Philosophy: To Be Balanced Is To Be Primal AND Ethical

I’ve been doing Reiki on myself the past couple of nights which is energy healing (I have been atuned by a Reiki Master to become a channel myself. This is to allow the universe’s healing energy to flow through me to where healing needs to be done. This healing energy works around my body and through my chakras, helping it to naturally heal itself by putting it in homeostasis and raising its vibrations. Chakras are like emotional well-being pressure points. If we are not living authentically, in free flow, our pressure points are going to be stressed and blocked up. Reiki resets your energy flow so that you can live healthily in honour of your unique self. That is, until you stop your own flow again but that’s your responsibility.) I’ve been trying to figure out the causes for my unexpected, violent thoughts; my fear of other’s hidden darkest parts and inability to access my feelings sometimes. Once, a year or so after my dad passed away, I had to start seeing a counsellor because I was in a mental loop: I would have sudden horrific or disturbing thoughts, be appalled and replay it to test my reaction. If I had no emotional reaction, I was ‘bad’ because I had to be disgusted with myself. I would keep suffering myself by replaying unpleasant scenarios to test my morality and it scared me because I felt like I had no control. I felt like I might act them out if the thoughts were too consuming. I was terrified of myself. The counsellor told me to simply acknowledge them when they came, “Oh there’s that thought again.” And let it go: don’t think about it again. This helped massively and eventually it stopped. This was eight years ago and I’ve learned bits here and there about psychology and what might have been happening but I feel like now I’ve made a break through. Yes it was a cognitive behavioural thing, and a change in thinking pattern cured it. But I am a strong pursuer of root causes and I’m glad I’ve found mine because I can now regain control where I misused it. So after doing Reiki just before bed, I would wake up after having vivid dreams. This is to be expected: when we release the blocked up energy, everything in us that had been repressed, gets resurfaced, so dreams are telling. I had a dream about trying to kill someone! I threw a knife at their neck and then they fell to the floor, still conscious. My actions before, during and after this incident were all important. The person was someone who, in real life, had wounded my ego. So, below is my thought process as I attempted to work on myself, and halfway through I remember the dream. When I talk about doing a bad thing, I’m outlining my thinking during the dream. I’m analysing it in generalities because I want to leave room for my real trauma to show itself. Because I assumed I had to have suffered trauma in order to be having these mental experiences. And in real life, it is a fear of mine to think that way:

So where are my issues coming from?

It’s like a blockage. I just don’t know. It’s cold. It’s unloving. It’s the part of me that wants to kill a wounded animal. What is that about?

I have a part of me that is cold and unloving and wants to squish something vulnerable. Why?

My third eye is telling me I know why but nothing is coming to me.

Quickest way to deal with your dangerous, self-centred feelings including cowardice, anger, hatred, indifference, want to push something under the rug, shame, dishonesty:

Empathy.

You can get stuck in a loop like me. You’ve done a bad thing, you planned it out, pre-meditated, fully conscious the whole time you were doing it. You gave in to your desires and you did it- you caused harm to another. So after planning it AND executing it there’s the aftermath. There’s still a chance to save them or let them die. You didn’t kill them but you want to be sure they’re dead. Your cowardice sets in now and you neglect them until they die with time. You shut them away and wait it out for a couple of hours. Going about life as normal, hosting friends and chatting, while in the back of your mind you’re waiting. Ok, so you’re afraid they’ll attack you if you walk past them but now you believe they’re dead. So you go to leave the house. They are still awake and try to exit when you get the door open. You fight against the door and manage to win, locking them in. Your plan now is to walk away and never look back. Forget them. The whole thing never happened. You’ve left them to die and you want to erase it all from your memory. They never existed. But then, as you’re walking, you think about what you’ve done. You realise that having done this to someone else, you’re inviting horrible karma to yourself in the future. You can still save yourself. So you go back with shame and open the door. The person is still there, and you help remove the harm and close up the wounds. The person doesn’t attack you. They’re grateful you came back. They speak calmly, politely and graciously and then they leave you on good terms. The full weight of what you did hits you. Their humanity has been seen. They were kind to you, forgave you and they were grateful to keep their life. You caused their suffering, neglected them in ultimate vulnerability, and chose to hide them, forget while their life was in your hands. Now they are free. You treated him like an object you wanted to destroy. How could you do that? You couldn’t believe you’d been capable of something like that. That poor person, that was their own being, had endured that. You fully realise the absence of your emotions and your empathy. But you don’t move on and learn from this and remember they are free now. Instead you sit in a loop of remorse. You replay what happened, what you did, how you only changed your mind when your life was threatened and then you realised you failed on every step of the way. You believe you have no ability to do the right thing. You have no confidence in yourself. When you feel raw urges and desires, you immediately jump to the extreme that you’re evil and you lock that part of yourself away in fear and rejection. You test yourself with horrible, imagined scenarios to see what your immediate reaction is. You want to know if you’re ‘good’. You want to feel guilt because it tells you you’re a good person. You stay there and can’t move on.

