Secret Partners

TURTLE KEEPS ME ON TIME

Knowing how to approach or even think about the topic of spirit allies is a tricky one, especially when I’m trying to explain the concept to my students. I have chosen the term put forward by Kate Wilhelm in her book Storyteller, which is “Secret Partner.”

She says your novelist-within can be programmed to work on the story even while you’re doing other tasks. Students are receptive to the term “Secret Partner,” but lately I find that I also use the term “Wonderful One Within” for my students.

However, that is a simple binary of inner vs outer, and any artist knows the situation is more complex than that. So next, I introduce the idea of The Editor. I have them personify The Editor in writing and in drawing; in that way, they can externalize and begin to make choices about when The Editor does and doesn’t appear.

But the real situation is yet more complex than that. I have learned through Stephen Pressfield’s The War of Art to externalize Resistance, which has revolutionized my ability to stay on task. So there we have four aspects of the personality externalized: outer me, Wonderful One Within Me, the Editor, and Resistance.

Then who are the rest of the figures who recur repeatedly in my drawings; for example, Turtle, and the woman named Nightwinds, and the crazy-eyed Cubist screaming head called Teecher, and the Silver Fox who showed me the way to the past and to a new direction in art, and the tiger cub who embraces turtle?

Spirit Animals Hoping to Be Adopted Together (Tiger Cub and Turtle)

These aspects of the deep personality enchant and empower even as “they” lend “us” –who ARE all these people? 🙂 — their unique gifts that help “us” navigate “our” lives. Secret Partners, Allies from the Dream World where our Night Vision guides the way…

My Allies


Friday, February 1, 2008. Late night drawing-colored pencil. I am still on the market for gel pens which will provide more contrast. I have painted a lot this week. I am starting to log in long hours at the easel on consecutive days.This is my first ever opportunity to do that and certain things are becoming apparent.

I do not paint alone. I seems to me that I have many, many supportive helpers and I do not know exactly who they are. Sometimes I think a specific famous painter – I hear a wry comment from Kahlo in my head. But more often I sense entities that certainly help me and oddly enough, I think that sometimes I help them.
I do not have elaborate theories about who these people are. The more I read about science, the more I realize that the idea that man is the only intelligent entity in the universe is almost certainly as ridiculous as the idea that the earth is the center of the solar system. As ridiculous as the idea that men are somehow closer to God than women. As ridiculous as the tragic and mistaken idea that man should have dominion over the earth.

It seems almost certain to me that there are many forms of life and I hope to the Goddess that they area more intelligent than we are. I am beginning to be suspicious that parallel realities are abundant and that none of this is even slightly woo woo. I am reasonably sure that science is a long way from nailing down the answers to most of the really big questions. I feel that it would be dishonest of me and a waste of time to develop a strong belief system. I guess I do not put a lot of stock in belief systems. In the meantime, I have allies in unusual places and my life seems to be working better because of their welcome presence in my life. And no, I do not hear voices and they do not tell me to do anything more threatening than “more thalo blue please.”

Mandala for How the World Works


This blog post is commenting on Cheryl’s post and her dream sketch of 1/22/08 titled “Many dreams of a chicken with a golden egg.”

I read an article by Martha Beck, a life counselor, in current issue of The Oprah Magazine about the power of making a list of what you want. Several stories were recounted—one was about a woman named Helen who had been given a terminal prognosis of cancer by her physician. She pared her life back to the core (sound like anyone you know?) discovering only what was of supreme importance to her. Then her doctor said the diagnosis was in error—and she lives on a new woman.

However, she finds now that whatever she wishes for weirdly and magically appears. It is she who said the pull quote, “[From my Core of Peace] everything I think seems to materialize…I swear, if I held out my hand and said ‘apple,’ one would appear.” The author goes on to say, “She held out her hand in illustration. Another friend pulled an apple from her bag and put it on Helen’s palm. We laughed…nervously” (Beck 68).

Beck said that is because Helen’s desire now comes from her Core of Peace. She no longer concerns herself with living in The Shallows. She has passed through the Ring of Fire where all desire is burned up and come to dwell in her Core of Peace. From that center point “ask and it shall be given to you.”

I see this as a correlative to where we both are in our lives now; we have had experiences that have peeled us back to the Core; however, in part, we still know what it is to want something from “The Shallows.” And we know the heat from the Ring of Fire when we try to drag something from the Shallows through the flames to the Core—it gets burned up!

If your grant is written from your Core of Peace and sent out into the world, the answer will come one way or another. If not the grant, then from some other devious angle. But you cannot win if you do not play!

Your picture is interesting because the goose that is laying the golden egg is on top of the figure’s head where it can’t be seen! The brain is bubbling and the brain bubbles are coming out of the mouth—what is that? Soap for Truth? Rabindranth Tagore talks about laughter being like “foam on the flood” of being. Foam is a transitional substance combining air and water—so something about transition?

If I look at the face in another way, the foam represents hair coming around the shoulder–and is that a yellow ribbon or a pink ribbon and what does it represent to you?

The face looks like a Greek or Trojan mask–perhaps even Aztec?

Works Cited

Beck, Martha. “Go Tell Alice.” The Oprah Magazine. February 2008, 64.

Tagore, Rabindranath. “The Gardener # 84.” The Literature Network. 2000-2008. 2 Februaury 2008. http://www.online-literature.com/tagore-rabindranath/2955/

84
Over the green and yellow rice-fields sweep the shadows of the
autumn clouds followed by the swift chasing sun.

The bees forget to sip their honey; drunken with light they
foolishly hover and hum.

The ducks in the islands of the river clamour in joy for mere
nothing.

Let none go back home, brothers, this morning, let none go to
work.
Let us take the blue sky by storm and plunder space as we run.

Laughter floats in the air like foam on the flood.

Brothers, let us squander our morning in futile songs.