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windinthemaplesFriday afternoon, we worked with the concept of there being four levels of reality that we define ourselves (and everything around us and everything that happens to us and, I guess, just everything) by. The levels are: physical, emotional/psychological, mythical, and essence. The idea, as I vaguely understand it, is that we create our reality in layers. There is physical reality that well-focused observers could agree upon or measure. (On Friday morning, just after 6:00am, I went for a walk.) The other three levels, though, are products of our fascinating powers of creativity. We are all storytellers and our minds are constantly scripting the unfolding tale of our lives. There is a emotional/psychological track where I set the mood and there is a mythic track where I ascribe great importance to my morning walk. I cast people into roles in my tale--there are heroes and villains and innocent bystanders and magical guides. And down at the essential level, there is the core of everything--innate qualities, talents, perspective. So in real-time, physical reality is unfolding in a series of events without meaning and then we power up our amazing story-telling minds and dip the proverbial quill in the proverbial ink and get to work with all the rest of it. It can become so elaborate that I almost lose sight, entirely, on the physical reality of what occurred.
Now, the Grove philosophy seems to stress that this is normal, empowering, and good. It sounds delusional, but this is where we find meaning in everything. There is a power in knowing the process, though, because there are pitfalls to all these layers of reality. For example, there is a boy from Middle School that tormented me. One of his favorite tricks was to flip my skirt up in the hallways, flashing my underwear for all and sundry to see me. To this day, I don't want to wear skirts because of what this guy did to me when we were 11 years old. I have cast him, mythically, as THE VILLAIN! He's not even human, he's a cardboard cutout of THE VILLAIN in any story that includes my school experience. My senior year of high school, after years at another school, he became our class president. He approached me, all smiles and kindness and struck up a conversation in the halls one day about a big class trip he was hoping to plan. THE VILLAIN was acting completely out of character. It didn't make sense to me, at all. He wasn't trying to humiliate me. He wasn't taunting me like an eleven year-old terror. He was just nice and friendly and talkative. It didn't jive with my mythic reality. Other VILLAINS from my school days are now adding me as "friends" on Facebook and cheerfully commenting on how beautiful my profile picture is. They, too, are shattering their cardboard roles because they've aged and matured and changed and mythic portraits of people that we create never do. So that's where the reality I've created is probably nothing like their own perspective, their own reality of the days we spent in school together.
Well, anyways, as little seeds of potential and change, we discussed the levels of reality as a place to go to effect true, lasting change within ourselves. We were challenged to consider that in order to change we must first change our essential selves. Changing just the physical issues or altering our mood rarely works longterm. We must instead put our storyteller selves at work for a good cause and tinker at the essence/essential self level of reality by undergoing an "essential reclaiming". This is changing the very unquestioned essence of who we are, how we understand and define our talents and basic qualities, the gifts we feel we have as part of our birthright. At this level, at essence, is where we tell our unique life's story.
To help us to chart some of these essential self waters, we had two writing exercises for the afternoon. All you need to follow along is a few minutes and two pieces of paper. :)
Essential Self (The key is to not spend too much time with any one task. Go with your gut!)
1) Divide a piece of paper into three columns.
2) In column A, list ten nouns describing yourself. These are labels that you feel can be attached to you. Some examples would be (woman, mathematician, couch potato, athlete, mother, lover, blogger, priestess, student, etc).
3) In column B, list ten adjectives describing yourself. These are qualities you feel you have. Some examples would be (bold, colorful, lazy, talented, artistic, skeptical, passionate, etc).
4) In column C, list ten descriptives/adjectives that your best friend (who is not your partner) would say about you. Chances are this list will differ somewhat from the list you made of your own qualities.
5) Now go back to column A. Choose one or two labels that you feel would be most universally acknowledged by others.
6) Go back to column C. Strike out one or two qualities/descriptives that you you don't agree with your best friend are true of you.
7) Go back to column B. If an all-knowing soul-seer could see through to the truth of who you are, what five adjectives would they pick from this list to describe you? They may have to add a word you didn't to the list. They may have to add all five words they pick to the list.
Those five adjectives the soul-seer chose for you? That is your essential self. It may seem impossible, but those qualities can be changed by you into whatever you need them to be. Our homework, before Friday night's ritual, was to make a list of the 10 nouns, 10 adjectives, and 10 things we want to be as part of our becoming. Make your own new lists--what do you choose to become? What new qualities will you take into your essential reality? Read your new list with the affirmation "I AM ______________________."
We all took time, after the exercise to meet in smaller groups and discuss what we learned, what struck us, what happened to our thinking during the exercise's unfolding.
The second writing exercise we were given was to write a love letter to Life. We weren't given much time to dwell on it, just ten or fifteen minutes with a sheet of paper to pour out a love letter to that Life that calls us out from the Underworld, that Life that encourages us to engage, that Life that sings that song that lifts our head from our grief and our isolation. Everything about Life that calls us yearning towards it--craft a love letter. This letter we were told to bring with us to ritual, to read it privately again to ourselves in the safety of sacred space. Will you write a love letter to Life?
