DR. SUSAN MOSSMAN RIVA
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​​Welcome to my Blog
As we behold, we actively transform the image.
Website User Guide:
Each chapter in Homing In is supported by a blog that offers supplemental articles, film documentaries, as well as important links and insights that support the reader’s transformational process. These story strands are part of a holistic teaching story or mandala. Each blog further develops the themes presented in the book.The blog is an online learning course in the Social Sciences that informs, guides, and connects readers to important concepts as they embark on their transformational journey.

Chapter 32 : The Mind-Body

2/22/2021

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Explanatory models provide a framework to explain how our illnesses and conflicts are affecting our bodies and relationships. The body is the vase or sacred container filled with verses or narratives, expressing our life experiences. The interconnected nature of the mind-body can also be understood by looking at the concept of archetypes, symbolic representations fashioning our becomingness.
Questing for my origins led me to transformational practices. Along the journey, I not only found my birth family, but my intellectual family. My intellectual family and my books that have been faithful companions, provided the springboard for me to muster the energy to change my circumstances.
Embracing Viriditas, a concept from Saint Hildegard von Bignen, allowed me to perceive the generative energy forces that were present in my environment. And as the virtual reality expanded through the new technologies that were made available, I connected with these greening powers, weaving virtual relational templates. In these expanding spaces of becomingness, my mind-body, incorporated the virtual. My odyssey’s sails filled with divine guidance or mediatorship. As I ventured into new dimension of relating, my Self-transformation moved to platforms that ultimately allowed me to connect, relate, and belong in more fulfilling ways. Within my circle of relations, we became more wholehearted, rooted in the Earth, and the sky.
After attending a medical anthropology conference in the countryside near Bologna, I traveled by train to Florence. While visiting the Family Matters exhibit in Florence in 2014, I discovered artwork that portrayed the transformation of the concept of family. The exhibit brought together modern art and photography to represent these changes, underscoring the artistic expressions with social science perceptions that allowed visitors to contemplate these changes through discourses on family matters. Virtual links allow us to investigate the past and contemplate the present in ways that offer new lines of flight. Our conscious awareness is future-forming. Knowledgeability transforms intergenerational life trajectories.
 
Here is the link to the Family Matters Exhibit in Florence:
https://www.palazzostrozzi.org/en/archivio/exhibitions/family-matters/
 
Here is a link to the Healthy Hildegard website:
https://www.healthyhildegard.com/why-is-hildegard-of-bingen-important
Saint Hildegard von Bingen was a visionary, doctor of the church, and playwright. Here is a picture of her artwork:
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Chapter 31: The Meaning-Making Process

2/9/2021

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Part 3
Belonging: Designing My Medicine Shield
 
Part three introduces the third and final section of the book that begins with exploring the meaning-making process. This chapter is filled with symbolism. I describe my stained-glass window that was inspired by a Medicine Shield that I found in the Seven Arrows book, many years later realizing how much they resembled drawings from Jung’s Red Book.
I speak of running on my favorite footpath that like an old friend, I am forever happy to encounter. I also tell the story of being called to run higher to hear my calling on Poppy’s last day on Earth.
But most importantly the quintessence of this book is found in this chapter, explaining how this part of the book presents meaning-making methods and evidence to my own theory that “each of us are inhabited by a primal urge and capacity to home in”. Homing IN to the good life is an endeavor I share with you my dear readership. This is a call to arms, armoring ourselves with Self-Knowledge or gnothi seauton. Inspired by visions of potentiality, may we walk together like heroes on what Joseph Campbell describes as The Heroes Journey.
 
Here is a picture of Poppy, my dear grandfather, holding me in his arms.
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Here is a link to The Greater Good Magazine website at the University of Berkeley, California:
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/profile/dacher_keltner
 
Gnothi Seauton-Here is a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson as well as an explanation of the Greek tradition. 
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