THE CLOSET MYSTIC

What is the future but a culmination of a long series of nows?

I am not saying looking to the past in regret is bad.

I would, however, say that you should place yourself in the shoes of your future self. Ask yourself what your future self would regret not doing in this very moment.

Regret is fruitless without looking right before you, too. The now is a test, the past is our lessons. Demonstrate your learning.

The lead of the past can be alchemized through the fire of meeting the present head-on, heart first. Regret can fuel the loving flame of positive transformation. Rectify, rectify, rectify.

the scourge of your love

is one I’d accept any day

pain and pleasure become acquainted

love and hatred becoming one

your love was the scorpion’s sting

I relish the venom

I’d never felt alive

until it was in my veins

I refuse the antidote

with gritted teeth

only the scorpion’s stinger

can pierce the veil

Ripping through that thin fabric

between conscious and unconscious

alive and dead

Today I choose to let myself hurt

Well-meaning voices that seek to protect me

Try to convince me to hate her

To be angry at her

Simply have no effect on my heart

I’ve said it before —

She’s a one-way street.

She is to be listened to.

The Sun shines,

The Moon reflects.

The Sun is my heart,

Moon my mind and soul.

I’ll never be capable of loving again unless I let myself hurt.

You don’t get to choose.

You don’t get to have only the bliss and euphoria of love

Without this pain,

Even if it is excruciating.

All debts must be paid,

What goes up comes down.

Stave off the inevitable,

and you only build interest.

the debt will only build.

So here I am.

I’m here to pay what I owe:

Immense grief and sorrow.

Yet underneath the tears is a smile

Knowing the love behind them.

Knowing that every end is a new beginning

That each death foretells a new life

So I’ll grieve joyfully

I’ll dance in the rain.

It’s all accompanied with the awareness

That those who choose to hate

Are simply those who cannot face the pain,

And would rather turn it outward.

No.

I’ll face it.

I don’t hate her, not even a little bit.

I accept how powerless I am.

And it’s amazing.

I’ve no illusion of control.

So I experience the hurt with a purified mind

And then it isn’t even hurt at a certain point —

What does the sensation become?

It becomes the squeezing of a sponge

The release.

I cannot wait for the miracles that will come

Once the squeezing is done

What will be absorbed next?

…

…

…

The relationship died —

Not my heart.

Not my ability to love.

Not my joy,

Not my youth,

Not my inspiration,

Not my happiness.

The relationship died.

I will live, and live to the fullest.

“I allowed people,

to get between us” —

Says I, looking in the mirror

I vow that we’ll never grow estranged again

I’ll learn to love you —

To truly love you —

To not be at the mercy of the fickle

For your value to be innate,

Intrinsic.

“I’ll never depart your side.”

“I will always love and protect you.”

I said to everyone but myself

privileges I gave others

but no, not me.

whatever happened to me?

I had climbed so high

but she caught my gaze

So quickly did I lose my footing

and slip from the mountain’s top,

into a deep valley

I guess that’s why they call it falling?

I now understand Zanoni’s plight

An alchemist

who forged the stone

to have met eternal youth

what did he trade it for?

what could compete?

trading immortality

having caught the eye of a mortal

Yes, I’d give it all up

I sought the stone

Not realizing

all I ever wanted

Is to not be alone

So I fell from Olympus

Having convened with the gods

their ambrosia

their nectar

had graced my lips so many times

but never did I know true bliss

until mine met yours

Forgiveness recognizes that we all are at a crossroads, faced with two choices, two paths:

1. Grow old, angry, resentful, bitter at those who have wounded you, and allow them to steal the light in your soul and accept defeat

2. Grow happy, joyful, and stay eternally young and youthful, with a heart good enough to wipe clean all hurt — to choose to be the healing force this world so desperately needs.

We will all hurt others and be hurt by others. It is inevitable. Do we allow the hurt to claim the throne of our hearts, or do we allow the benevolent usurper of forgiveness to overthrow that malefic tyrant and restore goodness to our own personal universe?

On forgiveness:

Forgiveness is the cleaning of the soul. Forgiveness, then, truly is next to godliness. 

