Mars drawing copyright Taylor Ellwood 2021
5-22-2021 I posted a cartoon on Facebook that essentially had this person find this oracle, which told him that some of his problems were of his own causing and I wrote that the one thing all your problems have in common is you. My friend Colleen pointed something out that I felt was rather appropriate since I’m working with Martian energy this month. She pointed out that all your problems having you in common is actually a form of abusive self-dialogue because sometimes other people are the cause of your problems and you aren’t the reason the problem is happening. Her response really got me thinking about how far too often I’ve blamed myself for problems that have happened and taken too much responsibility on when perhaps it really was someone else’s responsibility. It’s definitely something I am going to work with further this month.
I did some more of the wood element workshop. The main focus was on working with the ligaments and it was quite intense work. Naturally some internal stuff came up and I worked through it, releasing grief with each release of the ligaments. It did make me reflect on some realizations I’ve been having around my life and the way people have shown up in the past. Afterwards I meditated with the alchemical substances for Mars and Geburah and worked on releasing judgment of myself and others. Working with Geburah in that way is interesting, because typical it is a rather severe energy to work with, yet, I think sometimes people ignore the more subtle ways to work with a given Sephiroth. In this case, learning how to release judgments of yourself and other can be just as relevant as any other work you might do in that Sephiroth.
5-23-2021 I had a conversation last night with my roommate and she helped me recognize again how much support I had gotten from K. So today I wrote her and just expressed how appreciative I was of that support. And I meditated further on Geburah and the aspect of not judging myself or others too harshly, but balancing the scales appropriately. Were there some ways that things could have been done differently by both of us? Yes, and I will learn from those lessons and become a better person for it. But there were many things we did right and I am so profoundly grateful to her for those things and for the ways she showed up and supported me. I must never forget her generosity or love because she is a good person and although I’m sad we didn’t work out, I am also grateful for all the times we shared, good and bad, because we both learned a lot from each other.
5-24-2021 I’ve been reflecting today on the mistakes I made in my relationship with K. I can’t change those mistakes, but I can learn from them and that’s really what I’m trying to do even as I accept that our relationship has changed. I will simply allow the relationship to change to whatever it needs to, while continuing to reflect and learn from my mistakes.
5-25-2021 Tonight I did a session with Ingo around my relationships with women. It was fascinating to realize how often I’ve felt like I had to compromise myself to be accepted. We traced that back to my Dad and I realized I got it from him, so I gave it back to him and then I felt a sense of great calmness and depth and acceptance. Then Ingo brought me to the womb and there I gave away the fear I felt and then I felt She Who Watches appear and she held this space of acceptance and love for all of me, without a need to compromise myself, or give part of myself away. Instead I could simply be with myself, and accept all of me, with love and gratitude for who I am and how I show up.
Today as I was driving around I got into this long conversation with myself around the recent events and I came to this place to acceptance at the end…and I realized this: To love anyone else I must accept and love myself. Tonight’s session with Ingo was perfect for working on that realization.
5-26-2021 Last night my friend and I pulled cards for each other about things we need to work on in our respective lives. One of the cards she pulled for me was the Lovers card, and I felt like her reading of it was accurate, in the sense of me possibly exploring my desires and how healthy that could be, but as I drove around today I began to meditate on that card in respect to myself and consider what other lessons might be there.
I'm in this space of rediscovering myself, waking up dormant parts of myself that went to sleep and are looking around and thinking how much has changed. And so much has changed. You get involved in a long term relationship and it becomes insular and then its over and things have changed. Life has moved on and now you find yourself trying to catch up.
So for me the lovers card is really this invitation to rediscover myself and what I'm looking for in terms of love and play and other such matters, but it's also about creating a foundation of specific values and principles that I'm not going to compromise on ever again.
Because if there is one theme I see in my history of relationships, its a theme of compromising in ways that weren't healthy for me and not speaking up and advocating for myself. And that's on me.
