Learning to feel...

It has been a difficult week and I am trying to process all that has happened.  It started with an experience that opened up a lot of emotional boxes that I have kept carefully locked for a long time.  This resulted in an average of three hours sleep each night and dreams that I wish I did not remember, that made my waking hours uneasy. 

This weekend I spent with loved ones and attended the celebration of a cherished friend.  I have been looking forward to it for months.  Before the party, we engaged in a few hours of very energetic play that included pushing my limits in ways that I did not expect. 

My reaction to these experiences, before we ever even arrived at the party, was unexpected as well, although not unfamiliar to me.  My anger escaped and I felt overwhelmed by feelings.  Not specific feelings that I could identify and process but, rather simply too much feeling.  And as has been the case for the past week, my ability to shut down those feelings was missing.  It was just gone. 

The part that was familiar was an almost overwhelming desire to walk out onto the highway and catch a ride to anywhere else.  The thought that “I could be ten states away by morning” kept repeating in my brain.  The desire to hurt someone was also very strong and difficult to silence. 

I have not had those thoughts, those desires, so strongly in decades. And I returned to a behavior that I rejected years ago.  I resorted to sipping on a bottle of fire whiskey all night long to quiet those thoughts and to numb those feelings.

That form of self-medication has never proven to be very effective and, while I managed at first to regain some semblance of control and even danced and spent time laughing with loved ones, the moment eventually came when I just fell apart.

I know exactly where I was when it happened.  The truly mystifying thing about it was that, suddenly I was surrounded by six people whom I love, and I do mean surrounded.  They were standing around me in a circle.  One moment to the next, they were just simply there.  I have no idea how they knew what was about to happen.  None of them have ever seen me in that state before, certainly not at a party.  But I could not hold it together any longer and I could not keep the feelings contained, nor could I keep them out. 

It feels as though they stood there with me for a long time.  I believe I was crying.  I know that I was ashamed.  I know that I kept apologizing for my weakness.  I know that they kept reminding me, that if it were any one of them, I would not consider it to be weakness. 

I am incredibly grateful for their support.  And for a beloved who sat in a car with me and talked me down from a very bad anxiety attach after, and for beloveds who never complained when the dreams that kept waking me, woke them as well.  And who let me remain silent on the long drive home. 

I am home now, alone in the quiet with my beloved Pwca.  My chest still hurts and I keep crying, over what I don’t know, but I am safely away from the thoughts and the feelings that seemed so overwhelming.  I will try to sleep again and hopefully the dreams will let me.  I will try to make sense of this week when I wake.  

Boundaries

I have been exploring and experimenting lately.  I have been meeting new people and discussing the nature of desire, and I realized that one of the skills that I need to develop further is the ability to hold strong boundaries.  To see clearly what I desire and to distinguish that from what others may desire.

It is not only a need to communicate those desires, or to negotiate what I am willing to try, but to hold clarity about myself, and to respect my boundaries. 

I have spent most of my life, until recently, complying with the wishes of others.  “People-pleasing” is a habit.  I caught myself asking whether or not I could meet another’s desire, and deciding that, I could indeed accommodate their wishes. 

I realized in that moment that, I was asking the wrong questions.  I need to be asking myself, “What do I want?” and   "Is this person’s desire compatible with my own?”

I can no longer afford to compromise what I want, or my need for autonomy and independence, to fit someone else’s dream.  This journey must be about my dreams. 

In a conversation with someone who was trying to pick me up, and who I had no desire to accommodate, I heard a gem of wisdom.  “It's not about surrendering to another person but, to your own body’s experience.  It’s about your own energy being released, and about your own power to choose.”

In an experiment with a cherished and trusted friend, I discovered that it is indeed about surrendering to my own body, allowing my own energy to flow freely, and it is about my power. 

Choosing to submit to another, in that moment, and only for that moment, is a choice to express my own power and, in doing so, to remember that power. 

The choice is mine and the power is mine. I must be diligent to choose consciously, not through habitual pattern.  And I must be diligent not to sacrifice my strength but, to choose my own desires.

Stolen children

I remember a recurring night-terror that I had as a child of about seven.  I would dream that a mad-scientist melted my parents and my brothers into buckets (a sideways version of the witch in the Wizard of Oz) and took them from me.  Children of that age typically experience night-terrors regarding loss of family and abandonment.  

  

I woke at two this morning from a dream and was able to recall at least the last moment of it.  In that moment, I accused my family of origin of stealing my children.  I have this dream occasionally.

