The Wisdom of Oz
The Wizard of Oz is not just a tale of a girl and her dog trying to find their way home; it’s a powerful metaphor for our journey of self-discovery and transformation.
It reminds us that the challenges we face along our “Yellow Brick Roads,” can only be overcome by the resources we carry within us—our thoughts, emotions, and actions.
The genesis of my radical life transformation was the moment I really got to work on peeling back the layers of self—a conditioned identity born from a lousy childhood, upon which I blamed the arson of every bridge I burned well into adulthood.
It was in 2018, within an intensive outpatient program at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center—not the first nor the last of its kind for me—when a pivotal moment in my journey occurred; I was about to commence a confronting with the deeper, unresolved issues keeping me stuck.
Enter a counselor named Scott Lee—the man who popped my Jungian psychology cherry with hyperbolic symbolism so brilliant that I saw his cognitive dissonance diagnosis and raised him every bit of my maladjusted spirituality and undivided attention.
He related substance abuse recovery to the Land of Oz, my screwups to Dorothy’s mishaps, and my addictive behavior to the flying monkeys; of course, I was all in.
Whiteboard, squeaky black marker, the classic storyline we all saw play out on pages and screens since our lousy childhoods—but different. I’d never seen this version; this adaptation, I only experienced.
Few people know that the author of The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum was a healer, a follower of Eastern mystics and paths of self-realization. He had witnessed gullible people seeking their truth through Spiritualism, gurus such as Krishnamurti, and like world-famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung, became fascinated with Eastern religions, mysticism, and spirituality.
Baum immersed himself in such experiences, and this lifelong passion influenced the writing of his classic tale. It is an insightful, aphoristic look at the journey most humans take through life, along with the pitfalls and actualities along the path of healing and self-realization that one endures coming of age in the world.
The enduring relevance of Carl Jung's theories is evident in his belief that spiritual disconnection with the world and oneself is a significant contributor to many symptoms of neurosis. He proposed that the innate human need for self-integration and synthesis to form a unified whole is fundamental to our existence.
Baum drew on the Jungian architecture of self-identity when developing Dorothy's character and each character she encounters on her journey. Each represents a different aspect of her psyche, and her interactions with them mirror the process of her healing and integration.
That's right—the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and even the Cowardly Lion were all Dorothy's parts.
Dorothy needed courage while in Oz. She had to trust in the unfamiliar and surrender her attachment to old versions of herself. Early on, our lucidly lost protagonist and her pup arrive at a fork in the road. Here, she must decide whether to remain the same or evolve.
First, we meet the Scarecrow, who reminds us to connect to consciousness and fill our minds with seeds of knowledge, adding an emotional frequency of elevated states such as joy, amicability, passion, and gratitude. It's Dorothy's first glimpse of comprehending her higher mind and ability to connect at a higher vibrational frequency.
Next is the Tin Man, which signifies the burning heart we're all born with, long before human nature tends us to get caught in the ego mind and disregard the essential energy we hold in our heart—an intuitive center separate from the mind yet full of knowledge that elevates us to rekindle our spark when allowed to expand toward the harmonious fortitude of mind and heart unison.
The Cowardly Lion is rather explanatory in its significance of the courage required to take chances, be brave, and voice our needs. We all have that lion energy within us; we find it by establishing boundaries and honoring the dignity of our own experience through taking risks and leaps of faith.
Toto represents the inner, instinctual, most animal-like part of us. Throughout the story, Dorothy converses with Toto—or her inner intuitive self—and in the final sequence, our beloved Toto realizes the Wizard is a fraud before Dorothy's physiological processing can.
Of course, the Wicked Witch represents the shadow self, which is evident when she tries to put Toto into a basket at Gale Farm and again at the castle—these actions signify the ego's attempt to block or sabotage the intuitive.
Nevertheless, Toto escapes from the basket in both cases, much like the intuitive voice within us that certainly can be ignored but never contained.
Eventually, Toto chases after a cat, and Dorothy chases after him and misses her balloon ride—the equivalent of taking the easy way out and abandoning oneself to some skinny Wizard blowing hot air promises of a trip to the Divine; this ultimately leads to Dorothy's transformation and the discovery of her inner powers.
Now, whether you subscribe to the idea of combined character metaphor mumbo-jumbo or the Internal Family Systems therapy model matters not—either way, the concept I'm presenting to you remains:
Once the characters in Oz removed the veil of searching down the Yellow Brick Road, they realized they had all the internal talents and attributes they were searching for outside themselves, and that's a wildly profound lesson because it applies to all of us!
By embracing all parts of ourselves, the good, the bad, and the ugly, we can live our lives to the fullest and achieve our goals. Dorothy's journey teaches us that self-acceptance is the key to success.
Dorothy would have never made it home had she ignored any part of her journey. In allowing herself to feel the emotions wash over her along the road to Oz, she faced her fear and addressed the self-limiting beliefs she once held too close to perceive her ability to change innately.
But, once she did, Dorothy could harness her power and reach her goal of returning home—to her authentic self—an accomplishment highlighted beautifully in the final chapter of Baum's astute take on the hero's journey.
The denouement comes when Glenda the Good Witch informs Dorothy that she’s held the power to go back home all along. I’m paraphrasing a rather infamous coffee cup quote here. Still, it’s in the line that follows—the Good Witch’s response when the Tin Man questions why she’d waited so long to tell Dorothy of her power—that best encapsulates the story's moral.:
“Because she wouldn’t have believed me, she had to learn it for herself.”
Our power is within, not external.
We need help, support, encouragement, and drive to reach our goals. Still, we must realize that our most extraordinary vigor—our true gift—lies within, deep beneath, the layers of conditioned negative bias, limiting beliefs, and thier consequences that frame our perspective of self and the world.
Honoring our strengths, weaknesses, and everything about who we are is how we get through our life journey. Living, fully aligned with our higher self, is how we awaken our genuine authenticity, divine purpose, and inner peace.
