actingclass@aol.com
I turned to the microwave to set
the timer for my tea before beginning this newsletter. The clock read 11:11. I
smiled. Apparently, this newsletter begins where the last one left off. I
stopped to use that 11:11 minute to pray and express my gratitude. Then, I came
into the bedroom to turn on my computer and glanced at the clock. A minute or
two behind my kitchen clock, it now read 11:11. I laughed. Thank you. I’ve
been given another minute to pray for guidance in writing this newsletter and to
remember that life is more mysterious and wonderful than I can imagine.
This newsletter is urged out of me
from the experience of the last Creative Explosion workshop. I don’t usually
write about the workshops, and I do not want anyone to think that these
workshops are the Panacea, the Answer to It (whatever It is), the Final
Solution, or anything akin to that. One can get powerful and immediate results
from it. Its purpose is “to create the energy to start what hasn’t been started
and to blast through the block that’s in the way of going where you want to
go.” As such it can be a kind of jump-start, shot in the arm kind of
experience. Or, it can be utterly transforming depending on what you bring to
it and are ready for.
However, the work of the Soul is
like anything else. It’s like going to the gym and working out. If after
working out and achieving the body you want, you think you’ve “done it” and you
can lie on the couch watching TV without continuing to work out, you will lose
your muscle tone. It’s the same with this work. It must be practiced. The
bad news is: we fall off our paths easily. The good news is: we can get back on
them just as easily.
That said, this workshop was
thrilling for me, so much so that I am scheduling two more this fall. I hadn’t
done a workshop for almost a year, I think. Between my trip to China, long
recovery from what was probably SARS, all the trips to Florida to be with my
sister during her illness and recovery, relapse of SARS, doing She Stoops to
Comedy at Playwright’s Horizons in the spring, reorganizing my house, and
going to the O’Neill Center this summer, there just was no time. By August I
was feeling the need for a workshop myself, so I scheduled one for September 13
& 14. For various reasons, by the time Saturday arrived, there were only three
people enrolled in the workshop including my dear friend, Marilyn Despres, whom
I have known for years and who has done the workshop several times before. I
expressed to her my concern that because there were so few people, the workshop
would not be very powerful. We laughed about that concern several times over
the weekend.
Over the years the workshop has
evolved to the point that it is nearly self-run. With very little instruction,
people partner one another in the processes and do very well. As there were
three others in this workshop, I was always someone’s partner. Coincidentally
(or not), the other three were also women. It was perfect.
For each of us the workshop was
utterly surprising. I had profound and transforming experiences. On the second
day of the workshop, I started getting present from feeling really good. I
didn’t think there was anything I needed to “work on.” However, the good
feeling began to grow until I unexpectedly began to feel what I could only call
ecstasy. This ecstasy turned into an energy that was unlike anything I have
ever known or felt before. My mind wanted to fly off from it, but with the help
of a committed partner who kept saying, “Where is it in your body?” I began to
allow the power of it. It was so huge that my partner started feeling it, and
later, the two who were in the living room said that the energy of it had
stopped them momentarily. It was totally unexpected. It was the first time I
have ever experienced a truly female goddess-like energy. God had always felt
masculine to me. It was a profound revelation. I realized that in the past I
had assumed getting present was something one did only when one was
uncomfortable. Discovering that getting present when one is feeling good or
fine could be a transforming experience was new and startling information for
me.
Marilyn had been eager to do the
workshop, and as she said later, expected it to be a pleasant, relaxing
experience during which she would “tweak” a few things. Later, we all laughed
heartily at that, since, in Marilyn’s words, “This was an experience she would
remember on her deathbed.” It was not only transformational for her, but
enlightening to me. I have received her permission to write about her
process.
