What does your Barbieland look like? 🎨
After experiencing a weekend of ease and fun, I tried a visualization exercise inspired by Barbieland. Give it a try.
I saw Barbie this weekend like most of you. And yes, I wore pink. 💖
If you haven’t seen it, don’t worry. I won’t give anything away that isn’t in the trailer or all over the internet already.
In Barbieland, women are free, safe, respected, protected, and seemingly happy while men are treated how women stereotypically are in our current reality — looking pretty, being in competition with each other, codependent, and needing to be chosen.
Throughout the film, Barbie has agency to move fluidly between Barbieland and modern day reality, on a mission to protect herself and her home from unwanted change. All the while getting exposed to new human experiences (as well as Ken) that surface deep feelings she’s never felt before.
As a result, Barbie and Ken each go through an identity crisis, swinging Barbieland in the direction of modern day reality.
This makes me think about the 5th Hermetic Principle of Rhythm:
“Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum‑swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.”
As the pendulum swings, the Barbieland community navigates a rivaling power struggle and by the end, leaves us hopeful that someday there could be a reality where we’re all treated equally. If you’re curious about the other Hermetic Principles, you can read about them here.
Leaving the film, I found myself thinking about feelings and how the more we feel, the more we (and our surroundings) change. The deeper we access ourselves, the more we want to discover. And as our capacity to feel broadens, we have more options available to us, and thus more choice. Which means having clarity on what we want becomes crucial to feeling content and satisfied in our lives.
That night, I had an evocative and illuminating dream where I was being tossed between two realities: one where I felt safe and protected and the complete opposite in another. There were people and places from my past, and visions of how my future plays out — all dependent on which path I chose to follow.
Intense dreams like this have increased in frequency over the past few months, so I’ve adopted a new routine. I wake up and write messages down because while the dreams have a tone that haunt me, I know they’re part of something that’s currently transforming inside of me.
Here are some of the messages I jotted down, the rest unfortunately evaporated back into my subconscious:
We’re not taught how to protect ourselves
Protection is an act to prevent harm, a responsibility we all have
How do I stay open and feel protected at the same time?
Protection also exists on an energetic and spiritual level, focus there
The next day, I went on my usual morning walk to clear my mind and found this Hamsa on the ground. A Hamsa is a symbolic hand which represents protection and defense from the “evil eye” so I took it as a sign I’m onto something.
Over the past 2 months (to the date), I’ve been going through a personal surrender experiment after my coach suggested I read The Surrender Experiment by Michael A. Singer (highly recommend and everything else he shares, more popularly he wrote The Untethered Soul).
This experiment has been very simple. I spend the majority of my time on deepening my relationship with myself. This can look like movement, journaling, meditating, eating healthy, tarot pulling, etc. While in my stillness, I can see what opportunities, thoughts, ideas come to me. When I feel resistance, I take that as a sign that it’s something for me to explore. If I feel a strong desire, I pause to see where it’s coming from within me.
As a natural initiator, this practice has been challenging. I enjoy the grounded, centered, loving thoughts and ideas I’m having and ability to act on those. The feeling of “waiting” for opportunities or people to come to me is…new, to say the least.
Perhaps not a coincidence (since if you know me, you know I don’t believe in those), days before I knew I was going to launch this fun experiment, I hosted my birthday dinner and facilitated a conversation among my nearest and dearest friends.
Hours leading up to this dinner, I went to get a massage and during it the format of the dinner came to me (you can read about that here if you want).
That night, during the second part of the conversation, I asked everyone to open the cards I placed in front of them. On the inside was a word, a value, they’ve taught me. Values like safety, protection, softness, authenticity, ease, play, commitment, empathy, curiosity and unconditional love. As I chose a word for each person, it didn’t feel like my conscious mind was in charge. It was as if my higher self was dropping them one by one into my heart the moment I felt into the relationship I had with that person.
What has transpired since this night, and in my intentional practice to deepen my relationship with myself, is truly awe-inspiring. Without getting too into the details here, mostly out of respect to the people in my life who are involved, I will say that my life has been in a process of transformation.
Without doing anything, the people, places, and opportunities that are not meant for me are no longer in my life; I’m calling this my ongoing purge.
And the people, places, and opportunities that are meant for me, have shown up loud and clear. People who were at that dinner, but also many who were not. Ideas I’ve never let myself have (like an art project I’ll be sharing more about in the fall) and the direction of Liminal to name a few.
And I’ve only just begun, which is exciting and fun. 😈
The day I went to see Barbie also happened to be one of the most spontaneous, playful, connected, full of ease days I’ve had in a long time. I learned how to make incense, I frolicked in a garden, I had an incredibly deep conversation about grief and heartache with a stranger, I DJ’d a dance party on a car ride, and of course, I saw Barbie.
This day inspired a visualization exercise I’ve been playing with this week. I’ve been asking myself what my ideal “Barbieland” would look like. And thanks to my therapist, with any visualization exercise I explore, I focus first on how I want to feel versus what literal thing I hope will happen.
Using the messages from my dream, and the inspiration from the past 2 months of moments I felt most like myself, I found the feelings that matter most to me are: feeling safe, at ease, peaceful, joyful, playful, and liberated. Because in this state I am my most authentic self. I am love. and I am surrendered to what life has in store for me.
Integration
If you could design your ideal “Barbieland,” how would you want to feel?
When was the last time you felt that way? Who were you with? What were you doing?
Do you trust that life will unfold how it’s meant to for you when you are clear on how you want to feel? Why or why not?
With ease,
Ashley
P.S. I’ve been incorporating ease into my mornings with this 5 minute meditation.