How Symbols Can Support Your Writing Life | Jane Friedman

Today’s post is excerpted from Breathe. Write. Breathe.: 18 Energizing Practices to Spark Your Writing and Free Your Voice by Lisa Tener.

---

When my husband Tom and I began dating, he took me to his mom’s house one weekend and invited a couple he knew. As the four of us walked down the road, I spied an owl, high up on a branch in a distant tree. “Look, an owl!”

“Where?” Carol asked. No one else saw it until we walked much closer.

“That’s not an owl,” Steve said. It clearly looked like an owl to me.

“It’s too exposed to be real. It must be a plastic owl to scare away the birds,” Tom offered.

I decided he must be right, but Steve tested the theory and threw a rock at the leaves near the owl, causing it to stir. Owl, indeed. And alive. (But, come on, Steve. Who throws a rock at an owl? Just no. Don’t do that.)

I have an uncanny sense for seeing animals in nature, animals that normally hide from humans or disappear in the light of day. I believe we all have this ability when we open our awareness to the previously hidden world around us, the world that our harried, productive, modern selves insist we don’t have time to explore. It takes quieting our mind chatter and slowing down to natural rhythms for us to see this world.

On one level, the owl incident immediately showed me that not only did I discount my knowing, but I stifled my voice and didn’t speak up when Steve threw the rock, despite how wrong his actions felt to me.

My interaction with the owl continued to reveal a new understanding about my life. As I recalled the owl while lying in bed that night, I had a kinesthetic experience. I felt myself on one side of the owl, representing divine feminine energy, and Tom on the other, representing divine masculine energy. The owl perched above us in the center, as we wound around each other like ribbons on a maypole. I felt the power of this interweaving of masculine and feminine. It conveyed to me that every romantic relationship has a dimension greater than the experience between two people. In our off-kilter world, each relationship holds a healing power to balance and harmonize feminine and masculine.

This understanding was not so much a linear thought; it came as more of a felt sense, full mind-body-spirit kind of knowing.

Although we’d only been dating for a couple of weeks, through this experience with Owl I knew Tom as my soul mate, our relationship as part of our personal healing and a planetary healing. This may sound grandiose, yet many cultures view the everyday world as full of symbols and guidance.

Life speaks to us through symbols that help us learn, grow, heal, and create, if we slow down and listen. Jesus spoke in the symbolic language of parables as did many prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Hindu stories in the Bhagavad Gita and other spiritual texts are meta-metaphors, full of symbolism.

When I walk a client through my Meet Your Muse exercise, the muse often speaks through symbols, both by how the muse shows up (and in what guise) and by providing symbolic images in answer to our questions.

Paying attention to symbols in your life

Pay attention to what you see and hear today:

• Animals that cross your path
• A word you hear several times from different sources
• Song lyrics that pop out
• Sensations or pain in your body
• Objects or people that spark something within you
• Numbers that show up repeatedly

If each experience appeared in a dream, how might you interpret the symbols? First tap into your intuition for answers. After that, you can look up symbols on the internet. Kari Hohne’s dream dictionary at Café au Soul is my favorite resource.

What does the symbol or symbolic event have to teach you about your writing or other areas of your life?

You can also seek out a symbol. You can close your eyes, ask a question, and see if a symbol comes up. Or you can find an inspiring animal totem card deck, like Jamie Sams’ Medicine Cards or the beautiful Spirit of the Animals by Jody Bergsma. Think of what you plan to write about today and ask for an animal spirit guide to support you. Or pick a card without any specific plan, and write about what the card means to you or seems to communicate.

Using symbols to inspire and enrich your writing

While writing is an inner journey, you can add elements of the outer world to make it more concrete. Bring some fresh cut lilacs to your writing space, light a candle, or breathe in the scent of your favorite essential oil. If you have a deck of animal spirit cards or any other divination deck, choose an image that speaks to you and place it in your writing space. These outer prompts serve you in several ways:

• Symbols in your writing space underscore the message that this is your special writing time, connecting you to your creative source.
• These brief rituals connect you with your senses—smell, touch, sight, sound, and taste—the magic talismans for your authentic voice.
• Such brief rituals become part of your writing habit, making it easier and easier to groove right into writing from a place of wonder.
• Simple rituals provide an easy way to bypass the inner saboteur.
• Rituals can add an element of fun and play. And the muse loves to play!
• Writing rituals have a way of making our writing time feel more magical. Bringing in symbols can open you more fully to the creative magic within you.

Creating a writing ritual

Create a writing ritual incorporating the steps below:

• Choose a symbolic object and hold it in your hands. Feel its weight, shape, and texture.
• Close your eyes and imagine carrying your sacred object with you as you open a gate to your creative inner garden.
• Imagine your object soaking up the good qi of the garden, and being able to bring that good qi back with you in the object, to inspire and support your writing.
• Imagine bringing back your sacred object as you return through the gate to present time.
• Open your eyes and imagine placing the object near you to nourish your creativity.
• Write about the experience and what the sacred object means to you, and use the writing to segue into an ongoing project or new piece of work, such as a short poem, blog post, or story. How does the ritual affect your writing?
• End the ritual with a feeling or prayer of gratitude.
• If you want a simpler ritual, you can light a candle or smell a special essential oil or flower and imagine it giving off creative energy to support your writing session.

Symbols at work

Is there a character trait that’s holding you back at work or a skill or trait that might help you succeed on a work project (or in your career, in general)? Close your eyes and look for an animal or other symbol that might embody the skills or traits that would help you in this endeavor. Write a dialogue with the animal/symbol. Ask it questions and answer as if you were the animal/symbol. What might you do differently?

---

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out Breathe. Write. Breathe.: 18 Energizing Practices to Spark Your Writing and Free Your Voice by Lisa Tener.