I have been creating soul collage cards for over two and a half years, now. This process has had a profound impact on my understanding of myself--in fact, that's the whole idea of making a soul collage card. The act of randomly selecting images, cutting them out, and combining them on a card is a mindful, but unplanned practice. The resulting card "speaks" to something in your character which your subconscious or the Lord has brought to your attention. It always happens in a timely and surprising manner. When I purposely choose a background and images to combine, I secretly think "Why am I picking THIS picture? These images don't go together!". That's when I tell the inner voices in my head to hush and just go with my gut.
This recent soul collage card is a perfect example of my head trying to get in the way what my heart is telling me to do. I knew the lady in the kayak had to be in the card. Putting the gold frame around her looked pretty but really made no sense at the time. I thoughtfully cut out the spirals from an image with colors that seemed to fit with the scene. I am not sure why I put the enlarged fish scales on the bottom. When I finished, I looked at the card and listened. The obvious symbolism of a journey jumped out but it was the less noticeable meanings of the other pictures that were the most profound.
The lovely gold frame that I used to surround the woman in the kayak looks very similar to bone marrow. I didn't even notice that when I selected the image for the card. Michael has multiple myeloma, cancer of the bone marrow. This disease does "frame" my life. It sets boundaries on where I can go and what I can do. Also, I am recovering from a full knee replacement. The bones in my knee were damaged and just weren't working. Walking has been a challenge for years, now. My own bones have set boundaries on where I can go and what I can do, just as much as Michael's illness has.
The two Fibonacci spirals are spinning in opposing directions--not sure the significance of that, yet. The background that looks like scales could mean a number of things. Perhaps I should embrace my "mermaid" energy, if there is such a thing. Or perhaps, they are soul cones. I do know fish scales protect the fish, have beautiful, shimmering colors, and also record the age of a fish or reptile. Bucky Fuller said, "I call intuition cosmic fishing, you feel a nibble, then you’ve got to hook the fish." Soul collage is all about intuition. I like how Bucky called it "cosmic fishing". In the Bible, scales fell from Saul's (soon to be Paul) eyes and he was spiritually blind no more. That's pretty cool, too.
So, this simple soul collage card that I made in the wee hours of a sleepless night is pretty powerful and relevant to me. It tells me to not let "bone" issues box me in. It tells me that intuition is crucial to my spiritual journey. I would never have had this revelation without creating this soul collage card. Awesome!