Skip to main content

Home is Where the Dog Is

In the past ten years I have been teaching The Wizard of Oz to my college LIT students, sometimes three classes per semester, two or three semesters a year, and in recent years,instead of paying attention to the film itself (a film whose dialogue is etched in my memory), I pay more attention to student reactions and responses. Once Dorothy hooks up with her companions along the yellow brick road (a symbol of the third chakra, our core self), we see that each character is not searching for an object like a heart or a brain but is searching for an integral part of himself: chakra he thinks he is missing. Of course we know that no chakras are missing; they just have not been activated in the characters' consciousness. This pretty much parallels the way we live our lives in a mundane world polluted by noise that keeps us from our spiritual selves. Who leads us to our spiritual selves in this film? The same creature who leads all us sharing this blog: Toto, the dog. He is the propeller of the Divine.
Who causes Dorothy to leave home in the first place? A naughty Toto exploring Elmira Gulch's garden. Who leads the trio of her companions to the tower (symbol of the unconsious) where she is kept prisoner? A fearless Toto. Who ultimately unmasks the wizard as a fraud? An all-knowing Toto. And who prevents Dorothy from taking the easy route home in a hot air balloon? Toto, who leaps out of the balloon as it ascends, forcing Dorothy out after him, where she must learn her ultimate lesson: that there are no gurus, there are no greener pastures, that all she ever needs to survive is what she already possesses. Toto is her spiritual teacher in every regard.
Over the years, I've been monitoring student response to these characters and find, surprisingly, that my student reactions differ greatly from mine. They overwhelmingly identify the Cowardly Lion as their favorite character. I, however, water like a fountain every time (and I've seen this more more than 100 times) Dorothy has to part ways with the Scarecrow, her first, completely unselfish, and most loyal companion. Go ahead. Point out how this translates in my own life.
That's exactly what I invite you to do on October 22 at the Crystal Garden in Boynton Beach, where I'll be facilitating a worskshop on this very subject. We will talk about shamanism, mythology, and the chakra system, watch the film, and then see where in our own lives we most identify with the characters so we can fix what we think may be broken. I hope to see you there! Feel free to call me at 954-680-5759 with questions, or call The Crystal Garden at 561-369-2836.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

God's Covenant with Animals in the Old Testament

What is our human responsibility to the earth and its non-human inhabitants? Traditional Biblical scholars would say one of master-servant and ecologists would say one of caretaker. However, using either frame, neither movement has responded in full view of the evidence presented throughout the Bible that God clearly included animals in covenantal relationships with Biblical scholars neglecting the sanctity of animals and secular environmentalists neglecting God. A closer look at the Old Testament reveals that God designed humankind’s role in relation to the animals as one of stewardship rather than domination. Traditionally religious people often cite Scripure justify a master/servant relationship between humans and animals rather than one of partnership, but deeper investigation invites us to see texts rich with references, both literal and figurative, to the partnership between humankind and the animal world. From Genesis through Prophets and Wisdom Literature, the writers of the Ol...
2 comments
Read more

Animals, Divorce, Picador: Living in the Moment

I once heard George Carlin say dogs can't tell time; they don't differentiate between one minute and one day, so when we leave them, upon our return we get the same exuberant greeting whether we were gone for three hours or three seconds. This merits some thought. Is it that animals don't recognize time or that they don't worship time the way we do? We obsess over time lost and time coming; we struggle to retrieve the past, seeking some previously missed key to consequences we endure in our ongoing life sagas. Or we project and fantasize about the future, what will be, what could be, what we want. Doing so, we miss the present moment, the essence of a happy life. The Buddhists teach us that by living in the moment, we have no expectations and feel neither sorrow nor disappointment. So sensible. So difficult. Do our animals experience disappointment and resentment? If they do, such states are momentary. I am still winding through my fresh divorce, which I know in my hea...
8 comments
Read more

Surviving the Loss of a Pet: Tips to Get Through the Grief

Your animal has died and you are distraught. You have never felt such deep and prolonged loss and are afraid to share this with others who will minimize and perhaps dismiss your pain as misplaced or trivial. Wrong. All of us who have shared life with (not "owned") animals have entered and emerged from this unavoidable black hole, and we'll likely revisit it as long as we live with animals whose life spans do not equal ours in measure. What can you do with this grief? 1. Give yourself permission to grieve, and give your self permission to grieve hard. Experience it. Embrace it, even. It's real and it's potent. Avoiding grief, burying it, masking it, will guarantee its future re-emergence as a larger and more devastating threat to your well being. 2. Remember. Remember the joy and mischief, the silly songs and the serious training, the intimacy and the frustration, the quiet support and cuddles your dog gave you when he sensed you needed them most. 3. Talk ...
5 comments
Read more