Fortunately the hypnotherapy work I'm doing in conjunction with the Dzogchen and Taoist meditation is helping me do a lot of work around that issue and last night's session ended up being a break through, so as I drove around and meditated on the card, I felt this sense of acceptance of me and that's where my love has to start. That's where my foundation is... healthy acceptance of me and what I want, and also a release of attachments to expecting anyone else to necessarily fulfill or be part of that. I can be open to new relationships, as and when they happen, but I can also simply accept that they may not happen either. There are no guarantees, but if I can love myself and be confident in who I am and in what I am doing that can be enough. And right now that’s all that really needs to be enough. I don’t need to get involved with anyone else and maybe I shouldn’t, for a good long time.
5-27-2021 I dreamed about M.S. last night. We had this long conversation about what happened and it struck me as sad, because I will likely never actually talk with her again. I never even met this person, in person, and yet she had such a profound impact on my life. In the dream she was haughty as ever and I felt this sense of judgment, but I dissolved it on my end and it gradually released on her end and we just talked about what happened and let it go.
I’ve been continuing to think about the lovers card as well and I think it really comes down to me doing self-care and love for myself. I need to work on me and not worry about anything else. I’m going to continue working on this releasing of judgment in myself toward me and others.
5-28-2021 There are moments I feel a sudden flash of sorrow, a realization that K is gone. Oh we may see each other on occasion, but it’ll never be the same. You have a person in your life day in and day out and suddenly they are gone. I’ve felt this way before with other people, so I know this is normal and I’m just allowing it to be. Ended up having multiple moments today and by the end of the day I hit a wall and decided I needed a video game night more than I needed anything else.
5-29-2021 Today’s been an interesting day. I got assaulted by someone who was clearly on something. I was walking the Johnson Creek Blvd trail and the guy ran up, asked who I was working for and then punched me. Fortunately he only hit me once and I called it in, but it was quite an event. I’m doing some qi gong to clear out the shock. Ironically I’d been doing the qi gong anyway, but this just gives me another reason to do it. It also makes me appreciate something I read earlier this week in the daily stoic, where they talked about how at any moment your life can end or change. Memento Mori.
5-30-2021 It’s really hitting me today, what happened yesterday. I haven’t felt triggered like this in a long, long time. He hit me before I could do anything and it reminds me of all the moments I got hit when I was a kid. So I decided I’m taking a self-defense course (how Geburahvic) but I also went and reclaimed the space of that path for me and for other people who want to walk it. It’s important, when we can, to reclaim such spaces. And I could, so I did.
6-1-2021 I ended up looking into some self-defense classes with a friend. I think they will be a good place to start. And I did something that perhaps I shouldn’t have done. I reached out to M.S. I doubt she’ll reply and even if she does I don’t know what I’ll do. She haunts me as no one else ever has and the heart wants what it wants. It’s insane, but then again so am I.
6-2-2021 The last couple days make more sense now, I guess. Evidently Mercury Retrograde with Gemini points to unfinished business with a person and can influence you to want to reach out. I hope this isn’t the usual trend each time with Mercury retrograde. I don’t think it will be, but I certainly don’t need it, because it just puts me back in a space of longing for something which is long gone.
6-4-2021 Today I find myself missing my cats. I saw a picture of Rapscallion in my feed the other day and it hits me I’ll never see them again. Its part of the price I’ve paid for my choices and I accept it, but oh I miss them today so keenly! I don’t know if I’ll gets cat again for a while, because even though the cats aren’t dead, it’s like losing them in that way. For all intents and purposes they may as well be dead, and it hits hard because I’m grieving that loss as much as anything else.
6-6-2021 I had sex today with someone who really knew how to fuck on the energetic level as much as the physical level. She ended up clearing out some blockages in my heart around events of the past year, which helped. I don’t know how often I’ll get to see her, but at least on occasion. I didn’t realize how badly I needed it until it happened. I’ve missed that level of intimate connection on not just a physical but also magical level. At the same time I realize that it’s something I want and need on all levels of my being. I’m not sure I can really do casual ever again. It is nice to feel myself fed in that way, on that level. It helped me process the assault as well, which is one of the reasons I decided to avail myself.
I am reading Polysecure, and specifically reading about the attachment dysfunctions people can have. I definitely see myself in what I’m reading, both in the avoidant and the anxious. or maybe the chaotic combination of the two and it gives me some real food for thought in relationship to my interactions with people and how I handle and show up with those people, but also what I bring to that equation that may be causing or contributing to the situations. I’m glad I’m reading this book before I get too involved with someone or more again.
