Showing your colours on a path of inner wisdom: Storytelling and inspiration afternoon 27 October
Jacinta Kogelman (kleurenreis.nl) will give a mini workshop for pilgrims who have completed the Walk of wisdom with colour, image and word at our story and inspiration afternoon on 27 October. An interview by Damiaan Messing.
On a beautiful late summer’s day in October, I cycle along the long dike from Nijmegen to Oosterhout, where Jacinta lives. In between the new buildings, I am pleasantly surprised by farmhouses with orchards and spacious gardens, which are intertwined with nature. In one of the gardens, between two trees, a wide volleyball net hangs frank and free.
Jacinta, in her light-filled studio above her house: “Everything outside of you is a mirror for what is going on in your inner world. The world is talking to you.” She asks me to reflect on what I have seen along the way. “In what you meet, you find what you value and find important.”
Jacinta is a creative colour and nature coach and artist. She allows everything to be a mirror for what they and workshop participants or clients are deeply involved with in their lives. In the workshop of the storytelling afternoon , she will do this with memories of pilgrims of their journey and the motivation why they started walking it.
Jacinta: “Coincidentally or not, I’ll probably finish my own Walk of Wisdom next week. Together with a friend, I walk the route in short stretches. We walk with attention to each other and to the environment, sometimes in silence, sometimes in conversation, often no more than 7 to 10 kilometers a day. Beforehand, we both draw two cards: a color chart and an art card for living. The colour indicates a theme and the art of living card indicates an in-depth need. What we encounter along the way – and above all: what we let ourselves be touched by – works as a mirror for what the cards have given us.”
To illustrate, she lets me draw two cards myself. I draw gray as the color “Connect with your body” it says. Jacinta also lets me draw a card from her own deck of cards, mirror of the soul. I draw a guardian angel, in the middle of which – coincidentally or not – is a figure that is very reminiscent of the symbol of the Walk of Wisdom: Pilgrim. Jacinta draws orange as a colour – “security” – and as an art of living card, “really having to meet the other in openness and vulnerability”.
Of course, we immediately start talking about the cards. Jacinta went through a difficult period with a lot of physical complaints and I am tired myself today, with a lot of hip problems that have been going on for years.
Jacinta: “I feel like there’s a transformation going on in the world. A transformation from self-centeredness to the we, from living from the ego to living from the heart. Sensitive people like you and me pick up on those signals. But to really experience that transformation from the inside out is not easy.”
I ask a little deeper about that transformation. Jacinta: “I believe that everything is animate and speaks to us through colors, people, animals, and through what-you-don’t-see-but-feel-with the message that everything is connected. In everything there is the power that carries us: love. Many people have lost the connection with that love and feel detached from it, like grains. But that’s not the purpose of life at all. We need each other to strengthen each other. “
I think it all sounds nice, but I’m also a bit skeptical. I understand that I am painfully touched by new construction and warmly affected by lush gardens. I appreciate open space and I don’t think we should build up the countryside. But that everything is animated around and in us? Transforming our will into love? I question my physical complaints or her own struggle with body and mind.
Jacinta looks at me proudly. She points to the color chart I drew: gray. “Listen to your own body” it says. “Isn’t that a messenger of goodness, that you should slow down, take a break?” That’s right.
Jacinta: “I am here with much more than just you and me. I’m also here with the flowers I gathered yesterday because I knew you were coming.” In the bouquet there is – again, coincidence or not – one orange flower that bends towards us. Jacinta looks pleasantly surprised, but at the same time is not surprised. Her color chart was orange. “That’s the color of security.” Her life art card was about having to do it. “You can only meet each other truly, openly and vulnerably if you feel safe, if you feel safe.”
I understand a little better how Jacinta works. Our cards mirror each other slightly and provide a signpost to look at the things we encounter in life. I don’t know if everything around us is animated and speaks to us, but I do believe that we can pick up that message if we want to look at the world with eyes of love. In any case, the cards are a great way to quickly talk to each other about the big things in our lives.
Jacinta; “I feel like a messenger of good. Connect with yourself and the natural around you. My own questions are: who wants to hear that message? How do I reach the other person? But also: how does that message reach me?”
I like that. As a coach, Jacinta wants to be her own student. “I myself am constantly trying to show my colours and to allow the creative, enjoying power that is life“.
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More about the storytelling and inspiration afternoon for pilgrims who have completed the Walk of Wisdom : link Saturday 27 October
More about Jacinta: Colour Journey
