Promptly Written Spiritual Prompt for Week of April 10–16

To Thine Own Self Be True

Synchronicity led me to issue this week’s spiritual prompt from the surprisingly funny and sometimes deep sitcom Young Sheldon

63935989 by albund licensed from depositphotos.com

The Prompt:

Please watch this four-minute clip from the episode and then create an essay, fiction, poem, or creative non-fiction based on your reaction to any or all of what you hear and see.

My Thoughts

The Synchronicities Leading Me to the Prompt

My hours are upside down. Though I live in the Eastern Time Zone (USA), my circadian rhythm lately has me waking up in the evening, opening my laptop around 8 pm or 9 pm, reading, writing, and editing on Medium until the early morning hours, and then watching sitcoms on Nick at Nite (Friends (sometimes funny), Mike & Molly (often funny to hilarious), Mom (often hilarious)) until going to sleep after the 6 am Young Sheldon episode. Two days ago I caught this episode and the portions shown in the YouTube clip really stuck with me and hit upon notions and questions that have occupied many of my hypnagogic (thank you Rebecca Romanelli for this addition to my vocabulary) states lately.¹

I often plan my prompts and my own responses thereto in these twilight states between awake and asleep. I believe spirituality and nonconformity go hand in hand² and had been contemplating how to create a prompt around that and asking for your thoughts on this connection and what nonconformity means to you.

Early this week, Marilyn Flower, in her How I Connect to Spirit When Life Gets Tough and That’s The Last Thing on My Mind, tagged me to participate in responding to this challenge prompt that Ravyne Hawke had issued in KTHT a month ago. I created my response that day (My Stress Avoidance Spiritual Toolkit) and a couple of days afterward I went back into Marilyn’s story to see what readers may have commented in the interim (I was particularly interested to see if fellow tagged-for-participation-writer Art Bram had responded — he hadn’t and hasn’t yet). However, Randy Shingler had commented:

Marilyn, being a Zen Buddhist practitioner I appreciate your spiritual practices although different from mine. I recently wrote a poem about the necessity of having a spiritual practice whatever it is.

I replied to Randy asking him to provide the link to his poem, and I saw the notification of his having done so shortly after I finished watching the Young Sheldon episode. After reading Randy’s excellent and most definitely spiritual poem, Choose a Path, I commented therein with a link to the video:

coincidentally I watched an episode of Young Sheldon an hour ago which some lines of your poem reminded me of

These lines from Randy’s poem particularly evoked the video clip for me:

Awareness of who I am and where I go

and

Allows us to be who we truly are Unshackled from others’ expectations

A Responsive Poem of Mine

This afternoon I still had not settled upon whether and how I would use the clip for a prompt about the spirituality of nonconformity. Then I received a notification of applause from Aiden (Illumination YouTube Coordinator), ILLUMINATION-Curator, and Shawn Jr (who I had not seen in quite a while and recall thinking highly of his discussions of psilocybin and other spiritual matters) for a poem I had created back in December, Oh So Alone on an Island in a Sea of Humanity, A rondeau of self-reliance, which I had created in response to Ravyne’s 12/11/21 Daily Special poetry prompt, and then I knew that I would indeed use the clip for the prompt and include this poem as part of my own response:

For more months than I care to count the divide continues to mount Grains of sand slip through my fingers On the beach I still malinger My truth society will discount

Must act now for my own account Show the world I am paramount Stand up front as lead singer Oh so alone on an island in a sea of humanity

Prey on sheep this stealthy catamount Conformity I shall surmount Liberty bell I shall be the ringer Take notice here comes a zinger Drivers of the herd shall now dismount Oh so alone on an island in a sea of humanity

More Thoughts from the Clip

Now before my friend Christine Graves comments that the prompt is taking her somewhere beyond what I intended, I do not necessarily expect people to react to the video clip with a piece about non-conformity — that would kind of defeat the purpose of that particular message, don’t ya think? ;-) In fact, in addition to ones that probably have not occurred to me, the video contains many kernels for interesting responses, for example :

When Sheldon refers to himself as an atheist baptist
Using stereotypes humorously versus in a manner that could increase discrimination
What it takes to get into heaven and what happens once we are there

On that third bullet point, I have engaged in many interesting conversations, both with myself hypnagogically, and with others, especially Jodie Helm in her fabulous stories (see, e.g., Archangels Q&A #5 and What Do Souls Do On the Other Side) and in which she delivers to us the wisdom of the archangels that she channels. Many writers on the platform claim to be channels of higher dimensional beings — I have doubts about many — I am absolutely sure that Jodie is legit and encourage you to read her work.