Another realization I’ve been considering for the past week or so. The more I give myself over to the generative process the more things come back together. It’s another lesson from Neptune, with a bit of creativity mixed in.
6-7-2021 I’ve been watching the Fearless Man youtube channel. Since I have dated anyone in a looooonnngggg time, I’m really having to re-examine what I knew because the dating scene landscape is so different now. But watching those videos has been interesting for me, because it’s actually helping me focus in on really appreciating and loving myself more. It fittingly enough is happening as I go through this month of exploring judgment in my life and some of those videos have helped me be more discerning about the judgments I apply to myself. I’m feeling more confident as a result which I think can only be a good thing for me.
I did my first self-defense training with G today. It was interesting to pay attention to my internal response to being in a situation where I’m trying to do something to someone. There was a part of me that reacted in a way that reminds me of being younger…a feeling of panic, of wanting, briefly, to just curl up. I held space for that part of myself and then I started learning the basic moves and found it to be empowering. I’m going to continue learning and go from there.
6-9-2021 There are moments where I miss K and grieve for what happened between us. But these moments are becoming fewer and more far between as I move into my new life. I miss her sometimes and I’m sad, but I also accept my new life and that things didn’t work out. And I continue releasing judgments about myself, her or anything else as they come up. There’s no point in really holding onto any of it. It’ll just weigh me down and keep me trapped in the past.
6-10-2021 I had an interesting realization this morning as I was reading Dear Writer, are you in Burnout? I’m also grieving for losing the opportunity to be a fulltime writer. I finally reached that goal last last year, and then blew things up and even though I didn’t work for another half year and got some writing done, I was so depressed about everything, I really didn’t enjoy it. Now I’m enjoying my writing again, but for the short term future at least it has to be a side activity I do. And that isn’t stopping me from writing, but acknowledging the grief I feel around this loss is important.
And then too there are the continued moments of grief around K. I miss her. I miss talking with her and all the other activities we did. And I played my role in messing it up. It wasn’t solely me, but I definitely screwed things up on my end. It’s something I will always have some regrets about, because how can you not when you still love someone and yet you can’t be with them anymore. There are times where I wonder if I should have just found a way to grin and bear it, in regards to the other people in the situation, but I couldn’t do it anymore and it wasn’t just around a half year that I’d been dealing with things. It was a lot longer and I certainly contributed to that as well. But I can’t hold myself in judgment over it, because what’s done is done and I just have to accept my grief and let go of the attachments, such as they are. No good comes of holding onto what was or wishing for a different outcome.
6-12-2021 Today I drove up to Cape Disappointment to make an offering at one of the shrines that is there to the Columbia river (aka She Who Watches). It was hard to drive up there. I didn’t want to, because it was one of the last places K and I visited together. But She Who Watches was quite insistent that today needed to be the day I go up to Cape Disappointment. So I drove up route 26 to Sea Side and thought of all the times I had driven up there with K and the discussions we would have in the car along the way up.
I thought about stopping in Seaside, another favorite place for us to visit, but my heart wasn’t in it. It hurt too much to visit that place without her. Maybe someday, if there is someone else or more than one person who I can rewrite those memories with, I’ll go back and visit, but I drove through and headed to Astoria and then across the bridge to the Washington side. Driving up there also brought back memories. Occasionally I glanced over to the passenger side of the vehicle, expecting to see K there, and knowing I wouldn’t.
I reached Cape Disappointment and drove into the national park and I saw a sign that today was a free park day, which meant I didn’t need to buy a discover pass. And I realized that was one reason She Who Watches was so insistent…one reason. I also owed her an offering.
I parked, ate some food I brought with me and wandered over to the shrine. This family who’d been arguing with each other was following me, but once I got to the shrine, they just turned away. No they were turned away by She Who Watches. I made my offering of personal effects to her and started speaking, as much to her as to K because I had last visited this shrine with K and now again I was there without her. I started crying and I knew my tears and my sorrow were part of the offering She Who Watches wanted, the price and sacrifice I paid. I stayed for a little bit and then walked down to the beach and did qi gong there, an offering to her and the pacific and I said my goodbye to K, my goodbye again to our relationship and to the life we had.
