Elemental Emptiness work

Elemental Emptiness Month 12: From Zero to One

9-24-09 I haven't been able to update since the esoteric book convention. It highlights how busy my schedule has become and how problematic that can be at times. I'm not sure I like that, so I'm looking at what I can change in my life to give me a bit more time. As this elemental working winds down to a close, what I mostly feel is tired. This has been such an intense year, and the second intense year in a row. I need a break from intense years...and although it has been an intense year for me, I feel like I've drifted away from my spirituality to some degree in the process of doing this elemental work. And I guess that makes sense, because in some ways I've had to let go of everything important to me, to make this year's emptiness working work. The path of the abyss is one where everything is sacrificed as journey through it. At the same time, I feel a kind of anticipation about the end of this one. I know all the work I've put in is going to payoff and that the payoff, for me, is really being able to move past so many conditioned responses and behaviors that used to hold me back. I'm tired, but I'm also at that last part of the journey, where you push through the tiredness and make it to the end, because you know its part of the journey. 9-28-09 There's not really much to write. Unlike all the other months, what I really feel right now is anticipation, or being in the center of the eye of the hurricane. I can look around me and see everything I've been dealing, but also recognize where I am and know I've moved past everything. Now it feels more like making a choice and getting ready to move ahead, free of the rotting putrefaction I went through, because the refinement is here.

10-01-09 I've been playing the Force Unleashed recently. When I first started my emptiness working, I played that game a fair amount. It represented, for me, the feeling of emptiness at the beginning. It doesn't really anymore because I no longer see emptiness as an antagonist. It's something I can see as part of me, instead of against me.

10-02-09 I reflected today that to truly experience emptiness I've had, in one form or another, to really become empty, to really see everything I hold dear fall through in some form or manner, if only to convey to me the full depths of emptiness. Recognizing that everything could be taken away, that's been hard, but useful as well.

10-06-09 On a really deep level I wonder how much this year's working has really helped me. I've been exposed to what drives me toward feeling empty, come to a really good understanding of it, but I don't feel like its really solved. There's still a part of me that just wants to find someone, something that will somehow meet this very intangible need I have. It's a very primal, emotive part, not something rational that can be reasoned with. And it's likely always going to be there. I guess I've learned better strategies for handling it and recognizing it when it comes out...and maybe I feel a bit less driven than I did before, but I also feel like somehow I just haven't really "solved" the core issue for me. I don't know if I ever will. Maybe, all I'll really come away is a better grasp of my emptiness and a better way of handling it, when it comes up in potentially unhealthy situations.

10-08-09 I woke up this morning thinking about D. D was someone I met when I was twenty. We became lovers. She was seventeen years older than I was, a gifted magician, and very experienced when it came to life, and for that matter sex. I never fully, consciously realized until now just how deeply she imprinted me, or how much the relationship not working out would affect me. The majority of women I've been attracted to have always had a connection to Babalon, Lililth, or a similar type of goddess, i.e. the sacred whore archetype and I think it's because of that imprint from D. This person made a really strong impression and I never fully got to satisfy or see where that relationship would go. So I see it as the root of a lot of my longings and seeking when it came to possible partners and sex in general. I've been trying to find someone with this particular current for a long time but I never fully understood why that was the case. And now I do...I really understand some of my choices in a very different light now than I did before.

10-10-09 I've been thinking further about what I wrote above, about the person I contacted, etc. I look back at various activities, various sexual encounters and I see this particular need trace itself through most of my relationships in a manner that never fully addresses it in a satisfactory way. The two partners I ended up with in long term relationships never embraced that particular archetype of the sacred whore. And conversely I've put myself in situations where I could almost have that relationship with someone who embodied that archetype, but then would take it away from myself, too afraid perhaps of getting what I wanted, or perhaps just not ready. I'm tired of that pattern. I'm tired of the hurt it's caused me and others. And while I do love my wife very much and take genuine pleasure and joy from her presence in my life, I also have to acknowledge that this current is in my life and likely always will be. It's something I want to explore with someone, safely and sanely.

10-11-09 One of my problems or flaws is that I put expectations on a lot of experiences, people, etc. In a conversation with a friend this morning, I thought about that...really thought about how much those expectations have actually caused me to miss out on some good experiences. I know I've placed expectations on so much of my life, and I'm even relatively sure of where that pattern came from. I also know those same expectations create a lot of the emptiness I feel as well.

