I am fortunate to be a student in one of the StoryCircle groups facilitated by Susan Hagen. My living room transforms into a women's writing class most Monday nights. We check in briefly, Susan talks about an aspect of writing and then leads us in a guided meditation. Our creativity is enhanced by the way our process is safely wrapped in a sacred container. After writing, we each read to the group and they reflect back their impressions without analysis. The process works incredibly well for me.
Susan is co-author of the book Women at Ground Zero. For more information about StoryCircles, go to WomenatGroundZero.com and then click on the Classes & Workshops link in the frame to the left. To contact Susan directly send her an email Suzhagen@sonic.net.
Following is the story that I wrote tonight...
During the meditation I noticed myself becoming more and more relaxed. Inyo found her way to my lap and her warm weight there was comforting. She curled up to sleep I am sure because I became very sleepy myself. My thoughts drifted, not clinging to much of anything. I love that experience and it is one of those things that I rarely attempt to reproduce when I am home alone.
Sitting with the cat on my lap, now that’s another thing. Whenever I sit down in the chair or on the sofa, she appears as if the subtle sounds of my settling onto furniture is a trigger for her. In the morning after I rise, I sit in the chair in the bright blue light of the mood lamp. I got it to see if light therapy would have an effect on how I feel and how much energy I have. Amazingly, this simple 30-minute exercise seems to be working. I suppose that I could use that time for meditation, but I enjoy using it instead as a time to read, have a cup of tea and stroke the silky fur of my feline companion.
Lately we have been reading articles about the tsunami in the Press Democrat. Stories about destruction and despair, miraculous survivors, difficult relief efforts and people called to go and help. I am fascinated by the magnitude, the huge area involved and the way people and animals reacted. I find it reassuring somehow that all the animals in that large park in Sri Lanka survived. They somehow sensed the impending danger and moved inland far enough to escape harm. Or the elephants in Thailand who broke their chain restraints in their desperation to get out of the way of those waves. They took some people with them.
My imagination takes off as I read these stories. I have a million questions and I feel perfectly content with the answers I make up. I enjoy reading the theories suggested by others and I am angered by the suggestion that since it has not been definitively proved by science, no one really knows why. Duh. It seems pretty clear to me. The animals sensed that something was going to hurt them if they didn’t move. When they moved far enough to be safe, that feeling stopped.
An article I read said that animals have the ability to sense subtle electronic and magnetic signals, but people do not have this ability. I think to myself, "Really?" Is it that we do not have it or that we have simply forgotten how to interpret and react to the sensations? We are so inundated by cultural beliefs and assumptions that we have cut ourselves off from the same clairvoyance that is simply part of the nature of being an animal. But we are animals too. I figure that we must have this sense. It is not so different from the reasons why we have become unable to communicate with animals and plants. We have become convinced that it is not possible and so it isn’t.
After my stroke I had an insight into an aspect of my future. I was being ushered into the world of rehabilitation and encouraged to seek this path of recovery. The word struck me. "Re" - to repeat. "Cover" – to conceal. So in order to return to the ridiculous world of western civilization I was going to have to relearn how to not be aware of all the things that had become so obvious and simple.
My life was extremely uncomplicated, but I had to recover from that. I lived almost entirely in the present moment. I only thought about one thing at a time. I moved slowly and deliberately. I had to recover from those things. I had to relearn multi-tasking and efficiency. Part of the insight was that there was nothing that I could do to stop it. My nature as a cultural human demanded that I recover.
I really enjoyed reading about your thoughts about the tsunami, animals and the word recover. What's interesting is that I've known you very long but this venue provides something different that I have never heard from you before.
Posted by: Janet Tokerud | January 27, 2005 at 11:36 AM