Sophia-Art Seminar on "The Art of Letting Go"
June 19th, 2010 - 10:00 AM - 5:30 PM
Using the Art of Film
as a Guide to Creating your Life as a Work of Art
This is a day-long Seminar which will utilize the movie “Under the Tuscan Sun” as a guide to working on “The Art of Letting Go”. It will be held at the beautiful Creative Living LLC Spiritual Exploration Center set among the rolling hills of the Kettle Moraine.
Throughout the day we will explore how loss and change that can initially seem “tragic” may actually contain the seeds of a completely new life …. and how we can cultivate the Art of Letting Go to allow the seeds to germinate and grow!
Program for the Day:
10:00-10:30 Introductions and setting the intention for the day with a brief meditation.
10:30-12:30 Film
12:30 – 1:30 Potluck Italian Lunch!
1:30 – 2:45 – What is it that I am called to let go of? How can I use the pain that I experience as a motor towards a new identity? What is the freedom I desire, and what is the gift contained in my loss?
These are some of the questions we will explore during the group discussion of how we can embrace the idea of making our very lives a work of art .
2:45 – 4:30 – During this time we will take a walk to the beautiful “Let Go Mountain”, in the rolling hills behind the retreat center house, to begin to process what we have discovered so far, either individually or as a group (participants may choose).
4:30 – 5:30 – Weaving it all together: closing moment, sharing of the day’s experience, setting our sights on a new future, by integrating, not denying, the struggles of the past.
Cost: $45 if you register before June 12th, $50 afterward. Space is limited, so reserve your place early!
Life as a Gift and as a Work of Art
Sometimes change is forced upon us unexpectedly, with extreme force and violence, turning our lives completely upside down and obligating us to face challenges we would have never dreamed of. When we are in the midst of the changes, the pain of it can seem unbearable. When the change is caused by someone we thought was our ally, like a spouse who leaves, a friend who betrays us, an employer who downsizes and lets us go, or even our own bodies that suddenly become ill, it can cause us to lose faith in ourselves and in our ability to make good choices. When a tragedy strikes, such as a natural disaster or the loss of a loved one, we can begin to deeply question whether life is truly “good”. Sometimes, it is our past traumas and conditioning that seem to have a grip on us that is so strong we end up repeating choices and behaviors that are not in our own best interest, such as in addictions to substances or to people that do nothing but bring us more and more misery.
There are essentially two ways we can look at these difficult situations. The way we choose, how we decide to deal with them first and foremost within ourselves, will determine the quality of our lives.
We can consider ourselves victims of other people, of parts of ourselves, or even of Life itself; we can convince ourselves that we are either being justly or unjustly punished for real or imagined wrongs; we can lose all hope and give up on ourselves and on others, on Life itself.
Or …. we can step into a new way of looking at things, and decide to become artists of our lives, where every experience, every trauma, every “defect” within us and every painful change can become not only something that we can learn important life lessons from, but also a powerful motor that propels us towards completely new horizons. When we begin seeing our lives as a work of art, we understand that our path is never linear, and the result is always something a little bit different than what we had originally imagined. Something richer, deeper and more colorful than we ourselves could have ever even dreamed of!
This is what happens to Frances, the protagonist of this exquisite film based on a true story of an American woman who, after going through a painful divorce and a period of great pain, decides to accept the gift of a trip to Italy that ends up completely changing her life.
Sophia-Art
is a theory and a method developed by Antonio Mercurio, and it helps us make our very lives works of art, capable of producing beauty, freedom, truth and love for ourselves and capable of becoming ever more powerful fields of energy that continually transform ourselves and others. Just like an artist uses all kinds of different colors when he or she makes a painting – black, white, and everything in between – we can learn to bring together all of our life experiences and our personal qualities, good and bad, light and dark etc., to create a living work of art.
It is by first embracing our traumas, our problems, the parts of life and ourselves that we consider “negative”, that we can begin this transformational process; and when we are being prodded to move beyond them, we must learn the Art of Letting Go of the old, so we can allow the New to come in. Once we have begun to master this continual life process, our lives become like a Work of Art, and just as a work of art deeply moves and influences its audiences, our lives themselves become sources of transformational energy for ourselves and others.