I've been reading the Doctrine of Awakening by Julius Evola. It looks at some of the earliest tenets of Buddhism. I'm finding a lot of it speaking to some of the struggles I've been experiencing for a long time. And I've been reminded that I'm not really drawing on all the tools available to me. But I'm not surprised by that either. I've needed to fall apart this year, to see my flaws up close and personal as well as understanding the cause. It's when you know the cause that you can start at the beginning with awareness and readiness to move forward. So falling apart has been discovering the causes...and starting the healing. I'm just about ready to move forward.

She said: "all you have to do is look around you and really see, not the image of your life but the real life. When you can define yourself alone, all the emptiness goes away" The image of my life is the desires, the expectations, the fixations, everything that haunts me because it isn't realized. The real life is accepting how little any of that matters and how much what does matter is less about expectation and a lot more about the experience.

10-12-09: Further discussion with D, as well as thinking about something written in The Doctrine of Awakening, which stated that when a person "needs" another person they are spiritually weak. Not need as in rely on a person to back you up, but need as in codependent need, trying to find someone to fulfill something within you. As we all know by now, my emptiness working has at its core been dealing with that very issue, and on a very primal level, sex as a shadow activity can be expressed that way. Sex becomes a connection, the intimacy a doorway...the problem is it can also be addictive...it's a drug like any other. You become a junkie, looking for your next fix. And for me, sex, like so much else, has been a way to avoid emptiness, to try and fill it up, and otherwise shut it out, but it's always been a temporary fix. And it's always been more about a constructed reality than an actual acceptance of this reality.

I know that now. That's really what this year has been about, is finally, finally tracing the emptiness to every single root event and coming away with a profoundly different awareness of my emptiness in the process, as well as myself. And always going away with the awareness that I have a choice, have always had a choice, but now have more awareness in making that choice.

10-16-09 I volunteered at a play party tonight, to help out with one of the communities I'm part. After finishing up volunteering, I watched some people play and was struck with a feeling of incredible loneliness, and later a feeling of anger at myself and others for the last few years. I feel really alone. I have for a while. And a lot of it's my own making. Seeing the fun and intimacy others were experiencing tonight just brought it home to me.

10-18-09 I ended up writing a long post about how I was feeling the other night on another site and got some useful feedback. But it also seems that the last couple of days has conspired to put me in touch with some possible interests...and I kind of laugh about that, because it's the end of the emptiness working...and that ending is going to be opening a lot up for me. Last night I had a dream of a silver web and in the middle was a glowing orb and cracks were starting to appear in it.

10-20-09 I went and got the tattoo for Xah. The artist, Alice Kendall did an excellent job . You can see a picture below of the sigil for Xah, as well as the saying "From 0 to 1" Tonight, I went into my ritual room, and painted my body with the sigil of Xah, while vibratingh isn ame over and over again. Eventually, the fox lord came, eyes laughing, tongue lolling out. "You've been through a lot this year. What have you learned?"

"I've known myself at my weakest, all my faults, flaws, and reactions exposed to myself. I've known myself at my strongest, confident, secure in who I am, able to achieve anything. And I've known myself as a mixture, and I am humbled by everything I've experienced. And I'm ready to move from 0 to 1, from a place of reactions to the past and old wounds, to a place of conscious decision and acceptance of the consequences."

Then I, for a while, just meditated on this last year, on what I'd learned about myself, and my choices. This has been the hardest year of my life, in terms of really facing myself, and fully coming to terms with my emptiness. I've had to dig up all my core wounds, come to terms with some different people and their effect on me and also more importantly come to terms with my choices and how those have really effected others. I can't say I'm a better person, so much as I'm a much more aware person after this year, after, the last five years really...and that awareness provides me an opportunity to be much more mindful of my choices. This year has been the culmination of a lot of internal work. I don't even recognize myself sometimes, because so much has changed...but I'm ready to embrace this person I've become, and let go the weight of the past.

At times I wondered if I could make it...I spoke for a while just to myself about this last year, about what I learned, about who I've decided to be. And then I told Xah I was ready to finish this year, and move into the next one. I decided to use a bit of sex magic and brought myself to ecstasy, and in that ecstasy gave myself to Xah again and felt him enter through the sigil I'd placed on my arm and then felt the zero crack open and from it came forth the direction I've chosen...then a shower to wash the paint off...and now it is the 21st my Birthday. And I've made it through this year of emptiness and found myself and found clarity and sanity and peace with myself. For yes, there is emptiness, but now I no longer need to fight it or run from it. Finally, finally, I have accepted it.

I read through my entries on emptiness...it's about a good four pages worth Just re-read everything...from start to now. If you go to the categories dropdown, you can select emptiness and read every entry...go back four pages or so...start at the beginning...You'll read a journey of this last year, of a person's journey to find himself and find resolution and closure with an element that most of us in the West would rather ignore.

