Healing and Echoes and Strings (oh my)

So this place where I am now….I’ve been thinking a lot about emotion. I’m gonna get witchy here for a few moments. If you don’t believe in that stuff, that’s fine, the belief isn’t important for the concept. I’m going to connect some seemingly unconnected dots.

Let’s start in the real world. If you are in a room full of string instruments, and you play a note, say an A, then every instrument in that room that has a string tuned to an A will start vibrating. Or rather, their A string will start vibrating. All of them. Even if that string is tuned to a different octave of A, they’ll all vibrate. Science shows us this, and it has to do with sound wavelengths.

I’ve always found this an interesting metaphor, because when we go out and show our weirdness, other people with the same weirdness vibrate too. Shit, have you FELT the energy around any kind of convention that addresses your particular weirdness? Steampunk, Anime, Gaming, Comics, Movies, Disney, …fuck even let’s say Antique Cars, or Yard Sales. There’s this kind of energy that happens when you love those things and you talk to someone else who loves those things. (Especially when you talk about WHY you love those things. That turns up the volume somehow, I’m not sure why.)

= = =

In the Non-Ordinary Worlds there’s a lot of things that can affect the power of someone’s magic. How much you believe in yourself, love yourself for example, can absolutely effect things…but your emotional state at the time of the work absolutely affects things in an extreme way. If you are angry, or frightened or worried or scared, or in need, those feelings have this kind of vibrational level that amp things up somehow.

I heard two of my Elders speaking a couple of years ago (I will quote you if I am allowed to, you know who you are, but without your permission I will not) and one said something that stuck in my head and sent me on a meditation journey that lasted several years. She was talking about a candle, a small candle like a tea light, and she said, “It’s as big as the Heart of the Sun.”

I felt like that was truly important…and originally when I thought about it I kind of felt like it meant that every flame, no matter where it is or how small, has the desire to become as big as it can, that they all have the potential for growth and the desire to consume, and later I came to realize it’s not that at all.

I mean, that’s true…but it’s not that at all.

What it really is is that every fire in the world, in ALL the worlds, started somewhere as a spark, and every spark kind of has the memory of what it is to be that huge. Not all of them WANT to be that big, but they all REMEMBER it, it’s kind of in their DNA, and they can, if they want to or need to, expand in the Non-Ordinary realms, to be bonfire huge, or planet huge. And it’s not difficult to do, or even a stretch, because it’s part of the essence of what they are. Fire burns. That’s what it does. When you look at the SPIRIT of fire, it doesn’t matter how small the fire is…the spirit of it, the energy of it, is this twisty, dancing burning thing of light and heat. It is always that thing. It is never not that thing.

I started thinking about other elements then. Does every drop of water remember the ocean? Does every grain of sand remember the planet? Does every breath or whisper remember the Hurricane?

Yes, yes, yes.

“Okay. Great,” I said to myself. But what does it mean? It feels very important…And it has something to do with those strings echoing in a room…how does it connect?

= = =

People say, “Think globally, act locally.” There’s validity to that. Healing the planet (and the planet, not just the greenhouse gases and climate change, but the animals on it, including us, we need healing) is such a huge job that individuals can’t do it. But if all of us heal our little circle of people, eventually that ripples out to the planet. Eventually things get fixed. There are too many humans that are shitty to other humans, and that means everyone from racists and transphobes to bullies that make our children want to hurt themselves. How can we fix that? Is that even possible?

…It would be faster if I could make it echo. How do I do that?

= = = =

It made me start asking myself, what is the smallest unit of a human being? I don’t mean zygotes or DNA, I mean the common thinking feeling denominator of being human? I spent months and months on this question trying to figure it out, knowing that it was important and not really being sure WHY it was important, but it was.

And then finally, one day, it hit me. Our common denominators are all emotions…fear, weakness, joy, love, laughter, pain…all of us feel those things. That is important…but why? Why is that important? It was driving me in this weird way, knowing that there was something important there but not understanding what it was.

= = = = =

In the Otherworlds, emotion is practically currency….I mean, you can’t buy things with it, there aren’t things to buy in the same way, but everything you do, every person or thing you talk to, all the discussions are steered by your emotional state. If you are a kind and loving person, you have kind and loving interactions. If you have done your shadow work, the interactions are stable. If you have not…well…chaos can ensue. It doesn’t always, but its not unusual.

= = = =

There’s this roleplaying game called Wraith where your in-game powers are driven by Pathos, the more emotional something is, the more you can power it and drive it. Rage filled ghosts can do extreme things like possess people or become poltergeists.

= = = =

Emotion vs. Passion. Emotion is the thing you feel. Passion the amplitude at which you feel. You can love someone (emotion) or you can LOVE someone so much that you will jump in front of a bullet (passion).

Passion is the depths and heights of the sine wave of whatever you feel. It’s not what you feel. It’s how much bandwidth the signal requires. What you feel is how long the wave is from left to right. Your passion is how tall the wave is from top to bottom.

What you feel is the note. Passion is the volume.

= = = =

Heal the world. Heal yourself. Emotions are the common denominator. Two strings vibrating. The heart of the candle, the heart of the sun, the drop of water, the breadth of the ocean, magic answers need, be your weirdness, there is too much hate here, echoing strings, the weakness of infants, emotions have power.