Reasons to forgive:

• Belief that people can and do improve.
• Belief that you can heal from the hurt they caused you. The hurt one holds onto is inversely proportional to their ability to forgive. True, deep healing creates forgiveness; forgiveness creates true, deep healing.
• Forgiveness is growth. Anything else is stagnation and decay — to look backward instead of forward. 
• Love feels better than hate. To forgive is to let oneself love again. Forgiveness is the dissolution of protective walls of scar tissue — walls that seek defense, but only prevent the healing salve of loving connection from being applied. 
• Forgiveness redeems not only the one being forgiven, but also the one doing the forgiving. Who truly suffers when one holds onto gnawing, biting anger? What truly is anger but a foolish attempt to deny the soft underbelly common to all humanity, that space containing the hurt we’d prefer to ignore? What is the anger but an attempt to delude ourselves that we still hold some semblance of power in reaction to our deep feelings of helplessness and powerlessness brought on by being human and having emotions at all? How terribly vulnerable that is. And, oh, how we grasp at straws to escape that reality, scrambling to forge flimsy rafts on chaotic seas, doomed to be swallowed by the deep at the first sign of a storm.

Forgiveness is the holiest of holies, the highest of altars, the Philosopher’s Stone, Holy Grail, and Elixir of Life. Forgiveness is the greatest of strengths, forgiveness is the beauty of beauties. Forgiveness is all the strength of Mars, the most brave and knightly of warriors. Forgiveness is the beauty of Venus, her high and sacred sweetness. Forgiveness is god and goddess made one.

“My God, what does it mean to forgive?”

“To forgive is to let yourself love again.”

What about taking accountability? What about when the one to be forgiven is not another, but oneself? Where is the line between escaping blame, turning a blind eye to one’s own wrongs, and truly, honestly forgiving oneself?

You need not forgive yourself. You need only recognize that your God forgives you, and that forgiveness is about an opportunity to rectify. No matter how you’ve stumbled, the rest of the staircase to your Father’s house is always there to be climbed. The opportunity for betterment exists always.

No matter how you’ve stumbled on the path, it makes no sense to stay put, to stay seated. Forgiveness of oneself is about the reminder that the destination of love and goodness is always there to be sought.

Forgiveness is about redemption and the promise of redemption. To forgive oneself is about the recognition that the slate can always be wiped clean when the desire is there and true and earnest. It’s the reminder that the love and goodness of this universe is greater than any hurt and wrong we may do to each other.

Forgiveness is about the courage to do better.

Forgiveness, maybe, is about the recognition that the possibility for goodness contained within our future is always infinitely greater than the quantity of bad contained within our past.

Prove your ability to have learned a lesson and grow.

To fall in love with oneself is to meet the spark of pure creativity that exists within, and to make the declaration that it deserves its fullest expression in this lifetime.

It is to say that I deserve to be myself, that there is no treasure greater than that, for that spark is true alchemical Gold, greater than any material coin to ever be discovered.

Fall in love with yourself. Know that you will be doing everyone else a favor. Know that in doing so, you extend an invitation to all others to do the very same.

How can a constellation be made without shining stars? If we all allow ourselves to be our very bright, unique selves, claiming the beauty of the true spark of individuality stored within, we will become whole constellations. This is the beauty of humanity when we work together — we should all let ourselves shine like stars, knowing that we will create blazing glories across the night sky, our unity and community bringing us from singular points of life, to great, glorious, burning constellations.

attachment… the nature of attachment. what a high danger it is.

Saturn, ruler of the physical realm maybe. Also ruler of time, reminds us that all things are temporary. Thus, attachment… is foolish, necessarily. Change is constant. Death is change. Change IS death. To be attached is rooted in foolishness, because it is to deny the transitory nature of reality — to beg for things to be fixed when they are anything but.

high and beautiful and true love, however. it can transcend. that is our key to the eternal. Love.

this reality is a game. so go out and play. we are literally in an arcade game. have fun with it. choose your character. choose your own adventure. be the hero of your own story!

why would we fear? what is there, truly, to fear? fear is self-imposed limitation that blinds us to the infinite stored within our hearts. what is consequence? what consequences can truly exist in an arcade game? this begs the question of what is truly “real.”

ultimately, once we decide what is important to us, and what we would like to achieve within this game (side thought, the zodiac wheel is like the character selection screen OMG LOVE THAT IDEA!) we decide our own bounds and rules.

This is NOT an invitation to live haphazardly, with reckless abandon! No — it is an invitation to realize your highest bliss, and to know that you are the creator of this game, both creator and created. Therefore, only you could prevent yourself from achieving and realizing it.

Live life to the full, for there is literally no reason not to.

I care not for the opinions of mortals

And that includes me

For I have convened with the goddess

And she gave me a message

Of universal redemption

That you

And I

And all

Are her sons and daughters

We are her children

Each of us her favorite

Each just as special as the rest

Each with the seed of perfection planted

And she whispered into my ear a secret

On the whereabouts of that divine seed:

“My dear,

Be silent:

Don’t you hear?

That pulsating,

in your ear?”

She planted her hand on my chest:

“Sweetie,

It’s right here.”