one of the greatest indicators of growth is embodying a strength that your younger self might have considered weakness

you’ve not known living until you’ve danced around a fire under the Moon with loved ones, you’ve not known living until you’ve swayed with the Moon, you’ve not known the life that has been lost in modernity. you’ve not known the goddess until you’ve let her Moonbeams seize you and make you move as she sees fit, you’ll feel like a puppet pulled by her strings, and you’ll relish each moment of it, you’ll see that that body of yours wasn’t being used properly, it’s potential not being fulfilled, until you let Her take control. you’ll begin to see that there is a sickness shared by most of the first world, and that sickness is marked by deprivation of Moonlight — it is estrangement not just from the goddess, but estrangement from the beautiful mystery that makes life worth living. It is the unspoken wisdom that looks like insanity from the outside, but is the only truly sane thing in this world. It is chaos that makes all truly orderly. 

Oh, the Moon! 

Is there anyone else who has been touched by her magic? Is there anyone else that has seen her for the panacea that she is? My heart swells with gratitude. 

Please, do me a favor and sit alone with the Moon. Look not just with your eyes, but open your heart to Her. No, do not buy into the myth spread in our paradigm of spiritual paralysis that she is inanimate. No, look to the seas given life by Her, look to the tide, and know that all of the aliveness of those oceans exist with Her, in Her, because of Her. Look not just with your eyes, but with your heart. Let your heart be like the face of the Moon — she is a mirror of that happy Sunshine, but then let yourself be a reflection of that reflection, a mirror of that mirror, the cycle is complete once the Sun-Moon duality is turned into a triad, you the critical point needed for completion.

Edmonton was livid. 2,000 years of living, and infinite more to come, and that thorn in his side — whose name made him wince to even think — still roamed free. 

Maybe millions of minor inconveniences that his arch-nemesis had formulated simply to make his eternity of living constantly, ever-so-mildly annoying had instilled in Edmonton a rage so deep that it would only die if his enemy were to perish as well. 

What he wouldn’t give to go back in time — that cursed resource of which he had infinite, so much that each second became more and more worthless as they came — and stop his younger self from making that one decision that would keep him young forever. A timeless oracle promising immortality to a young alchemist in pursuit of that panacea. Why wouldn’t he have taken it? The promise of his pursuit of that elixir of youth finally ending, for him to clutch that holy prize? 

“All on one condition,” she said. “All your days will be slightly dampened by a creature who is like a pebble in a shoe that will never come off, like a thorn in your side that will never be plucked free.” On top of it all: “The only way for this creature to yield and cease his torment is for true love’s kiss to grace your lips.”

You’d think he’d have chosen a different name for himself at this point, being given opportunity after opportunity to remake himself as ages came and went, as empires rose and fell. But no — he held onto Edmonton. Perhaps it was a means of retaining some of his core identity, a blanket taken from home to ameliorate his homesickness that would never leave. 

Despite the constant trickery and annoyances of his slick, silver-tongued nemesis, there were many joys to be discovered in the millennia he’d stalked through as a shadow who came and went, a ghost who materialized and immaterialized as he saw fit. 

Despite how heavily he craved liberation from that troll, that poltergeist, that fucking cretin who lurked behind every corner, he more greatly feared the inevitable sorrow that awaited him if he fulfilled the oracle’s requirement: to watch his love die, and for him to live on, alone. 

He suffered the minor torment, rather than that colossal agony he knew would befall him otherwise.

Fear, fear, what is fear?

How much can be learned through identifying anyone’s greatest fears. Fear, it is where all power is lost — fear, it is where the heart is most at risk of being forgotten. Fear is the venom, the poison — fear, it is the fork in the road, fear, it is where we choose to run or maintain its gaze, for when we win this unholy staring contest, its yields are untold riches, oh yes, the winner truly does take all — so choose, choose: will you take all, or will you lose it all?

I know no power that doesn’t involve the facing of one’s deepest fears. I know of no freedom that doesn’t involve the facing of one’s deepest fears. I know of know real truth that does not involve liberation from fear. Fear, fear — what are you but the guardian of the threshold? What are you but the keeper of the treasure, the dragon encircling gold? To conquer fear is to conquer oneself and oneself only — 

Nothing makes me feel more alive than to do things that scare me, nothing makes me feel more alive than to activate that system designed to escape death. 

I can tell you this, this immutable truth, there is no way around what I am about to say — no gymnastics of the mind that can dodge this reality, and that reality is this:

A life lived obeying fear, that system ingrained in us to escape death, is how one comes to live a life that is death, it is to become one of the walking dead.

