Last night, I received two books in the mail. One, is a book I’ve been DYING to read for quite some time: “Celtic Tree Mysteries: Secrets of the Ogham” by Steve Blamires. The other was a gift from a friend of mine, and is the next book in a series I’m reading. The book is “The Singing Sword” by Jack Whyte. I’m really excited to have new books to read! I’m a voracious reader, and though I love all the books in my library, it wears a bit after the second or third thousandth time through them all.

In my last post, “The Numinous and Worship“, I mentioned a passage from the book “Contact”, by Carl Sagan, that dealt with the main character falling in love. I’d like to share that, directly below.

“Their conversations were a joy, with ideas flying back and forth like shuttlecocks. Sometimes they responded to each other’s uncompleted thoughts with almost perfect foreknowledge. He was a considerate and inventive lover. And anyways, she liked his pheromones.

She was comfortable describing to him her reveries, snatches of memories, childhood embarrassments. And he was not merely interested, but fascinated. He would question her for hours about her childhood. His questions were always direct, sometimes probing, but without exception gentle. She began to understand why lovers talk baby talk to one another. Ther was no other socially acceptable circumstance in which the children inside her were permitted to come out. If the one-year-old, the five-year-old, the twelve-year-old, and the twenty-year-old all find compatible personalities in the beloved, there is a real chance to keep all of these sub-personas happy. Love ends their long loneliness. Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship. With her previous partners, it seemed, at most one of these selves was able to find a compatible opposite number; the other persona were grumpy hangers-on.”

As I had mentioned earlier, this had struck a chord for me, having found that within these past couple years ith someone, after a lifetime of searching, and eventually giving up. Man, but the Gods can be cruel when they finally give us what we most desire. Along with the joy of the finding, came a terrible fear and despair of ever being able to grab onto that, and guilt for having to extricate myself from the committed relationship I was already in to realize it fully. I guarantee you, I spent quite a long time hoping to find it with the woman I was already with, out of the love I still shared with her, and the love she still felt for me.

Why do we fight so hard, to force ourselves to go against what is obvious? What was awakened in me, was awakened by this new person, but I hoped maybe it could be transferred to my now ex-wife. She would tell me how much she was in love ith me, would tell me how much she ould change for me, even made certain changes. It was hard facing that, because the more she changed, the more she opened up her lines of communication, the more in her I saw the person I had initially fallen in love with, and the more compatible she became to what I was looking for out of life. Throw in the fact that she was and is the mother of my two children, and the difficulties in walking away from her were increased exponentially. How could I do this to somebody who loved and needed me that much? Did I not OWE it to her, to find the same feelings for her? And let me tell you, I came close to finding it. REAL close. Maybe we COULD “make it work”. Despite all that, I couldn’t seem to do it. Through time, I came to realize, that the feelings I felt, that I were awakened to, were not because of her, and aren’t transferable. And even though I could find almost everything else for her, I couldn’t find that one part that said, “Yes.”

Why do we fight so hard to force ourselves to fill those roles that others hope for us? We show amazing compassion for others, and yet, we show very little compassion to ourselves. For me, the reason I could not tell my ex-wife “yes”, was because she was not the person that that part of my heart was saying “yes” for.. the same one that awakened those emotions in me for in the first place. It wasn’t her face I saw in those moments with her. The Gods are cruel. But, they also are kind, because I DID feel that for someone, in all those ways, even if it didn’t lessen the hurt or acceptance I still had to find. And they were kind, because they allowed my ex-wife to see that was what was real in MY heart, that while I loved her, I couldn’t love her in that way, not after being made aware of it more fully with somebody that TRULY awakened it in me. And my ex-wife, I loved her more than ever for allowing me to have that, for loving me enough to let me find that true happiness, even if it wasn’t with her. And you know, it hasn’t been easy, because when I see her with the man she is with now, she reminds me more and more of what I hoped she and I could have. But I’ve been chasing the future that is real in my heart now, the one that speaks to all those parts of me, and dealing with the pain that comes from walking away from my past as it comes. The pain lessens with time, the healing begins, when there is acceptance of the truth. Yes I love her, yes I see so much good in her, and yes, we could probably have made a better go at things, but no…. that is not where my heart was pointing me. Only after I acknowledged that direction, and she acknowledged my direction as well, was I able to truly move on. She made it easy for me, and I’m grateful. She probably could have sat there every single day from then until now, begging me to stay, and I would have not had an easy time at all walking away. To say the least.