:)
Now, the Grove philosophy seems to stress that this is normal, empowering, and good. It sounds delusional, but this is where we find meaning in everything. There is a power in knowing the process, though, because there are pitfalls to all these layers of reality. For example, there is a boy from Middle School that tormented me. One of his favorite tricks was to flip my skirt up in the hallways, flashing my underwear for all and sundry to see me. To this day, I don't want to wear skirts because of what this guy did to me when we were 11 years old. I have cast him, mythically, as THE VILLAIN! He's not even human, he's a cardboard cutout of THE VILLAIN in any story that includes my school experience. My senior year of high school, after years at another school, he became our class president. He approached me, all smiles and kindness and struck up a conversation in the halls one day about a big class trip he was hoping to plan. THE VILLAIN was acting completely out of character. It didn't make sense to me, at all. He wasn't trying to humiliate me. He wasn't taunting me like an eleven year-old terror. He was just nice and friendly and talkative. It didn't jive with my mythic reality. Other VILLAINS from my school days are now adding me as "friends" on Facebook and cheerfully commenting on how beautiful my profile picture is. They, too, are shattering their cardboard roles because they've aged and matured and changed and mythic portraits of people that we create never do. So that's where the reality I've created is probably nothing like their own perspective, their own reality of the days we spent in school together.
Well, anyways, as little seeds of potential and change, we discussed the levels of reality as a place to go to effect true, lasting change within ourselves. We were challenged to consider that in order to change we must first change our essential selves. Changing just the physical issues or altering our mood rarely works longterm. We must instead put our storyteller selves at work for a good cause and tinker at the essence/essential self level of reality by undergoing an "essential reclaiming". This is changing the very unquestioned essence of who we are, how we understand and define our talents and basic qualities, the gifts we feel we have as part of our birthright. At this level, at essence, is where we tell our unique life's story.
To help us to chart some of these essential self waters, we had two writing exercises for the afternoon. All you need to follow along is a few minutes and two pieces of paper. :)
Essential Self (The key is to not spend too much time with any one task. Go with your gut!)
1) Divide a piece of paper into three columns.
2) In column A, list ten nouns describing yourself. These are labels that you feel can be attached to you. Some examples would be (woman, mathematician, couch potato, athlete, mother, lover, blogger, priestess, student, etc).
3) In column B, list ten adjectives describing yourself. These are qualities you feel you have. Some examples would be (bold, colorful, lazy, talented, artistic, skeptical, passionate, etc).
4) In column C, list ten descriptives/adjectives that your best friend (who is not your partner) would say about you. Chances are this list will differ somewhat from the list you made of your own qualities.
5) Now go back to column A. Choose one or two labels that you feel would be most universally acknowledged by others.
6) Go back to column C. Strike out one or two qualities/descriptives that you you don't agree with your best friend are true of you.
7) Go back to column B. If an all-knowing soul-seer could see through to the truth of who you are, what five adjectives would they pick from this list to describe you? They may have to add a word you didn't to the list. They may have to add all five words they pick to the list.
Those five adjectives the soul-seer chose for you? That is your essential self. It may seem impossible, but those qualities can be changed by you into whatever you need them to be. Our homework, before Friday night's ritual, was to make a list of the 10 nouns, 10 adjectives, and 10 things we want to be as part of our becoming. Make your own new lists--what do you choose to become? What new qualities will you take into your essential reality? Read your new list with the affirmation "I AM ______________________."
We all took time, after the exercise to meet in smaller groups and discuss what we learned, what struck us, what happened to our thinking during the exercise's unfolding.
The second writing exercise we were given was to write a love letter to Life. We weren't given much time to dwell on it, just ten or fifteen minutes with a sheet of paper to pour out a love letter to that Life that calls us out from the Underworld, that Life that encourages us to engage, that Life that sings that song that lifts our head from our grief and our isolation. Everything about Life that calls us yearning towards it--craft a love letter. This letter we were told to bring with us to ritual, to read it privately again to ourselves in the safety of sacred space. Will you write a love letter to Life?
:)
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 07:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-06 01:11 pm (UTC)Why do you think that is? I find it fascinating. I know for me, I'm perhaps *hyper*sensitive to how I perceive others perceive me. I know that I can be completely off-base, assuming someone's sudden silence means that they now secretly loath me, but mostly I'm just overly-concerned with how other people see me.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-06 01:23 pm (UTC)We assume that our essential qualities are fixed. We assume that we as storytellers have had no hand in creating them, nurturing them, and ensuring that we behave true to form. For example, I grew up "painfully shy". In my writing assignment at the Grove, where I listed my ten adjectives describing myself, it had morphed into "solitary". At one point in my high school career, I decided that I did not want to be "painfully shy" or "awkward" anymore. I was involved in theatre and knew the transformation that was possible when I stepped onto stage and was fearless. So, I very deliberately crafted a laughing, friendly, fearless, somewhat gutter-minded persona of not-shy and not-awkward and began pretending to be her. I played this part, very much against my essence, for day after day after day until I realized that I was no longer playing a part and that I had actually shifted on an essential level. (Textbook "Fake it until you make it".)
So these qualities that we take to be the fabric of our very essence are as mutable as our emotional and mythic realities. The difference is, when we effect a change on this deep, instinctual level, it effects all the other levels of our reality and has the most potential to transform our lives and ourselves.
At the Grove, we were encouraged to do this in a deliberate way at ritual. I had a list of my five adjectives that my "soul-seer" self selected as being my essence. (generous, beautiful, compassionate, thought-full, and balanced). If you'd asked me ten years ago, maybe even ten months ago to complete the same assignment I would have given radically different answers. So the second part of that assignment for us was to sit down and figure out what we wanted for our future. What labels did we want to be able to claim for ourselves? What adjectives, what personal qualities, what essence did we want to take on in order to do that work?
In ritual, I then went with that list and began "I am'ing" them into existence. Instead of saying, "I wish I was more intuitive..." I boldly claimed "I AM intuitive".
It feels like play-acting at first, but it begins the work of experimenting with altering the very essence of what you believe about yourself, transforming your life accordingly, and eventually having that new reality feel like an old, comfortable shirt that has always been yours to claim and wear.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-06 01:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-06 01:40 pm (UTC)