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a metaphysical interlude
Sep. 26th, 2016 04:00 pm(Taking another break from emotionscape posts to talk about something completely different. Because I need to write this stuff down somewhere, and here makes the most sense.)
It's happened several times now, that I'll go to an event with a bunch of pagans, and then I start having nightmares - of the sort that aren't just normal dreams, something is obviously trying to visit, and manipulate me to give them something. I wish I'd written down which events and who was at them, so I could figure out who's doing it. Other than it's not coming from someone I see on a weekly basis, I have no idea. I'm assuming that no one is trying to do something malicious to me specifically, but more likely they're having some issues, and it's being contagious. This isn't unusual if you do magick (which itself is not unusual among pagans), and have enough of an ego to think you can do things that you really shouldn't, and attract a lot of attention from incorporeal entities.
So. Nightmares for me. That I then have to do a cleansing to get rid of.
The last event this all happened for was Mabon, which had nearly 40 attendees, and then on Saturday/Sunday I had two nightmares in a row, along with already being over-caffeinated from the day before and the neighbor's alarm going off at 4:30am (...again), and by 5am I figured I better just do the cleanse right then and there before it got worse. And it turned out to already be pretty bad and took a lot longer than usual. So really I didn't sleep at all that night.
I don't remember the details of the first nightmare. The one before that, the night after Mabon, it ended with a beige silhouette of a woman sitting on my chest, staring at me. The ending for the third and last one, I was in the house of my childhood, everywhere was dark except for the third floor hallway, and there was a small pet named Pip who only trusted me. The house would no longer be safe once the last light was out, so I took him downstairs through to the kitchen door, and was going to put Pip on a boat with two friends who would take him to safety. Only, at the last minute, I realized that these friends were doppelgangers of the Bad Guy, and when I didn't put Pip on the boat, one of them came back and was going to start chasing me back through the house to get Pip.
For me, rituals are a means to an end. The specifics don't matter. They're there to provide focus. So far what I've learned from watching pagans being pagans as a group, is that to them, rituals are elaborate affairs with lots of props. I don't need props. I just lie there and breathe and visualize, and occasionally use mantras when the situation is as bad as it was. (Actually, this past weekend is the first time I can think of where I actually needed a mantra.)
So, the way a cleansing goes, usually: Start by finding the link between the core of your being and the universe. It should look like a beam of clear white light. Breathe in, breathe out, let the energy flow from the universe into you, and then expand it outward from the crown of your head to fill the room. Fill up the space that you're cleansing. Add color/flavor/tone (however you want to call it), so that it isn't just pure white, because pure white attracts attention. Make it solid. If done right, you don't even need shields, the solidity of the mass of positive energy will keep the space clear for you by itself. I can usually do this in about 20 minutes.
... it didn't go that way at all. I could find my center, but not the universe. The link between them was like a hairline crack, surrounded by a whole lot of darkness.
So step back a bit, and the first step was actually: reforge the link to the rest of the universe. Breathe in, breathe out, let the energy start to flow and widen that hairline crack. As it first started, there was a moment of startled panic, and then fear started pushing back in at me to get me to stop.
Years of experience recognizing and externalizing other people's emotions turns out to be a useful skill in a time like this. I noted the fear and then disregarded it, and kept going. It faded as the darkness started to lighten.
Then, once the energy was flowing, it wouldn't go to the crown of my head. It was so slow that I first had to let it pour into my feet, let it puddle there, slosh it back and forth, and then flow downward, and eventually around my back and up past my shoulders until it made it to my head. (Ye gods, wtf.) The coloring was (is) the sort of slippery, fluidlike blue-silver that seems to be my default. The mentor who originally taught me how to do all this said that it made me impossible to find through the ether, which was a very good thing for me at the time.
An hour later (I don't know how long it actually took to do that, it felt like forever), I was finally ready to expand outward. Things got much lighter. By the time I was done filling in my home space with peacefulness, instead of a whole lot of darkness surrounding a hairline thread of light, it had become a whole lot of light surrounding a braid of shadows. And finally, there came a moment when I touched the braid and the whole thing incinerated - became completely consumed by light traveling from me toward the universe. (If this was a dramatic video, this would've been the moment when angels burst into song.)
Of course I had to follow the newly cleared line all the way up, to find out what was at the other end. It wasn't the universe. It was a being that was smaller and definitely finite. Since I was now already there, I surrounded it with love and light to clear away its shadows and fear.
Love and light, to replace shadows and fear. That was the mantra.
I still don't know who was at the other end. I imagined a number of possible suspects from the pagan community. I certainly hope that I helped them with whatever their problem is that keeps sending nightmares to me. Either that or I turned their deliberate spell back on themselves, and neutralized it.
Last night's dreams were normal.
A number of random thoughts occurred to me while I was doing all that.
The emotionscape and the general psychic energy scape probably overlap, but aren't the same places. The shared mindspace between you and me is part of a different set of "channels" operating at a different energy level. I'd never had a shared mindspace to compare anything to before ours.
I pondered whether it might've been you at the other end, but it didn't really feel like it.
Fear seems to be a pretty big part of what's between you and me, too. I also wonder whether it would be at all helpful to walk you through a general cleanse. Replace the fear with love, because those two emotions reside in the same spaces, and maybe good things will happen.
One of the things about you that originally got my attention was the sheer amount of power you're capable of wielding, if you knew you were doing it. That evening two years ago when you hit me for a comment about trustworthiness. Since then I've figured out that it's more like a resonance between us - you can power me if I first power you, and it gets massively amplified. If we ever got our act together and worked together, we could probably take over the world.
