Query of a paragraph in Steve's book ...

How about embracing the Dark Side? Make friends with it. Carlos Castaneda and Friedrich Nietzsche call that the Will to Power. Magicians call it the Left Hand Path.

 

We can't help harboring a darker side, with all the movies and tv we watch in a lifetime
that are about murder, etc.

We may think we're absorbing them as fiction, but I wonder how our unconscious mind stores them?

 

Of course Washington DC is a nightmare in itself, but I meant Washington State, where I was spent my childhood fro age 6 to 19. It is the place where my nightmares began.

From what I am understanding about delving into our TMS journey, nightmares is another manifestation of distraction. Because of this awareness, I am not overly concerned, though I am still shaking the residue of the images themselves.

It is hard knowing someone who appears to be lacking in consciousness. They can be extremely hurtful, and their negative influence sinks deep into us. Keeping your distances, but praying for him ... this is a good tactic.

Congratulations on your TMS update!

with grace and gratitude,
^_^

 

This ..... literally inspires a thread of terror. It means, if true, that every male has the thought .. even if not acted upon, but simply the thought of violence. Under the right trigger, what might release that thought into action? Too much alcohol? Blind rage? Opportunity?

I cannot take this road ... I simply cannot.

How can anyone make the claim that 'everyone' has 'such-and-such' thoughts? Isn't that like saying everyone can see the color red?

This is a double-edged sword. How many have the tools to understand this concept? At the most base level, it can come to an 'us or them' scenario. Suppress, experience pain; Act out, feel better.

This .. the seed that we water is the one that grows .. is beautiful, and perfect. Those here on this forum will most likely understand this, and practice it.

Elsewhere, though.
Elsewhere.

I believe I shall make an executive decision for my mind and my body .... I choose not to believe that all men harbor even a sliver of desire to commit violence upon a child or woman. Just as all people do not see the color red.

I also shall choose that those who do have those slivers inside, are as you say so eloquently, Chickenbone ... working to acknowledge and and release those thoughts. Thank you for that post!

with grace and gratitude,
^_^

 

Nothing on television, movies or the media can compare to the real horrors of modern war. Stalingrad, Normandy and Vietnam make "Good Fellas" look like a Sunday church picnic. The media hold the mirror up to Caliban's face, but the monster doesn't like what he sees reflected back. Like Mr Kurtz says at the end of Conrad's Heart of Darkness: "The horror, the horror, the horror". How can any video game come close to Stalingrad?

 

And Col Kurtz at the end of Apocalypse Now, for a more modern take.

 

When he wrote Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad was prophetic about what was going to occur next during the 20th century. Think it was written in the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee when anyone who was anybody thought that peace, progress and prosperity were just going to keep on going and going the way they had for almost a hundred years. Somehow Conrad saw that the cultural assumptions behind European colonialism were leading toward the Battle of the Somme and Auschwitz. Conrad was right and everybody else was wrong. The Battle of Stalingrad did more than any video game to desensitize civilians and soldiers alike to the horrors of mass killing.

 

That's a perfect piece for a repression. Something that we all know of. Wow, thanks. I laughed so much. My mom was like that. Thanks North Star for all you do. Your Awesome

 

With mom right there when you pop the question! OMG! Big trouble ahead! Does someone have what the Freudians call "an unresolved Oedipus complex"?

 

Monster-in-Law is a funny movie, if it didn't happen to you.

 

My mother-in-law doesn't qualify as a Monster in law but I was doing that same thing to her when she dropped in on our 25th wedding anniversary meal…and invited herself to stay. I was assaulting her with my steak. So glad she couldn't see the thought bubble floating above my head.

And yes, this on-going conflict is part of why we're moving out of state.

 

Moving will relieve your pain. Some people are just impossible to live with or be near.

Live in the present knowing your future will be happier because of the move.

 

Lily Rose,

Dark, deep pearl.
A gem rendered in tumultuous waters.

