With The Marion Method, I’m here to help you be who you really are, and for your life, relationships, and actions to be a clear reflection of your true self, your Soul.
The Marion Method maps and practices really do what they are designed to do.
I know that from my own life, and from walking alongside my 1:1 mentees and course and immersion participants.
If you want to understand what The Marion Method (MM) is and what you can do with it to bring about transformation in your own life, I invite you to keep reading.
THE MAPS OF THE HUMAN SOUL
Our Unique Soul and Our Callings
The Marion Method consists of a set of maps of the human Soul, and the relationship between our unique Soul and Soul’s Callings, and the family, culture, and time we are born into – and live in.
Our experiences during our incarnation, birth, and early years are often the exact opposite to our Soul’s calling.
The contrast between those two, and the healing of our original hurts, is part of what helps us connect more deeply with our true Soul nature and the unique gifts we’re here to give.
The experiences of our ancestors are also often directly related to what we’re here to do this lifetime.
Getting free from cultural conditioning, and becoming cultural change agents, is a core part of this work.
Already this might sound esoteric, but alongside the Marion Method maps, which include lots of layers and levels, the practices in The Marion Method are very tangible, specific, and practical.
This article is about the maps and the map-making: the cartography of the Soul.
In another article, I will explain about the practices.
In a third, I’ll share about the effects people experience from holding in mind the maps and engaging with the practices.
OUR TRUE SOUL NATURE
In The Marion Method, we are all Souls, and each Soul consists of Love, Will, and Consciousness.
Love incorporates communion, oneness, unconditional love and compassion, interconnectedness and community.
Love is the always-present undercurrent of interconnected, omnipresent unconditional love that lies in between every heartbeat, every raindrop, every snowflake. Love is the fabric of the universe. It’s what’s between the notes of music on a page that make it a symphony. We ARE Love.
Will includes agency, autonomy, choice, willingness, wu-wei (effortless action), and harmony with Divine Will.
Will is the life energy that animates all living things and is the drive to both create and protect life, and to bring forth that which is non-manifest into the manifest realms. Will is the movement to become more. We are so much more powerful than our culture tells us, but we are not all-powerful.
Consciousness is akin to Shakespeare’s words, “‘We are such stuff / As dreams are made on.” Consciousness is the exquisitely beautiful fabric which is the ground from which Love infuses and Will creates.
And with all three, there are specific practices in the Marion Method which are completely tangible and specific – down to the exact words we might choose to help us connect with our Soul-nature as Love and Will.
THE FAMILY, CULTURE, AND ERA WE GROW UP IN AND LIVE IN AFFECTS THE PERSONALITY WE DEVELOP
Our personality – which is who we and others believe ourselves to be – is created by the meeting points between our Soul and the family (and lineage), culture, and era we grow up in.
The more that our family, culture, and era are able to clearly see who we are as Souls, reflect that back to us, love who we are unconditionally, and support us to both be who we are and do what we’re uniquely called to do, the more our personality will be a clear reflection of our Soul.
In other words, who we believe ourselves to be and what we do will be authentically us.
People who experience more of this in their early years will have a sense of themselves that is a deep match with who they are. They will tend to know early on what their gifts and callings are, and will generally do that throughout their lives, with support clearly and continuously coming their way.
However, the more the gap between our unique Soul and the mirroring, love, and support we receive, the more we will feel disconnected from who we really are, from our authentic self-expression, from intimacy, and from giving our gifts.
Yet, when the distance is really extreme, which is called “severe trauma” in this culture, these are also points where, if we tend to them later in life, are exactly where we reconnect with ourselves as Souls, and our unique gifts.
Indeed, it is sometimes those who experience extreme pain early on who are powerfully called from a young age to see beyond what others with mid-levels of Disconnected Domination Culture conditioning and pain are often comfortable to remain in.
These people may experience abilities that are outside the conditioned reality of what is seen as “acceptable” in the DDC: seeing non-physical beings, deep sensitivity to the feelings of others, deja-vu, deep intuition, or clearly seeing that something is massively awry with the culture.
These are often the ‘black sheep’ of the family, judged in early life, but whom, in later life, realise that these are gifts, not “failings”.
