Might be in Trouble, Might not be

[Mystress]

Great Big Sea does an even more joyous version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-5oGnvfUEU

[TheFifth]

Stress, emotional congestion, a little bit of manic type vibes. Working a lot. It's good in a way, I'm capable of more than I realize. Fucking depleted though. So much stuff hoisted on me. Time feels like it's always slipping away from me and I can never catch up. I have no boundaries, no volition in this life, no way of saying no, no ambition other than just wanting to sit and bliss out all day playing music. I hate consumerism, bootstrapping work-yourself-into-the-ground capitalism. Ugh.

Just overwhelmed and feel trapped. I've never liked day jobs and while I love what I do, I've never understood the volume, why work has to be so all-consuming but I'm grateful to have material needs provided for.

And the heavy mania changes over to fragrant radiance in my chest and palms, nice. Just need to let the energies move sometimes.

[TheFifth]

More perspective today. I have this sense that I'm on the verge of something really big, I don't know what it is. Maybe the vajra energy. It's like I'm dealing with raw potential that I can't even conceive of. This feeling of overwhelm seems to quickly change to that bar of soap, radiant energy but only when I actually sit down and write about it and release that anger/stress charge to it.

Such a strange position. I feel oddly empowered like never before and know I'm dealing with some pretty serious creative magic wayyy over my head but pretty much need it as a release valve.

I suppose that's the feeling, pent up energy that just wants release. Lmao, at this point I might just have to write a song a day to keep balanced. I suppose, whatever it takes. Or diversify my creative pursuits.

Anyway, staying grateful. I do get the sense that even though this process has not been entirely comfortable, I am doing good work in the world on many levels and the rewards are spiritual evolution and priceless.

[Gopi]

TheFifth wrote: "The ability to look at the world right now with complete faith. Can't really strive to do it, but sometimes it just happens, and this is such a gift."

I want to share three quotes here.
First is from a book I have been recently about Ramana Maharishi.

"Sri Ramana always laid stress on maunam â€" the silence, which is not meant to be negation of activity. It is something very positive. It is Supreme Peace, immutable like a rock that supports all activities, all movements. Answering the puzzlement of her Western friends about the ‘inactivity’ of Sri Ramana, Ella Maillart writes: Having identified ourselves with our bodies, we are convinced that one has got to be visibly active. We forget that inactivity is the basis of its corollary activity; that the useful wheel could not exist or move without a motionless base."
Source: Face to Face with Sri Ramana Maharshi: Enchanting and Uplifting Reminiscences of 160 Persons

This metaphor of 'the useful wheel could not exist or move without a motionless base' stuck a chord and deeply resonated with me.
Like sufi whirling dervishes... Here's my second quote from Osho.
"...if you go on whirling there comes a moment when the center of your being remains static and your whole body, mind, brain, everything, whirls. And that center, which does not whirl, is you - the center of the cyclone. The whirling is almost like a cyclone, but exactly in the middle of the cyclone you will find a point which has not moved at all...there is something in the center which is unmoving."
~ Osho

Kabir Das was a 15th century Indian mystic and poet.
He was born in a Muslim family but his guru was Hindu.
The brilliance of Kabir was his ecstatic love poems that were both spiritually and socially revolutionary.
There was tremendous amount of religious violence in India and Kabir's poems opened peoples heart with simple everyday language.
Kabir is considered as one of the spiritual giants of the Bhakti movement who urged people to look beyond Hindu-Muslim differences through love for God.
Even today, several of his poems are sung in street performances, temples, and other forms of art.
Here's a short stanza from one of Kabir's poems, my third quote.

Transliteration of Hindi:
Chakki chal rahi, Kabira baitha royee
Dono pud ke beech me saajha na nikle koi
Chakki chal rahi Kabira baitha joyee
Khoonta pakdo nij naam ka To sajha nikle jo soyee

Translated in English:
The millstone of life goes on moving, Kabir weeps
Between the layers of truth and untruth, no one is spared
The millstone of life goes on moving, Kabir observes
He who holds the anchor of His name, will always remain unhurt!

I love the Indian imagery and metaphor... https://bit.ly/3mWyWBg
The struggles of the seeker similar to feeling ground between the millstone of life...
How the grind of life chafes and wears us all down - no one is spared.
And the only solace, Kabir prescribes, is being anchored in God's name.