You’ll never know any greater joy, you’ll never know any greater exhilaration, never know any greater bliss, nor greater fulfillment, than to overcome your fear–

Yes, a life lived facing fear is a life truly lived.

Crying tears of joy

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

I’ve officially moved out and I live in my new home.

Is this real? Thank you heavens

These instances in which the fog clears!

How fucking silly was I. 

This type of love — the type of love rooted in making another your all,

the type of love rooted in wanting to die if they were to depart,

the type of love rooted in this intense desperation — 

son of a fuckin’ gun! It’s childhood attachment complexes… right? It’s got to be. That appears to be where the facts are pointing, though the romanticist in me is not eager to let go of the belief that such a love, a real love, can exist — let’s put a pin in that for now— 

however, I can say for certain that, whether that love exists, the lesser version of it rooted in childhood complexes of attachment certainly does exist. 

it wasn’t love, it was attachment. it was the need for a mother, an innate trait in all beings. 

I can say that, now that the light is shed, there’s nothing to do but to learn and to act and to perform the healing. 

Let’s analyze how I described this type of love: 

“This type of love — the type of love rooted in making another your all,

the type of love rooted in wanting to die if they were to depart,

the type of love rooted in this intense desperation —“

Okay…

first, let’s examine:

“This type of love — the type of love rooted in making another your all,”

As a child, is not the mother your all? When in the womb, you are completely one and the same, separation nonexistent, they are all encompassing;

Next:

“the type of love rooted in wanting to die if they were to depart,”

is not the child bound to the mother for their very survival? it is hardwired biologically to help ensure the survival of an infant that separation from the mother may very well mean death. I believe the remnants of this instinct stay in adult relationships when a secure attachment to the mother was disrupted in the childhood.

Lastly,

“the type of love rooted in this intense desperation —“

seems to contain the aforementioned. 

Attachment research may be some of the most fertile grounds modern psychology has yet presented me. I can feel it; I can feel the work to be done and how rewarding it will be. This is a biological mechanism as ingrained in us as the instinct to eat and drink. I believe that treatments aimed at intervening with and remedying unsavory attachment complexes in adults may be one of the many holy grails of modern psychology. 

The desperate fear of being abandoned; it’s a child clinging to the mother. It is so, so deeply ingrained. Our relationship with the caregiver informs our self-esteem for the rest of our lives. It’s the most deep and innate sense of whether we are worthy or not. To be held, loved, and cared for. This is major, this is huge, this may be a breakthrough, it is a breakthrough. 

I cannot wait to investigate the methods for remedying insecure attachment styles and to share it with the world.

AND — AND!!!!! — And,

so often have I asked, wondered, pleaded:

why are so many relationships seemingly doomed to fail? 

a picture is beginning to form in my mind — the picture has its beginnings in the understanding that the original and primary relationship we form is with the mother, and from this, all other relationships we are ever to form sprout from. 

work and healing on attachment styles — on all of the raw, infantile feelings that exist in there — appears to be perhaps one of the most potent means of ensuring relationship success. 

this may be why there are so many “man-children” out there. Son of a fuckin’ bitch. You kidding me?! We deprive men of basic emotional warmth and love, a basic human need that begins in infancy, not allowing them the emotional security to blossom out of that childlike stage, and wonder why they act like children. it’s because every human, man and woman, needs a caregiver to grow. the way in which our mothers soothe our emotional states inform for the rest of our lives the ways in which we soothe our own emotional states. the mother or primary caregiver is the one tasked with being sensitive to the needs of the baby. the baby seeks soothing and reassurance from the mother for crying out loud. if a man — or no, ANY person — is acting constantly like a child, ASK yourself, really ASK yourself: what sort of care and affection did they receive as a child?

Yeah, we’ve obviously pinpointed that there is an issue with men. We all know it. I believe that the beginning and end of it is in the emotional care they are deprived. The end of toxic masculinity is in us not being toxic to men — no, scratch that. The end of toxic masculinity is in us not being toxic to boys, that way they do not grow into toxic men. 

This is huge. So much of my life’s work might be dedicated to attachment styles. It feels so so strongly like this is the case. Time to do the work on myself… it’ll be a period of experimentation, self-healing, and self-work, and that way, I’ll be better equipped to help others in my future practice.

