finding your story

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Dragons Never Fear to Tread

I was quite pleased with my post yesterday, where I waxed poetic about slaying my dragon. Then my friend Jim pointed out that dragons have a different meaning in Eastern mythologies. They represent raw power.

I was annoyed with him for disturbing my moment of satisfaction with having slain my dragon. Jim often annoys me because he forces me (okay no one forces anyone to do anything) to dig deeper with his well-maybe-not style of questioning.

I want to dismiss these questions by assigning them to the cynicism bin – where they are sent to be disposed of with no regard for what they might mean to me. I think cynicism is the flip side of a coin that has cynicism on one side and sentimentality on the other. Cynicism annoys me because it, in my opinion, dismisses things by assigning them to bins where they are sent to be disposed of with no regard for what they might mean to the cynic.

I hate when I impale myself on my own prejudices.

So, today I did a bit more googling about dragons and found this interesting link to a site called Dragon Tango. It’s about a sound sculpture that depicts Eastern and Western dragons meeting. Here’s from the Website:

During a trip to Asia in 1994 Amanta and David were in Hong Kong gazing out over the mountains of Kowloon. Kowloon means “nine dragons”. Their thoughts came to rest upon the contradictory and mysterious nature of dragons worldwide. Amanta and David wondered: what does the dragon mean in today’s world? What would happen if an eastern dragon met a western dragon? The dragon quest began.

Dragon Tango

Check out the link. It’s very interesting.

Then I remembered the movie “Dragonheart.” The story tells the tale of the last dragon joining with a disillusioned dragon-slaying knight to stop an evil king who was granted the potential to be immortal. I love this movie. For one thing, Sean Connery is the voice of the dragon and, of course, a dragon would sound like Sean Connery. That is embedded deep in our DNA, probably from the time we lived in caves.

And, I loved it because of how sympathetic the dragon was.

So, I still trust what I wrote yesterday. But maybe there is more.

I think what I was trying to get to is change and how we deal with it. I’ve heard people laugh that horses are so stupid they run into a burning barn. But they do that because that has been their home—what is familiar to them.

And, oh my, if we humans don’t go running into the burning barn time after time. We seek the familiar, even when the familiar is not good for us (think bad relationship number four), because it is comfortable. We know what to expect. We know that story. We suck it up and ignore whatever pain that story might be causing us because it no longer fits—like a pair of shoes we have outgrown.

I think we rarely move easily into change. I think we are usually catapulted into it by life events and for me, it usually means facing the dragon’s breath and letting its fire burn away what is no longer useful. I don’t go willingly into change.

I think that the point of facing the dragon is to show a willingness to be transformed by change. And that slaying the dragon with compassion (if that is the mythic image one is using at the moment) means understanding that the dragon is sacrificing itself so change can happen, much as we die because—well, there just isn’t enough room on the planet for us to be immortal.

I just became the dramaturge for the play “Metamorphoses” at Los Positas. It is a wonderful play. It includes this line of dialogue:

“Transform me entirely, let me step out of my own heart.”

So I must thank my friend Jim for annoying me—making me feel discomfort. I suspect he will annoy me again.

I have known Jim for close to fifty years. His mother was my mother’s best friend. I know she misses my mother. The downside of living a long time is you live long enough to miss your loved ones.

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Thar’ be Dragons

I wrote to a friend recently about the difficulty of moving back to my hometown after a 34-years absence. I was afraid, I said, that there would be dragons lurking there. And there were.

One could say that I entered the dragon’s cage.

So this morning I googled “Joseph Campbell dragons” and found a transcript from the “Power of Myth” and an excerpt from “The Heroic Journey.”

I learned that slaying the dragon is a part of the journey Campbell refers to as “the soul’s high adventure,” the journey each of us has to make if we are, I concluded, to live and not just survive.

We are called to make the journey perhaps when we have “ . . . a realization that the story we are living no longer matches the story that we are;. . .,” Campbell says. “Psychologically,the dragon is one’s own binding of oneself to one’s ego. We’re captured in our own dragon cage.. . . The ultimate dragon is within you, it is your ego clamping you down.”

Oh.

Captured in my own dragon cage.

Then there was this exchange between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell:

Moyers: How do I slay that dragon in me? What’s the journey each of us has to make, what you call “the soul’s high adventure”?

Campbell: My general formula for my students is “Follow your bliss.” Find where it is, and don’t be afraid to follow it.

Moyers: Is it my work or my life?

Campbell: If the work that you’re doing is the work that you chose to do because you are enjoying it, that’s it. But if you think, “Oh, no! I couldn’t do that!” that’s the dragon locking you in. “No, no, I couldn’t be a writer,” or “No, no, I couldn’t possibly do what So-and-so is doing.”

Moyers: When I take that journey and go down there and slay those dragons, do I have to go alone?

Campbell: If you have someone who can help you, that’s fine, too. But, ultimately, the last deed has to be done by oneself.

So I came back to my hometown so I could follow my bliss. Not what I expected. For one thing I thought bliss was — well blissful. Filled with fluffy clouds and maybe even bare-assed angels playing hand held harps following me throughout the day, whispering “No pain,” in my ear.

Now I think that bliss is finding your authentic story and living it. And while that surely will include pain as well as joy, it is much less painful than living the story that no longer matches you. There is certainly no joy in living a story that doesn’t fit.

But to follow your bliss you must first free yourself from the dragon cage; embrace the story that you are, which might not be the one you’ve been living. To do that you have to be willing to let the fire of the dragon’s breath burn away what isn’t you, then slay the dragon — with compassion.

And here’s the thing. My writing took on a new depth after moving here. Perhaps because when the story isn’t working, you have to go deeper to find the real story.