Those of us in that group often realise that rather than these gifts and abilities indicating something wrong with us (as we were taught to believe as children), we come to understand that these experiences lifted the veil of cultural conditioning.
Like the small child who calls out that the Emperor in the myth isn’t wearing any clothes, we see what those who are deeply steeped in conditioning are not able or willing to see.
So, there are a broad range of at least three experiences:
~ EASEFUL SOUL-CONNECTION:
Growing up in a family where who we really are, what we need, feel, enjoy, and are called to, is seen and supported, and where we experience a relatively easy experience of being who we really are, doing what we’re here to do.
~ MID-LEVEL PAIN:
Experiencing usual levels of pain in the DDC. This is still a huge amount of hurts – including disconnection from traditions and feelings, and conditioned by coercion to coerce ourselves.
We might be awoken to these effects of our family and cultural conditioning at particular times in our lives…
Becoming a parent is often one of these, particularly for women, because we are invited to question our cultural beliefs and practices in relation to pregnancy, birth, and caring for babies.
This is often where women start to get freer from DDC conditioning, and move towards practices from intact cultures, such as receiving support from other women, feeling powerful in pregnancy and birth, co-sleeping, ‘babywearing’, and more community-based living.
For others, the ‘wake up call’ to question conditioning may come after a breakup, physical symptoms, or in midlife, when the Soul calls loudly for more meaning and purpose beyond survival and even what is deemed “success” in the DDC.
~ DEEP PAIN:
Experiencing particularly strong or ongoing pain, often called severe trauma, often early in life.
Here, there seem to be two options: deep dissociation in order to survive (which may include a deep connection to the non-physical world), or an early necessity to tend to the pain and question the systems that created the pain.
Both of these can actually lead to powerful Soul-connection.
This might mean questioning the DDC’s core beliefs, doing deep inner feelings work, and finding new maps of meaning.
I wonder if you recognise yourself in any of these?
Many of the people who are drawn to The Marion Method work (although by no means all), are mothers, who either already have done inner work and getting free from cultural conditioning before becoming mothers, or who, once they are mothers, find themselves questioning a lot of cultural practices and beliefs about babies and children.
Many come in via Aware Parenting, discovering an invitation to deepen their own journey of listening to their own needs, becoming more compassionate with themselves, and welcoming their own feelings ~ whilst learning a whole different map and practices with parenting. (Please note that in Aware Parenting, there is no concept of a Soul, nor of many of the things that are a part of The MM).
THE PSYCHOSPIRITUAL MAP
In The Marion Method, one element of both the map and the practices is seeing each person through two lenses.
One of the lenses is the personality, younger parts, and all the painful feelings.
In The Marion Method, all feelings are welcomed with unconditional love.
All the ways that we needed to change ourselves and our behaviour in order to be safe, belong, and be loved, are all met with unconditional love.
All the ways we developed to protect ourselves from being hurt in the ways we were hurt the first time around are all met with unconditional love.
All the unmet needs are met with unconditional love.
All the adaptations we made to fit into our family, culture, and era, however foreign to our Soul, are seen as deeply wise choices.
All of the parts of us that needed to believe the false beliefs that our family, lineage, and the DDC gave us are also met with unconditional love.
However, we also see each person as a wise Soul, of Consciousness, Love and Will, with their own unique calling.
In the midst of the most extreme powerlessness and terror, we also hold that a person is also profoundly powerful.
In the midst of the most excruciating grief and loneliness, we also hold that we are always loved and loving.
There is always meaning and purpose in the most deepest places of pain.
There is always deep wisdom in the symptoms, adaptations, and feelings that are created by not being seen as a wise and powerful and loving Soul.
This map is not to spiritually bypass the pain, but to create even more safety to feel the profoundly painful feelings.
I will meet you with love when you feel powerless or scared,
and when you are most deeply connected with how powerful you are.
I will meet you with love when you feel deep grief or loneliness,
and when you are suffused with unconditional love.
And everywhere in between.
LOVE-NEEDS AND WILL-NEEDS
As Souls of Love and Will, we have Love-Needs and Will-Needs.
The extent to which we are seen and known to be Loving and Powerful beings, and these needs are met, are the extent to which we are able to stay connected with our Love and Power.