Compassion is a good thing, but there comes a time when one has to let others deal with the reality on their own terms, without standing in the way of that. And here, the compassionate thing is to let them figure that out for themselves, without you trying to hold their hand through it, and without sharing your fears back and forth beteen each other. Feedback loops are powerfull, patterned, and cyclical. Just as there can be a loop and regress of love beteen true lovers, there can also be loops of fear that never move anybody forward. So sometimes, compassion in a situation means having the compassion to walk away, to be quiet, and to let the other person see the truth for themselves. It can mean having the compassion to put your own hopes to the side, and acknowledging that in reality, they’re not returned. Sometimes compassion is having to do the hard things, that hurt the most now, instead of the easy things, that hurt more and more in the long run.

Deep stuff, and stuff I’ve been working on in myself. Having the compassion to let others see the truth for themselves, and having trust that the Gods will bring me beauty, whatever the outcome. It’s hard, but I’m following an ecstatic path… with the ecstasy, comes the hard work. And though it’s hard, I can honestly say that I am truly living my life now, and not waiting on the world to make things happen for me. I’m taking control of my life, and it feels amazing.

ON TO THE RANDOMNESS!

My “W” key is on the fritz, and I never really realized how often that letter is used!

I hate Wordpress’s textbox for typing posts, as it is constantly scrolling back to the top of the post, and typing in it it seems to be about one character a second hitting the screen.

I’m considering removing email notifications of new posts, as I often think it keeps people from wanting to come and comment.

I’m trying to integrate Google Friend Connect, to make it EASIER for people to come and comment.

I like comments.

I’m thinking of creating a new blog to dedicate my posts about my relationship to Herne with.

I really like watching The Office, Bones, and Heroes.

Happy Thursday all.

When confronted by someone who is going through a difficult trial or tribulation, I often feel compelled to give advice, which is part of my caring nature. I hate seeing others in pain, and if I believe I have it in my power to help ease that pain and suffering, then I tend to go to it with a will. One of my favorite pieces of advice in situations like these, is to encourage the sufferer to look on the bright side of things. To look for the positive in the situation, and to embrace that, even if they negative is at the forefront, and even if the positive is hard to see. I sincerely believe in this idea, and yet… I’m also in a place now where I’m finding my own advice hard to swallow. I’ve become something of a hypocrite.

If this wasn’t bad enough, if the person takes my advice to heart, and follows through on it, I am then quick to turn around and lash out, telling them I wish they actually believed the facade they are putting up. At the time when they start to follow this excellent advice, I turn around and hit them between the eyes with the incongruity between the positive spin and the negative reality. I destroy the very ideal I hoped they would create. Hypocrisy times a thousand.

I’ve spent all day thinking about this, after sneaking a peek into a small tarot reading for myself. The cards urged me to seek out forgiveness today, and this is what’s popped into my head as something that I’ve done, and how it’s wronged some people in my life very close to me. I’m aghast and ashamed with myself. To heal, one HAS to be able to look at the positive, no matter how hard it is to see. Negativity breeds negativity, and conversely, positivity breeds positivity. One can not find the positive in life while focusing on the negative. The positive could be staring them in the face, and they would completely miss it. I’m at that point myself. While the universe continues to rain shit down on me, I’ve succumbed to some very negative ways of looking at the world, and yet I’m continually surprised by how much more negative things seem to be getting. I WANT the positive, but I’ve nearly given up in believing it can exist anymore. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy of epic and earth shaking proportions, and it’s destroying me, as surely as I can see it destroying others.