I told She Who Watches I didn’t know when I’d be back, but I knew I would be back. Then I drove home on route 30 which didn’t have the loaded memories. So I’ve made my offering, released some more of my sorrow and honored the spirits of the land, while binding myself even further to the Pacific Northwest. This is my home, the place I feel most comfortable with, the land the speaks my name in its soul and in turn is spoken to by my soul.
6-13-2021 Today is K’s birthday. I was going to get the finger tats done today but yesterday the tat artist called because he’s got a pet emergency. So that’s been put off until next week. Last night I talked with Vic about the feelings of grief I was having. I’ve felt sad about previous exes but not to this extent, perhaps because really I didn’t let them into the depth that I let K into my life. And Vic told me that it will take a while for the grief to fade a bit and I guess that’s true. Certainly in the first year I’m going to hit little reminders of her and I and just have to deal with the inevitable grief that comes up. So today I’m making into a self-care day for me and I think I will do that each year, to reclaim the day for me and to take care of myself.
I’m continuing to read Polysecure. I think its exactly the book I need to read because it’s helping me see my own attachment issues from a different perspective. What I’m learning a lot is how much the work I’m doing around being with me is exactly what I need if I’m going to have a chance at healthy relationships down the line. I am reclaiming my sense of self-identity and rediscovering the joy of being me, without having to continually try and adjust that sense of self around someone. I’ve done that with too many people and I don’t think its healthy or realistic.
There are moments where I think maybe I should’ve kept trying. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re married. You stick with the person through thick and then. You support them as best as you can and you never give up because you’ve made a commitment to be with that person, no matter what. But it ends up not working like that. At least it hasn’t for me, and I wonder if I’m just too broken and too problematic. I should have somehow been able to handle the shit I was going through, somehow been able to be resilient enough for the relationship that I could stick with it. And it’s not like I didn’t want to be. But then I remind myself that the situation had become toxic and not everyone wanted to work through the issues that needed to be addressed. And the result was a situation where I felt depressed everyday and like a prisoner in my own home. What was I supposed to do with that? I could take a stand and say things need to change or I have to leave or I could stay in a toxic situation and become unhappier and unhappier because nothing was being done to address the issues. In the end I made a stand and it cost me my marriage. It hurts and it makes me sad, but I had to do what I had to do and I stand by that, regardless of the cost.
6-14-2021 I was reminded today to keep recognizing and releasing the judgments within myself, in regards to me and anyone else in my life. It’s an odd thing to release judgment, because it so often can become this comforting tension in a way. It justifies what you’re going through and provides you a way to hold yourself and other people in a specific perspective that might allow you to frame everything within that perspective, but causes you to ignore other things that you ought to see. Releasing judgment takes the scales away from your eyes. You see yourself and those other people and perhaps you find some compassion for all involved. Certainly its what I’m trying to do.
6-15-2021 I had a realization today. When other people are making the rules about your relationship that aren’t in the relationship, that relationship is screwed because those people are always going to come first, even when they shouldn’t. And that’s what happened. Other people were making the rules and calling the shots in a situation where they had no business making those rules or calling the shots. In the end what mattered was their judgment of me. That trumped any other consideration and while they could certainly feel what they felt, when that was treated as more important than anything else, then that created a situation where my own needs and concerns were treated as secondary to that judgment. In that kind of situation, how can you possibly resolve it? You can’t.
6-16-2021 Today I reflect with some sadness on the things K and I never got around to doing together. You can be with someone for a long time and still not do things that you want to with that person. I wish we’d practiced magic more together. We started out strong, but eventually it just became an occasional event and then nothing. I wish we’d read some more books together, such as Watership Down, but we never got around to it. I wish we’d listened to music together, but it never really happened. Don’t get me wrong, we actually did things together but there was so much we didn’t get to. We took the time for granted and when other things such as jobs or writing or other people became more pressing it took away from our time together. Some of that was certainly on me and its something I’ll never take for granted again. I know I could have done better, spoken up more or somehow otherwise made the effort in ways I wasn’t necessarily making it in. I own that, because if I want genuine connections with anyone else I am going to have to make sure I hold up my end of that connection and also speak up when I notice it not being held up.