Our Love-Needs include:
Communion, community, closeness, connection (with ourselves, our bodies, our feelings, our family, our ancestors, and our traditions), compassion, contribution, belonging, empathy, attunement, and so on.
Whenever our Love-Needs are not met, we experience painful feelings related to Love, which include: sadness, grief, loneliness, and loss.
The Marion Method practices support us to welcome those Love-related feelings, know our true nature as Love, honour our Love-Needs, and be more willing for them to be met.
Our Will-Needs include:
Agency, autonomy, choice, differentiation, direction, action, movement, and so on.
Whenever our Will-Needs are not meet, we experience painful feelings related to Will, which include: frustration, powerlessness, resentment, outrage, and rage.
The Marion Method practices support us to welcome those Will-related feelings, know our true nature as Will, honour our Will-Needs, and be more willing for them to be met.
The more we heal from our Love-Hurts and Will-Hurts from the past, understand them, and are willing for them to be met in the present, the more we connect with our Soul in the most tangible of ways – we feel more connected with Love – spacious, interconnected, unconditionally loving of ourselves and others – and with Will – free, powerful, in harmony with Life.
We also have Soul-Needs – for meaning, purpose, contribution, and connection with who we really are and what we’re here to do.
THE DISCONNECTED DOMINATION CULTURE AS THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE AND WILL
In the West, there is the Disconnected Domination Culture, which has been in existence for thousands of years.
The Disconnected Domination Culture (the name inspired by Marshall Rosenberg’s “Domination Culture”, who was inspired by Walter Wink, who was inspired by Riane Eisler) is based on a consciousness and practices which are the opposite of Love and Will and which disconnect us from our true Soul nature.
The DDC starts with disconnection.
Disconnection is necessary for domination to occur.
There are several pivotal points of disconnection, and these exist at the exact portals of most power, with one of the most important for the DDC being disconnection between mothers and babies.
In order for that disconnection between mothers and babies to happen, the DDC conditions girls and young women to believe that they are not powerful, particularly before, during and after birth.
It also disconnects women and mothers from community, support, sisterhood, and wise elder women.
It shames women who want to be close with their babies and children.
The DDC works hardest to create disconnection and powerlessness at the most potent power portals.
DDC consciousness disconnects girls and women from the innate wisdom of their bodies, their feelings, and their intuition (it does the same for boys and men).
It also creates disconnection from self through ways of thinking – particularly guilt and shame.
Guilt is a completely culturally-caused feeling, created by ways of thinking.
Girls are conditioned to become mothers who feel guilty, because guilty mothers focus on changing themselves rather than changing the culture.
Then there is disconnection of children from themselves, as well as their mothers, fathers, family, lineage, traditions, other-than-humans, nature, and so much more.
CONDITIONING CHILDREN TO BELIEVE THAT THERE’S SOMETHING INNATELY WRONG WITH THEM
One of the most insidious ways of disconnecting children from themselves is to believe that children are innately “bad” and need to be taught to be helpful members of society, and to perceive their behaviours as indicating that there is something wrong with them.
Rather than knowing that their feelings and behaviours are the most apt responses to their experiences, including their birth, and how their Love-Needs and Will-Needs are responded to.
The DDC does an ongoing sleight-of-hand trick, focussing everyone’s attention on what is apparently “wrong” with babies, children, teens, mothers, and fathers, creating shame.
Rather than clearly seeing that our feelings and behaviours are apt responses to the family, culture, and era we’ve grown up in and live in, and also that we are wise Souls with profound capacity for healing.
Children then internalise this and grow up into adults who will pass these cultural beliefs down again, unless they see clearly what’s going on and are able to change those beliefs.
THE OTHER CENTRAL PLACES THE DDC OPERATES
The Family: Disconnection happens between generations and is the continuation of early separation. In the DDC, families are often separated much of the time at work and school. Children are encouraged to leave home at 16 or 18, and multigenerational families are discouraged or judged. The cultural ideal is large houses of nuclear families with family members spread out.
Parenting: Separating parents and children, and teaching parents to give punish and rewards, distrust children, suppress their feelings, create shame and guilt, and work against their innate wisdom in relation to food, learning, sleep, and healing from stress and trauma.
