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What’s Real & What’s Illusion?
By Cornelia Powell | December 13, 2007
I’m always reminding brides how to not “lose themselves” in the busyness of planning a wedding. Emotions take such a topsy-turvy tumble that a woman can get a bit off center as a bride, sometimes confusing “what’s real” with “what’s illusion.”
Weddings are full of rituals that use symbols, metaphors, concepts, and images “representing” something that is real and actual. Real experiences like love and a sense of feeling your heart open can be subtle and elusive, therefore sometimes difficult to express on your own. Rituals, therefore, come in handy to help you articulate a deeper expression of your heart.
On the other hand, sometimes a bride becomes so dazzled and distracted by those same symbols and rituals — when they become only pomp & circumstance — that she loses sight of how to distinguish real love from the symbols of love. (Same thing can happen in “regular life” as well!)
A Real Movie
This query — real versus illusion, actual versus conceptual — came up for me in a different way recently when I saw the film, Lars and the Real Girl starring Ryan Gosling, a favorite actor of mine. He plays Lars, a sweet, socially challenged introvert, who orders a custom- designed, life-size girl doll as a “companion.” His tender attention to his new “friend” brings him out of his shell and brings his family and community into a connection with their own hearts — filling voids they didn’t know they had.
Here was a “real” man who created an imaginary “relationship” that opened his locked up emotions and freed his spirit. And his tenderness and care-taking of his doll-friend touch his community and family to the extent that they become more “real” — more attentive and thoughtful to each other.
The story becomes an emotional, comical, transformative journey for Lars and the people around him. The twist here is that Lars used his doll-friend (a “symbol”) to practice coming out of his shell until he comes into his own sense of self and confidence. The doll-friend was like a “warm-up” to prepare him in relating to “real” people.
The symbols and rituals of the wedding ceremony — words, music, rings, candles, vows — are part of the couple’s “warm-up.” Rituals were designed to guide the couple in keeping their hearts open during what could be a stressful transitional time. (Like Lars in the film, this gives the couple a little “practice” time to really feel the experience of living with a more open heart.)
Practicing
Wedding ceremonies follow the culture that presents them — and we live in a rather “objectifying” culture! While watching the Lars movie, I became present to how real people can easily become like “objects” to us unless we keep our hearts open. And is that not the real intention in life — to practice staying open?
Lars used a life-size doll to help get his emotional balance, to practice opening his heart with real people. I use writing, time in nature, stillness & meditation, and being with quiet friends to ground myself, re-find my center, connect with spirit, and practice keeping my heart open. What do you use as a centering process?
This is what I suggest: Use what works for you to keep real life real - - and perhaps what’s real is just the heart you bring to it. And in the moment of opening your heart, you drop into your center and ease into life’s flow — at least long enough to connect to the person next to you, then you get to practice all over again!
Love. Listen. Let go.
… with love from Cornelia
Topics: Women's Notes |