The Yeti Door ~ Unleashing Locked-Up Thoughts Into Your Journal

On a recent excursion into Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World, I encountered a door that defied explanation. A fastened entrance made of wood, dyed with red pigment, on the circuitous journey to ride “Expedition Everest.”

The forbidden egress was engraved with two frightening depictions of Yeti (plural). The chains suggesting that what lay behind was not meant to be released on the world.

I questioned a castmember about the door, but she played clueless and asked that I not wear plaid shorts into the park anymore. (truly clueless)

Thinking about this mystery later, the enigmatic doorway came to represent a journaling truth in my mind.

How we keep certain thoughts locked away in our heads. Not even pulling them out in our journals.

But our journals should be secure places, where our haunted memories and frustrations are safely uncorked. How can we unchain the Yeti doors in our brains?

_{Turn Your Yeti Loose in Your Journal}

We all have thoughts, memories, and suspicions we keep secured in the deepest wrinkles of the brain. Behind doors. We may fear what will happen if we turn the key and release those yeti on our friends and family. Our partners. The thought of speaking these opinions and fears into the open air may be terrifying.

But these are just the situations that journals are printed up and bound for. Those pages should be lock-down panic rooms. Places we can uncage our most vulnerable or dangerous notions.

Think of your journal as a Biohazard lab.

The kind of research lab you see when you watch a Zombie show. Where the biologist is fully garbed in a lab sealed off, with its own oxygen. If an experiment or a journal entry goes horribly toxic, you have the option to torch the whole lab or douse it with powerful chemical agents. Killing the germ that could not be released on the world.

Okay, this failsafe never seems to protect the world from the zombie virus, but that’s Hollywood. The CDC should have stronger guidelines for keeping glass tubes of zombie virus further away from the edges of tall tables.

Your journal is a much more secure environment. You set the protocols. Work up the courage to experiment with that humiliating incident or virulent idea in your own paper lab.

Yeti Journal Entries Gone Wild

I have a friend, we will call Kelvin, who I try out new journaling prompts on. In an unexpected twist, he unleashed a perplexing prompt on me. “Write about your most spiritual experience.”

This cursed prompt unleashed childhood memories of my dad’s faith, and my efforts to understand religion with a young mind. The difference between divine intervention and the counterfeit inspirations originating in my own head.

Suddenly, I had a pack of Yeti running across the frozen landscapes of my imagination. Finally, after a crisis of thought, I got them herded onto the pages of my journal. I could safely wrestle with these Yeti in a journal where I could better control their wanderings.

I didn’t want to write that entry, but I eventually sat down to contemplate the prompt. I WROTE 5 PAGES! The words flowed out. I wound up finding out that my own fears weren’t really what I thought they were.

I discovered I was still using the data (my thoughts) from 20 years ago when considering matters of spirituality. When I reexamined these taboo subjects I had kept off limits, I had a new perspective and I wasn’t quite as afraid of my yeti (plural).

Scott mumbled this on a mountaintop at some point

And if the topics had still been too painful or disturbing for me, I was fully authorized to lock them away in my journal, or even rip those pages to shreds. At least a portion of the damaging thoughts would be dislodged from my brain.

Keep a Leash on Your Yeti

We fear these big, furry ideas skulking around the highest summits in our heads. We can be searching for a completely different memory, and suddenly spot the elusive Yeti loping along on a faraway plateau. Impossible to pin down its exact shape and intention, but we know those scary thoughts well because we spend so much time denying their existence while staring right at them.

It takes a lot of effort to keep something the size of a Yeti restrained. Why not throw wide those doors and use that energy for something more positive.

Only when you are strong enough, of course. But I found that I’d been afraid of my topic due to notions from decades ago. Once I pulled my yeti into the light, I realized the yeti was now different and so was I.

When I’d approach a summit, I’d get distracted by the red yeti door just before those last few steps. Once the door was opened and aired out, I could reach the peak and then set my sights on the next mountaintop I’d been avoiding. End

Musical pairing suggestions: Animal Kingdom Asia Background Music, Tibetan Chanting, Epcot’s China Pavillion Background Music. Or get lunch at Yak & Yeti and write your entry to their soundtrack.

And to see my stylish Plaid Shorts that Disney World tried to ban, click here.