Your Own "Hero's Journey"
The Case for an Imagination Samurai: PART I
In 2001, I worked on 185th Street in New York City (the tippy-top of Manhattan) and on September 11 I saw, from my office window, the second World Trade Center tower—at the absolute opposite end of the city—get hit. And I’ll never forget when, after going to my desk to answer the phone, I came back to the window and it was suddenly gone.
It was a surreal time. I had to take the ferry to work because they’d closed the bridges and tunnels into the city. And they had also stopped all air traffic for a while, so the skies were unusually clear and blue and silent.
In fact, the weather was especially beautiful in those days and weeks after 9/11, which was a strange contrast to how everyone felt. I’d stand outside on the ferry’s deck each beautiful morning for my seven minute commute across the Hudson, feeling the breeze on my face and watching the acrid smoke lazily rise from the rubble at the bottom of Manhattan.
Days later, with the economy in tumult, President George Bush implored us, as American citizens, to do our duty for our country and…shop.
This was the “Hero’s Journey” being offered up to the citizenry in our time of crisis: “Consume.”
A hollow assignment.
I was thinking about this cultural reduction after the election. That in late capitalism, the message we get as citizens is that our main role in society is being consumers.
And in what I think of as the “learned helplessness” of late capitalism, we’re the faceless, nameless customers of a handful of multinational corporations who don’t really care whether or not we’re satisified or dissatisifed, because they know we can’t really completely ‘quit’ their product(s) and still function in society.
But last week, when a lot of people didn’t like the price of rent and eggs and gas, they actually voted as dissatisfied customers. I think this is a telling example of what happens when the dominant culture crams people into a tiny box labeled “consumer” and tells them this is who they are and this is what matters in life.
And by voting mainly about their anger over prices, these voters helped re-elect perhaps the most transactional person who ever pursued the job of president. Strangely fitting.
It’s also ironic, since they voted for the person whose campaign promises would only raise those prices.
Of course, all these thoughts came days after the stunned fury I felt on Wednesday morning when it appeared that a majority of voters had signed me up to live in a Project 2025 christo-fascist police state without my permission.
Oh my Gaia, I was pissed.
But the complexity of this election result hit home more clearly when I read this on Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter:
‘Republican strategist Sarah Longwell, who studies focus groups, told NPR, “When I ask voters in focus groups if they think Donald Trump is an authoritarian, the #1 response by far is, ‘What is an authoritarian?’
Sigh.
So what happened really, is not that a majority of American’s decided they wanted to live in an autocracy. It’s that a complicated mess of toxic right-wing disinformation, deep-seated civic ignorance, lack of education, conscious and unconscious racism and sexism, selfishness, apathy, and enough peoples’ daily lives genuinely sucking resulted in the election of a person who disdains democracy. Who perceives every interaction he has as a transaction. A consumer president for a consumer culture.
As a friend said, “Sadly, it looks like we still need to face our demons as a country.” I agree.
But I know I can’t sustain myself on fury. And I won’t live in fear.
So while I’ve been letting myself feel all the feelings (so many angry tears!) I’ve also been searching for an empowering personal path forward—as an artist and writer—a cultural worker who is a helluva lot more than a “dissatisfied customer.”
To create my own “Hero’s Journey” through all this.
More than a Consumer
Of course, we are ALL more than dissatisfied customers. We are multidimensional beings of light who are barely scratching the surface of the possibilities our own existences, for crying out loud.
One of the ways for me to be a part of the resistance to a potential autocracy (it can’t happen in a minute) as well as contribute to the metamorphosis of our society into something sustainable, loving, inclusive, creative, light-filled, and balanced is to protect and cultivate my precious and powerful imagination.
And to help others do the same.
As I wrote two weeks ago in my post called The Power of Your Imagination, I believe our imaginations are nothing short of humanity’s untapped superpower.
Our imaginations are not only potential portals to source, they are the key to our evolution as a species on the planet. And now is the time to really hone that power for our higher good.
To do that well, I think it helps to be aware of when we throttle our imaginations with fear.
Not indulging Fear and Dread
As a lifelong artist, my imagination is very developed. So when I become fearful of what might happen in a Trump administration and do a deep dive imagining American society under autocratic rule, I can quickly bring that to life. (And boy, did I!)
But when I do that, I’m living in a future that isn’t happening yet, and draining my own power. Dimming my light. And the more convinced I am by the dystopian story I’m conjuring up in my imagination, the more I’m also helping it become real.
This is not that different from Trumpers who are angry about false right-wing stories about immigrants, the state of the economy, or kids having sex change operations at school—fictions that are not actually happening, except in their imaginations. And we see how powerful that is.
So I must protect my imagination from my fear. This takes vigilance because for most of us, our fears and imaginations live in very close proximity to each other. And most of us also have, over the course of our lives, unconsciously but habitually leaned on fear as a way motivate ourselves—because fear galvanizes us to take action—it’s part of our mammalian survival kit.
But as we all know, driving oneself forward with fear is also a quick way to run out of gas. It’s like when I try to fuel myself with a coke and gummie worms when I’m tired—a short sugar burst that always depletes me in the end.
And because it’s important to be informed and clear-eyed about what is happening around us, we can’t bury just our heads in the sand as a strategy to protect our imaginations.
We have to find other ways of protecting our imaginations.
Sovereignty
For me, this is when standing in my sovereignty comes in. I think of my sovereignty as being aware of myself as a unique presence in the world, an individual with choice, autonomy and self-direction.
I like to imagine the light inside me, my own personal light filling my physical body. I then imagine into my personal strengths—myself at my best—and I imagine these strengths also filling my body. And then I imagine all the love and support I have, what nourishes me—my family and friends, pets, my garden. (In Lorian, we call this “standing on your inner land.”)
And then, standing on my inner land, I connect my lit up self to the earth below me and the stars above me.
This is my imagination reminding me of who I am, and it dissipates my fear and returns me to the present moment.
I think it’s helpful to have your own spiritual strategy in place for when fear strikes. Feel free to do some version of what I just described or develop something new. But do something self-supporting to protect your imagination because nothing makes a would-be autocrat’s life easier than your imagining what he might do, and then voluntarily making yourself smaller to fill the shrunken space he’d like you to live in.
What’s the big phrase rolling around the internet right now? “Anticipatory obedience.” Every cell in my body recoils at that phrase.
So, um, no thank you to anticipatory obedience. I’ve got other plans, like my mission to become a kick-ass “Imagination Samurai.”
Because when you really hone your imagination, you naturally increase your creativity. And when you increase your creativity, you enhance your own freedom. And when you enhance your own freedom, well, you’re harder to control.
Which is why I’m being vigilant about separating my fear from my imagination, staying in the present, filling my body with light, and standing with joy on my inner land.
Because, say what you will, but this genie is out of the bottle, and I’m not going back in.
Next week, I’m going to talk about what I think being an “Imagination Samurai” is and how you could treat that as a “hero’s journey” worthy of your time.
I zen abbess said to me after the election, "we must be the guardians of the field". I am all the more committed to bringing what goodness I can where and when I can. The 'negative merge', while confirming alignment, leaves us depleted.
The disaster future narrative in our mind is the real enemy to our inner peace. The unknown is just that. To face the next 4 years we need to hold our center and work together. There will be challenges bd we are strong enough together to meet them.