Pia has been a part of Earth Odyssey since the beginning. She has a Master’s degree in Culture and Spirituality from Holy Names University, Oakland, Calif., and is a recent graduate of the two-year Anamcara apprenticeship program through the Sacred art of Living Center in Bend, Ore. She is a freelance photographer, artist and writer based in Payson, Ariz. She can be reached through her photography and design business, Animist Arts, e-mail
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, website www.animistarts.com and through Earth Odyssey at
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| Monday, 01 February 2010 00:00 |
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| Healing presence with an open heart |
| Download this column:  18-EO-Liminal_Mind.pdf
An essential aspect of complementary healing is respect for and recognition of the client from a holistic (spiritual, physical, emotional, intellectual) perspective. Western allopathic medicine offers invaluable benefit and support in many instances, yet tends to focus on the physical plane and may be practiced in a materialistic rather than interrelating manner.
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| Sunday, 01 November 2009 00:00 |
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| Soul work, responsibility, trust and transformation |
|  Night falls sooner now that we are past the Autumnal Equinox.
Even in Arizona, there is color in the trees and the world looks changed. As when snow falls to blanket the land in sound-absorbing stillness, autumn signals a transformation we can integrate into our own lives.
This time when the nights become longer and nature prepares for her sojourn in the dormant underworld, is a time for introspection and reflection.
Samhain (Halloween) is a threshold time between one year and the next, a time of magic, ritual and metaphor. It is a time for reconciliation and release, a time to honor those who have crossed over from this life to another, a time to descend the darkened hallways of our own psyches—it is a time for soul work.
Ideally, soul work is something we engage in throughout the year, although it is a practice seldom taught in the culture-at-large. Those of us in recovery have an advantage because we come to learn about it through 12-Step program practice, although it takes a lifetime to really understand and develop.
Addictions (of all kinds) are what happen when a person represses, denies or projects their own suffering and develops compensatory behaviors to numb the pain.
Soul work is the art of living from an authentic, imaginative, depth perspective. It is also the discipline of leaning into one’s own pain to discover and integrate the inherent teaching gift.
It is the process of disarming the false self and creating a safe environment for one’s deep soul nature to emerge. Soul work brings the recognition that our original wound (the “hole in the soul” to quote Jung) and subsequent wounding, carry within them the seeds of healing and wholeness.
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| Tuesday, 01 September 2009 00:00 |
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| Relinquishing the trance and discovering true community |
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*NEW* Download PDF of this column Liminal_Mind_EO-0909.pdf
I miss the community of learning one finds in a certain type of program, the rare school devoted to mystery traditions, creativity and soulwork. The particular energy shared by a group of spiritual wayfarers, called from diverse geographical, professional, intellectual and spiritual worlds, to arrive with hearts open to possibility and grace. People I encounter in everyday life say things like “you can’t be a professional student,” implying that school is something one graduates from when one is too young to know what to study, as though learning were finite.
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