BAM.

= = = =

Every human knows what it is like to be weak. To be helpless. To have to depend on other people for light, for love. Every human somewhere remembers in the same way the candle does what it is to be whole. Independent, Loving, Complete. Everyone craves it (possibly the candle craves it too, to be one with its source….that will require more thought) craves wholeness.

I have been struggling my whole life for this. Originally because I thought I was having children and I didn’t want to do to them what was done to me. It was important that I heal so that I didn’t do more damage. I damaged people who loved me because I was so broken I couldn’t believe that they loved me, even when they did. I told them they didn’t and they just didn’t know…they THOUGHT they loved me, but they didn’t.

(Gods help me, I gaslighted people and not even on purpose. I was just so lost, I assumed that anyone who loved me was also lost. I am so sorry. So very sorry. And I still love.)

But my healing…it has a resonance. And there are so many people like me, who have gone through the same things, who are also trying to heal.

These fears, these pains, they are the common denominator for all of us. By putting them out there, you resonate too, because you feel those things, you know them.

= = = =

Which means as I heal, if you can imagine those things, you can resonate and change too.

I am going to say that again because it’s really important.

As I heal, if you can imagine those things, you can resonate and change too.

= = = =

It’s just the string echoing. It’s not something you have to DO, it’s something you have to LET HAPPEN. Don’t over think it.

Just Be.

= = = = =

Keep reading these posts, these notes. They’re also on my website going back for several years because I moved them over when FB lost the Notes feature. The writings go back as far as 2009, but you would probably do best starting here and moving forward. This is where the note starts sounding, and where the healing starts. http://brujahquemando.com/wordpress/?m=201412

Just read them, and feel them, and just be. Sit with the thoughts, don’t rush to the next one. Let them perk in your brain and just THINK them and FEEL them. Especially FEEL them.

All this healing may be easier than you think. I mean, that’s the hope.

But what have you got to lose?

I need to just cut myself some slack.

This has been a busy busy month.

Of course there’s christmas/yule, and there’s trying to get my act together.  I’ve completely gotten caught up in taking care of our cat, Gehenna, who is 21 years old.  We’re trying to value the time that we have with her, but she’s starting to lose weight and lose weight and not eat, and it’s very distressing.  She got kidney disease a couple of years ago, and we’ve been giving her a subcutaneous drip every night to help take some of the pressure off her kidneys.  She’s been super good about it, and she takes all her meds without too much drama.  She’s adorable, really.  She’s hard to get good pictures of because all-black kitties are notoriously hard to get photos of because of lighting, but this is her:

(I had to edit that top photo and turn up the lighting on it so you could see her.)

So anyway, that’s a thing, and I’m also doing more cooking.  So that means that I’ve had less time for self-care….and I have a tendency to self-neglect, so my self-care is usually the first thing that goes.

I’ve been working from home, too, and Rob has been switching back and forth from days to midnights and back, so figuring out what day of the week it is has been challenging.  I’m focusing on my job, getting and keeping it organized as I go back and forth to work, but it’s hard and I need to be innovative for that, so that also subtracts from my self-care.

Honestly, I considered it a win when I bought a wet-brush and just detangled my hair.  I need a haircut so badly I’ve literally spent time crying about it.  But it feels like there’s no time, each moment of my day is spent caring for us as a family, or caring for the cat like a child.  Gehenna wants to be held all the time, and it’s like having a toddler.  Sure, I don’t HAVE to hold her just because she’s climbing all over me, but if I don’t, how badly will I feel when I don’t have her anymore?

I feel like I just have to accept this is where I’m at and work with that.  So I’m trying to fit myself in sideways.

I’m also trying to deal with myself as an artist.  I have issues with the fact that most of my art isn’t “original art” meaning that I didn’t draw them from scratch from pencil to finished product.  Often I’m taking pieces of ideas from the internet, whether that’s photographs, or clip art, or whatever, and putting them together to make something else.  My friend Risa says that that has always happened, and as long as I’m not taking the original art and claiming it as mine, as long as I’m crediting the original artist, getting their permission if I can, and putting it together in an entirely new medium, then it’s just art because my combination in my medium is something that never existed before.

I don’t know how I feel about it.  I’ve been beating myself up because my art isn’t realistic enough, and then I see images like this by other artists that are beautiful and NOT realistic, and are definitely, DEFINITELY, Art.  (This was on pinterest).

So I’m kind of struggling with the idea that I don’t know what my own art style is because I don’t do enough original stuff, and then I sit down with something to do an original thing, and I just stare at the blank wood and do nothing but hate myself.

I mean really.  I sit there and hate myself and my lack of ability to move forward.

So I’m struggling with that piece of acceptance….just accepting that ALL of this is art.  That it shouldn’t matter as long as it brings me joy, that I should just keep going no matter what, and who and what I am as an artist will take shape on its own.

It’s hard.  I feel like I have a skillset, but not the ability to design.  I guess that’s it.  And no one can be good at everything, right?

And I DID design this thing, even if it’s not very complex.

I should just cut myself some slack.

This is me, learning how to do that.