Further to this bullet point, when I noted a couple of weeks ago my frequently stated and unpopular opinion denouncing the existence of the law of attraction and the corollary that bad things happen to good people when they vibrate negative energy, a writer, my friend, I. Trudie Palmer, with whom I often mutually, respectfully spar on this and other points, asked me in a comment:

What do you believe? I would like to hear it explained as you would to your 6 year old grandson.

First I deflected and responded that I’m glad I have at least 20 years (based on the ages of my kids, 16 and 18, and what I know about their education and career intentions) before I need to have that conversation. Then I went into a hypnogogic state and came up with this substantive answer:

You know those participation trophies that every kid gets for playing T-ball instead of awards for best hitter and best fielder and how that annoys grandpa, well that’s actually how life and heaven work. Everyone gets to go to heaven as a reward for participating in the game of life. Some will play it really well, some ok, and some terribly but they all get to go to heaven. God loves everyone equally and is like your coach. When the game is over and you are in heaven you and God will discuss the game and come up with a plan for you to learn to play better next time. Anyway, things don’t always go well in the game and that’s ok. And sometimes other players cheat and that can hurt you physically and your feelings. Learning how to react to that without cheating yourself is part of playing the game. If things don’t go your way that doesn’t mean God doesn't love you and it doesn’t mean God is punishing you.

An interactive conversation continues to percolate as I sleep, including on the difficult topic of evil actors, i.e., “to be continued.”

One part of the video requires context, which may provide yet another spark of inspiration. The reason Sheldon’s mother is crying is she just miscarried the surprise pregnancy she found out about just two days prior. The news of the pregnancy had not been met with glee by her or her husband. Still…

Closing with an Interesting Tidbit about the Title of this Piece

Having watched the video, you know why the title applies, but you might not know that the meaning that people ascribe to the quote is not what Shakespeare meant when he wrote it. People usually use this line from Hamlet, “to thine own self be true,” to represent integrity and healthy individuality, when in actuality Polonius was entirely selfish and what he’s really saying to his son is “Screw everyone else. Put yourself first, do what you want, and don’t worry about what other people might need or want.” — Source

For those that may be interested, two other phrases whose meaning has strayed from the original intent are “blood is thicker than water” and “carpe diem.”

Reminder: You can use this prompt here on PW or anywhere else on Medium. Regardless of where you publish, please tag me, and Ravyne and use “promptly written” as one of your reader interest tags, and include a link to this prompt. Also, if you use the prompt in another publication, please come back here and drop a link to your story in the comments as the tag notification system is notoriously unreliable.

In Rama I create, with soul-energy surging through my body, inspiring me and breathing wind into my sails,

Marcus (Gregory Maidman)

Endnotes:

In a comment exchange with Rebecca recently, I wrote: “13 months ago I posted this short form: “Generally accepted definitions of meditation and mindfulness fail me. I feared I would not achieve a connection to my soul and my god, and a stronger connection to my dearly-departed-heavenmate, without stillness. I lamented to my guides, asked for guidance, and they advised that with my INTP mind of split screens humming constantly, “meditation” does not suit me. What does is taking walks and more often than not I find that the output is as described by proponents of stillness — what works for me is getting into the flow of my streams of subconsciousness without trying to still my mind nor body. Only recently have I discovered or maybe rediscovered the meditative state twixt awake and sleep. Now, I love staying in bed as long as I get back into those spaces.” Rebecca replied: “Hypnogogic zones are very conducive to epiphanies and insights Gregmar. They can also lead to lucid dreaming. Great discovery for you! Good work.”
See, e.g., https://readmedium.com/marriage-of-philosophy-and-spirituality-742dc1d639f6