What you’re lacking here is balance. You’re jumping from something small to something extreme and then believing that’s who you are and what’s going to happen. There’s no in-between, there’s no rational thought process, there’s no emotional response process. There’s no area of confidence because you failed on all stages. But you’ve got to learn from something. The redeeming factor is you learned. When you freed the person, that’s when you were enlightened by seeing the full picture. That’s ok.
You received new information and it broke you. But you forget that you learned something and that counts. But now you’re punishing yourself with no self confidence. However, now you’ve got to move forward after learning how to empathise. You now have the ability to listen to others feelings when you didn’t before. It helps you humanise them. When you humanise then, you don’t want to hurt them. They have value. You are relieved. You are a good person. But what happens when they shut away their feelings? You can’t humanise them then with empathy can you? They seemingly don’t feel things and you cannot apply value to them. You are once again faced with the worst part of yourself that failed to empathise with another being and did something cruel to them. How are you going to fare now? It’s the ultimate test.

What did I do? I ran away. I removed myself to protect the other person, and ultimately to protect me and my karma. I didn’t have trust in myself or balance and I was scared of myself.

The answer is empathy. The answer is to wait for permission from the emotional communicator before you do something self-serving. You check how this will affect someone else. If someone did this to me, how would I feel? Are they safe by my actions? Are they nurtured by my actions?

If you know they wouldn’t be, you may, once again be faced with your remorse loop. How could I want to do that to them when it could have had this affect on them?! This is all in your head at this point, and again your confidence in your ability to do the right thing suffers. But this is part of the journey and this is how you learn. You think something, you look at the bigger picture and then you realise there’s more. We can’t know things before we know them. So what happens if those feelings are still there after learning the bigger picture?

There’s a lack of connection here to the emotional authority. You want to do something harmful, but for whatever reason you’re unable to empathise with the person you want to do it too. You are stuck with the horrible desire to hurt them and no one to ask if it’s ok. It’s just you and them. You’re terrified of yourself at this moment. You keep imagining it and it keeps getting more powerful. You’re scared of it and know you don’t want to do it but you’re wondering why you thought about it. You’re confused. You may remove yourself from the situation. You may act out the motions you imagined in the air in a separate room without knowing why you’re doing it or where the feelings are coming from. You let the energy out and you wait until it’s gone before you return. You’re still nervous and still unconfident but happy you didn’t hurt the person. You still don’t trust yourself around them though and struggle with the test in front of you.

Perhaps they are someone that has no self-power or self-assertion and gives their power to you naturally. Without you wanting it or asking for it. This can make the test extremely difficult. But the universe wouldn’t have sent a test unless it thought you were ready for it. And the person wouldn’t have put themselves forward unless they wanted to help you and believed in your progress.

Ok so you handled that well. Your confidence is still inconsistent and you’re more confused than ever about where those impulses were coming from. Why do you even have them? You’ve dehumanised yourself. That’s why those feelings won’t go away. They’re part of being human.

