{"id":7087,"date":"2021-05-10T09:09:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-10T13:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=7087"},"modified":"2021-05-10T09:09:00","modified_gmt":"2021-05-10T13:09:00","slug":"guide-meditation-robin-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=7087","title":{"rendered":"Guide Meditation: Robin Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"

June 17, 1993\u00a0 <\/span>Writers group, Sybil & Lynn<\/p>\n

Guide Meditation: This is a standard one, I don’t remember where I got it. \u00a0I 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.<\/p>\n

Walking between very tall trees, bushy undergrowth, fragrant flowers, jeweled birds.\u00a0 <\/span>Cave is a Neolithic mound, stones at entrance, like Kercado<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>The back of the cave opens into the fairy realm.\u00a0 <\/span>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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Robin Williams played all these characters. \u00a0Parry is a character in the movie Fisher King<\/a>, Keating is the teacher in Dead Poets Society<\/a>, Mork is a character on the TV show Mork and Mindy.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Mound of Kercado is a neolithic mound in Brittany, with a passage going in and ending in a chamber. \u00a0I spent some time there when I was doing research for my book, The Feminine of History is Mystery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What is your name?\u00a0Robin<\/p>\n

Why have you come?\u00a0Humor and magic<\/p>\n

What do you require of me?\u00a0Just come along with me…<\/p>\n

I follow through underground tunnels.\u00a0There are roots hanging down with little starry lights attached to them.\u00a0We come to a large room hollowed out of the dirt.\u00a0It is an alchemist’s workshop, an artist’s studio.\u00a0There 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.\u00a0There is a small fire with a kettle over it and a table with odd apparatus.\u00a0Robin is gleeful as he shows me around.<\/p>\n

Transformation.\u00a0Something about recombining the elements so that something completely new can emerge.\u00a0I think about the work I am doing with my journals, and how the fragments combine to tell an unexpected story.\u00a0Today I was typing a description of how I put together the version of 1991 for RM \u2014 and I think of her response, how she couldn’t put it down.\u00a0I 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.\u00a0I suggest we have a cup of tea to slow him down.<\/p>\n

He mutters something about herbs and gives me my tea.\u00a0We sit in companionable silence.<\/p>\n

J: what I really want is some help with the noise of the airplanes<\/a>.\u00a0I had a bad time today.<\/p>\n

R: (rocks, and sips tea, and stares into the fire.)\u00a0Yes, pain is real, and pain is painful.\u00a0There is no real escape, there is only transformation, and transmutation.\u00a0Remember that some days are better and some days are worse.\u00a0It may be time to make the “scare plane”.<\/p>\n

J: Will you help me?<\/p>\n

R: I can try.\u00a0Remember how Neil died because his father couldn’t let him be an artist.\u00a0Remember how Perry got lost in the pain of trauma.\u00a0Pain is real.\u00a0The Red Knight must be battled in many places and on many levels.\u00a0Sometimes death happens because someone is uncaring, unconscious, not malicious.\u00a0Sometimes death happens because someone does a cruel thing on purpose.\u00a0Sometimes 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.\u00a0The tragedy of your struggle with the airplanes is that the noise they make is at once obnoxious and trivial.\u00a0The risk of death is not obvious, and so your courage fails to be roused.\u00a0But what you lose when the planes go over is not your physical life, but your connection to what makes life worth living.\u00a0This is serious, not trivial.\u00a0If you think of it as trivial, you make yourself weak.\u00a0And sometimes we are truly powerless, sometimes the forces operating are beyond our will or courage or desire to affect.\u00a0Remember 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.\u00a0It is as serious as that.\u00a0No different than what Neil’s father did to Neil.\u00a0No different than what Jack’s unthinking remarks did to Perry.\u00a0No different than what disease did to Leonard in Awakenings<\/a>.\u00a0Your battle is of the stature of theirs.\u00a0Yes, the planes are trivial.\u00a0But little Jenny holding her own against her parents is not.<\/p>\n

Well, I certainly got a long way from the “Robin” character.\u00a0But the resonance with all those movies is what brought him to mind.\u00a0The heroism of daily life.<\/p>\n

I offered an apple to Robin.\u00a0He took it and whirled into a shower of stars and vanished.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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. \u00a0I imagined it as an antidote to the planes. \u00a0I did make one of the wings.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0Another example of this meditation is the post Ereshkigal<\/a>. \u00a0I went back to find the original and it was written just a week before the Robin one. From my journal:<\/p>\n

Writers Group: Guide Meditation \u00a0 \u00a0Lynn & Sybil.\u00a0 <\/span>5 minutes.<\/p>\n

“Clear the tubes \u2014 write off all that junk that’s going thru your head.”\u00a0 <\/span>We just did a ritual of smoking Sybil’s house to drive out all the leftover negative vibrations from her marriage.\u00a0 <\/span>She was divorced two weeks ago, and Bob is getting remarried on Saturday.\u00a0 <\/span>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!\u00a0 <\/span>Negative energies, get out!”\u00a0 <\/span>I also chanted “Om triyambakam” and “Om mata Kali” for good measure.<\/p>\n

Then I talked a little (a lot? too much?) about this sort of meditation, the varieties of results, the problem of expectations.\u00a0 <\/span>I recorded the tape this afternoon and hope it’s OK.\u00a0 <\/span>My voice always sounds weird to me \u2014 so nasal, so midwestern.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/a>. \u00a0It just amazes me that we did the guide meditation for the first time after performing such an important ritual.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

June 17, 1993\u00a0 Writers group, Sybil & Lynn Guide Meditation: This is a standard one, I don’t remember where I got it. \u00a0I may have had it on tape. You start following a path, then come to a cave, then … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,4,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guidance","category-healing","category-trauma","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}