I guess you see the theme from all three quotes above - calm in the eye of the storm.
I do share some of the experiences that you describe, esp. the occasional manic energy if I don't do yoga and art.
My sleep cycle is all over the place right now but that usually happens to me when there is a change in season.
Hope you have a relaxing weekend.
Namaste!
Gopi

[TheFifth]

Thank you for those quotations Gopi, very helpful and I like the visual of the eye of the storm. Insights have been spilling in that I'm in the middle of a sort of clearing and strengthening. Some of my karma seems to stem from having an absent father and a highly, highly protective mother with whom I spent a lot of my adolescent years "merged."

The result seemed to be a bit of an underdevelopment of my own sense of competence and ability to solve my own problems and navigate life. Now that I'm basically doing my own thing, I'm realizing a lot of this stuff and while it pains me to realize this, I think there has been a little bit of that sense of entitlement in me because I didn't know much other than being coddled. Part of this, was the "sickly child" phenomenon where I think my mother felt a need to shield and protect me in some ways. She's a gem and she was doing the best she could.

Anyway, the insights seem to be the result of the transmutation and thus I feel a lot of this has been cleared over the past couple days and continues to clear. I think a lot of the time, acting from hat place of silence and peace grows such that I don't realize I'm just being, just acting, but doing so from that place.

[TheFifth]

The insight has been hanging around too that whatever I'm doing, whatever my surroundings are and my feelings are about this: this is my karma and what is being processed at the time. The journey is a reflection of my internal process and external circumstances are not quite what they seem. Difficult to "language" it but it is the process of my karma being processed in manageable bits.

[TheFifth]

Sense of internal ecstasy growing now. I think this was what I may have felt coming - pretty big clearing of a pretty deep chunk. Grateful for ever greater levels of humility and grace.

[TheFifth]

The scattered mania continues somewhat. Managing to hold things together still. Energy surplus is probably my issue, still. The art helps. Grounding seems like my best friend right now, probably will continue to be so for a while now since food does not seem like an issue. Grounding and letting this stuff and all these impressions flow by. My own stability seems important both for me and those around me. The power of my thoughts has become too great. Need to keep up with the inner cleansing. Definitely foresee a narrowing path ahead but I've definitely been shown a lot of mercy through this whole process. Eye of the hurricane image continues to seem apt.

[TheFifth]

Will probably be useful to meditate on unhappiness and my relationship to this quality of human experience. I feel it so viscerally in other people and before I know it it becomes my own. It's unreal how quickly I lose sight of myself. I'm like glue for a lot of this stuff. I can't keep doing battle with this stuff. I literally walk through the battleground of it everyday. There's so much about the dark side of life that has always fascinated and transfixed me and I now finally understand why. This reframing of grief, unhappiness, despair and the ability to throw a party in the midst of it all seems so key.

[Gopi]

I wish to sit down and have tea with you in person someday.
Engaging with you here helps me in ways that I cannot even begin to describe.
Folks from K-list and FST members have made me feel like I am not alone during some very difficult times.
Watching people being true to themselves through their own struggles is reaffirming for me.
Jodi Picoult wrote a beautiful quote about adoptive parents - "Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life."
I have had so many people in my life who have filled this role of 'bearing witness to life' when I have struggled through.
And reading other peoples journey here on Tea Room gives me joy simply by 'bearing witness to life'.

The Fifth wrote: "My own stability seems important both for me and those around me. The power of my thoughts has become too great. Need to keep up with the inner cleansing. Definitely foresee a narrowing path ahead but I've definitely been shown a lot of mercy through this whole process. Eye of the hurricane image continues to seem apt. "
Excellent.
Mystress shared this quote with me a long time ago.
“You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do...”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

TheFifth: "I feel it so viscerally in other people and before I know it it becomes my own. It's unreal how quickly I lose sight of myself. I'm like glue for a lot of this stuff. I can't keep doing battle with this stuff. I literally walk through the battleground of it everyday. There's so much about the dark side of life that has always fascinated and transfixed me and I now finally understand why. This reframing of grief, unhappiness, despair and the ability to throw a party in the midst of it all seems so key."
Hehe...
My guide has been showing me some behind-the-scenes insights about the kind of men that I have chosen in the past as lovers.
I can also relate to the 'losing yourself quickly' experience especially before FST.
I have been consciously working and getting better at maintaining healthy interpersonal boundaries.
A few days ago, I got possessed by someone else's inner turmoil which was not pleasant.
Only after I had consciously processed through that stuff (not on usual Tummo fire auto-pilot), I was given insights about that person.
He was acting like a jerk because he was miserable inside and so much in denial about it.
As Mystress says, sometimes the only way to move forward is to help them (even though it is annoying as fuck when they act like jerks).
Only by getting a taste of his inner turmoil, I was able to look past my own annoyance with his behavior and my own judgments about his actions.