As I have often said, the workshop
begins the moment one commits to it. Several days before the workshop, Marilyn
took the Connecticut acting class and then stayed over. After everyone left,
she was clearly upset. Her mind was in upheaval and negative judgment about
herself. Bypassing several hours of talk, I asked her if she wanted to “get
present” (no one, in my experience, actually does want to get present,
but she was willing). With great difficulty she began touching on an immense
sadness. I was sitting across the room and could see that her mind was
racing—panicked at the depth of this feeling. Her unseeing eyes were darting
about frantically. I went over and sat next to her looking straight into her
eyes. She was terrified of the feeling—and of crying. In the past these
feelings triggered migraine headaches that were violently painful, so,
naturally, she was near panic. This sadness deep in her lower body was
overwhelming to her. “If I go there, I’ll never get out!” She wailed. I asked
her if she could touch it for the count of eight. (I’ve started counting to
eight instead of ten after watching rodeos and realizing that eight seconds is
all a cowboy has to stay on a bucking horse in order to win—without losing his
hat. It’s a perfect image for me about feelings and sensations that are so hard
to ride. Even eight counts will be transforming.) She stayed with it for a
count of eight and was better—her mind calmer. But, she still didn’t believe
she could go deeply into this sadness without dying or triggering a terrible
migraine.
In the first process of the
workshop, Marilyn declared that she suddenly felt one and a half years old and
thought she was incapable of helping anyone else, so I said I’d partner with
her. We went back to my bedroom. The commitment that she was working on was a
desire to relax. When she started to get present, she experienced pain in her
back between her shoulders blades. It felt to her like a little bird with its
wings torn off. She could see the image vividly and was horrified and began
crying. The image literally flung her into that Ocean of Sadness. “Why would
anyone rip the wings off such an innocent little bird?!” (“Her abused one and a
half year old?” I wondered.) She reached out to touch the little bird and felt
an enormous love, compassion and sadness for it. The sadness and love for it
were immense—like an ocean. (This ocean of sadness that the Buddhists talk
about has come up over and over again in this work.) I asked her if she could
surrender to this ocean. She did. And, it became the Ocean of Compassion and
Love as well as the Ocean of Sadness. This was the Mother Ocean—the Mother
Marilyn had never had. She felt an immense love for this little bird and
prepared a place for it in her heart. It wanted a nest of red, velvet pillows.
I asked her to ask it what it wanted. “Milk,” it told her, so she fed it with
an eyedropper and cried even more deeply at how quickly it responded to love,
tenderness and care. In a short while, she noticed that it had developed little
stubs where its wings had been ripped out. I asked her to bring a Higher Power
to help, and a wise surgeon appeared whom she trusted. He said that if there
were little stubs, it was a very, very good sign and to just keep taking care of
it as she was doing. She was complete at that, so this process was over.
She was pretty amazed by it all,
and realized that this Ocean of Sadness had been something that she had never
experienced in her whole life. Much of her energy had been used to avoid it at
all cost. We talked about the transformation of her sadness from being a “bad”
thing to it being a connection to her compassion and enormous capacity for
love. Sadness was transformed from a fearful place—one that she feared would
kill her or cause a migraine to a place from which she never wanted to emerge.
Relaxation, as I reminded her (the thing she desired) was so much about
context. She had, in that process, healed and Mothered the wounded one and a
half year old within herself. It was quite beautiful to witness. I felt
privileged. I have often said that the greatest gift we can give to one another
and world is to be consciously present.
That night, I opened my mail. A
dear friend, Ian Hersey, sent me, for no articulated reason, a lovely Origami
bird. It was a white dove of Peace with a bit of paper laurel in its beak.
Opening it up, I set it on the table. The paper wings spread wide and swooped
gracefully like a bird in flight. I knew Ian would not mind, so I gave it to
Marilyn. She was deeply moved by it. It was a rather breathtaking moment—one
of those synchronistic events that convinces me there are angels and a
responsive Universe. I mean, how often have you received a large, white origami
bird in the mail? I never have.
As if that weren’t enough
corroboration from the Universe, my friend Patrice Maltas called that night from
her cell phone. I had trouble hearing her. “Where are you?”
“On the beach! That’s the ocean
in the background! Isn’t it great!”
“Marilyn!” I called downstairs.
