Image courtesy of SXU - http://www.sxc.hu/photo/223188I originally wrote this post back in 2003 when I blogged with Divatribe, and a post about the Bene Gesserit "Litany against Fear" I found at Devin's Mental Emotional Health blog reminded me of it.
Five years on, I still use the technique I describe below, albeit not quite so often - and I've led discussion groups at SF/F conventions about it that have led me to conclude that I'm not the only one who uses fiction in all sorts of way in real life.
I'd be interested to hear what readers think of the idea - something that blurs the line between fantasy and reality just a little too much, or helpful technique? I know where I stand on the matter, but I'm always interested in hearing other views...
Blessings
Starfire
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GUIDES AND GOBLIN KINGS - WORKING WITH FICTION... (July 16 2003)
I have a confession to make.(And it's a bit of a doozy).
I talk to people who aren't there.
I don't mean that in the sense that I speak with the spirits of the dead, or with beings from another dimension. Not that that wouldn’t be cool, and not that I'm not jealous as all hell of people who *are* so enabled (and I know a couple of them personally), but apparently, that's not my lot in life. No, I mean it in the real, genuine sense that there are a whole host of people I talk to who literally don't exist. Now, this isn't going to surprise those of my friends who know me in person, and who've seen me talk to everything - chairs, computers, TV remotes, stuck window frames - you name it. If I have to interact with it physically, I've probably talked to it at some point.
But the non-existent people I talk to talk back to me. And that's where my confession gets starts getting worrying.
I think it all started back in one of my applied psych classes. Or maybe it was going through some kind of self-development course, or a journalling workshop. It all seems to blur after a while, and it doesn't really matter anyway. The thing is, that somewhere along the lines, I learned a technique that can be really useful in problem solving.
What you do is look at the problem, and work out what qualities you'd need to solve that problem. It might be physical strength, or compassion, or moral fortitude or whatever. Then, you work out who you know or have heard of - and this hypothetical person can be real or imagined - who's really, really strong in that particular quality. Then you do this little visualisation where you imagine a conversation between them and you - and you talk to them about the problem - ask them how they'd deal with it - what they'd focus on - what techniques they might try using. It can be a really powerful technique for getting your subconscious to hand over information that it's usually a lot more tight-lipped about.
Now because I seem to get a lot more inspired by fictional characters than by real ones (which probably says something very sad about either the state of my life, or the state of the world around me), I built up a whole group of fictional characters I respected for various of the qualities they possessed. If you're not a fan of fantasy and science fiction TV and novels, there's a good chance there's not much point in me going into exactly which characters I associated with what (not that I can remember all of them now anyway), but if you're interested in the particulars, feel free to drop me an e-mail and I'll try to remember the specifics for you. The important thing as far as this piece of writing is concerned, however, is that those characters were there like a standing army that helped me fight my problem-solving battles, and I could always have them there to consult with in the privacy of my own mind.
Now, flash forward a few years, to a point when I was training for my ordination and learning various meditation and visualisation techniques. And the concept of guides came up, as it so often does when you start exploring the esoteric. And I did the visualisation, and got to meet interesting beings in my meditations. The only thing was - most of these beings had forms I already knew. From the problem solving visualisations. Which put me into an interesting quandary. Now don't get me wrong - I have no problem believing in the objective existence of guides. At least, not in general terms. It's just that when they're wearing the faces of characters that someone else has written for profit… well, you can understand my feelings of scepticism.
I'm figuring there are two possible answers here. Either these beings that I'm 'meeting' in my meditations aren't anything outside of me at all - they're just parts of me - aspects of my personality, much like the subpersonalities I've talked about before. But the parts correspond enough to these make-believe characters, that my brain has created some kind of mental heuristic, noticed the similarities between my aspects (or what my aspects aspire to being) and the characters, and, then, with some kind of pavlovian conditioning, come to associate one with the other. Which kind of works as a theory… and doesn't threaten anyone's nice sane, ordered view of how the world works.
The other option, which is only going to be taken seriously by those who have a fairly new age and/or spiritual bent to start with (and no, they're not the same thing… but they're not mutually exclusive, either), is that I am actually dealing with external guides of some sort… but because they're non-physical, they can pretty much take on any form they please in the privacy of my mind. And since I already have these nice handy 'shells' all ready and waiting in my mind from when I used them to help me problem-solve (look, audience, here's one I prepared earlier!), the aforementioned guides have decided they might as well use the forms that already exist, to save me the bother of having to create ideas of what they look like from scratch. Hey, it could happen…
Or, behind door number three, let's not forget the possible option that I've gone completely mad and have now lost the ability to tell fact from fiction anymore. I have a sneaking suspicion that there are a number of people out there who - given that I'm an officially ordained Priestess of an ancient Greek Goddess, that I practice energy healing, and that I have a strong belief that focusing on something will manifest it - would feel that my inability to tell fantasy from reality is pretty much a given from the first. I'm not going to argue with them. I'll just smile - like the poster says - reality is for those with no imagination.
But personally, I tend to incline toward the first option - most of the time, at least. Hey, it let's me have the best of both worlds - a belief that I'm still sane AND an ability to chat to my heart's content with broody, soul-laden vampires, alien warriors, uber-humans who can pretend to be anything they want…. and now singing, dancing Sidhe-type Fair Folk royalty. Yep. Now we get to the meat of my confession. The reason this whole topic has come up at the moment… as of last weekend, I seem to have developed a new 'guide'.
A question for the fantasy buffs out there. Remember back toward the end of the 80's, Jim Henson (he of Muppets fame) got together with David Bowie and created that modern magical fantasy fairy-tale to end all fairy-tales - The Labyrinth? Sigh… I've always loved that movie. And I've always loved the character of Jareth - David Bowie's rendition of the Goblin King.
Well, the other day, I was online, doing something completely unrelated, and I somehow ended up on a Labyrinth fanfiction page (yep, this confession just gets more and more seedy). And I started reading. And suddenly, Jareth was there, in the back of my mind. And he didn't want to leave.
Initially, I just put it down to my overactive escapist tendencies - the 'gods I want to get away from it all, and I want to get away NOW!' thoughts that tend to hit me at my weaker moments. But as the days went by, I started noticing that the times they happened most were times when I could actually constructively *use* a lot of the characteristics that Jareth, the king of the goblins, has. The two things I've been focussing on most strongly over the past little while have been dreamwork and manifesting... and let's face it, the ability to manipulate reality and work with illusion are two of the areas the be-breeched, spiky-haired one is strongest in.
So after taking a few moments to indulge myself in a little good-natured 'Oh-gods-I-can't-believe-my-subconscious-is-working-this-way' laughing at myself, I think I'm now ready to start actually *working* with this new 'guide' in my life.
How can I do this?
Well, meditation is a good place to start - heading into the privacy of my 'sacred garden' where a large number of my guided meditations begin - and inviting Jareth to join me for a wee chat about what he can offer me in my current path, and any suggestions he might have to offer. Then there's dreamworking - trying to incubate a dream in which I meet up with him and have a similar kind of conversation. Finally, there's writing - if I'm not having any luck with either of the first two, maybe I can sit down and write a story (or at least a scene) about meeting up with him and what we'd say to each other if we did (avoiding the temptation to turn the whole thing into a Mary-Sue fanfic... and believe me, that temptation is *always* there). These are all things I've found helpful in working with other 'guides', so they're reasonable places to start working with this one. And if I discover other techniques along the way, so much the better.
And if nothing else, I get to indulge my current obsession *and* call it spiritual at the same time. You really can justify anything if you try hard enough ;-)
Hugs and blessings
Starfire
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