On Day 2 of the last Rally (Rally!), I spent the entire morning and part of the afternoon creating a giant treasure map.
A treasure map! Because that was the big idea that our morning group Shiva Nata flailing gave me.
My monsters did not like this one bit. And they did not want to eat a cookie or go to a safe room. They wanted to rant and rage about what a colossal waste of time this was.
So I let them. I gave them their own notebook, and — in between pasting, coloring, drawing, cutting, arranging and sparkling bits and pieces of the treasure map — they got to have their say about how I am on an extremely doomed path to the doom of doom.
And then I was done and I had my treasure map.
It was very much not clear what was supposed to happen next.
The treasure map was simplistic. Highly stylized. Colorful. Shiny.
It was pretty, but I didn’t know what it meant or what I was supposed to do with it.
The monsters: “SEE? Doom! You wasted your precious extra-insanely-productive rallying time on arts and crafts?! Doom!”
I thought about fractal flowers and how everything has a hidden purpose, and how at Rally we follow the rabbit holes and infuse projectizing with curiosity, sweetness, movement and surprises.
But I still didn’t know what to do with the treasure map.
I had too much on my mind.
The creepy letter I’d received. And that awful feeling of something is in my space and I don’t know how to disappear it, or if I have the right to.
Not making progress on something that needed progress. And conflict with someone, which was really weighing on me.
Plus all the monsters.
So I decided any or all of these things could be walked through the treasure map.
Just like when we do Shiva Nata. We take the thing we want (or the thing we want to be done with), and we run it through a series of algorithms. Using our body. Sometimes we add words, and then those words become part of the process of de-patterning and re-patterning.
Instead of running my issues through the ever-more-complex cycles of the dance, I was going to lead them through the different pieces of the map.
Bringing it to the map.
This is what happened when I took the Creepy Letter Situation to the treasure map.
It’s a little weird, but then again you were probably expecting that.
Attuning to the map.
There are seven parts to the map. A secret walled garden, the hidden pool, the radiant sun, the ladder that is also a bridge, the grove of trees, the wishing well that reflects my qualities back to me, and the house that is just for me.
What are the qualities and essence of this Treasure Map?
Spaciousness. Belonging. Safety. Patterns. Shelter. Creativity. Forgiveness. Recovery.
I go into the secret walled garden. What does it tell me?
This is your home. You are safe here. You are sheltered here.
Guess what? Not everything requires a response. And you do not need to interact with these things that make you uncomfortable.
That’s not what you came here to do, and you did not invite them in.
Your job is to rest, replenish and smell flowers.
Your caretakers can shred this for you. They can break it down into its essence, which is HOPE. Someone thinks you can help them.
We can bring fragrant HOPE into this garden and give them back the rest.
I enter the pool. What does it tell me?
Wash it all off. Clear out and let go. Release what is not yours.
This doesn’t need to touch you one way or the other. It is like a test of things washing off of you. Let it leave your space.
Come into a world where these old, false perceptions of “everything is dangerous” are no longer true. Where you can respond with love to yourself.
Then you will be able to see when people are being small and petty and know that it’s not personal.
I step under the sun to be dried off. What does it tell me?
Everything burns. Give it to the fire.
Be in your power and none of this stuff lands. Be in your power.
I cross the ladder that is also a bridge. What does it tell me?
Drop your pain and discomfort over the side.
In order to make this crossing you need to say goodbye to the part of you who takes things personally.
You are the one crossing the bridge now.
I hide in the grove of trees. What does it tell me?
This is not your issue. Take care of yourself first.
Give this pain-that-is-not-yours and the pain that is us and deposit it into the earth.
Watch it decompose. Just because all things and people are connected doesn’t mean you need to attach to other people. Their stuff is theirs. Your stuff is yours. Separate and strengthen.
I consult the wishing well. What does it tell me?
I am stronger than I think. I am radiant. I am strong and radiant.
This doesn’t need to touch me. Buffers and barriers.
I go into the house that is just for me. What does it tell me?
Know that all these reflections are not reflections. Return all the projections and lies.
You know who is trying to be at the front of the V? Eight year old you. She sees the world as a place of being tormented or pranked.
These are old experiences and they are not true now. You are safe.
The stuff that happened then wasn’t personal, you are not a victim, those other people were in pain and they put their pain on you.
What is the truth in the heart of those experiences?
Oh! It never has to do with me. This experience is not a shoe. I can say: hey, this isn’t okay. I am saying it right now. HEY, THIS IS NOT OKAY.
