Dragons and heroes

Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, April 26, 2024

“In a ruined and toxic future…” — Apple TV promo for a new series

“We’re our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.” — Tom Robbins

In my 20s, I worked in the rights department (sales of excerpts, quotes, cover art, foreign rights) at Bantam Books in New York. The highlight of the job was lots of free books, first reads, and connections to the world of writers and writing. That, and selling Tom Robbins’s (an eccentric novelist, now in his 90s) cover art to foreign publishers and actually seeing him in the elevator one time. 

They were heady days for the “new age.” Bantam had just created a new age imprint, and one of their many seminal bestsellers was “Creative Visualization” by Shakti Gawain, a book that propelled visualization back into the popular forefront.  Now, of course, there are hundreds of books on the topics of visualization, mental rehearsal, mindset, and meditation. And, in the face of imagining any kind of  “ruined and toxic future,” we may be needing these techniques more than ever. 

Though visualization has been used throughout history, often in spiritual contexts, a trend toward self-referential or performance-based visualizing is more recent. Today, for example, we generally accept that athletes are using mental rehearsal, a type of visualization, for enhanced performance, and that if they aren’t, they are probably performing at a disadvantage. 

But what if performance includes other aspects of how we live our lives? What if it includes every aspect, in fact? Today, many spiritual leaders, coaches and neuro-hackers say it does. In a tsunami of information and negative news of the day, how else are we to overcome our general human tendencies to feel anxiety and fear, to be escapist or distracted, to default to automatic negative thoughts (ANTs)? How are we to be our own heroes and rescue ourselves, essentially rising above our own water lines? 

For me, step one is to opt out of our addiction to ruined and toxic futures. Political, ecological, or technological dystopias — regardless of the quality of the premise or popularity — don’t interest me so much anymore. Chances are, if I go to bed with feelings I don’t know what to do with, some of my precious dream time may be stolen. The waking world may arrive darker than it actually is. And even if the world is as dark as it seems, why must my own mind be a reflection of this? 

During COVID, like a lot of other people, I started a meditation practice.  I’d bumped into one online, a morning “priming” exercise offered by a popular mindset guru. After doing the fifteen-minute practice for several months, I started to feel more open, hopeful, and happier. Why? After attempting several meditations and practices, I determined that the morning exercise I’d been doing contained techniques from various traditions, including Shakti Gawain’s. Together, these techniques provided a boost for me; so I’ll share them here.

The first part of the practice involved deep breathing for a couple of minutes (he used breathing with a forceful exhale, called Kapalbhati in yoga). After relaxing the body came visualizing three separate moments in life of deep gratitude, giving each one a minute or so, long enough to really feel the elevated sense of that moment in time. 

Part three was to visualize (and feel) white light in the body and in the heart (part of Gawain’s most popular visualization) for several minutes. And the last part of the meditation was to see three desired outcomes – goals — as if they’d already happened, internalizing the pleasure and victory of their accomplishment. The meditation ends by allowing an influx of memorable life moments and seeing the beauty of the whole. 

What I discovered after months of doing this Tony Robbins meditation (yes, Tony Robbins), was that the gratitude part of the practice alone was worth its weight in gold. Nothing new here, clearly: just practicing something that always needs to be practiced and felt. Remembering how many moments in life are worth remembering, and letting them rise to the surface. I remembered so many things I’d forgotten! It may be worth an online search and trying it for yourself.

I’m not dissing all dystopias, mind you. When the movie Blade Runner originally came out in 1982, with its dark, rainy, replicant-infested future of 2019 and its awesome score by Vangelis, I remember thinking how delicious a movie it was. And how delicious it was to be in my own 1982. If toxic futures help us remember how fortunate we are right here and right now, well, that is a different story.