Happy New Year & New Beginnings

While many of my posts are personal, this one is extremely so. Wasn’t really sure how to categorize it, but I’ve put it in “Deciding Where to Live”, metaphorically speaking. As 2013 shows its backside and 2014 emerges, rather powerful energies of purification seem to be in operation.  These energies call to mind the question, “Where in my own mind do I want to live?”

The last three or four days of this year have been a sort of exorcism for me…the casting out of the demons of a lifetime. I’m not sure how to share this; I’m not even sure I want to, but something is still typing, so there you have it.

In the year 2000, I began in great earnest my healing journey along the Toltec Path. One of my earliest lessons was that I was not responsible for others. I needed that lesson…then. I needed to free myself from a lifetime of misplaced responsibility.

But perhaps one of the most important things to remember is that in our cycles of growth, lessons must evolve with us. If we cling to the lesson, it becomes adulterated by the mind that wants only to preserve its sense of self. Tricky, that.

For awhile now, I’ve been misusing that lesson. I’ve used the idea of others being responsible for their own feelings to excuse my own terrible, Tazmanian devil behavior. I have been so irresponsible with my psychic energy, throwing it haphazardly like a child in tantrum. It was simply a lack of maturity on my part. I couldn’t see it, and I didn’t know another way.

Now that Stuart has entered my life, old ways of being in relationship are reemerging for me. I see how I have treated those I love with aggression and rudeness. I have pushed and tried to ensure they don’t come near me because I couldn’t handle the “intrusion”. I’ve tried to ensure they stop loving me, being affectionate with me, because it was too out of my ability to see the demons they were bumping up against. It is no wonder I’ve always been happier alone. I needn’t have faced these aspects of myself. I can’t believe I still have to fight these voices of abuse and destruction…these Nazi voices that hate, hate, hate. It becomes impossible for the tiny voice that longs for it all to stop to cry out, “Help!” And really, what right does it have to even ask when that same voice yells, “Fuck you, assholes?”

Embracing one’s shadow is never an easy task, but it is always the most rewarding. These last few days have plunged me into the darkest of nightmares in my mind, the relentless inner war, the deepest of schisms. But I’ve re-emerged humbled, grateful, and determined.

Now with this dam broken, a ripple effect is still reverberating. So much to heal, so much to embrace.

The habit reveals itself:

I feel myself wanting to be comforted and see myself not allowing it. It is a deep, internal rift inside…an unconquerable divide. Why do I not allow myself the comfort? Why do I writhe ever still the feral cat ready to claw. I tell myself it would confuse the process. Is that true? Or would it just confuse the ego…or this hurt emotional body? I also want to reach out and comfort, and I see myself at the pivot point always choosing the worn road of backing away and going the other direction…to the computer, to the kitchen, to bed. In the instances I try to choose the other direction, it feels stilted and unnatural to me.

As my mentor has shared with me, “Everything can be healed.  Go for the stilted, because it is the avenue of the novel and your efforts will be rewarded and become a new pathway.  You have been in a rut, but the avenue can always be repaved.  Of course it will take work, but once you know the price you pay for the old, you will make the effort.”

I know the price. I’ve seen it in my work, my finances, my creative pursuits, all my relationships. I’ve seen it in Stuart’s eyes.

It is no longer worth it.

With the voice of my father, plagued by many of the same demons, echoing in my head, “We hurt the ones we love the most and don’t admit it,” I know this great internal divide must be breached starting now. So, I humbly apologize for the misuse of my energy.  I forgive myself, too.  And I forgive others  who, like me, cannot see or simply don’t want to see where inner demons are hiding.  I stop judging them for not doing their “own damn work” because I know the depth of excruciating pain that accompanies it.  May I see with compassion beyond the demons to the angels beneath.

As both my friends Will and Suzannah reminded me today in separate instances (just to make sure it sunk in):

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.  ~Gospel of Thomas

I will bring it all forth. My greatest act of love…for myself, my loved ones, and the world in which I live.

As Astrologer Bill Attride recently wrote:

You are called to remember,
Beaten Paths are for the broken and beaten…
It is time to be a Trail-Blazer again.
To know and to believe in the Power of New Beginnings…

Here’s to a courageous 2014, everyone. I hope you join me and decide to live in Heaven on Earth, no matter what must be brought forth.