It's happened several times now, that I'll go to an event with a bunch of pagans, and then I start having nightmares - of the sort that aren't just normal dreams, something is obviously trying to visit, and manipulate me to give them something. I wish I'd written down which events and who was at them, so I could figure out who's doing it. Other than it's not coming from someone I see on a weekly basis, I have no idea. I'm assuming that no one is trying to do something malicious to me specifically, but more likely they're having some issues, and it's being contagious. This isn't unusual if you do magick (which itself is not unusual among pagans), and have enough of an ego to think you can do things that you really shouldn't, and attract a lot of attention from incorporeal entities.
So. Nightmares for me. That I then have to do a cleansing to get rid of.
The last event this all happened for was Mabon, which had nearly 40 attendees, and then on Saturday/Sunday I had two nightmares in a row, along with already being over-caffeinated from the day before and the neighbor's alarm going off at 4:30am (...again), and by 5am I figured I better just do the cleanse right then and there before it got worse. And it turned out to already be pretty bad and took a lot longer than usual. So really I didn't sleep at all that night.
I don't remember the details of the first nightmare. The one before that, the night after Mabon, it ended with a beige silhouette of a woman sitting on my chest, staring at me. The ending for the third and last one, I was in the house of my childhood, everywhere was dark except for the third floor hallway, and there was a small pet named Pip who only trusted me. The house would no longer be safe once the last light was out, so I took him downstairs through to the kitchen door, and was going to put Pip on a boat with two friends who would take him to safety. Only, at the last minute, I realized that these friends were doppelgangers of the Bad Guy, and when I didn't put Pip on the boat, one of them came back and was going to start chasing me back through the house to get Pip.
For me, rituals are a means to an end. The specifics don't matter. They're there to provide focus. So far what I've learned from watching pagans being pagans as a group, is that to them, rituals are elaborate affairs with lots of props. I don't need props. I just lie there and breathe and visualize, and occasionally use mantras when the situation is as bad as it was. (Actually, this past weekend is the first time I can think of where I actually needed a mantra.)
So, the way a cleansing goes, usually: Start by finding the link between the core of your being and the universe. It should look like a beam of clear white light. Breathe in, breathe out, let the energy flow from the universe into you, and then expand it outward from the crown of your head to fill the room. Fill up the space that you're cleansing. Add color/flavor/tone (however you want to call it), so that it isn't just pure white, because pure white attracts attention. Make it solid. If done right, you don't even need shields, the solidity of the mass of positive energy will keep the space clear for you by itself. I can usually do this in about 20 minutes.
... it didn't go that way at all. I could find my center, but not the universe. The link between them was like a hairline crack, surrounded by a whole lot of darkness.
So step back a bit, and the first step was actually: reforge the link to the rest of the universe. Breathe in, breathe out, let the energy start to flow and widen that hairline crack. As it first started, there was a moment of startled panic, and then fear started pushing back in at me to get me to stop.
Years of experience recognizing and externalizing other people's emotions turns out to be a useful skill in a time like this. I noted the fear and then disregarded it, and kept going. It faded as the darkness started to lighten.
Then, once the energy was flowing, it wouldn't go to the crown of my head. It was so slow that I first had to let it pour into my feet, let it puddle there, slosh it back and forth, and then flow downward, and eventually around my back and up past my shoulders until it made it to my head. (Ye gods, wtf.) The coloring was (is) the sort of slippery, fluidlike blue-silver that seems to be my default. The mentor who originally taught me how to do all this said that it made me impossible to find through the ether, which was a very good thing for me at the time.
An hour later (I don't know how long it actually took to do that, it felt like forever), I was finally ready to expand outward. Things got much lighter. By the time I was done filling in my home space with peacefulness, instead of a whole lot of darkness surrounding a hairline thread of light, it had become a whole lot of light surrounding a braid of shadows. And finally, there came a moment when I touched the braid and the whole thing incinerated - became completely consumed by light traveling from me toward the universe. (If this was a dramatic video, this would've been the moment when angels burst into song.)
Of course I had to follow the newly cleared line all the way up, to find out what was at the other end. It wasn't the universe. It was a being that was smaller and definitely finite. Since I was now already there, I surrounded it with love and light to clear away its shadows and fear.
Love and light, to replace shadows and fear. That was the mantra.
I still don't know who was at the other end. I imagined a number of possible suspects from the pagan community. I certainly hope that I helped them with whatever their problem is that keeps sending nightmares to me. Either that or I turned their deliberate spell back on themselves, and neutralized it.
Last night's dreams were normal.
A number of random thoughts occurred to me while I was doing all that.
The emotionscape and the general psychic energy scape probably overlap, but aren't the same places. The shared mindspace between you and me is part of a different set of "channels" operating at a different energy level. I'd never had a shared mindspace to compare anything to before ours.
I pondered whether it might've been you at the other end, but it didn't really feel like it.
Fear seems to be a pretty big part of what's between you and me, too. I also wonder whether it would be at all helpful to walk you through a general cleanse. Replace the fear with love, because those two emotions reside in the same spaces, and maybe good things will happen.
One of the things about you that originally got my attention was the sheer amount of power you're capable of wielding, if you knew you were doing it. That evening two years ago when you hit me for a comment about trustworthiness. Since then I've figured out that it's more like a resonance between us - you can power me if I first power you, and it gets massively amplified. If we ever got our act together and worked together, we could probably take over the world.
