 |
Intuition
and the Sacred Imagination:
The Dance of Co-creation
by Dana Reynolds |
"You say God speaks to
you, but it’s only your imagination." These are
the words spoken by the inquisitor to Joan of Arc during
her trial for heresy.
"How else would God speak
to me, if not through my imagination?" Joan
replied.
You know the story of Saint
Joan and her visions and voices that led her to victory
for France several hundred years ago. Her sacred
imagination was the fertile field where her human self
journeyed to co-create with her intuition and Divine
inspiration. The marriage of her ingenuity combined with
her rapt devotion to her intuition changed the course of
history.
You are also blessed with the
potential to join forces with the infinite wisdom and
guidance of the Universe. When you combine your
intuitive urges with your unlimited potential for
creative expression, you have the opportunity to birth
new projects, innovations, and ways of living
authentically. If intuition is the voice of the soul,
the sacred imagination and creativity are the hands of
the soul. Intuition delivers guidance from spirit.
Creativity transforms spirit into tangible form.
Intuition is born in a place of
mystery—--a place between your heart and soul beyond
the psyche and the calculation of left-brain thinking.
It sometimes whispers and occasionally shouts to your
senses inviting you to a dance of co-creation. This is a
dance of trust.
When intuition calls, you are
being invited to embrace the message and take action
through your creativity and sacred imagination. You may
not immediately understand what your intuition is
telling you, but art making offers a way to crack the code
imbedded within the message. Setting the intention to
engage and to dialogue with intuition through creative
exploration will lead you to places of discovery and
innovation. This is the dance of co-creation. The
partners are spirit and matter.
I was invited to co-create with
my intuition three years ago while I was preparing to
leave for a long overdue vacation. It was a frenetic
day. There were plants to water, errands to run, and
suitcases to pack. All morning as I ran from one task to
the next, I was plagued by an urgent recurring message
being broadcast from that mysterious place between my
heart and soul. "Create a collage to represent
fire." The messenger delivering this bizarre
request was relentless. The messenger was my intuition.
I felt anxious and annoyed by
this intrusion while at the same time I had a growing
perception that I shouldn’t ignore it. With an intense
sense of urgency I stopped my whirlwind of chores, made
a sandwich for sustenance, and went to my office to give
the inner voice what it had been asking for. The
following two hours were spent searching my collection
of books and magazines for just the right images to
express the power and mystery of the element of fire.
After cutting and pasting the various pieces together
the collage was complete. I stared at it with relief and
curiosity. Relieved that I had silenced the nagging
messenger, and curious about the actual meaning of the
composite image I had created.
I returned to the busyness of
the day but my preoccupation with thoughts of fire
continued. I contemplated how I would escape and quickly
grab cherished photographs and journals if there were a
fire in our home. I thought of the horror endured by
those souls who were burned at the stake in medieval
times. My mind even wandered to the wonder and
hypnotically romantic beauty of a beach bon-fire on a
summer’s evening. Throughout the entire day it seemed
as if fire and I were engaged in a mystical dialogue.
That night I finished my
packing and finally stepped into my p.j.s. It was then
that my intuitive voice came calling again. "There
will be a fire. You will be okay."
The tone of the communiqué was
matter of fact, not alarming but informational and
reassuring. I was exhausted and eager to go to bed,
knowing I needed to be awake very early to make a
morning airline departure.
I remember falling asleep
effortlessly that night. My dreams seemed fragmented and
chaotic so when I heard the distant sirens I thought
they were part of my dreamtime. The sound grew closer
and louder, calling me to consciousness from my nightly
journeying. When I opened my eyes I was alarmed to find
my bedroom washed in a soft orange flickering glow. My
senses were instantly charged by the view from my
bedroom window of towering flames and the smell of smoke
that wafted in like an unwelcome visitor. Across the
street on the adjacent block a neighbor’s home was
burning to the ground. A tragic occurrence, but
fortunately the occupants were away and no one was
injured. We live in a heavily wooded area. It was a very
foggy windless night so the forest was spared and the
neighborhood was miraculously protected.
It wasn’t until the fire was
extinguished, and I was in the shower saying prayers of
gratitude for safe-keeping that I received the jolt of
remembering the collage I made the day before, and the
intuitive message before bedtime. I was stunned. How
could I have had inklings of this event? Was there
something I might have done with the information I had
received before the fire? I was filled with awe and
confusion. Intuition often confounds us while providing
guidance and direction simultaneously.