Of the many things I'd like to pop in Steve O's mouth, words are not one of them. Therefore what follows are the happy flotsom and jetsom of my wandering mind.

I do not believe in this punishing aspect. I do believe that the modern world has lost an awareness of the healing capacity of the dark and so we equate it with evil, destruction, loss and in this case, punishment. Our higher brains will perhaps always live at odds with our reptilian core, but there is a beautiful redemption (and evolutionary boon) implicit in reclaiming not only our personal shadows but our cultural ones too.

What we lack are the rites and rituals that honour every aspect of the life and death cycle. Push morality to one side, call upon your wisdom and compassion, for you are a consort of The Great Goddess. In her dark aspect call her Lilith, Erishkigal, Morgana, Baba Yuga, the Black Madonna, Hekate, Kali, Durga...

The cycles of Virgin, Mother, Crone and Death are constant. Nothing can prevent this turning.

You and I and the sweet souls who gather here in some way understand that we are not alone in a cold universe, that there is soul beyond the self, that war yields opposites and that death and sex are the most beautiful of mysteries and precursors of rebirth.

Let us forgive Freud and his followers their misogynistic bias and the morality it inevitably invites.
You are Woman.
You are underworld and earth and sea and sky.
You, my dear Lily Rose, are more alive with Natural intelligence than the writers whose thinking you follow.

I adore the sweet tension of your unfolding and I cherish the healing you give and give and give.

 

Plum ..... you sent warm, salty moisture into my eyes, and even warmer relief to see your return. As Spring is making her appearance, so have you.

More to follow, but I wish to walk around outside now, as the sun pushes between the clouds ... and I will breathe, wrapping myself in the embrace of your words.

with the deepest gratitude and grace,
^_^

 

Plum, your kindness, compassion, insight, and poetic wisdom have been dearly missed.

 

*smiles*

Into my wild a flurry of happy clouds jam-pack themselves in the Forest-shaped-gap of my universe. Missed you too dearest.

 

Lily Rose and Ellen, let's play and giggle until we are young and old again. I have missed you both so much. My love in abundance to you xxx

 

The stillness and the watchfulness and the questing to follow words that at times made great sense, and at other times left me adrift without a strong tether ... you've gathered my confusion into a spiral that twists upon itself, twists again, and springs forth with a completely new vision. The stillness ripples, unstilled.

I feel the salty place of tears, not just the surface tears in the eyes, but the origin. That place that has remained so elusive, you've cast open the doorway to that beautiful, grieving place.

I know of the Virgin, the untouched so deeply protected within me, and the Mother, the need to nurture and protect, and I am awakening into the Crone, the woman of such life-experiences and grief. Death, death is a friend, awaiting with patience until I finish my life-path.

Morgana .... a revelation of a name, gifted from a dream. This I will share. In 1980, early May, I dreamt of a volcanic eruption. The mountain nearest was Mt. Rainier, so it was in my dream, my great mountain spewed ash. It confused me, as I was unaware that mountains erupted with anything other than lava. Within two weeks, Mt. Saint Helen's erupted, and a week later, rained ash upon our home. Many years later, while unpacking into the new home my husband had purchased for us, I found a journal with this dream ... and the other aspect of this dream was also written to this paper. Within the same dream of ash raining, my last name had become Morgan. I took this piece of paper to my husband, my proof. I had forgotten. Like so many of my memories, this, too, had fallen into darkness. I have carried his last name close to my heart for over 25 years.

When there is talk of the dark side, of anger and hate and violent thoughts .... this has not coincided with the darkness that stirs in me.

The warm-darkness. This is the unity, the perfection of our being. Life and Death in an endless cycle. This is what I seek.

with love, grace and gratitude,
^_^

 

I think our hearts always hold some darkness. We have to work at turning on the light in the darkness.
Think a happy thought, do a happy thing. Imagine a happy time of the past. Visualize being with someone
who made you happy. Winter can pull us down into a dark place. Think spring and crocuses and daffodils
and remember that big, wide field of yellow daffodils in "Doctor Zhivago?"