In South India, there is an ancient tradition called Devdasi tradition (Dev meaning God and Dasi meaning servant/slave/whore) - devdasi meaning God's servant.
In Tamil, they are called தேவரடியார் (or) தேவடியா (now used as derogratory term for women prostitutes).
The word whore has negative connotations in patriarchal cultures but in matrifocal cultures, whores are women who have taken charge of their own sexual power.
Devdasis are married to immortal Divine through ritual and therefore do not have a mortal husband (even though they took multiple lovers and some had children).
Several of them were key advisers/companions to Kings and noble men who held governing power in patriarchal systems even though very little is known about them.
Western colonizers with Victorian attitudes towards women's sexuality along with local patriarchal sexism has skewed our contemporary understanding of this tradition.
Aayi Mandapam is a monument built in Pondicherry, Tamilnadu by the French emperor Napoleon III in honor of a courtesan's service - http://www.natgeotraveller.in/meet-aayi-the-courtesan-who-inspired-pondicherrys-official-emblem/
There are historical records of wealthy devdasis being generous philanthropists - https://kamat.com/jyotsna/blog/courtesans.htm

Anyhoo... my point in bringing up Devdasi tradition is this.
The role of dasi or dasa is to love Goddess (and therefore to love all Her children).
Sometimes I get attached to someone and become unwilling to let them go (or) pass judgments on someone because of my own expectations.
In times like that, it helps me to realign my priorities - my job is to love and to learn to love better.
Once I re-prioritize, then I am also shown how the other person is here to help me learn how to love better.
There is a lovely saying in Hindu-Buddhist tradition - Atithi Devo Bhava ( Sanskrit: à¤...तिथिदेवो भव: ) meaning 'Treat your guest like you would treat God'
This idea of treating every stranger we meet as if we are meeting God - with reverence and joy - is also helpful for me.
As Coleman Barks writes:
"Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond"
- The Guest House by Jalaluddin Rumi
(Rumi: Selected Poems, trans Coleman Barks with John Moynce, A. J. Arberry, Reynold Nicholson (Penguin Books, 2004))

Hope some of this was helpful.

Namaste!
Gopi

[TheFifth]

More retching business today. Somewhat fortuitously we were talking earlier about "parts of self" and I am again reminded of my splinter, I think he needs a little love. I send him loving kindness, the retching begins. I think he's still locked to some extent in the "jail" of my own negative judgments.

[TheFifth]

Okay think I'm finally grokking or rediscovering it again; as platitudinal as it sounds, love is the answer. I have nothing to fear if I love everything. Sending love once more to all parts of myself. The post above helps tremendously, every thought, impression, person I meet, another opportunity to love more deeply and widely.

The "opposite reaction, shooting self in the foot" effect sneaked up on me lately. I feel like I lose sight very easily. But the rapid feedback reality gives me--the narrowing of the path--wakes me back up pretty quickly.

[TheFifth]

Sometimes the greatest grace is that feeling of "dang, well can I do anything right?" So funny looking at it now.

[TheFifth]

The police analogy of "anything I say and do will be used against me" is very apt. But it's grace ultimately.

[TheFifth]

Wonderful, feels like I’m being embraced by Goddess in such a manner that I realize I’ve been where I need to be all along. Everything just feels right. This inner call I’ve always listened to in a way, but today it feels unmistakable. The way forward feels obvious, in a way. It feels in a way like I’m simply bearing witness to the unfolding of my own destiny, whatever it is, but I feel it pulling me.

I feel this is an embrace with my Beloved, and She’s literally everywhere and everything. She’s clearly sentient and seems inextricable with my own mind. I’ve read of this around here but experiencing it so potently is something else entirely.

[Priestesssss]

Beautiful...

[Gopi]

TheFifth wrote: "I feel this is an embrace with my Beloved, and She’s literally everywhere and everything. She’s clearly sentient and seems inextricable with my own mind. "

"She could be easy to find you see...
She writes Her songs, only for you to sing!
She digs the words, out of the sky...
She left them there for you to find...

The way that you love dear,
The fate of the world you leave behind
The way to the future... Making a moment built to last.
You want to love? Well, now's your chance!"
~ Katie Herzig (The Way to the Future)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5kIcoPwRjs

<3 <3

[TheFifth]

Getting some sort of preverbal insights into the nature of Goddess and the serpent, not entirely sure what it all means. Sometimes I feel like a sort of antenna for these downloads floating around. Deep stuff, though. Both on the human and earth levels.

