INNER CORE

This week in our journaling group, we worked with the adaptation of a German folktale about “Bundles”. This adaptation by Allison Cox is on the http://www.healingstory.org website. In this story a woman is trying to figure out how to deal with all of her troubles. She is told to seek assistance from that part of herself that is connected with all things. Through the story, she learns that the bundle of troubles that she is carrying is precisely the level of “troubles” that she can deal with and that her experiences and talents, both current and yet to come, will provide everything she needs to deal with her troubles.

How empowering--this belief that we are not given more in our life than we can handle, especially if we rely on the parts of ourselves that are connected with all things to help us find the solution. We can tap into the imagination and creative force of the universe to deal with all our challenges. Jung spoke before about a “universal unconscious”. As a writer I believe in the breadth of the creative force. Whether we think of it as a visit from a muse or from the collective unconscious--when you open yourself to the Universe’s creative potential, new ideas can spring more willingly into your mind.

We use metaphors to try and describe ideas and issues—a gray bundle of troubles; a silver and gold bundle of experiences. Some individuals, however, find it difficult to accept these images. They try to analyze or explain everything. Sometimes the creative force just wants to be—it doesn’t want to be understood. Just accepted for what it is.

Last night my daughter and I were reading from Goose Girl by Shannon Hale. I had a bookmark stuck in a previous section and so we looked back at a quote that I was saving. The main character talks about what her core would be if every other part of her was melted away. I asked my daughter, “What would your core be?” And I tried to answer the question in my own mind because I knew it would get turned back on me. My answer was “love.”

My daughter told me that she wasn’t sure she understood the question. And sometimes that’s the point, you don’t need to completely understand, just be open to the images, the answers, and the creative flow. I asked her to not think too much, but just tell me the first thought or image that came to her mind when she focused on what her “core” was. She replied, “A fierce tiger.”

Now there’s an image.

“That’s your core,” I told her. “When you’re struggling with things, just know that inside you is a fierce tiger, ready to battle on.”

So….

1. What image do you have of your core? If everything else was melted away, what would be left? This does not have to make sense! It might mean more if it doesn’t. Just close your eyes, sit with the question and don’t dismiss an answer because it doesn’t make sense. Sometimes life doesn’t make sense.

2. Then visit Allison’s story if you’d like to read it all and think about your bundles of troubles, but also think about the experiences and talents that the universe has available to help you get through them. If you don’t have the experiences now, what do you need in order to get through your challenges? If the image in your mind is a “fierce tiger” that doesn’t mean you need to visit a zoo. What do you need to nurture your fighting spirit? What do you need to help get your voice heard—make you able to roar? What do you need to sharpen your claws so that you can fight ED? Don’t expect “perfect” answers—take the images that are given to you and write about those. It doesn’t have to make sense to start with. You might learn more about what you’re struggling with or what you need as you free write. Often writers have to write many drafts just to learn what their characters are trying to tell them. You might need to write a lot of pages to discover what you inner core thinks or feels.

So what are you waiting for?

Write On!

Martha Peaslee Levine, M.D.

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[Phyllis Klein]

The deep things we know

Whatever is left when
the hard things find us,
hard as in why and why not,
as in you and not me,
or me and not you, when time
and place erase all else, as in
which building you're in
when the earthquake strikes,
what tree you're holding onto
in the cyclone.

The deep things we know
that are hard or soft,
tender or fierce.
Like a car stereo blasting
rap music that melds
into Judy Collins,
or a street musician wailing
his heart out on drums.

Deep inside me there's
a rechargeable stereo
playing next to my heart.
Can you hear it?