Things do not pollute my space. I can toss them or not. It doesn’t matter.
Interesting…
Oh, my monsters were abashed, in an awkward teeth-gnashing sort of way. They were both annoyed and amazed that the treasure map had solved my problem.
So I started funneling other things through the treasure map. I plugged in marketing problems and personal problems. stone skipping questions and design challenges.
Slowly the monsters started to think this was a pretty okay game. They wanted their own treasure map. A scary doom-filled one! With monster-ey things!
I told them they know where the arts and crafts table is. And then I said it out loud. The Treasure Room.
The arts and crafts supplies at the Playground live in the Treasure Room.
All day long I had been wondering where the treasure was. I thought it was in the map, but it was everywhere. Awesome.
And comment zen for today.
You can play too if you like. Put something you’re working on into any of the places on the treasure map and find out: what can this tell me about the situation I’m in?
Or you can make your own treasure map. Or talk to monsters. Or have a tiny tea party in a secret garden.
Or just be happy with me about the fact that this ended up not being a day of doom, but a door into usefulness and creative productivity.
As always, we all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We make room for everyone else to have their stuff, and we don’t give each other advice, unless someone asks. Love!
p.s. Registration for the next Shiva Nata teacher training is open as of this morning! You don’t have to want to teach — coming for the weird insights and ideas is okay too. 🙂
Wow. Just wow. This is completely brilliant, and now I want to go home to my sketchbook and make myself a treasure map, comprised of some of my favorite places I’ve discovered through writing and worldbuilding.
Awesome. Thank you, Havi. It was wonderful to read your journey and incredible to be shown this idea to take home with me. 😀
This map is made of awesomeness. Holy cow do I love it!
My day is so very crazy in its middle, and so very calm toward the end, so I am setting out all my crafty fun stuff now so I can come back and try it out this afternoon. Huzzah!
“On an extremely doomed path to the doom of doom” made me smile hugely. That’s such a familiar feeling these days.
I’ve just finished making a treasure map. It contains:
–the ocean
–the redwoods
–the cottage
–the sand castle
–the fire circle
–the amphitheater
–the X that marks the spot. Which is purple. I’m not sure why, but I am sure that it matters.
What will I find there? I don’t know. For now, I’m just going to sit with it, look at it, and savor the knowledge that it’s there to explore.
Wow. Shall have to have a go at making one myself. For now though, I think i’ll bring a flask of herbal tea into the secret garden [which was my favourite movie as a child..] and remind myself that in all this chaos; i am safe.
thanks for the reminder 🙂
Yay arts and crafts! Yay treasure map (which is ever so much more awesome in person – the detail/texture is incredible)! Yay for staving off doomedy doom!
Love this post on so many levels!
The story it tells of interaction between a person and her monsters. How well it can work if you let them have their say. How unexpectedly they were proved wrong.
The way that story shows that everything has a point. I may have a YouTube video to share with you later on that subject.
The map itself. I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this, or if people tell you all the time, but you have a bit of a gift for art.
I want to make my own map later – not sure if I will – but for now I’ll interact with yours. I’m bringing the upsetting fact that I think I love God, or I wish I loved God, and yet I have huge stuckification around praying or interacting with God at all.
I go into the secret walled garden. What does it tell me?
I’m reminded of the story of ‘The Secret Garden’. An abandoned walled garden that looked chaotic and overgrown and dead, but deep down in the roots, in the sap, there was life, and the garden came alive again through love and attention. The garden reminds me of me. Of how dead I’ve felt since growing up. How all this extra growth, all this extra flesh feels like dead wood. Of the tearjerking hope that inside there is still a living green core of me. That I still have a self and can still be brought back to new life. Not sure how this relates to prayer – is prayer the way to do this? Is the garden telling me to be curious, to investigate, to poke at things, to look for life? The children who revived the garden adopted the attitude first of the Detective, then of the Lover. Is it telling me not to be afraid of confronting myself in prayer, that I’m not just a husk, that there is a person here?
I enter the pool. What does it tell me?
Fear of swimming, of being seen so close to naked, feeling the water touch the boundaries of me, the wrongness of my shape and size, flesh where there shouldn’t be flesh. This is so connected to the realisation I had two days ago, that losing weight won’t make me okay with myself, and it won’t stop me being a woman.