Below is a picture of the tattoo I got as a tribute to this last year.

Happy Birthday to me.

xahtat

Elemental Emptiness Month 11: The zero is about to hatch

8-20-09 It's hitting me that in two months this working will end. I'm sort of surprised it's such a short time away, because in a way I've felt like I've lived more than a year's time with this working. And maybe in some ways I have.  The metamorphosis I've been experiencing and still am experiencing is monumental. I know what's at the end...actually had a number of different people pick up on the end result, so to speak, but the journey is how the end manifests. Would the end exist if the journey didn't? 8-21-09 When I'm situations where I'm dealing with subcultures, whether the "occulture" or the "goth" or any other, what I'm well aware of is a sense of discontent on my part. I thought about it, meditated perhaps, on it tonight while dancing and realized at a certain point that all this feeling of discontent, whether it's about subcultures, or about my dating life (or lack thereof) is really just my issues...it's no one else. It's all my perception and it's all my clinging, holding me back from really letting go and experiencing emptiness. At some point I thought to myself, "Why am I continuing to struggle with these issues so much" and the response I got was, "Because you're trying to hard and you want it too much" And that pretty much is it...I want it too much. I want to feel belonging, acceptance, be desired etc., and it puts a lot of pressure on me, which I've never really acknowledged before.

8-22-09 Thinking about the feeling of discontent further, it's a feeling of not fitting in I've felt a fair amount, but also a kind of clinging to wanting to belong.  The question then arises...when do you embrace your space and accept it, regardless of how much you fit in or not? And that's a question I've struggled with a lot...and it's fitting that its coming up right now in this work as I near the end of this year. Where do I really fit in? Does it matter if I fit in? Does anyone get me? Does it matter if they or don't? These questions might seem like ones only asked by teenagers going through existential angst, but I think people of a wide range of age/life experience ask them. And whether that's the case or not, I know I'm asking them as part of dealing with some of my own attachments and blockages around acceptance and alienation. And I feel comfortable with that.

I went to a guy's night out with some friends...not something I've ever done before. We went to a bar with a karaoke machine, played pool, drank beer. It was an interesting experience, and a little surreal. I'm generally working on projects or playing games. I enjoyed it in some ways, but I don't see myself doing it very often. But sometimes putting yourself in unfamiliar situations can be useful, and I felt that way this time.

8-23-09 As I find myself in various social situations, I'm struck once again by the realization I had some time ago...I'm more comfortable in situations with specific functions attributed to those situations. It's an odd realization that I struggle with at times. It makes sense, but it also illustrates a source of my discomfort with different interactions and social situations.

8-27-09 I've been so busy I haven't had a chance to update this, but today's meditation got me thinking. Basically, what stood out about it was how much my mind kept wandering as I focused on two different issues: sex and business. I've been going through a period of celibacy and it's reaffirmed some of my recognitions about sex, while also digging up how I deal with sexual frustration, as I've needed to be a bit creative with that. But I think also I may take some of the celibacy a bit further, to complete celibacy, just to see what happens. And business...given my journey into self-employment, I'm not surprised it's in my mind when I'm meditating. I can see where stress from both is coming out in my meditation, but I think that's good, because it means I'm able to focus in on those particular areas and spend some time with them, instead of just letting them slide and create problems down the line. In fact, I tend to find that meditation can act as an early warning system, an identifier of stress and blockages in one's life. It's not so much for emptying the mind, for me, as it is being more aware of what's going on in the subconscious and working with it proactively, instead of letting it bubble up in ways that could hurt myself and others.

8-29-09 I think it fully hit me today that one of my issues with sex has always been a fear of having my desire fulfilled and then taken away. This issue actually extends to further beyond that, back to when I'd be told I could have something such as a game, and then have it taken away shortly thereafter for whatever reason or none at all. But in most areas of my life, I have a lot more control of whether something can be taken away. But with sex, a variety of control issues arise that make it all a very weird tangle. For example the desire to be dominated, mixed in with a desire to be in control at all times, makes for a real contradiction and some confusing signals. Or the desire to be dominated and the fear of being controlled. So I see these issues and it suddenly makes a lot more sense why certain relationships never took off, because of triggering issues that I hadn't fully resolved in my sexual identity, or overall identity. Now I'm aware of these issues and left thinking, "now what?" I have contacted one person where this occurred and explained what happened on that end of things. What I'm realizing at the ice-tip as it were is that there is a lot of control issues around sex for me, which has hurt others occasionally, but hurt me much more because I haven't really been able to get clarity on what I want and what I can really handle.

