When I was a very little girl, about 4 or 5, I can remember playing alone in my bedroom and being deeply immersed in the story. My dolls were lined up, I was pretending to mother them, but also some of the characters were in distress, so I was also ‘rescuing’ them. Giving them clothes and food. I’ve been dealing with the fallout of rescuer energy most of my life. At least I know that was an innate lesson I needed to heal within.
In that play-space, Time disappeared. It simply did not exist. It was a bliss state and I was content in the fields of my own imagination.
Years later, I watched the same energetic process occur in my sons. On one particular occasion Ryan was playing with Lego and making a movie. I think he was fixated, in the best way possible, immersed in his creative process and after some 16 hours, he surfaced.
My playing with dolls was interrupted by my caring mum, calling me for dinner or some other necessary nurturing experience.
For some reason, Ryan who was so rarely focused or immersed in anything, due to some traumatic programming he’d received at school, a host of learning blockages and other personal difficulties – had created a sanctified boundary, a sacred space, around himself. I managed to tune in enough (rare at that time) to know he was ok, he wouldn’t starve, as much as my mother-smothering wanted to take over and control his experience. I left him to it.
When he was ready he rose from his creative trance, got some food and returned to his very important task. It was a beautiful thing to witness in a lad, who if certain ‘authorities’ had got hold of him, would have drugged him to the eyeballs with ADHD chemicals, they dare to call ‘medicine’. That authentic 'trance experience' didn’t last long – but at least he had it. Once is enough. It leaves a seed of awareness.
A seed for both of us.
Now let me be clear here. He wasn’t video-gaming and lost in a world slowly sucking the marrow out of his bones and into a destructive vortex. There are benefical video-gaming experiences which I believe can be powerfully supportive for our young, so I’ll sift out my innate prejudice here and return to that story at another time. I will emphasise though, those video-gaming benefits only occur when used with great discernment and in a world of balance. A world where the virtual meets the real in some way and co-operates.
Back to my own personal tale.
My well-meaning mum interrupted my independent creativity and imaginative play with what she thought I needed. Routine. Now in one way, she was absolutely right. Children, under 7 years, need the experience of loving routine and structure – to give them a strong foundation, something sorely needed in many children's lives today. In another way, she innocently created a wound I’ve carried for a lifetime.
I’ve been tending to this wound consciously for the last 10 years, climbing the mountains of a particular pain set and in just this moment, the flow feels like it has carried me UP the highest of mountains and I have just arrived at the peak with a vista that has taken my breath away.
I’ve seen something, about myself, that I’ve never seen before.
I always interrupt my own creative play, which is what will lead to inventive and imaginative solutions to my own day to day pains in the ‘real’ world! And I do it using – food.
When people are in pain, my first form of ‘medicine’ is always...food. Sometimes food is medicine. But given at the wrong time, it can interrupt a self-healing process.
How's your Timing? Do you interrupt your own flow states out of 'guilt' or unnecessary interference?
What’s your personal Medicine?
Does it heal or harm? Does it nurture, or interrupt, a self-healing, self-actualising process?
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