Aware Parenting by Aletha Solter, PhD. does the opposite of this, which is why I’m so passionate about it. You can find more about my Aware Parenting work on my website.
This is why getting freer from DDC consciousness as a parent is one of the most powerful ways to create change in the culture, and the next generation.
SCHOOL
Most schools are where children are conditioned into DDC beliefs, not just through the content of what they are taught, but also by what happens at school:
The separation of families and children;
Children being grouped together by age and ability;
All children expected to learn the same things;
Topics chosen by the adult rather than the interest of the child;
Starting and stopping times being directed externally and in fixed ways rather than by the needs and willingness of the child, as well as;
Competition, comparison, judgment, shaming, punishment, and homework.
These experiences often deeply affect people’s connections with their callings, and often mean that they feel fear, judge themselves, or believe themselves unable to do what their Soul calls them to do.
We can see these hurts and conditionings later in life, particularly in women entrepreneurs, when these feelings come up to be tended, and thoughts arise to be questioned.
Being coerced to be at school and work at a certain time is often where and when the most powerlessness is created in both parents and children, and where parents often turn to power-over.
It’s a potent place of potential disconnection and domination which often happens repeatedly.
JOBS
In the DDC, many people work at jobs that are not connected in any way with their interests, callings, or desires to contribute.
In an intact culture, each person is supported to give their unique gift, and the community comes together to make sure everyone is able to survive and thrive.
In the DDC, it’s each person for themselves, leading people to often feel deep meaninglessness, fear, and disconnection from themselves and others.
Many people are coercing themselves to do things that do not meet their needs for meaning, contribution, or enjoyment.
People needing to work hard to survive is often part of them also needing their children to be separated from them at an early age – which is why it’s also part of that first essential DDC piece, disconnection of mothers from babies.
FEELINGS AND BEHAVIOURS
In the DDC, big feelings are often labelled as ‘disorders’ with a myriad of other judgmental names.
Rather than being seen as apt responses to growing up and living in the DDC, including because feelings are suppressed from infancy.
People are either shamed, judged as inadequate, or told that there’s something inherently “wrong” with them, rather than receiving the support and compassionate listening that is a basic Love-Need for all beings.
ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS
Without living in community, expecting one person to meet all of our needs is often a recipe for deep disappointment, frustration, and outrage – all feelings which are more aptly put at the door of the DDC.
The hurt and pain caused by the DDC, families in the DDC, and structures of the DDC, such as school and jobs and lack of community support, often come up in relation to one’s partner or ex.
Seeing ourselves as “part of the same team” within an inherently awry culture, rather than as enemies fighting for scarce resources, transforms couple relationships.
As does seeing that like in friendship, there are two types of Soul relationship.
One where we choose to be together as Souls to deeply support each other.
And another, which invites descent into pain, where we choose each other as Souls because the other person has the exact core hurts that are the puzzle pieces to our own.
In this second variety, we help each other to feel the deepest pain from our childhood, in the desire as Souls to heal from those hurts and receive reparative experiences from each other.
SISTERHOOD
Women are taught to compete, rather than create community together. This leads to so many hurts that also affects new mothers receiving the community support that is so needed for the mother-baby dyad to thrive.
BROTHERHOOD
Men are taught to fight each other, rather than support each other.
Rather than being supported to rely on each other and create intact community, men are taught to compete.
ELDERS AND “AGING”
Older age has been demonised, particularly in women, leading to many women trying to keep looking as if they are in their 20s and 30s.
Because elderhood isn’t valued, and women are judged on how they look, the incredible power that comes through the next portal – of post-menopause, is potentially thrown away.
Just as PND is often a sign of growing up and living in the DDC, the huge menopausal symptoms are often seen as something wrong, to be medicated away, rather than apt responses to growing up and living in the DDC, with all the conditioning about women baked in.
Symptoms are always meaningful, and point to either what needs tending to, or what has already been tended to.
In an intact culture, elder women are revered, and their lived experience and power is essential for the health of the whole community.
SCREENS
Screens and the internet can be seen like electricity – neutral in itself, as a power to access so much more information, and to connect with people all around the world, but a power that can also be used in the service of the DDC.