I am so excited

• A belly laugh
• Any song sung truly from the heart
• Forgiveness between beings, the wiping of the slate and the release of strained tensions
• A smile at the beauty of nature — the peace that comes in a hallowed grove, the awe of a spectacular sunset, the marveling at the complexity of the natural world — perhaps when watching a bee pollinate
• Compassion extended to a being weaker or more vulnerable — carrying a spider outside, for example. (The gods, or God, or whatever your preference, are more likely to treat you the same — we are infinitely more puny to them than a spider is to us. If we cannot extend basic gentleness to a being so much weaker than us, why would they feel we deserve the same?)
• Any artistic activity done for its intrinsic enjoyment. To draw, to sing, to write, to dance, to create simply because it brings joy.
• and so much more

all of these things baptize the heart each time we engage in them

Consciousness is a wine; we are the emptiness that sips. You are not you, at least as you know you.

So many selves. There is a permanent, fixed self, the one who observes. There is a self that is in constant flux, constant flow, ever-changing and dynamic. What are we? What are we really? Why should we be at the mercy of the ever-changing self, to take it ever-so-seriously, when what we are is something more, the backdrop, rather than that which is projected? We are the blank canvas pulled down, not the cinema played upon it. Why should we build our home upon the mutable, the protean, the transitory? Can a house be built upon water? I prefer stone, I prefer bedrock — the bedrock of emptiness, of nothingness, a container and receptacle for consciousness, an observer and a witness — but oh, I’m nothing, and in this is freedom. How vulnerable and weak is it to hold onto an ego! How susceptible do we become. What treasures will you bring with you in your coffin? We come to this Earth and leave this Earth destitute and penniless. This is why humility is truth, this is why humility is freedom, this is why humility is greatness. We are of dust and return to dust. Nothing! And in this, does all of life become a play. A game. I don a theatrical mask. How can I take anything seriously knowing this? Reality itself is a dream and psychedelic experience. To realize this is to realize the self, to become a lucid dreamer. 

…

more practical:

The psychological need for control may be better defined as the psychological need for potency. We need to feel like the actions we take will have effect. Why act if nothing you do will make a difference? Those of us who struggle with inaction may have had periods of time where no matter what we did, circumstances would not improve. Or, we may have had someone who undermined our own will, who refused to let us make our own decisions, who exerted control over us — presumably out of fear or a lack of control elsewhere in their own life.

Ultimately, I am realizing — in my own life — that the key to happiness right now is action. There is much to be done, and it will be very, very rewarding. Especially having my own home, I’m going to experience a degree of control and potency that I’ve never experienced once in my life. This might contribute to a healthy sense of masculinity.

and no matter my interpersonal enmeshment

no matter the embrace,

no matter how potent the solvent of love,

there will always, always be a portion of my being

that makes the solution heterogeneous.

a core untouchable,

simultaneously empowering

and isolating.

to ask me to open up —

it is to ask the gates of Hades

to welcome a visitor

knowing full well

only the winged messenger may return.

are you he?

…

and to be frank,

what have I yet learned about relationships?

I cannot tell you that I’ve yet seen a single one done “right”–

what does it mean for a relationship to be done right?

I can tell you of the “separation” stage in the alchemical process — V.I.T.R.I.O.L —

each respective portion, masculine and feminine, of the alchemical marriage, is to be purified and to reclaim its most essential essence

before union.

but what are we to do? we all struggle with our own unique venom — we try to make another our antidote, only to infect them —

are we simply creatures ruled by instinct? do we construct epic tales to distract ourselves from how base our desires truly are? do we illustrate some personal, unique myth, the myth of some love that saves, when perhaps we’re simply being damned?

here I am — straddled between the ideal and the real, wondering what’s doomed and what’s still salvageable. yes, how beautiful love and friendship but can be, but why, why, why does “love” turn us into lesser versions of ourselves? I thought love was the greatest form of sublimation. I thought love was that mythic Stone capable of turning lead into gold. Why have I more often than not seen it turn gold into lead?

Perhaps we’re confused. Perhaps we confused infatuation for love, attachment for love, obsession for love, selfish loves romanticized into some reclamation of Eden when it is in fact the Fall, the biting into the fruit and our fall from grace.

Perhaps I’ve yet to discover real love. Perhaps real love might mean conquering myself. Perhaps real love requires sacrifice, perhaps real love requires the release of one’s vice grip that it might instead be virtuous. Perhaps real love requires utmost faith and liberation from fear, perhaps it eludes us if we turn back even for a split second to ensure our love follows us from Hades.

I’ve also been told that it is the greatest of evils that masquerade as the greatest of goods… how capable we are of deceiving ourselves!

there is a certain form of stupidity that is virtuous 

a certain form of curiosity that kills. 

a certain form of wisdom that is folly

a certain form of ignorance that is omniscience. 

just some musings from pondering my kittens. 

…

those wise little idiots.