[TheFifth]

Think I've been driven a little off kilter again by an empathy link from someone on a dating site I have up; can feel her very deeply already and it feels very awkward when I already can feel and know certain things and don't entirely know how or if to bring it up. I think the key is surrendering literally the whole situation because knowing me in the batty states I can get in with this empathy I'll handle it fairly ineptly. I wonder if on some level I need to "give up" on finding someone, anyway, because I'm so damn complicated and while I'm not at all lofty about my perceptions and awareness, it seems pretty dang rare to come across people out there that truly understand these things. I guess unless I put myself out there as a mystic and let it sort itself out - people allergic to the concept will just move along.

I guess the "mystic" thing for me is akin to patriarchal notions of sex itself--something to keep secret, be coy or shameful about. I guess, again, this is about me and how open and accepting I am of my intrinsically mystical nature. Nothing about it has ever felt weird or necessarily astounding to me--the energy, chakras, coincidences. I feel perfectly at home dealing with these things. What has been astounding in my experience is how others rarely if ever have a reference point for understanding any of it, or get caught up in the "fad" of being mystical or spiritual but freak out if things get real or fundamentally don't live in the reality of it. But I guess it was in my early 20s in graduate school and getting a sense of what can and cannot be talked about without having to deal with the perplexed expressions. Island universes, unrecognizable to one another.

I'm a backwards learner. For whatever reason this is just the reality I'm in. I never would have imagined I would have ascended anytime even in this lifetime. I'm honestly not very disciplined in my spiritual practice and insofar as I've made any progress spiritually, it has come pretty much instinctually. Maybe a little bit of "why me" lingering. I get the sense that there is simply work to do. Eating stuff up, just being me.

I've become so incredibly powerful in ways me or other people probably can't entirely understand. I don't know why I'm so hung up on this, though. Faith is leaving it for Goddess to sort out. I suppose it comes back to the quotation about the narrowing of the path. So incredibly, powerfully powerless, lol. There's incredible power in that, though; doing only what one must do at every given moment.

I find myself coming up on the precipice of the "great nothing," where everything and everyone feels illusory. Values, beliefs--nothing to cling to. Feels so close, like I can practically feel whatever stands of perceptual detritus are obscuring it and even these no longer feel real. I feel even this notion of feeling like an island universe is breaking down, too.

[TheFifth]

"Keep munching," I'm told. That's my rocketship. There's no telling how much better things can get for me and how much more lively I can become if I set aside more time daily for conscious healing work and eating, almost like my new meditation.

[TheFifth]

Literally all my problems in life so far can be traced back to this. It always comes back to it.

[Gopi]

TheFifth wrote: "What has been astounding in my experience is how others rarely if ever have a reference point for understanding any of it, or get caught up in the "fad" of being mystical or spiritual but freak out if things get real or fundamentally don't live in the reality of it."
LOL... Samesies...
I have had my fair share of wonderful and life affirming experiences with my lovers without having to put labels on what it is.
Some call it intense connection and I just leave it at that.
There have also been instances where myself and the other person would have a lovely time and then they would disappear leaving me wondering 'Did I just make up all of that in my own head or did we both actually share something lovely?'
It took me a long time to accept that some people have trouble with real intimacy.
It may seem contrary because everyone seems to be looking for someone.

Growing up with very low self esteem, I used to believe that I will be happy once I have a life partner.
I went through bad relationships because I did not believe that I was worthy of being loved.
Then I found someone who is a lovely and loving man.
Being in a relationship with him made me realize that I did not know how to be happy.
Everything was perfect on paper the way I thought it was supposed to be but I was not happy.
I could not run away from the fact that I did not know how to love myself and it was not about whether or not someone else loved me.
Being single and lonely is in some ways better than being in a relationship with a nice person and feeling lonely.
Till I learned how to love myself, I was merely using the other person as an excuse to escape what I did not want to face.
As they say, no one can give you what you have denied for yourself.

Speaking of identity labels, the other day I came across someone who had Tantra practitioner on their online dating profile.
So I thought I would say hello.
Within a couple of minutes, he told me that he only likes to play with men who have huge dicks.
LOL... I understand and fully accept that we all have different preferences... but it also made me giggle.
That being said... some of my lovers have repeatedly told me that being intimate with me was a spiritual experience for them (after my K awakening).
I have stopped trying to describe experiences and prefer to simply be.