It’s normal to feel horrid things. It’s an ID thing. When we are born we only know ourselves and our own needs. The world revolves around us. What we do in that time is selfish. Our ID is our immediate, primal impulses; it’s the first thing we have before we develop our civilised nature, and together they make a well-rounded ego. A step further from this is a super ego which is what we project ourselves to be. So I locked my ID (primal impulses) in jail. I then walked away and pretended it never existed. So ashamed was I by what I had done before I knew better, I denied it completely. Some examples were:
– Stepping on my cats tail because I found it funny when he bolted and screeched. I stopped when I was told he would become a big panther one day and then I’d be sorry. I learned about comeuppance then.
– Bullying. I stopped when I insulted a girl at a fancy dress party once and then I realised it was my best friend. I realised the humanity. It taught me a stranger’s value was the same as someone close to me.
So I hid from myself, I gave up my self-power, and I failed to build a balanced ego. I based my worth on how well I was liked by others, and how they felt around me.  Thing is, this only leaves ID to be building in resentment. When it acts out to get attention because while you live, your primal urges live, you are forced to visit him in jail. You see how extreme his behaviour has become. What can you do but go through that loop again? But the way you treated that person at the beginning, is exactly the way you’re treating yourself. You have been your own Karma. It’s time to learn the lesson.

This self healing will take a long time. It’s scary but you can no longer leave a part of yourself locked up and forgotten. It’s not going anywhere. You need to reconcile with that part of you. You need to give it all the love and acceptance that you had denied it before because it is a part of your growth. If you can’t do that, then you will never be able to accept or love another fully. You will continue to be frightened, prejudiced and insecure.

You’re on a journey now of reconciliation, responsibility and strength. It’s self-confidence building time, and most importantly self-healing time.

How can we start?

Step 1: Allow the dark feelings- the self-centred feelings that are lacking in empathy. Recognise they’re normal. Accept them. call them what they are: primal urges. accept them as part of your development process.

Step 2: let them pass. Let them leave your body first. Count to 90: Feelings take 90 seconds to circulate the body and leave. Then let your mind, body and soul do their thing without your interference. It is natural.

Step 3: Appreciate yourself. Build your confidence by recognising your progress and being grateful for your being.

Step 4: Repeat for however long it takes. It’ll take a long time and there may be mistakes but you’ll get there because you’ve already progressed.

Step 5: Embrace life’s tests with a new confidence and love for yourself and the universe. It’s all to help you grow. You want to grow otherwise you wouldn’t be doing this.

Step 6: Affirmation. You are human. You are trying your best. You are neither “good” or “bad” but somewhere in the middle that is a healthy, balanced being. You are peaceful. Because being good is superego and being bad is ID. To have a healthy ego you need to be both. To be neutral is to accept all of yourself: you are everything and nothing.

Step 7: Love and expand your mind.

 

Spirituality: Darkened Sprit & The Rise Of The Moon

I had a personal day last Thursday where I needed to give attention to my inner being. Therefore this is a delayed post and I’m sorry for no update but I hope the content will make it worthwhile!

The metaphor I’m going to use is that the feeling of being drained, lost, trapped and anguished is Night Falling. And the break in this; the release; the limit; the pushed point is the Rising Of The Moon.

To pre-warn, I do not mean this post to be read as gospel but as my contemplations and theories.

I’ve spoken before about the moon in astrology representing our emotions and our inner world. I have not talked about Myers Briggs personality archetypes (MBTI), which is a navigation guide of your mind and how it functions. I recommend googling MBTI personality test and doing this to understand what cognitive functions you have. A cognitive function is how we process the world around us and for every person there is a specific order. All together there are 8 functions and knowing the order of how you use them will help you to improve on your relationships and your ability to feel settled in the world.

All that being said, let’s talk about being in an exhausted state where your inner tensions are at a high. You’ve heard the phrase “you’ve had a bad day and you’re taking this out on me”. Well let’s look at that.

Using myself as an example, I can tell you that I do not detach myself from my feelings. They are breath for my body; the first thing I think about when I’m alone and the initial drive for all of my endeavours. This is MY first function (Introverted feeling).

Being around people that do not work this way is confusing and conflicting. I adopted the habit of matching the other person in a one to one interaction: they’re taking everything as a joke, so I’ll put myself in that mindset and laugh at anything even though I morally disagree, so that we can connect; they’re trying to set a positive tone on a sad situation, so I will hold my tongue and allow them to feel accomplished by pretending they’ve uplifted me.

Let’s call my first function (processing the world with my inner feelings) my First Child. By neglecting my first child in those situations, I am feeling emptier and like a shadow of myself; I am aware my first child is locked away and I am looking forward to the situation being over so I can release my first child who will undoubtedly be feeling angry and small. If I cannot wait until I get home, my guilt for trapping this helpless child will be projected onto those around me who I try to force into accepting them because I couldn’t and didn’t know how to.

