I dreamed last night that I really ought to write in my journal. I don't know if I should relate the actual dream, or if I should relate anything at all. Everything around me is so unformed and undecided. I struggle every moment for grounding. It is impossible to say just what I mean (T.S. Eliot says ;) ) !! Not that my life is in crisis, but this is an interior struggle. I feel like my mind is ascending again, that some old things are falling away, that I'm realizing things. I realize as I write this that I'm in the last two weeks of Death.
What I'm describing is actually my best understanding of the Death card (arcanum? sephirab?). Things are dying, things are falling away to be replaced with newness. Renewal is occurring, but I'm in the darkest part. I feel everything I touch is crumbling. Every idea I knock on is hollow. And the ones that aren't require the same thing. It's the same story. Giving up more of myself, admitting my personality is an illusion.
The only thing I can tell you with any certainty about the last couple of weeks is that I finished Moon Magic and I loved it. This is one of the most instantly influential books I have read. I have knocked it hard against the rocks, like a hawk on its prey, and it's hard, and sound. What's unsound is who I am and what I believe, but no matter what, Moon Magic is a good book.
It is to me a romance. The hero and heroine are idealized, they fall in love, and live happily ever after. But the heroine, Lilith, the force in the book, the woman, has inspired me to examine every inch of myself and my life even harder. At the same time, she's taught me a lot that I use now to good effect.
For example, there's risk. In order to summon energy and create something worthwhile, you must take a risk. Lilith does this in her rituals, and the more she stakes, and even sacrifices in physical pain, when Malcolm clutches her hands too tightly and crushes them, the more she gains. This is a revelation to me, because it negates the idea of a namby-pamby existence. If you spend your life being careful and polite, taking no risks, never putting yourself out there, you won't have anything. Like, literally, anything. You have to stake something, and you have to sacrifice something. With other people, especially. This is scarcely news at all, is it? But it's coming through powerfully for me, because I've always been so afraid to make mistakes.
But I see now that the mistake is not really wrong. If you do something because of your path and the goal you want, you're not wrong. And embarrassment, stumbles, missteps, when you see that you are not really separate from any other living being, or your environment, things like that don't matter. An offense can be corrected, and if you feel unattached love for everyone, an apology is effortless.
I'm about out of time. I don't know what more I should say. Maybe what my dream was telling me, it's definitely what I'm feeling now, is that this blog still exists. It's existed nearly nine years. It's definitely here. I'm definitely here.
I feel overwhelmed by how much I need to learn. And I feel overwhelmed by how quickly my mind is climbing and assimilating, or maybe not assimilating. The stakes are higher up here, and when I swing down, what I might do is so much worse. My biggest problem right now is materialism, obsession with material things and putting conviction into them as means to define myself. The more insecure I feel, the more willing I am to spend. Luckily these fantasies of huge splurges have only manifested in my thoughts, but I realize how stark it is becoming, this struggle.
What I'm describing is actually my best understanding of the Death card (arcanum? sephirab?). Things are dying, things are falling away to be replaced with newness. Renewal is occurring, but I'm in the darkest part. I feel everything I touch is crumbling. Every idea I knock on is hollow. And the ones that aren't require the same thing. It's the same story. Giving up more of myself, admitting my personality is an illusion.
The only thing I can tell you with any certainty about the last couple of weeks is that I finished Moon Magic and I loved it. This is one of the most instantly influential books I have read. I have knocked it hard against the rocks, like a hawk on its prey, and it's hard, and sound. What's unsound is who I am and what I believe, but no matter what, Moon Magic is a good book.
It is to me a romance. The hero and heroine are idealized, they fall in love, and live happily ever after. But the heroine, Lilith, the force in the book, the woman, has inspired me to examine every inch of myself and my life even harder. At the same time, she's taught me a lot that I use now to good effect.
For example, there's risk. In order to summon energy and create something worthwhile, you must take a risk. Lilith does this in her rituals, and the more she stakes, and even sacrifices in physical pain, when Malcolm clutches her hands too tightly and crushes them, the more she gains. This is a revelation to me, because it negates the idea of a namby-pamby existence. If you spend your life being careful and polite, taking no risks, never putting yourself out there, you won't have anything. Like, literally, anything. You have to stake something, and you have to sacrifice something. With other people, especially. This is scarcely news at all, is it? But it's coming through powerfully for me, because I've always been so afraid to make mistakes.
But I see now that the mistake is not really wrong. If you do something because of your path and the goal you want, you're not wrong. And embarrassment, stumbles, missteps, when you see that you are not really separate from any other living being, or your environment, things like that don't matter. An offense can be corrected, and if you feel unattached love for everyone, an apology is effortless.
I'm about out of time. I don't know what more I should say. Maybe what my dream was telling me, it's definitely what I'm feeling now, is that this blog still exists. It's existed nearly nine years. It's definitely here. I'm definitely here.
I feel overwhelmed by how much I need to learn. And I feel overwhelmed by how quickly my mind is climbing and assimilating, or maybe not assimilating. The stakes are higher up here, and when I swing down, what I might do is so much worse. My biggest problem right now is materialism, obsession with material things and putting conviction into them as means to define myself. The more insecure I feel, the more willing I am to spend. Luckily these fantasies of huge splurges have only manifested in my thoughts, but I realize how stark it is becoming, this struggle.