In effect, to embrace the positive, when surrounded by the negative, one has to embrace a specific form of hypocrisy. To dig through the manure to find the gold. To put aside all the negative evidence, and open themselves up to the idea that the positive is indeed attainable, and actually WORK at realizing it. And this does take work, my friends. It’s no mean feat to set aside the hurt, pain, heartache, discomfort, self-loathing… to set aside the facts to the contrary that are screaming, “HEY! You are FUCKED my friend! Give up!” Take it from me, I am living this reality right now.

I am 3 or 4 months behind on my mortgage. I have credit card debt left over from the divorce up to my eyeballs. I am behind on my utilities, water, internet and phone bills. I don’t even have auto insurance right now. I don’t have a job right now, and am drawing unemployment. Unemployment, after child support and taxes, has barely left me with enough to buy groceries and gasoline, let alone pay my bills. I am struggling with the realization that the love of my life no longer wants to be with me. I am struggling with my children not wanting to be here the few days a week I have them. I’m terrified about my health, which seems to be degrading. I’m so scared and alone and adrift, that I have literally become paralyzed. I am doing nothing to save myself, I have been succumbing to the negative as a fact of life. Yet, still I preach on about the power of positivity, though I’ve done little to follow through on my own advice. While it’s true, that to a certain extent I’m at the mercy of potential employers, my creditors, and how the people in my life that I love and want to draw closer to me feel, there is also a very real part that I have control over, and I’ve simply refused to take that control. Fear of failure and rejection is ever a huge thing for me, and I’m living it.

I need to heal. I need to be able to not only bring my life back under control, but … at the same time, how can I expect to do that when I am unwilling or unable to bring my outlook back under control? I feel more like a hypocrite for trying to find anything positive in my life. It’s so hard to see. It seems like every hope and dream, every thing I’ve worked to make a reality, crumbles under my fingers. I feel less like an architect of my destiny, and more like a wrecking ball, demolishing all I touch. The sad thing is, I’m right as long as I continue to view myself and my life in this manner. The real change won’t come, until I am willing and able to look at myself and my life as the blessed person/thing that I/it truly am/is (hehe). How do I believe it, when I can’t see it?

So I guess…. sometimes, hypocrisy is a good thing. It allows us to put aside the negativity, the bullshit, the drama, the facts to the contrary, and exercise our minds and our outlooks, to build up the tools needed to create a more positive reality for ourselves. To become prophets of, not our failures and fears, but of our potential and blessings. To shape a pathway to allow the good in life to return, and to forge a better tomorrow, whatever our situation.

I’m working on it, and I’ve taken the first steps, which has led me to doing something about my situation. I have a meeting with a credit counsellor tomorrow morning, to discuss my options for getting out of debt. Such a simple thing, so obvious, and yet, something I was unable to do while I was telling myself there was nothing I could do. I did it. It was surprisingly easy once I allowed myself to see the possibility. And you know, I’m less of a hypocrite now, for accepting a positive I couldn’t see and could barely believe in, then I was when I was so sure I would be screwed no matter what I did. Yes, there’s still a lot of this situation out of my control, but I’m more ready to face it with a positive heart. Or at least, to try for now. Healing is never easy, and it takes practice, and I still have my moments (read: weeks) where I struggle to grasp anything positive at all. But I’m willing to make that effort, for myself, for others.

Part of my healing here, is acknowleding how out of whack I’ve gotten, and how I’ve wronged others with my words and actions as described above. This week, seeking forgiveness is one of my goals. If I’ve wronged you in this manner (and yes, you know who you are), then I want to take the time now to truly and sincerely apologize. I know I can’t undo the damage that has been done, but I’m asking for forgiveness anyways. I’m also working on trying to forgive myself.

I’m not a perfect person, but I’m trying to get better. I … I believe I can. *small, brave smile* I’m telling myself I can. In the end, the two are related, and interlinked, and both will surely lead me to the reality of that conviction. This is my thought, my belief, my most fervent prayer, my magic intention, and the prophecy I hope to fulfill for myself.

So mote it be.