6-18-2021 Why do I want to by polyamorous. I thought about that question today when reading Polysecure. At one time, I would have told you it was because of sex. It didn’t help that I’d been sexually starving for a while. Now though it’s different. Now it’s because I recognize something I’ve learned time and again: I am a complex person and I like to connect with a multitude of people for intellectual, emotional, and yes sensual/sexual needs. One person alone isn’t always going to provide that. I’ve always favored an intimate connection with people where I go deep with them. I had to police that (and not always successfully) in my marriage and it didn’t work for me very well because I couldn’t necessarily connect with the other people the way I wanted to (And no I don’t necessarily mean sexually, but I do mean emotionally and intellectually).
It wasn’t even a case where I was necessarily interested in being romantic with someone. I remember once wanting to talk with a fellow presenter at an event because the person had some really intriguing ideas and it created a lot of conflict between me and the ex because to her perception I wanted to hook up with this person, because of the level of interest I had in connecting with the person. I didn’t want to hook up, but I did want to talk with the person. What that experience taught me was to keep my connections to a certain depth and go no further even if I wanted to, and there were times I did want a deeper connection. It also taught me to keep my connections to myself, which wasn’t healthy for my marriage, or me.
Now I can choose to connect with other people as intimately as I want and it won’t necessarily be a romantic connection, but it will be an intimate connection. I already have deepened a couple of connections with different people I wanted to get to know better, but held back on, for fear of how that would be perceived. I no longer need to do that and I will never do it again for someone else, because it ignores deep needs I have. So that’s why I want to be polyamorous, but the irony of that is I don’t necessarily even know if I’ll get involved in multiple romantic relationships. I might, but I might not, and I could be okay with that. What I wouldn’t be okay with is having to limit who I connect with and how deep I connect with them.
6-20-2021 I was meditating today and I had judgments come up about myself. There was this part of me sitting in judgment, telling myself I was a loser for not having my life together, for not fitting in more easily and for not being successful. I think this oddly came up because of an essay I wrote and posted about not fitting in. I haven’t felt like I’ve really fit in, and when I look at my life, my choices have not necessarily been the best choices for sustaining a successful life. Now, more than ever, I have to figure out how I’m going to take care of myself and live the rest of my life, if I can even figure that out. I know, on one hand, I will figure something out, but on the other hand, I feel lost sometimes.
At the same time I don’t give myself enough credit. I’ve actually done pretty well for myself over the last couple of months. I’ve gotten paying work and I’ve stabilized my life in a lot of ways. I’m gradually figuring out what’s next for the short term and perhaps for the mid to long term. And I’m continuing to pursue my dreams and doing what matters to me. Maybe I don’t have everything together and maybe I’m not living a successful life by the standards of middle class America…But I am living my life, as best I can.
On reflecting further on this, I realize I’m being so hard on myself because by the standards of Western society, I’ve never really gotten my life together in a conventional sense. I don’t know if I ever will. I’m not a neurotypical person and I find that trying to live in a neurotypical world is hard. I’m not conventionally successful and while I will keep trying to find some level of monetary success that gives me the freedom I’d like to have, I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it. It was easy to have that when I was with someone that was conventionally successful, but on my own: I don’t know. And I guess I need to not judge myself so hard for that. Yes, I’ve spent my life up to this point going from one activity to another, and I’ve really only discovered relatively recently what brings me a sense of accomplishment and joy. The path of the writer, along with the path of the magician…those are my paths, and I hope I can figure them out enough to achieve some sense of success, but if not I’ll keep doing them as best I can.
6-21-2021 It was a tough day. I’ve been reflecting further around a lot of grief I’m feeling over recent events. I was being hard on myself today, blaming myself for so much and I ended up talking with my mom and she gave me some perspective which helped. Later I did the final working with Geburah this month and I was told by Khamael that I needed to allow myself the grief as a way of releasing judgment on myself. By grieving for what was, and the losses I’ve had, it just really allowed me to let go of some of those judgments I’ve been holding onto and also the fears I have about the rest of my life. It’s funny how easily we hold ourselves in judgments to stop ourselves from really seeing what’s underneath all that judgment. For me, its feeling like a failure as a partner and in every other of my life and wondering if I’ll ever get it together to get it right, whatever that is. It’s easy to hold myself in judgment for those things and to avoid feeling them, but when I release judgment and feel them it hit homes how much these recent changes have really dug up my core and brought it face to face with me.