Picture this….
You’ve just entered Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. You follow the crowd into a dimly lit circular room. You notice 4 framed paintings on the walls and find yourself staring at the one with a lady holding a pink parasol.
Suddenly, the room appears to stretch and you notice that the paintings are stretching with the room as well. As they do, you see additional details in the paintings that were previously hidden from view. You now see that the lady holding the pink parasol is balancing on a tight rope, wearing ballet shoes. As the painting stretches further, you also see that there’s an alligator underneath her with it’s jaws wide open.
The painting and the room eventually stop stretching and a door opens. Everyone exits the room. But, instead of being guided into seats like on the actual Haunted Mansion ride, you’re led on a walking group tour of the mansion.
You can sense a mixture of nervousness and excitement in the crowd. A lot of people are wondering what’s gonna happen next.
A tour guide slowly shows you some, but not all of the rooms in the mansion, one by one.
There are velvet ropes across each of the entryways to prevent the crowd from going into the rooms.
From behind the velvet ropes, the crowd gets to peek into the different scenes laid out in each room. At the entrance of one of the rooms, you look around and take in some of the details as much as you’re able to from your vantage point, before being guided to the next room. Again, you stand behind the velvet rope of that next room and take a peek into the scene.
There’s a lot of looking. There’s not a lot of “doing,” other than walking through and looking around.
Origins of this story
This Haunted Mansion scene came through when I did an energy reading for The Aligned Collective, a manifestation group experience that my friend, Kim Khunaraksa, hosted. She invited me as a guest expert and I did a reading for the collective group to share the energetic themes that they could expect for the coming month.
Pay attention to the symbolism
In energy readings, there’s often a message in the symbolism. The message usually becomes an invitation to help you move through whatever might be keeping you stuck. While this reading was for a specific group, I believe there’s something we can all learn from it.
The symbolism that emerged from this particular story is found among the people touring the Haunted Mansion. Notice how they’re holding the energy of “bystanders” vs. holding the energy of “participants.”
Bystander vs. participant energies are very different from one another. Many would describe them as opposites.
See if you can feel yourself touring the rooms in this haunted mansion. Notice that it’s the tour guide that’s directing which rooms you can see and which rooms are you can’t see.
Notice the velvet ropes that stop you at the entryways of the rooms. You’re able to peek in, but aren’t able to use the rooms.
Rather than experiencing the dining room by sitting and eating and conversing, you’re limited to looking.
Now, feel how differently it would be to actually use the dining room, sitting, eating and socializing over a meal. The energy is active instead of passive, immersive instead of distant. You’re in your body instead of in your head. You’re experiencing dining in the room rather than wondering what it would be like to do so.
Get the Free Reflection Guide
I created a FREE reflection guide to help you discover what the symbolism in this story means to you personally and where the messages are trying to lead you.
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