The California Guided Meditation

This Action is well-served with 12 to 15 participants, and one meditation leader. It gets funnier and funnier but it's ruined if we burst out laughing! In Disney stores, we do this Action holding hands in a circle around the most prominent stand-alone display, where many famous neurotic characters look out from the shelves. The leader, walking on the outside of this circle, talks in the high monotone of a yoga instructor or hypnotist. "And now you will close your eyes and give your mind permission, let your mind know, that what you will be seeing over this next period of time, the visions that you will imagine -- will come from my instructions and my instructions only.

The leader pauses, then continues, "Now, holding hands in this sacred circle, look deeply into the eyes of the product before you, whether it be Goofy or Pluto or Donald Duck... that's right, look deeply into those fierce eyes. That's right. Return the product's stare, bond with it."

The sequence of the guided visualizing goes like this:

1) Look into the eyes of the product.

2) Close your eyes now and let your earliest memory come into your mind. Take your time. Let it come.

3) Very good. You are in a backyard now in a sandbox with your brothers and sisters. Or you are looking up at your mother from a tricycle. Very good. Now. Introduce the product with which you have bonded -- insert that Disney product -- that famous bug or animal or princess - directly into that early scene. This might not be easy. If you need to open your eyes again so that you can take the Disney character back into your old memory... go ahead. Don't rush it.

4) Alright? Very good, now you have introduced into your earliest memory a new character, some Mickey Mouse or Goofy or Pluto or Donald is right there in the sandbox with you, OK. Everyone got their character in there, in that scene? OK. Very good. But now you have to try to play with it, and it's like a stranger has walked into your world, a monstrous nightmare of a stranger with big crazy eyes and a neurotic screaming voice. You begin to become afraid of it. It's too big. It wants too much. It wants all the attention. Its arms are always reaching, and its eyes bulging. And it suddenly dawns on you that -- THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS! Why is your long-ago memory becoming a Disney production anyway? Now I want you to let yourself feel betrayal and anger. Give yourself permission to be hurt...

5) Open your eyes and shout into the eyes of that Goofy or Pluto or Donald: "I reject you! I throw you out! My life is not a Disney Production! I am free of your entertainment, your insinuation into my intimate memories...

6) Break from holding hands, and everyone run from the store. Run out onto the sidewalk, into the street. You're shouting "I am free of Disney! My life is not a Disney Production! I am free! I am free!"

Are you feeling free now? Tell about your vision in the comments! Meditate-a-lujah!