This may sound like an exaggeration but, in reality it is not.  My children were taken from me by my parents and given to others to raise.  I was not allowed to know anything about them or their families.  They were lost to me completely, possibly forever.

My parents are good and loving people.  They truly love me and were doing what they honestly believed with their whole hearts was best for me and my future, and for my children and their futures.  They were absolutely sure, and they were wrong.

I have never given birth to another child.  I did get to meet each of my children when they reached eighteen years, and I am building relationships with them but, I will never have the kind of relationship with them that I wish for, that the mothers who raised them have (and for the record, both of my children were raised by wonderful and loving families.)  I am grateful for the chance to know them.  I thank my Gods and my ancestors for returning them to my life.  But I am a footnote in their lives, a welcome visitor but, a visitor nonetheless.

I have come to terms with my anger over my parents’ choices.  I have forgiven them, and myself for my own compliance with their decisions.  For the most part, I have learned to let go of “what might/should/would/could have been” because, if I do not, I cannot live in the present or the future. But my grief over what I have lost still visits me, and the pain of that betrayal by those who loved me, whom I trusted most, is evidently still an obstacle for me in trusting and in being loved.

It is not possible for anyone to take from me more than that which has already been taken, and yet, trusting that is a greater obstacle than I might have imagined it would be by now.  I want to learn how to overcome that obstacle, if indeed I can.

Dreaming the Self...

Part of exploring and discovering who I am is remembering who I wanted to be when I was a child and considering who I want to be now.  I think that who we truly are manifests in our dreams of who we want to be. 

I have been dreaming a lot again lately.  The kind of deep dreaming that is difficult to surface from and yet, I have been unable to remember much, if anything, of these dreams.

It feels as though there is something important that I am supposed to know and that the images are presented to me over and over again only to disappear each morning before I can discover what they mean.

I will be working on other ways to find the answers, and maybe the dreams are not about who I want to be, or wanted to be years ago but, I have to start somewhere and so that is where I will begin.

I will let you know where it leads…

Visions of the Ideal Self

This past weekend I attended the Sacred Space Conference for the first time.  It was a wonderful experience and I have come away with much to process and integrate.  The tone of the conference was set for me in the first class that I attended, “The role of the Ego in Spiritual Evolution” with James Dickenson, a cherished friend and High Priest of my Tradition. 

I have never before had the opportunity to experience Jim as a teacher due to his living and serving more than 3 hours from where I live and I was looking forward to it with great anticipation.  I was not disappointed, Jim gave me much to consider.  He does not ask rhetorical questions but he does ask questions that make those present dig for the foundational beliefs they hold about the subject at hand. 

The answers offered by many helped me to be more aware of the diversity of thought on the subject and by noting my reactions to them I came to understand my own beliefs on the matter with more clarity.  James also offered his own position which he expressed with more grace than I am able to as yet but, which gave me an articulate model to refine my own.  I find it interesting that his expressed experience of the class was much more critical than mine.

In a nut-shell, the Ego is that self-aware part of us whose function it is to assist us in living up to our Ideal Self.  This exploration of identity is indeed a search to realize my ideal self, to refine and clarify it, and with the recent changes in my life I find I need to seek vision of who it is that I wish to become.

The classes and workshops and rituals I was able to attend, and the social interactions with beloveds as well as with new friends and acquaintances, taught me much about who I am and how I function and how those things might have changed over the past 48 years and how they might yet change as I step forward into an ever-changing vision of my Self.

Indeed I was granted visions of who I am to become.  Not flat images, but rather multi-dimensional experiences of who I am to be as a woman, priestess, lover, dreamer and human being.  

I give thanks for the teachers and beloveds and new friends who love me for who I am now, and who help me to see where I wish to go, and how I might get there, and who walk with me on the journey.

some thoughts on Autonomy

I have conflicting feelings about relationships.  I want very much to fall in love some day.  I believe in love and in sharing your heart with others. I did mention that I am a romantic, didn’t I?  I like having someone to whom to say “Good Morning!” and “Good Night” and “How was your day?”  I like sharing meals sometimes and sharing a bed sometimes.  I enjoy physical and emotional intimacy and intellectual conversation, the sharing of ideas, hopes, dreams, energy, magick and the experiences of this life. I believe that we as a species are not meant to be completely solitary creatures.

But having a place of my own, having time to myself, having the quiet and solitude that I need to think, to dream, to work magick and to write, is necessary for me and I have worked very hard to attain my independence.  I do not want to sacrifice my time alone or to negotiate with someone else to have time and privacy.  I do not want to check with someone else before going to the lake at night to sit beneath the moon or to make plans to sit and talk with someone whom I love who might need my support.