And at the same time, the pull that water has on me. Childhood by the sea. The little river that pulled me across the road the other day. I didn’t know it was there, didn’t know why I felt the sudden urge to cross the road at just that spot until I saw it. The tide inside my heart. The correspondence between water and emotion. Your words, ‘You are made of the element of water.’ Everyone thinks I am too. The story I’ve been thinking of, five girls with elemental powers, the water girl passionate, open and vulnerable.
What does this have to do with prayer? Willingness to feel my feelings, to change, to flow? To let the experience take me wherever it’s going? I don’t know. Not clear.
I stand under the sun to dry off. What does it tell me?
God’s love beaming down on me. Me beaming up. Whee! Like dogs and like children.
Whenever I enter prayer I’m entering this atmosphere of love. I want this, but I also avoid it, because being loved all over can be really uncomfortable when you don’t have a loving relationship with yourself. William Blake talks of ‘learning to bear the beams of love’.
So it’s okay if I build up to this bit by bit. Don’t stay out in the sun too long at first. Maybe take along some sun cream. Maybe a parasol. That’s allowed.
In real terms, this means it’s okay to have just a 15 minute prayer time every day, instead of thinking I should be praying all the time, and then praying not at all.
I cross the ladder that is also a bridge. What does it tell me?
A ladder to what? A bridge between what and what? I’m reminded of Winona Ryder in ‘Girl, Interrupted’ being told she has borderline personality disorder (I’m borderline borderline): Â ‘The borderline of what? The borderline between what and what?’)
A ladder goes to somewhere higher. Or lower. A bridge goes to somewhere on the same level. A ladder that is also a bridge is very NVC: it doesn’t judge.
So I’m trying to progress from a state of not-praying to a state of praying. The ladder that is also a bridge tells me to stop fixating about how bad and wrong here is and how good and right there is. This is where I am. I can meet myself here.
I hide in the grove of trees. What does it tell me?
Being a child. Endless lunchtimes alone in or under the trees, grubbing in the earth. Free from shoulds, no feeling that I ought to be doing anything, just letting my mind and body wander. If only, if only I could experience prayer as play and not as a duty. Perhaps I can. Explore creative, silly, physical, joyful, meandering ways of praying.
I consult the wishing well. What does it tell me?
Bose. Bose, bose! There I am bosing up at myself bosing down at myself. Just like I was bosing up at the sun bosing down at me. I’m love, I’m joy! Child and serpent, stone and star, we are all one, all one.
I go into the house that is just for me. What does it tell me?
Something about church. About my resistance to church. A house just for me. Can I make a church alone?Like the grove of trees of my childhood, a space for me to play with God alone?
‘Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –Â
I keep it, staying at Home –Â
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome -‘
Wow. Maybe I actually don’t have to go to church if I don’t feel like it, or I don’t feel comfortable with it.
Maybe I actually don’t have to have that guilt. Really? Wow.
Thanks, Havi – this is an amazing exercise and I’m going to repost it on my blog!Â
@Eve — “The children who revived the garden adopted the attitude first of the Detective, then of the Lover.” Wow, yes! What a beautiful insight!
Yay for the treasure map! (Which was super detailed/textured/amazing in person!) And Yay for arts and crafts! And YAY for non-doomedy-doom! Such a wonderful, creative, non-forceful way to work through things.
Yay for the fabulousness of the treasure map! It’s so beautiful. And maps in general. Maps! I want want want a treasure map. Wonderful!
I don’t have too much clutter, I have a hoard of treasure! So I’m either a pirate or a dragon. Or both! Yarrwrwrrr!
I’ve read about treasure maps before, but never got it. The words didn’t seem to have much meaning, but seeing one, sharing one. That’s usable and useful and… pirate-me and dragon-me and little-me are going to go have a tea party now. SlightlyFuture-me is bringing cupcakes.
Very powerful – many thanks.
Not weird at all, but brilliant and creative! I love how you let us into your process,cuz the stuff you do is really effective! And Fun 🙂
I am using the Seven Things in my morning routine. I use what you write as a starting point, throw in a bunch of my stuff, and it just flows for me organically. I loved Secret Passages and Hidden Doors, so have incorporated them into my morning writing. Yesterday, I realized I was IN a Secret Passageway around an especially gnarly Thing. YAY!
Marvellous!
Last weekend I drew a treasure map – forgot how much I love drawing. Even though my monsters are having about 50 fits a piece, I’m intrigued to try it out on something that I have a fair bit of resistence to.
And it reminded me that drawing is a completely legitimate thing to do and enjoy, just for itself.