Tag Archives: Elements

Healing and Echoes and Strings (oh my)

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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?

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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?

How do I explain? The first thing.

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When I go to one of these things…let me start again….I went to Shaman’s Quantum Universe, (now Midwest Shaman’s Conference) an annual event that focuses on shamanic teachings, which are very different from generic pagan things. There’s this shift that happens from that event that takes me time to process, a shift in thought and a bonding with Spirit that happens, and it can be really mind-altering. Last year it was enough to send me into a retreated state for several months, just kind of isolating and thinking, and deciding how much of this I wanted to absorb into my world view, how much time I was willing to dedicate…I keep remembering these turning points in movies, (Lost Boys, “How far you wanna go, Michael?”, Matrix, “You take the Blue pill…,” and now Wonder Woman, “Who will I be if I stay?”) where your life kind of shifts from that point forward, and I keep wondering how close I can get to that line without actually stepping over. I wonder what it means to step over. I really like my life right now. Will this enhance it or shake it around? I don’t know. I just know I keep edging closer to the line and each step is blissful and frightening. Why is it frightening? Responsibility.

If you love someone and you unknowingly hurt them on a regular basis, once you know you become responsible for that. If it’s inconvenient to stop hurting them, if it means you have to sacrifice something you love or enjoy, then you make a choice in that moment about what is more important to you. It’s easier to not see. The more I see, the more responsible I become. The more I need to change.

Shamanism deals with spirits….of the land, of the elements, of the plants, of Deity…they’re all over the friggin place. And it’s not like this nirvana-state like you might think…some of them are cranky, and some are nice, and some are decidedly not-nice, just like people. They have good days and bad days, and you want to not piss them off. The thing that’s amazing is that we can ALL hear them. Anyone can do it. It’s like a skill that gets better with practice, and when you do…well…suddenly you’re in a position of, “Have I been a good neighbor?” Later lessons become things like, “What? You’re not just my neighbor, we’re actually related? Have I been good to my Family?” The responsibility becomes deeper.

I learned two things this particular event. The first is a little complex, so bear with me.

We’re the sum of our experiences, right? All the things that have happened to us, all the lessons we’ve learned, all the people we’ve interacted with, these experiences combine together, meet your intellect, and become your ego/personality/whatever. This has been happening to us ever since we gained intelligent thought, since we were cavemen and trying to figure out how to use a rock or stick we’ve been cataloging experiences and passing them along. The elemental things feel universal and we pass them on to our children. “Fire is HOT,” becomes, “don’t touch the stove.” It’s still a passing on of experience (and some kids will always have to touch the stove for themselves. Some people need to refresh their experiences.)

So this tree told me, (yeah, I know that sounds crazy, but bear with me) that everything we are comes from them. (I’m pretty sure it meant all the elements, not just earth or tree…spirits aren’t always clear when they speak, and you just kind of have to roll with that. We have deficiencies in our language sometimes). It gave me all these pictures that were basically everything we’ve ever been since we were cavemen….our hearth fires to keep our fears away, our homes to shelter from the elements, the cradles we made to hold our children, the toys we made to keep them entertained, the food we ate to nourish ourselves, the medicines from the herbs we grew, even the recording of our knowledge on pages of books made from dead plants. We have libraries of books of knowledge and experiences that came from them. In the end, it said, it comes back to them…books burn, mold, decay. But the things that shaped the human species, that created our current state, that keep record of who we are, they came from Earth.

I got an image of us mowing down rain forests, and I think it’s important to mention there was no malice or anger or resentment…just a feeling of inevitability…that this is all a cycle, and it just happens, and it has always been this way. But I felt guilty, and I apologized, and the tree said basically that cycles happen, it is what it is. I said, “I am so grateful to have you,” and here’s the lesson.

In this tone of annoyance, and frustration, and, I-just-explained-it-to-you-why-are-you-so-thick the tree said, “You ARE me.”

Of course, this would have been obvious if I had the time to think it through. I am the sum of my experiences. Humans are the sum of theirs. So much of what we think and are came from thousands of years of depending on the land. The interconnectedness should be obvious, but it wasn’t. For just one moment I was plugged into the planet, (Highlander, “I AM EVERYTHING! I KNOW EVERYTHING!”) and it was SO much information I got dizzy, the chopping down of rainforests suddenly felt like cutting ourselves (and isn’t it? Isn’t it really a self destructive act when we know we need the air they provide?) and I just needed to sit down.

You don’t want to be rude to Spirit. I just said I had to go, and then I tried to take my leave formally, “Is that okay? I’d like to go sit down and absorb this, it’s a lot of information. Can I go?”

The tree said, “Where do you think you can go that we are not?” (I felt like Rocky up against the ropes, do the hits really need to keep coming?) I realized my furniture is mostly IKEA, wood, that glass has the spirit of Sand/Earth, that I drink coffee every morning, that mugs are made of earth, and so is some of my cookware, that the couch I lay on has a base of metal, the building I live in is made of stone and wood…it was too much, way too much. I went to write it all down right away because this is going to take weeks to absorb.

Because I thought who I am is pretty much set, by my age, by my experiences…and I’m still forming. And all these spirits around me are what are forming me. Forming you. Forming everyone. You may not believe in Spirit, but these things, our creature comforts, they call come from Earth and Fire, Water and Air. These creature comforts mold us.

So that was the first thing I learned. I’m still absorbing. I don’t have the energy for the second thing yet, but I wanted to get this out.