June 17, 1993 Writers group, Sybil & Lynn
Guide Meditation: This is a standard one, I don’t remember where I got it. I may have had it on tape. You start following a path, then come to a cave, then meet an animal in the cave. The animal leads you to your Guide for this time.
Walking between very tall trees, bushy undergrowth, fragrant flowers, jeweled birds. Cave is a Neolithic mound, stones at entrance, like Kercado. The back of the cave opens into the fairy realm. The “animal” is a tinkerbell like character, and I am led to Peter Pan (Robin Williams) & Parry from Fisher King & Keating from Dead Poets & Mork.
Robin Williams played all these characters. Parry is a character in the movie Fisher King, Keating is the teacher in Dead Poets Society, Mork is a character on the TV show Mork and Mindy.
The Mound of Kercado is a neolithic mound in Brittany, with a passage going in and ending in a chamber. I spent some time there when I was doing research for my book, The Feminine of History is Mystery.
What is your name? Robin
Why have you come? Humor and magic
What do you require of me? Just come along with me…
I follow through underground tunnels. There are roots hanging down with little starry lights attached to them. We come to a large room hollowed out of the dirt. It is an alchemist’s workshop, an artist’s studio. There are jars of pigments on shelves, chests of old cloth and costumes, jars full of beads, there are skulls and bones, pieces of fur and feathers, masks on the wall. There is a small fire with a kettle over it and a table with odd apparatus. Robin is gleeful as he shows me around.
Transformation. Something about recombining the elements so that something completely new can emerge. I think about the work I am doing with my journals, and how the fragments combine to tell an unexpected story. Today I was typing a description of how I put together the version of 1991 for RM — and I think of her response, how she couldn’t put it down. I want to ask Robin some questions but he’s such an odd little gnome, dancing around the room, showing me a piece of red cloth, or a beautifully shaped pine cone. I suggest we have a cup of tea to slow him down.
He mutters something about herbs and gives me my tea. We sit in companionable silence.
J: what I really want is some help with the noise of the airplanes. I had a bad time today.
R: (rocks, and sips tea, and stares into the fire.) Yes, pain is real, and pain is painful. There is no real escape, there is only transformation, and transmutation. Remember that some days are better and some days are worse. It may be time to make the “scare plane”.
J: Will you help me?
R: I can try. Remember how Neil died because his father couldn’t let him be an artist. Remember how Perry got lost in the pain of trauma. Pain is real. The Red Knight must be battled in many places and on many levels. Sometimes death happens because someone is uncaring, unconscious, not malicious. Sometimes death happens because someone does a cruel thing on purpose. Sometimes death happens because someone called people out of a false security to live a real life, and under the power of that calling they risked all and lost. The tragedy of your struggle with the airplanes is that the noise they make is at once obnoxious and trivial. The risk of death is not obvious, and so your courage fails to be roused. But what you lose when the planes go over is not your physical life, but your connection to what makes life worth living. This is serious, not trivial. If you think of it as trivial, you make yourself weak. And sometimes we are truly powerless, sometimes the forces operating are beyond our will or courage or desire to affect. Remember that when you hold to doing your art in the face of the disrupting and invalidating snarls of the planes, that you are little Jenny staying true to herself while her parents try to destroy her. It is as serious as that. No different than what Neil’s father did to Neil. No different than what Jack’s unthinking remarks did to Perry. No different than what disease did to Leonard in Awakenings. Your battle is of the stature of theirs. Yes, the planes are trivial. But little Jenny holding her own against her parents is not.
Well, I certainly got a long way from the “Robin” character. But the resonance with all those movies is what brought him to mind. The heroism of daily life.
I offered an apple to Robin. He took it and whirled into a shower of stars and vanished.
The “Scare-Plane” was a sculpture I imagined with big wings made from two large branches with strips of blue denim hanging down like feathers. I imagined it as an antidote to the planes. I did make one of the wings.
At this time I had no idea that I was dealing with trauma. Reading it now, knowing something about how pain must lead to growth or it will only lead to more pain, I am amazed at the truth revealed in this imagined interaction. Another example of this meditation is the post Ereshkigal. I went back to find the original and it was written just a week before the Robin one. From my journal:
Writers Group: Guide Meditation Lynn & Sybil. 5 minutes.
“Clear the tubes — write off all that junk that’s going thru your head.” We just did a ritual of smoking Sybil’s house to drive out all the leftover negative vibrations from her marriage. She was divorced two weeks ago, and Bob is getting remarried on Saturday. We lit cedar and sage in a casserole and walked around the house, Sybil carrying the smudge pot, Lynn and I following, banging on pot lids and calling out: “Evil spirits begone! Negative energies, get out!” I also chanted “Om triyambakam” and “Om mata Kali” for good measure.
Then I talked a little (a lot? too much?) about this sort of meditation, the varieties of results, the problem of expectations. I recorded the tape this afternoon and hope it’s OK. My voice always sounds weird to me — so nasal, so midwestern.
We listened to a tape of me reading the “Guide Meditation” from Deena Metzger’s book. It’s on pp128-130 of Writing for Your Life. It just amazes me that we did the guide meditation for the first time after performing such an important ritual.