that has been missing. Soul pieces are essential qualities and potentials of you packaged in  images, and as CG Jung said about dream images applies here, they often compensate or challenge your habitual one-sided point of view about yourself. So this oddness or surprisingness is the main thing, here. Welcome that!



 You may quickly grasp its significance, but do not be surprised if the image doesn’t fully open itself for anywhere from a few days to 2 or 3 weeks. Keep ahold of the image intuitively, get the subtle poetic feel of it in your body (felt-sense) sleep with it (keep it like a friend beside you as you drift off—a dream may open it up more). Continually  greet it, invite it to open and show you what it is about. Best of all, if you have a power animal or other spirit guide, you can journey and discuss its signifcance with your guide. Another important way to proceed is to playfully create a physical image or symbolic talisman of it and pace it on your desk or altar and contemplate it daily or bring it into your meditation and prayer time. This becomes a way of image talking back to image, resonating with each other, and giving you a handle on the soul piece. These actions help you enter more deeply into it. Working images in this way is an important part of the welcoming and integration process after the soul retrieval ceremony has occurred.











 

Mikkal