I believe that many screen-based abilities are external replications of skills we have as humans, but which are not nurtured in children, and so often disconnected from: receiving non-local information, intuition, reading Messages from Life, communicating with beings across time and space.
However, in the DDC, the Internet is often used to create disconnection and domination (of course), rather than being in service of Love and True Power, together.
Polarity, division, coercion, programming, judgments on looks, likes, algorithms, all these take us away from the potential of understanding each other across time and space, and compassion for, and connection with, people with whom we deeply resonate, thinking together creatively to create solutions for challenges we face collectively, and learning the most up to date information freely.
The CENTRAL trick of the DDC is to catch people who are more connected with Love and Power, and to invite them down a path which starts out as seeming to be all about Love and Freedom, but which gradually becomes the opposite – hoodwinking the majority to believe that they are still being loving and powerful, when they have simply become agents of the DDC.
This trickery happens in almost every sphere of life.
Understanding it can help us see it and step out of it before we become lost in it.
THE TWO CORE WAYS THE DDC OPERATES
There are two core ways that the DDC operates:
1 ~ POWER-OVER: i.e. the opposite of true power. Oppression and force.
This is the most obvious way.
Power over happens from the most powerful, often economically, socially, physically, to those who are less powerful in those ways.
That means from the king and queen / the “govern”ment / multinational corporations and their true owners and power brokers, to the adults, to the children, to the animals, to nature.
We can tell our true relationship to power by how we treat those with less power than us.
Power-over happens by force, punishment, coercion, both physically, psychologically, and monetarily.
It often happens, but not always, that those with more money use financial power over those with less, those with more physical power use physical threats over those with less, and those with more emotional power use emotional power-over those with less.
This is very relevant to parenting, where in the DDC, parents are taught to use coercion (have-to, got-to, must), rewards and punishments, and threats (however subtle) to make children do what they want them to do.
This power-over then becomes internalised, so that children learn that in order to be safe, belong, or be loved, they need to coerce themselves through internalised have-to’s, should’s, etc, leading to guilt as a form of self-coercion.
This all keeps people being a part of the DDC, and disconnected, to a greater or lesser extent, from the power of their Soul, their Will, their ability and freedom to choose, and the wisdom of their yeses and noes.
Conditioning is so powerful, that the power-over that was devastating to a child becomes internalised, and for the majority of people, that child who found power-over excruciating, becomes an adult who also uses power-over their own child.
The child who was forced to go to school can become the parent who forces their child to go to school (or insert many other elements of passed down conditioning here).
CONDITIONING is the process by which cultural thoughts (consciousness) are passed down, so that people keep using power-over each other and themselves, without anything external needing to do that or keep that in place (although it does, too).
This happens on a much wider level, and also explains colonisation, which is another core element of the DDC, as well as the intergenerational transmission of trauma, and also on a smaller level, how children’s unhealed hurts are passed along like wildfire from one child to another.
In colonisation, the coloniser’s own cultural conditioning – and the ways they have already been disconnected from their own Indigenous traditions and wisdom, is believed to be the superior way to be, and is then passed on to the next colonised peoples.
Bit by bit, intact interconnectedness and true power is stripped away, and again, it’s internalised and passed on.
The child whose spiritual traditions and native tongue are taken from them may become the person who sings the praises of the religion that was imposed upon them.
THIS is why understanding cultural conditioning, and getting free from it, plays such a central role in The Marion Method work.
IT IS POSSIBLE to gradually get freer from these cultural beliefs and consciousness, and to pass less and less of them down to our children, but it requires a lot from us.
And OF COURSE it’s difficult, because we are not meant to change our cultural conditioning.
It’s the way cultures are passed down from one generation to another.
In an intact, partnership culture that honours all beings, that’s a beautiful gift.
With the DDC, that’s a recipe for ever-increasing disconnection and domination.
And it has the devastating effects that we can see all around us right now.
2 ~ SHAME, JUDGMENT, AND EXCLUSION
The second way the DDC is kept in place is through SHAME, JUDGMENT, and EXCLUSION:
i.e. the opposite of love.
When people move away from DDC practices, beliefs, and ways of living, the DDC consciousness in others tries to bring them back again.
This is through shame, judgment, and exclusion (i.e. core love needs being threatened).