I’m not sure if you’ve also heard the phrase “that’s how the world works”. Or been told “this is what you need to do so you can get ahead in the world.” And I’m not sure how this makes you feel. However, I imagine, by hearing instructions from someone else, it may make you feel like you’re unacceptable in some way.

I want to extend to you my theory that the people who say those things do not prioritise your first child. That is because it is not their first child. And yes in this context, you can share your first/second/third child etc with many, many people. In fact, everyone has the same 8 children, but they’re just born in different sequences.

So let’s talk about your childhood. In this metaphor, you get to know your first child when you’re a child. It’s the first friend you ever make and the first person you ever discuss your experiences with. If fortune smiled upon you then perhaps this first child was nurtured and encouraged to become better acquainted with you. If this is so then you will soon meet your second child. However, if this is not so then you may not discover your ability to meet your second child.

So in this example, let’s say you were encouraged; in a few years you’ll have developed the ability to meet all of your first four children. The last four do exist but you are not aware of them.

Through interactions with other people you may learn that certain children are more favoured than others. This can be to certain people or even the vast majority. Perhaps your very first child was not well received at all and you never introduced your other four children to the world in response. Instead, you may have hidden all of your children away until the “situation” was over. You may proceed to go home and reluctantly free your children and hate them for existing, wishing you had met other children first.

If this is the case, you may feel as though you are not in touch with your identity. You do not know yourself and struggle to integrate with the world in a genuine, authentic way. Who are you? Do you have value? A purpose?

If you had never received encouragement to nurture your first child then perhaps this is how you felt.

If this happens, perhaps you learned that in order to successfully integrate yourself into the world around you, you needed to pretend you had different children or completely neglect your children to nurture someone else’s as your own.

This is the beginning of the night before the rising of the moon.

As you grow, and your children are kept a secret while you pretend you own different children, or you cater to other people’s children instead of your own, you may feel mildly accomplished. But then you go through puberty; suddenly your children are not so easily locked away.

They’re kicking and banging at the doors and they want your attention right this second.

Eventually they break down the doors and it is the first child that storms out first.

You face your first child in dread and begin to hate other people in public who also share your first child, believing they shouldn’t be out because they are ugly and wrong.

How ever you may choose to handle your first child breaking free, you will remember it as an intense period. If, like me, you completely denied the first child’s existence then you may have also felt as though you had lost your spirit along with the ability to connect to others.

In this chaotic scenario where we dismiss our first four children; we are left with our last four children. And they are much harder to nurture and look after and they run riot, incapable of being shut away.

One day. One miraculous day; you will be re-introduced to your first child, and in a moment of weakness you will hug them desperately. Like a sharp pain, you feel like you could die. And then the pain will dull and you will feel as though you now have the strength of two rather than one. Suddenly your last four children begin to calm down at the sight of the returned first child.

As you and your first child start to bond more, you will notice that your second child starts to hesitantly step towards you and excitedly, you pull them in for a hug and spin them around the room. They are delighted and easier healed than the first child. However they have a lot to teach you about your last four children and you begin to feel more in control.

Then you will go to the room and ask the third child to come out too. This child will be harder to coerce but you will find them an interesting addition to the family with their unique insight. The last four children begin to come a little closer to listen to what the third child has to say.

When you are feeling determined, confident and capable you will unexpectedly meet your fourth child and feel like you’ve known them all this time. They will be calm and objective and you will allow them the freedom to express themselves while they interact with the last four children in a growth provoking way.

You may find that all of your children fight, or that you are torn between the needs of two children while the others are demanding attention but you cannot see them.

As you navigate your family and the world, you may start to understand that not all of your children are welcome in a certain situation that promises to give you the survival tools you need in life to progress to where you want to be. You may then, again try to lock your children away, but only the ones that are not welcome by others.

The battles you used to have with your children are now an issue with the public. You know you are making these sacrificial choices but you believe that it is what you need to do and that you are stronger this time. You return to your neglectful tendencies in want of disciplining them.

You may very well manage this and for a long time.

However, you may find that you can not stop the moon from rising in the night sky, and every now and again it will show it’s full potential.