8-31-09 In a week or so I'll be meeting with an ex...timely for us both, because she's leaving Oregon shortly after that and I'm wrapping this emptiness working up. Relevant as well to my sexual celibacy and issues around it. I think it'll be productive for us both.

9-02-09 I'm going to the Fall Equinox festival (held on labor day weekend ironically). It's a strange feeling of anticipation. I *know* something will happen there...yet have no idea or expectation of what will occur. It is just my intuition speaking up, offering to me a realization that I need to go to this event and be there...that something needs to happen and whatever will happen will be significant for what it will offer to me. So much of this last year I've felt so much of what I valued lose meaning, lose significance...so to feel it is comforting, and also in some ways, a reminder that a shift is already beginning to occur. Nothing is moving toward something, 0 is becoming 1, potential is manifesting into reality.

9-03-09 It strikes me as very interesting that the majority of women I'm attracted to usually are working with darker, more sexual goddesses, and tend to have a lot of sexual energy. I'm more overtly aware of this than I used to be. And I'm getting more comfortable with it as well.

9-07-09 Back from Fall Eq. What a weekend for me. I went alone to this festival, left Lupa at home. Having some of that freedom was nice, especially in terms of being able to flirt with people, without feeling like someone might be looking over my shoulder. I didn't hook up with anyone, but the flirting and feeling attracted to several people I met gave me a lot to think about when it came to my sexuality. Spending time at the Tantric temple also helped, and I used it as an opportunity to meditate on my fears.

What really helped however was the Lakshmi ritual. The first part of the ritual involved making a sacrifice. For me the sacrifice was my fear of failing at my business, my fear of my sexuality, and my fear of asking for a specific desire I have. Giving up those fears was a relief to me. The second part of the ritual, where we asked Lakshmi to bring prosperity to our lives was also efficacious for me. I lit the candle and saw a vision of the goddess and she told me that there was light at the end of the tunnel for my emptiness working and that everything I've been working toward will manifest if I stay consistent with what I'm doing. And I got evidence of that when I got home, both in some constructive discussions with Lupa and in some welcome news on the business front.

9-10-09 Some realizations about how I handle fears and such. Sex, in its own way, is a security thing for me. Losing myself in the pleasure is a way to also temporarily forget about whatever I fear in that moment. As I come to a close on the emptiness working, I've been feeling regrets about how certain situations with lovers in the past turned out...the past two years anyway. Feeling those regrets isn't necessarily bad, but I realized today that if there's one thing I want from this emptiness working, it's starting with a clean slate. So I guess I need to resolve those regrets. Already have with one...the rest will get taken care of as well.

9-12-09 I had a really interesting conversation with Lupa today, which resulted in me realizing that the real trap in my life has been the act of trying to escape from situations I didn't like, as well as my own feelings and actions in those traps. Each time I've "escaped" I've just put myself back in the same trap...even if I didn't realize it right away. The last five years has been, for me, the journey to realize that I no longer need to escape the trap...I just need to change my awareness about that trap...instead of trying to escape it...sit with it, understand it, come to acceptance with it. My trap has always been my emptiness, my attempts to fill it and escape from it. But I could never escape it or fill it, and so this last year in particular I finally allowed myself to feel it, and accept it...I'm no longer in the trap, because there no longer is a trap. I'm just about ready to let the 0 manifest into the 1.

9-16-09 Today I hit bottom. I felt like everything was hopeless, empty...and frustrated. And then I rallied, talked to friends, went out to a networking event and realized it's all about perception. Emptiness is a perception...one that is given reality with what you are willing to believe about it.

9-18-09 We drove into Seattle today. Always when I come back here, I feel a palpable tension in the air, and today is not different, but I feel comfortable handling it for a visit. On the drive up, I thought about last night at the Goth, feeling no real sense of longing or need to fill something, where at one time that would've been all I felt when I looked at other people. Now it's just a feeling of acceptance. I know there's nothing that can "fill" me, but then, I don't need anything to fill me up either. I'm comfortable with my emptiness, comfortable feeling it, for it's no longer a trap to escape from. I may never "fit" in, may never really feel I belong, but how much of it is perception on my part? A lot of it...and so if that's the case, it's up to me to come to terms with that perception, which has been the theme of this month. And all that said, I'm more comfortable realizing my boundaries as well and knowing in that context what I can or can't accept about particular subcultures I sometimes visit and even ones I may belong to (such as the occult subculture.

The zero is about to hatch...The inner alchemical changes, for this element are just about complete. I'm ready.