If you’ve ever done something different to what is essential for the DDC to be passed down, such as become powerful in your birthing and birthing choices, co-sleeping, staying close with your baby or child, questioning sending them to school, saying no to foot binding shoes, a 9-5 job, or facial augmentation for women in older age, you will probably have experienced this – whether concern, or outright judgment, shame, coercion, or other ways of enticing you back to DDC consciousness.
Because our needs for inclusion in community were once vital to survival, and are experienced by our psyche as related to life-or-death, this is a really powerful way that the DDC uses to keep people who are thinking of leaving it another step, to come back in again.
I see this as like a biological organism simply wanting to keep itself alive.
The DDC does this via the conditioning of people whom, on a Soul level, would love to be also moving towards a life of more Love and Freedom.
As a way of understanding this, and as one of the practices I’ll be sharing with you in another article, I invite people to be unwilling to be hurt by these judgments and shamings, seeing them as an indication that the people using them are simply expressing DDC conditioning.
On a deep Soul level, they want to be deeply connected, free, and powerful, too.
As I wrote in The Emotional Life of Babies: “The adult who is shaming you for wanting to keep your baby close was once a baby longing for closeness.”
Conditioning is passed down from generation to generation but seen as “just the way things are”.
Seeing the DDC, and knowing how to spot the cultural conditioning, how to get free from it, and how to refrain from passing it down to the next generation – this is all key to The Marion Method work.
THE THREE TYPES OF FEELINGS
One of both the maps and the practices in The MM is the three types of feelings.
Every feeling is one of the three types, or can be a combination of two or three types.
For example, I might feel scared, and that might be 10% thoughts-feelings, 40% needs-feelings, and 50% healing-feelings.
The cause of each type of feeling is very different.
When we understand which type of feeling we’re feeling, we also know the most helpful response.
Rather than believing that all feelings are created by ways of thinking, in The Marion Method, thoughts (including DDC thoughts) are one of the ways that feelings are created.
Rather than thinking that all feelings are created from our childhood, and/or the culture we grew up, in The Marion Method, one of the causes of feelings in the present is when past unheard painful feelings bubble up in the present moment, in order to be heard this time.
Rather than believing that all feelings are created by present-moment needs, including safety, we see that these are one of the three types of feelings.
These practices have been life-changing for me and for many, because we can see the wisdom in each feeling, understand its source, and respond in the most apt way.
Our feelings are wise, and the more we welcome them, and get free from DDC conditioning of judging them and ourselves, the more we can understand their wisdom, and trace it back to the Source.
THE PRACTICES
For Becoming More Interconnected, Loving and Loved, Powerful and Free.
Love and Lovingness Practices:
The Inner Loving Presences
The Inner Loving Presence Process
The Soul Versions Work
Reparative Phrases
The Tea-Pot and Tea-Cup of Love
Will and Willingness Practices:
Embodied Yeses and Noes (these connect us directly to our Soul)
The Willingness Practice
The Neo No
The Willingness For All Practice
Language choice which creates Soul embodiment – we literally feel more spacious, powerful, and free
Getting free from guilt and all self-judgment
Getting free from judging others
Conversations with Life Practices
Creating new cultures of Love and Will
MY LEARNING LINEAGE
I’m so grateful to:
Roberto Assagioli, the founder of Psychosynthesis, and Joan and Roger Evans, with whom I trained as a Psychosynthesis Psychotherapist at The London Institute of Psychosynthesis from 1992-1998 and learnt so much about the Soul, the personality, Love and Will.
Aletha Solter, the founder of Aware Parenting, from whom I learnt about, and continue to learn about, Aware Parenting, and for being an Aware Parenting instructor, from 2001, and from whom I learn so much about babies and children, and their feelings, needs, and behaviours, and trusting their innate wisdom.
Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of Nonviolent Communication, from whom I learnt so much about what he called Domination Systems and language, from 2002 onwards.
Philiip Golabuk, the founder of The Field Project, where I trained to be a Certified Field Project Facilitator, from 2006-2012, and learnt so much about willingness and yeses and noes.
If you want to learn more, I have:
free offerings and paid offerings: https://marionrose.net/marion-method-courses/
1:1 mentoring: https://marionrose.net/mentoring/
© Marion Rose 2026