Introduce an episode of life crisis here where you second guess everything and you make rash decisions.

Until you understand that you are responsible for the health of all of your children, you may not realise that by meeting the needs of the first one, you will gain aid in meeting the needs of the second and so on and so forth.

The morale of the story is that the full moon exists all of the time even if we cannot see it. It shows itself in phases and it does this so that it can share the universe with others.

And when we see the full moon are we not taken by it’s magnificent presence?

You may not see your full moon if you do not acknowledge and move through the first phase I.e. nurture your first child. If you do not move through the first phase then you may experience a temporary eclipse.

I don’t think you should listen to anyone else tell you how you should light up the sky. They haven’t got a clue about how your moon rises. Your moon’s phases have a unique sequence and only you can learn them.

That is my theory anyway. Thank you for considering it.

Astrology: An Emotionally Charged Career

Astrology and Reiki references.

Wherever you find your moon sign in your birthchart is where you deal with your emotions. The moon represents our relationship with our Mother so we can tell a lot about what our Mother’s mentality was like with what house our moon is in. How your mum behaved can also be seen with the sign that your moon is in and this all reflects on you. To my basic understanding.

My moon is in the 9th house which is the house of travel and higher education. My mum in essence is supposed to have an “anywhere but here” mentality. This is accurate. This is then supposed to have an effect on my emotions, where, whenever I’m sad I want to go anywhere but here; if I am happy I want to go anywhere but here and express it.

This could explain my writing tendencies. I love to imagine, dream, research and report. And it’s like a need, so much so that if I don’t do it for a while, I get all pent up and restless. It seems like being gifted with an escape key in the world, especially in a world where expressing emotions was almost taboo as I was growing up. Or more that I was too private and paranoid about how I would be perceived to share them. By exploring feelings I was learning about psychology and the deeper meanings of life. I needed to express them to understand them, and to treat them with any less attention would be stifling.

Therefore, it makes sense that after I write I feel free and restored.

However, the catch comes when we monitor my energy; when I do reiki or I receive reiki from others, it is usually my feet, knees and root chakras that need the most work. My heart is often suffering too and I wonder now if this is all connected.

Our knees can store up energy from the past- all those times we’ve repressed our feelings or suffered without the tools to outlet what our bodies had needed from us at the time, we push right down there.

Our root chakra is tied to our sense of security, home and belonging.

Our feet are our tether to earth and we can receive earth energy through them which feels comforting and sustaining, but a lot more hardened and heavy than the energy that we channel for reiki (the universal healing energy) which uplifts, soothes and releases.

One can assume then, that I always need work with my root and feet because I am too far away in my escape world to feel grounded. Or perhaps it’s that my need to be anywhere but here is not entitling me to a feeling of belonging. Perhaps I need to write more to achieve a feeling of belonging, assuming that security doesn’t necessarily mean a place, but a state.

Psychologically speaking, when our bodies store trauma, we need to release this stored energy by acting out our survival responses that we failed to complete at the time that our trauma took place. Exercise is a great outlet.

In this context, perhaps there is more to be said about how my emotions work and need to be expressed frequently in this oppressed manner. By this I mean that much like with the above commonality with acting on instincts as and when it’s necessary, I should have the skill to do this more with my emotions and my escape key- based on my energetic state during reiki.

My moon is in Leo which means that I express myself vividly and dramatically and that I need to do it anywhere but here and so it seems as though the arts are the way to go.

Or running towards the arts.

I always thought my perfect career would be in the arts, caring for others who struggle to understand and express their emotions, or activity based. All encompass expression and release. But perhaps this outlet to express my emotions isn’t the best thing to base a profession on? For the reason that it is merely a need. The more I need, the more I do. The less I need, the less I do. It’s a fine balance to be achieved all the time and dependent on my emotional state!

As for my heart chakra, I am always told it is stored behind glass. Perhaps these emotions I keep so secretly, and express so loudly but privately in writing need to be shared. Perhaps then these chakras will all flow as they should.

I am still searching for my dream career that enables me to feel happy and settled. Perhaps I need to focus on achieving this balance? Or perhaps I need to recognise it’s a need that fulfills me, being only for me, and look at what I can do for the world that fulfils me, but is mainly for them?

That way I can create all the time.

What do you think in regards to your chart, energy and drives in your life?