“Get on the phone. You should hear this!” She got on the phone. We all talked
and laughed as the waves crashed in the background. Not often I get calls from
someone standing on the beach at Kitty Hawk where the Wright brothers first took
flight.
The next day, Marilyn’s desire was
to find a way to balance the male/female energy within herself. She has, like
many of us, not had the models of a good mother or father to follow. Her male
energy has come out, as she said, like a fierce bird that attacks whenever it
encounters any resistance. It is combative rather than effective. In her
process that day a picture of a lighthouse emerged from the Ocean of
Compassion. Its light was focused and clear. Afterward, because the image was
so vivid and real, Marilyn didn’t quite notice how masculine it was…a pure
phallic symbol. “Oh, right!” she laughed. And, it was an enlightened male
energy…not attacking or combative, but focused and protective of all the ships
at sea.
What I noticed in Marilyn’s
process was that she needed to heal the mother/female energy first. It is the
deepest and most primal relationship. We all come from the Ocean. As she
healed that within, she was able to reach back inside to her earliest childhood
and rescue her inner child. Having accomplished that, she was then able to get
in touch with a male energy that was connected to the female energy—came out of
it—and was there to protect everything attached to the female energy. A
lighthouse was a place for birds (babies) to alight. A lighthouse shows the way
for ships (older children?) and keeps them safe. To me it is the perfect image
of the proper cooperation between female and male energy that lives in all of
us.
What makes a masculine actor most
attractive is when he has female qualities like vulnerability, emotionality,
tenderness, and connectedness. What makes a feminine actress attractive are her
male qualities like directness, protectiveness, strength. We all need to find
the balance within ourselves in order to be complete.
I doubt that many of us would
disagree that the world is way out of balance. What would the world look like
if Compassion and Love were the grounds of being in world cultures? Can one
imagine such a world? What would the world be if male energy were not everywhere
more an expression of the Fierce Bird flying everywhere and attacking everything
that resisted it? What would the world be if the father/male energy was truly
committed to being a Lighthouse? What would the world be if both male and
female were committed to the nurturing, healing, and protection of children? I
want such a world—a world signaled by that dove of peace—a world of gentle
magic—and I am committed to it—if it means I can help only one person at a time
experience that kind of healing. That’s why I have scheduled two more
workshops.
If you are thinking about doing
the workshop, do not think that you will have Marilyn’s experience or anything
like it. Everyone’s experience is unique. Even if you have done the workshop
before, it will be unique. Marilyn said she felt as if she had never done this
workshop before. I have heard people say, who have done the workshop previously
that they thought it was a different workshop. It’s not the workshop that
changes: it is your experience in it. It will be what that person needs at that
time. I deeply respect that. Once a woman who I did not know came to the
workshop. During most of it she slept—snoring gently. I let her sleep—much to
the surprise of the other participants. Later I found out that she hadn’t
really slept in the two weeks previously. She had been caring for her dying
mother. It was the first deeply safe, good sleep she had had. She was
immensely grateful for it. That’s why the workshop is difficult to explain.
It’s not so much about information as it is about your experience. You will not
be pressured into experiencing anything you don’t want to. That you can trust.
I warn people that there may be a
backlash from the power of the workshops and to be gentle and mindful. I didn’t
heed my own warning, overdid it and pulled a muscle in my back doing yoga—a
literal backlash. God’s little joke on me. Sometimes I think one of my
principle jobs on earth is to make God laugh. My back healed very quickly with
the help of a fantastic Reiki session with Katherine Gray, and a visit to an
osteopath named David Johnston. (I highly recommend both of them!) I
had never been to an osteopath. The touch he used was gentle, nurturing,
mysterious and wonderful. He is a very balanced man. I noticed that he had
several gorgeous pictures of lighthouses in the ocean. And over the table where
he worked on me, I looked up and there was a little wooden mobile of a
lighthouse surrounded by flying birds.
The next two Creative Explosion
workshops are: Saturday and Sunday, October 25th and 26th, and November 22nd and
23rd, 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. For information call 203-761-0206 or email:
actingclass@aol.com
