3-28-12 A lot's happened in the last few days. Pagan Faire was last Saturday and I was pleased to feel no reactivity, and a feeling of being energized (due in part to the recent release of Magical Identity). I ran into someone who'd participated in some of my magical experimenter groups early on and it was good to catch up with her. It'd be good to have a larger group to work with now and that may work out, especially if I enhance it with a working to draw the right people to the mix. There's also been a dissolution of several internal blocks, and the realization of a sabotaging behavior that involved a tendency to pursue getting forgiveness over getting permission. I'm working on it currently, rewriting the behavior with new behavior that will ensure that I'm more team oriented, as it were. I've traced the previous behavior through most of my life and I can see how its created problems for me and for others.
Meditation on Fire has been interesting, both in terms of how fire illuminates and creates shadows. You can't treat fire as solely a creative or destructive force. It's both simultaneously. Working with it metaphysically involves a recognition of balance. Go too far in one direction and you end up finding yourself in the other direction. The creativity of fire feeds the destruction and vice versa. You've got to respect an element that is so primal and can embody contradictions in itself that aren't really contradictory so much as a warning: Be careful how you work with it...
3-29-12 I wrote this gem the other day: When you uncover a sabotage behavior, its a good idea to trace it back to its origins and imprint desired behavior on the original memory. Work your way through other memories, imprinting them with the new behavior as well. This will allow you to proactively change behaviors.
I've used this technique time and again to change behaviors that needed work and I'm using it right now with the beg for forgiveness behavior. It's odd how being uncomfortable can be such a motivator for change. The humiliation and shame a person feels burns away the illusions that otherwise create a comfortable lie. When you can't hide from your truth as it applies to how you act, there is a demand for change that is motivated by both external and internal circumstances. The external circumstances are the stimulus, and the internal circumstances is the spark that takes that stimulus and feeds it into the internal work that needs to be done to resolve the issue. I've always found discomfort to be an excellent motivator for change, which is why I've always embraced it. Yes it's uncomfortable but if it wasn't, would I need to change? I think you can measure how much a person is growing by how much discomfort is in his/her life, as well as what s/he is actively doing to address that discomfort. If there's no discomfort you're at a stable place and if there is discomfort there is a need for transformation and change.
4-5-12 Fire represents passion, but it can also represent action, movement, impulsiveness, and so much else. Fire can represent liberation, and yet also can entrap you. So much of fire is really just perception...all these words I associate with a primal force of life, buts it convenient to associate words, to assign values and meanings, to create metaphors that explain concepts and help people relate...or maybe just help me make sense of fire and all these emotions and words and associations I have with it. On one level its just an exercise that yields a kind of insular thinking that draws you inward and on another level it challenges you to apply a particular understanding and perspective to your life and your various patterns, habits, issues, oh my!
4-11-12 As I continue to unravel some patterns I've discovered I find that as always internal work is simultaneously the most freeing practice you can do and the hardest. Makes sense, because true freedom and the experience of it involves responsibility. Responsibility for your actions, your choices, but also for everything you recognize that you didn't see before. The people who play at meditation but shy away from doing the hard work are the ones who focus more on the labels they give themselves than on just doing the work and letting go of the labels.
4-12-12 In my Small Business Management course we ended up discussing the culture of a business as well as gatekeepers for the business. It proved relevant to a recent realization I've had about how I keep most people at a certain distance from me. I can't say I have many friends, let alone close friends. I have lots of acquaintances and a few people I genuinely I consider to be friends. Letting people in has always been a challenge for me. I'm very self-sufficient and independent, and while that can be good in some ways, its not so good when you realize that your business relies in part on being able to get to know people and in turn letting those people get to know you. It's a realization that's made me decide to push myself to be a bit more social with the people I network with.
4-16-12 Sometimes it surprises me how many people are following this blog or the Facebook page or whatever else I'm putting out there. It's nice to be recognized, and I guess that's a benefit of social media: It's much easier to be found and most of the time you're even found by friendly people. I'm looking forward to unveiling some new programs for people in the near future.
4-23-12 Act, don't react, because when you react you are responding to someone else and what they want to get out of you. That's a lesson fire can teach, because fire doesn't have to be reactive. It can be active, and usually prompts reaction on the part of people that deal with its effect on their lives.