Several days later, seeking
wisdom and counsel I called a dear friend, Christina
Baldwin. Christina is the author of Calling the
Circle and a consummate wise woman. I shared my
story and angst with her and she replied, "Your
collage was a visual prayer." She went on to
explain that she believed I had somehow tuned into a
frequency advertising the impending fire. Christina
believed that the creation of the collage was a response
to my intuitive guidance through creativity. This in no
way magically protected me or my home, but rather my
art-making created an energetic intuitive field
heightening my awareness. The intention to dance, to
engage, and to co-create with my intuition led me to a
deeper exploration of the internal messages themselves.
Because of my day-long dance
with fire, I was prepared for conscious action in the
event of imminent danger. If the fire had spread,
causing me to evacuate my home, my head would have been
clear to collect the few precious possessions I had
categorized earlier in the day. I even had a mental map
of my escape options. I had been readied by my intuition
for the possibility of such a traumatic event. My
intuitive/co-creative interaction with the concept of
fire had centered and equipped me for the happening
itself. It wasn’t until months later that the deeper
spiritual meaning of the experience would emerge—a new
inspiration and direction for my life’s work.
As a result of this singular
intuitive experience, visual prayer, has become a
central focus of my writing and my workshop/program
development for women. Visual prayer has grown to
include not only collage, but any visual creative
expression that is rooted in the intention for deeper
spiritual understanding, or a desire for
healing/transformation. Creating altars and devotional
spaces, art making, gardening, arranging touchstones
with intention, all of these things and more are visual
prayers.
The encounter my intuition and
sacred imagination experienced with fire, led me to
create workshop experiences to share the gift I had been
given. The gift was an understanding that the
integration of creative energy with intuitive guidance
holds the potential to enrich soulful living, initiate
healing, and facilitate transformation.
Intuition, the frequency my
friend Christina referred to, is not some obscure
ethereal vibration available only to those who possess
special psychic abilities. Rather it is a constant
source of wisdom and guidance from within available to
anyone who is open to sacred mystery and discovery.
Listening and awareness are the dials for tuning in to
our inner radios. When an intuitive message is received
your sacred imagination offers you a myriad of
possibilities for expressing the information you have
been given. The additional spiritual component is the
choice, the free will, to accept the invitation to begin
the co-creative dance or to refuse it.
Consider how history would have
been written if Saint Joan hadn’t listened to her
voices, trusted her intuition, and called forth her
creativity to save her country. Intuition and the Divine
spoke to her and she responded through her sacred
imagination.
The next time you hear your
inner voice offering guidance, nudging you here,
inviting you there, step into the mystery and join the
dance. Call on your sacred imagination and let the music
begin.
Copyright© 2000 Dana
Reynolds.
For ten years, Dana Reynolds has
been facilitating women’s spiritual presentations and
retreats nationwide. Her work as a Spiritual Midwife,
one who assists women as they birth their creative gifts
into the world, is the foundation of all her endeavors.
Her background as a visual artist and writer enriches
her Spiritual Midwifery: Birthing the Feminine Soul
workshops.
As the creator of an art making
process known as visual prayer, Dana teaches
women how to combine ritual with sacred intention to
create altars, collages, spirit dolls, and other
touchstones. The creation of sacred spaces is also
paramount to the Spiritual Midwifery experience. Her
web-site http://www.sacredimagination.com
offers samplings of her visual prayer collages, poetry,
and a workshop catalogue.
Dana is the author of the
whimsical and colorfully illustrated book, Be An
Angel, a co-creation with illustrator and graphic
designer, Karen Blessen, (Simon & Schuster). Her
essay, Visual Prayers is included in the
anthology, Our Turn, Our Time: Women Coming of Age, edited
by Cynthia Black, (Beyond Words Publishing).
A trained labyrinth
facilitator, Dana incorporates the labyrinth and other
spiritual wisdom into her retreats and workshops. She
recently traveled to Chartres and Vezelay Cathedrals in
France to gather information pertaining to ancient
sacred mystical traditions. She currently lectures on
such topics as spiritual midwifery, sacred journal
keeping, feminine spiritual wisdom, and the early
Christian women saints and mystics.
Dana’s life follows the
spiral path from rim to center and back again. She looks
for the sacred in forgotten places and openly embraces
the great Mystery of life. Guiding women to the
discovery of their creative inner gifts is the passion
that fuels her soul.
|
