Tending Souls in a Time of Deepening Shadow
Without Losing Hope
A 9-month program on Zoom for experienced professionals
2024-2025 will be the last year that this course will be offered, so apply today!
We live in a time of extraordinary invitation and genuine danger. The veneers on our carefully constructed understandings of ourselves and our institutions are cracking and revealing what lies beneath.
Shadow, the hidden and disowned parts of ourselves tucked away from conscious awareness individually and collectively, is visible. Our collective dirty laundry is fully exposed. There’s gold in the shadow, and there’s also the presence of evil. Claiming the needed renewal the shadow offers, means encountering the adversary too.
We are seeing this in what clients, parishioners and directees bring and the dilemmas and subtle discernments we encounter in accompanying them.
And, it impacts us as professionals! We who tend souls when darkest shadow is being revealed need to prayerfully consider these loosed energies as they manifest in clients and parishioners, with others engaging like work.
Essential practices for creating a container sufficient to process and encounter the presence of evil are spiritual surrender and community committed to a depth experience of unity that holds diversity.
Our hope is that this program will allow us to discover what this time asks of us and grow our collective awareness of how to participate in faithful, life-enhancing ways.
This is a 9-month practicum for experienced professionals. Sessions start in September 2024 and run through June 2025.
“This class is vital to an understanding of our troubled world today. Over the course of a few short months, it has had a profound impact on how I listen to directees with trauma experience in their backgrounds. It would be particularly valuable to anyone working with Jews or any other minority groups who have had a history of collective and/or generational trauma. I appreciate the deep thought and sensitivity in how the two incredibly well-informed teachers have handled a topic which has the potential to stir up challenging feelings and memories for participants.”
- Framing topics for mutual consideration on the encounter with darkest shadow.
- Reflecting on our own experiences.
- Reading assigned works related to topics at hand.
- Integrating content with life experience in oneself & in accompanying directees.
- Participating in small group work engaging case work, consultation and supervisory considerations.
- Personal, Collective, Archetypal Shadow --- Healing the personal shadow and response to the collective
- Evil and Projections
- Persona Good, Deeper Good and Deepest Good
- Evil in Addictions
- Evil Experienced in Trauma --- Transpersonal healing in trauma
- Trauma and Evil in Collective Movements
- When Religion Becomes Evil
- Distinguishing the Darkness of Evil and the Darkness of the Soul; Revolution
Sessions start in September 2024 and run through June 2025. There will be 8 all-group meetings of three hours, and 8 small group sessions in between these meetings. The small groups will be 2 hours with a reflective practice focus to personalize the work. All sessions are via Zoom on Wednesdays and all times are Pacific Time Zone.
| All Group Meetings | Small Group Sessions |
|---|---|
| September 18, 2024, 3-6 PM PACIFIC | October 9, 3-5 PM PACIFIC |
| October 30, 3-6 PM | November 13, 3-5 PM |
| December 11, 3-6 PM | January 8, 3-5 PM |
| January 29, 2025, 3-6 PM | February 12, 3-5 PM |
| February 26, 3-6 PM | March 12, 3-5 PM |
| April 2, 3-6 PM | April 23, 3-5 PM |
| May 7, 3-6 PM | May 21, 3-5 PM |
| June 11, 2025 3-6 PM | June 25, 3-5 PM Closure & Integration |
Long-time spiritual directors Don Bisson & Sandra Lommasson will lead the group in reflection on the dark currents flowing in our lives and world today, inviting the group to explore how to address them in a setting of spiritual companionship.
Cost: $1750 (initial deposit of $550, and 8 monthly payments of $150)
““The shadow material offered by Sandra and Don in the Deepening Shadow class has been transformative for me. As I continue to absorb and process all that this year long class has offered, I find a deepening awareness of the way the different manifestations of the shadow move and live in my directees. I see the profound hope and implied sensitivity in C.G. Jung words ‘To confront a person with his own shadow is to show him his own light.’ I am truly grateful for the class.”
”
Don Bisson, FMS is a widely respected spiritual director and specialist in the training, formation and supervision of spiritual directors. He serves in leadership in his Marist Brothers community and has graduate degrees in liturgy, spirituality, and transpersonal psychology. His D. Min. from Pacific School of Religion focused on Spiritual Direction and Jungian Psychology.
Sandra Lommasson, Bread of Life founder, has been forming and supervising spiritual directors since 1996 through Bread of Life and other formation programs. She has written a number of articles for spiritual directors and brings wide experience in working with trauma, healing and spirituality.