PRAYER

COUNCIL OF VOICES –  This concept is a combination of the process elaborated by Stephen Buhner in his book PLANT INTELLIGENCE & THE IMAGINAL REALM and SANDPLAY THERAPY, a modern therapuetic process in which people use sand & small symbolic objects to create their interior world & solve problems by using their hands (and bodies) to learn to control & harmonize symbolic stories.  All Buhner’s books are wonderful & we recommend that they be required reading for all scientists & politicians as well as the general public.  In the same way that rocks embody narratives which can be of help to human beings, our ideas are actually templates which tend to manifest in material reality by channeling the energetic field we are part of into a particular shape..  By observing & contemplating the “stories” or patterns in natural objects, we begin to partake of their formative energies, and they help us to empathize & incorporate their patterns into our own. The Council of Voices is an interior dialogue between different parts of oneself which are personified images that have their own voices.  The advantage of using natural objects instead of manufactured images is that they are given meaning by the participant in the same way that a Rohrschalk Test functions to be a picture created by the participant.  This is what we are actually doing with our “perception”.  The individual pieces or rocks can play the part of “persons” in our lives, of parts of our own psyche which have their own needs & purposes, or as abstract symbols of processes or relationships, similar to tea leaves, yarrow stalks, or astrological signs & planets.  The power of these symbols is that they are not human & therefore offer new & creative forms or patterns,  You create the “meaning”.  The ultimate experience may be that the narratives embodied in the rocks  are so unusual as patterns that they confound your rational mind & you “fall” into reality which is pre-verbal.  There are no exact rules in this game as there are none in life.  The measure of their truth is do they create peace, excitement or awe in your contemplation of  them.  The Blog discussion of cognitive dissonance & Nahuatl language is a beginning theoretical base but anything is possible.  One can also use these as decoration and they can be arranged in any way you decide.  Decoration implies that you are enjoying their appearance & apparition.  This is healing in itself.  Have fun.