Re-assembling the Scarecrow

Several of my neighborhood friends embarked on a "group date" the other day for lunch and a movie--"Oz the Great and Powerful." It was a very enjoyable romp through a seamless continuation of the Oz world created by Frank Baum and famously unleashed upon the world in the 1939 movie, "The Wizard of Oz."

I personally was relieved that the 2013 movie was not a cynical, dark, overly polarized version Hollywood seems to think sells. Yes, the characters are one-dimensional and the drama is milk toast, but, hey, it's OZ, people! ...and it was particularly fun in 3-D.

Lately, I've been continuing my adventure with certain pain issues, and in my quest, I returned to a shaman friend of mine for some cranio-sacral therapy and her unique brand of seeing. After the session, I suddenly saw myself as the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, during the scene where he has been attacked by the flying monkeys and ripped apart. "They took my arm and they threw it over there! They took my legs and threw them over there!"

The spiritual metaphor for me, is how the soul can also get ripped apart, leaving a part in a 1980 trauma, a 1993 ecstasy, or a 2001 earthquake--or even in past lives. Over identification with traumatic or dramatic events can "stick" attention, preventing fully coming into present time.

My intention for the shamanic session was to retrieve my creative center, which I felt had been scattered. It has been like having all the equipment to create a painting, but the brushes are in the bathroom, the canvas is under the bed, and the paints are in the garage. But you don't know that, so when inspiration strikes, there's no way for it to express. I said to my shaman friend, "I feel like I have an entire warehouse of amunition, but nothing to fire it with, or at!"

Many of the processes or life lessons I've gone through end up being about freeing unconscious attention from some past event where I was deeply affected, but didn't realize it. I usually spot a sort of disconnect between outward and inward experience. It is as if one movie is playing out within me while another one is playing outside of me. This is the realm of the ego and its trusty cohort, the mind. All the socialization, past judgments, and past decisions about "how life is" all go into this inner movie we mistakenly call "life."

Sages through the ages have all told us that Life itself is without judgment, without decisions about what is "right" and what is "wrong." These are entirely human-created and it all rolls into one big common movie we call Life on Earth.

Can we truly know what Reality is? Yes. Just by being aware of the question, it proves it is knowable. The thing is, we get so distracted because as in the Scarecrow, "they threw my arm over there, and ripped off my leg and threw it over there" that we think that is what life is about.

In this episode of the Scarecrow for me, I did retrieve arms and legs and my creative center. And I gained a new mindfulness about where my mind automatically goes in the course of any given day. Where does my attention go? How do I feel when it goes there? By paying attention, more of the Self is retrieved and now available to pour into the beautiful artwork we all can be creating called Life.

In vibrant health,