I want a lover in my life…maybe more than one, maybe not.  I believe that relationships should be based on love, respect and a commitment to show up when your beloveds need you. But I do not believe that it is necessary to live with another, to tailor your lives to revolve around each other to the exclusion of your own autonomy.

The image I have of the love I desire is not the one most people assume when they think of a relationship.  But it is the one that fills me with warmth and hope.  It is the thing I long for, still.  I hope someday to be granted the gift of loving another without reservation, without censorship, without restraint and without sacrificing my autonomy.

I lay upon my bed...

Nude by Renoir

I lay upon my bed,

The light turned out an hour ago,

The embers shimmer and glow inside,

The waves rolling off my skin,

Light the shadows all around.

I think of you and in my mind,

I hold your body close.

Although my heart would be for you,

A place of love and healing,

My mind tells me that what you need,

Is not what I can offer.

I focus on your pain,

On my desire to transform

That sharp thing,

Into something else.

As intense and overwhelming,

And consuming as my need.

My body and my soul want you still,

Even in your darkest hour.

To feel your force,

Your frustration and your anger,

Your loss and grief and despair,

Pouring into me,

Purged and purified.

To be battered in your arms,

To feel your violence and your hope,

To feel your control,

And your abandonment of it.

To feel your hands around my throat,

Pressed against the wall,

With no escape,

No choice,

But to surrender to your will,

And be conquered by your power.

exploring the dreams...

There was a moment during my second degree initiation ritual when the Dark God, the Sage, placed his hands around my neck.  He held me there, for what seemed like forever.  Thinking back on it now, it may have been the only time during most of the ritual when I was in contact with anyone but the house. 

The reason I mention this is, that moment caused some unexpected reactions.  It was intended to frighten me, to elicit an adrenaline spike, to heighten my senses.  Adrenaline can become any emotion that a human being is capable of experiencing.  That was the intended result.  And it was successful in that it did result in the release of adrenaline; it did heighten my perceptions. 

But that was not the only result.  I also became sexually aroused.  I have only spoken about this with one other person until now because, I find it rather disturbing.  My mind tells me that reaction was inappropriate.  There was nothing inherently sexual about the ritual.  That I reacted that way is confusing to me, being someone for whom sexual arousal is a rather rare occurrence, at least until recently.

But my body keeps reminding my mind of that moment, of that reaction.  I keep coming back to that moment and to that feeling.  In my most erotic dreams, there is a hand at my throat.  It is usually the hand of someone I trust and it is never threatening but it is always arousing.

Other images and sensations reoccur often as well, a blade piercing my skin, a trickle of blood, my back against a wall.  My logical mind, the one that tells me to conform to the rules, tells me that this is an aberration.  But do any rules really apply when it comes to the instinct of sexual arousal?   I feel a bit exposed revealing these thoughts.  That I find these ideas to be more arousing than frightening seems to me to be the kind of thing one keeps to oneself for fear or shame.  But I vowed that I would not look away and so I will not. 

I will continue to explore the images and the dreams.  There is more to explore in the inner world before stepping out into the real world.  

Sexual Dreaming

Dreams are strange things; they can take you places your waking mind will resist.  They can give you glimpses into your desires and leave you awake in the middle of the night gasping for breath with your heart pounding and your skin on fire.  They can haunt your thoughts for days on end.

I have been dreaming much more of late, the kind of dreams that wake me and that feel so real and so vivid that I cannot distinguish them from reality for endless moments after I wake.  It is, to say the least, disconcerting and has me more than a little spooked, truth be told.

I have had days of this sort of dreaming before from time to time but the past couple of months, it happens almost every night and sometimes more than once in the same night.

I do not know how much longer this will be the case but, I believe that there are reasons for it and I am trying to discover to what they might be.  Not the cause so much as the purpose.  The dreams themselves are often very erotic and I wake with my body in full sexual arousal. 

The people in my dreams are often my beloveds and the situations are so far removed from the reality of my experiences and relationships with these friends that I have difficulty processing them.  Sometimes the people are unknown, in the way that dreams will hide the identity of people but yet, they are not strangers.

I know that my dreams are the product of my own mind and body and soul.  They are not trying to help me understand others but rather to understand myself.  But because I do not respond to strangers, they are populated with the faces of my beloveds.

It is uncomfortable to experience our darker desires and even more so when it involves our most trusted beloveds.  But the desires we hide from ourselves can be the keys to understanding and claiming our greatest power.

I will continue to strive to understand these keys to my own self.