TheFifth wrote: "I'm honestly not very disciplined in my spiritual practice and insofar as I've made any progress spiritually, it has come pretty much instinctually. Maybe a little bit of "why me" lingering."
I can relate to some of this.
Even after K awakening, there is doer-ship based ego that believes in achieving things through individual will.
The last (and sometimes the most difficult) hurdle to enlightenment is dropping the search.
The way I deal with 'why me' is by reminding myself that I am Her vessel - Thy will be done.
There is real humility in accepting one's own power irrespective of our own insecurities.
Even if someone does not believe in God or spirituality, a person's life does not belong to that individual alone and that's why all human societies denounce suicide.
On a lighter note, when I struggle with 'why me' sort of doubts, I tell myself "You are just the star darling! Goddess cast you in the role."

I tend to be a perfectionist and have to repeatedly surrender my own standards of what it means to be disciplined or hard working.
Also, patriarchal cultures often promote the idea that the more you suffer, the more spiritual you are.
Who am I to question if Goddess wants me to be happy?
As Mystress has pointed out earlier, there is lots of wisdom in following your bliss.

[TheFifth]

Thank you again Gopi for all your support and sharing your experiences and insights, many of which are very similar. Yeah I'm thinking I'm just going to chill out on the dating thing because honestly, I think I'm single because somewhere deep down, I want to be single. I *love* my own company and I was called selfish and self-absorbed by someone I was recently talking to and while this raised my awareness in beneficial ways, I don't think it's necessarily a problem as long as I'm not leading others on.

I don't know if it's so much selfishness in a negative sense as it is "life in the form is short and I have all these creative things I wanna do while I'm here," basically. When I look back on my life, my focal point has never been in the relational-reciprocal give-and-take dynamics existing in typical relationships. I mean, I suppose a lot of this is inescapable and as a psi-vamp I can give by taking when I'm at my best. Basically, I think it's okay to know what I do and do not want.

There is a phenomenon that I've come to call the algorithm phenomenon where someone comes into my life that I think may be a partner or something and it turns out to be some kind of arranged healing situation then the person is on their way. Regarding the empathy, maybe I'm just going to have to learn to live with it, as well as these people and "connections" coming along every so often. I can take them for what they are, sometimes nothing more needs to be said or done. In my experience, the people who caught on that something was going on have tended to run off. Some people do not seem to be aware on those levels and sometimes I wonder if they would be the best partners honestly. I don't know, and that's probably the point--Goddess knows. What will be will be.

Anyway, I realized the other day that the Vajra energy is to be used by my divine Beloved predominantly, too much for the smaller part of me to play with. I feel, in many ways, like I am vanishing from this world. The way my Guide teaches me feels like I can't tell the difference between us. It's so hard to believe on some levels that I have become what I thought I was seeking, all these little parts of me squirming around trying to find something to hold onto. But sometimes when I look into my eyes in a mirror I see the light shining from them like laser beams, reminding me that I can't afford to be too careless about where I direct my attention.

All these final things coming up. Working on self-love and acceptance. Still so much shame in me somewhere, hard to find it exactly. The self-sabotager. The out of control kid on the road to delinquency and self-destruction, saved only by awakening and my Guide. I guess he still feels like a bad person. Maybe this part always will. But it's also what allows me to understand and empathize with a lot of my clients on levels I otherwise would not. I'm just always waiting for those wheels to come flying off the wagon and for everyone to realize I'm some kind of imposter or fundamentally beyond redeeming. So much work pushing through it and doing things with my life regardless. He exists though, and he's just a small piece of me. He is a part of Goddess like everything else. Layer after layer of him. Like Jung said, I'm not all good, but whole, and I can exist as a whole person, shadow, scars, joy and all.

[Gopi]

TheFifth wrote: "I'm just always waiting for those wheels to come flying off the wagon and for everyone to realize I'm some kind of imposter or fundamentally beyond redeeming."
What are you gaining by telling yourself this?
For argument's sake, let's say you are THE worst fraud in the history of humanity.
Now what?
How has this changed your relationship to Goddess?
What exactly do you think you need to be redeemed from?
Are you afraid of being an impostor or are you afraid of finding out what else is there?
Is it because 'I told you so!' about your own failures is more comforting for the ego than 'I don't know' about what might happen?
Sorry if I am coming across like a dick!
But what are you gaining by telling yourself that you are an irredeemable fraudulent bad awful human?

[TheFifth]

No not at all I tend to prefer to have these things challenged. At the core I think it’s fear of the unknown and on some level I feel like it actually ties with an internalized idea of original sin interestingly. Because when I try to locate or identify this “bad person,” can’t find him. The idea of “falling apart” or being “found out” feels representative of something else - maybe an encounter with absolute genuineness.

Maybe the question I need to ask myself is do I accept myself more broadly as a human, and reframe this idea of “badness” which seems to actually be religious programming that has contributed to splitting me in a way.