Note from Jeanne:

Below is a lovely blog from my dear friend and colleague Liz Carl describing one “application” of her work from SoULL teachings. I am particularly grateful for Liz, Jorge Galindo and the Core Community for doing this ritual and sharing it in writing, because Anna Timmermans and Cees Van Loon have a particular importance to SoULL. Truly, if Anna had not invited me to teach this material to her fifth year students for the first time in 2015 I don’t know if it would have begun its journey into the world. Cees was actually in that class as a student, even though he was a teacher at the time himself. I will never forget the gift and honor of that challenge, or their faith in me. I hope it has served.

Via con dios dear Cees. My eyes are full of tears and love for you both.

_____________________

A COMMUNITY GRIEVES:

A Spiral Dance for Death in Mexico

By Elizabeth Carl.

Hi, I am Liz Carl, one of SoULL’s board members and teachers as well as a director of a Core Energetics Institute in Poland. I want to share a little story about working with some of the teachings of SoULL in one of the communities I am most engaged with.

This August the International Energetics Core community came together for a Convention in Cancun Mexico. When all 130 of us arrived we got the sad news that Cees Van Loon, one of our dear friends and fellow director in the Netherlands (NICE), was actively dying in Holland. Cees was an extraordinarily kind, vibrant, fun loving and intelligent man. Besides running the Dutch Institute, he was an international teacher and on the Programming Committee for this Convention. He was invaluable to us all, but of course had to bow out of our Committee after he found out about his diagnosis in order to focus on his family and trying to heal.

When I reached Cancun the Producer of the Convention, Jorge Galindo, pulled me aside. We agreed we needed to create some kind of ritual together. But what? Here we were…I was…on the brink of a death experience. I reached into my SOULL training for guidance. I knew and trusted that the thing to do would come to me from that deep body of knowing. I collaborated with my dear friend and co-Director Ala Konopko-Ulanecki. We both slept on it and it came to her to do some kind of circle, or some kind of spiral. The spiral is a potent symbol for life processes of all kinds, but also a symbol that Core Energetics uses for its healing process. I thought “Spiral Dance”.

I called Jeanne Denney and we talked about the energetics of the Circle I had learned in SoULL, how the direction of a community moving together has been used in ancient times to support both dying and grieving, and how the circle is a fundamental way of uniting community, most especially supporting death. How appropriate that uniting in community was the theme of our convention. Our goal was to help Cees leave, but also hold onto his beloved wife Anna, keeping her with us. If Cees did not pass away by the end of the week, we knew he would choose to be euthanized, which is a right in the Netherlands.

On Saturday night, we invited all the participants of the Convention to join us in a Ritual to support Cees and his co-Director and wife, Anna Timmermans who was at his side. I kept following my instincts on how this was to be done. I found a drummer and asked him to provide music. We instructed Jorge and his wife Lola. We gathered and I explained to the group that we ask for their energy to support these two people. With a candle, Jorge and his wife Loly led us with the Spiral Dance, first clockwise and we turned and turned and turned inward. When we reached the center, Jorge asked us all to begin toning to give Anna our support and help her ground on this earth as she says farewell to the love of her life. Sounds emerged from all of us and filled the hall with the support of the drummer spurred us on. Several Core people from the Netherland held the center with a candle. Profound reverberation being sent across the ocean to our beloved Anna.

Then Loly led, turning us counterclockwise, explaining that now we will join our energies to help Cees as he leaves this lifetime. With love and tears, we turned and turned. When the spiral was unwound, Loly asked us to bend over and start scooping up the energy upward with our hands, to help Cees’s spirit ascend. We all scooped him up again and again, beaming him up, all of us. Loly, a healer and channel, whispered to me “He is telling me to keep on doing this. He says it is helping him”. We finally stopped and played a piece of classical music that Cees had told another director to play at his memorial service. It was beautiful. Another song was played called “A Prayer”

When we quietly ended nobody wanted to leave. We stayed in this energy and cried and held each other. This is how we could help Anna and Cees at his deathbed, even at a distance. He died peacefully the next day.

I am so grateful that we did this. I am grateful that we were guided in this way.

With love,

Liz Carl