Hypersensitivity, Freezing Over, and Coping

I was recently introduced to the concept of hypersensitivity via a few blog posts, one of which I reblogged. And, whether you’re looking to just improve your own life, or, looking to be a better leader, knowing yourself is crucial. 

Here are some techniques that I’ve used to work past this tendency in myself. I should point out that I am not a therapist, nor have I had supervised Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I was therapy through a cheap clinic for a while, and the therapist suggested that based on what I was expressing, I would do really well with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. She gave me some homework, and I read up on it on Wikipedia and elsewhere online.

The blog I mentioned refers to an article that I found useful in articulating some of the things I’ve struggled with in my own life, and might be useful to read before reading the rest of my post here.  http://lonerwolf.com/highly-sensitive-person-hsp/

Hypersensitive and Frozen Over
See, most of my life, I’ve experienced myself as fairly and emotionless. Actually having feelings is really difficult for me to get to–it’s not like I can just flip a switch and have emotions again. Then, something will happen and the skin on my entire body prickles and the center of my chest hurts and I’m overwhelmed with hurt or shame or anger or whatever.

When I started doing intensive personal growth work at the Diana’s Grove Mystery School, and before that at Reclaiming events, I became aware how I had adapted armor, that I was thin-skinned and the armor kept me safe, muffled. As I started intentionally trying to “remove” that armor and have feelings, I remember joking, “There’s no skin under here!”

I was an oversensitive kid. When I was 5, I’d cry at the drop of a hat seeing people in pain on tv or hearing sad music. But, in Kindergarten and First Grade is when I first started building up that armor. I was fat, and kids relentlessly teased me. Viciously. I was in pain all the time. Over the years, I built up walls. I stopped feeling, because it was the easiest way to get them to leave me alone. To stop hurting.

Years later, I’ve finally become aware that I’m not just emotionless–that I’m oversensitive. And, instead of blaming myself or being angry about that, I’ve tried to 1. acknowledge it, and 2. acknowledge that just because my emotions explode to a 10, doesn’t mean they’ll stay that way, and 3. that one rejection does not mean everyone will always reject me and I’m worthless.

That last phase in the oversensitive process is the one that consistently sends me into the depression spiral.

Techniques and Tools
I have leaned more heavily on the Four Levels of Reality tool from Diana’s Grove, which was adapted from Jean Houston. However, there’s some strong crossover. 

If you read Wikipedia and a few other online guides to CBT you’ll know as much as I do. Also, I have taken some guidance from blogs about anxiety.

The Four Levels of Reality as I use them:

1. Physical Reality: What actually happened. “Bob shut the door making a loud sound.”
2. Mythic Reality: The story we instantly tell. “Bob slammed the door angrily.”
3. Emotional Reality: The instant emotional reaction we have. “I’m hurt and angry at Bob because Bob hates me.”
4. Essential Reality: The stories we always tell, the way we see the world, because of what we’ve experienced in our past. “Of course Bob hates me, because everyone hates me, everyone has always rejected me, no one will ever love me.”

Essential Reality is a pair of glasses that coats our world. If we have good self esteem, if we like ourselves and have true confidence, then we might have a different story. “Bob closed the door really hard, I wonder if he meant to do that. Or maybe he’s angry. I should check in with him about that.”

First: Know Yourself
I have found, over time, that one of the keys to self transformation is first knowing myself. Once I know what’s going on, then I can look at what I want for my life, and how to modify and adapt. I’m not talking about “how to make yourself not hypersensitive.” In my case, I did the most adaptation I think one can do–I froze over my feelings almost completely. I remember doing it when kids started teasing me. By the time I hit middle school, I had no emotional affect.

It’s a skill I learned to cope with the world, to cope with the kids that verbally abused me every single day.

Knowing myself means–I know that I am emotionally sensitive. And, I know that I am generally frozen over. And, I accept myself, I know that I am that way. However, knowing myself means coming up with tools to work through that hot flash of shame/anger/overwhelm when something “bad” happens. I can realize, that it’s not a 10, it’s maybe a 2 or a 3, and if I look at it that way, I can reduce the thin-skin impact.

Emotions–when I have them–can be fairly overwhelming for me. However, learning that I’m actually thin-skinned has helped me to better cope with things like, romantic rejection, or, getting an email rejecting a proposal of some project, or other things that emotionally set me off. The tools within the Four Levels, and CBT, have helped.

Let’s imagine a scenario:
I’ve sent an email. Maybe I was requesting an interview on someone’s blog about writers, or maybe I was submitting an article, or maybe I was inviting someone to present at an event I’m hosting. And then the dreaded moment arrives; they send an email back, and I can see from the first line that the answer is “no.”

My gut clenches. Heart palpitates. Skin crawls. Anxiety goes to an 8, 9, or 10. I feel the adrenaline lacing through my system. I’m hurt–no wait, I’m angry that they rejected me!

I can’t even stand to read the email, my mouth is dry. Or, I opened the email and there’s the rejection. So I close it, I can’t read it. My anger turns into self loathing. Of course they rejected me, because everyone always rejects me. Because I’ll never….

Out of the Spiral
But here’s where CBT/4 levels comes in. I feel myself going into the old hamsterwheeling. Here’s the thing–I know I’ll feel better. It might take a few hours. Probably it’ll take a day; sleep always helps me. In fact, one of my challenges is that anger almost immediately makes me sleepy.

I just want to eat carbs and pass out and forget about the stuff that hurts me so bad.

However, in this instance, I can say, yeah. I’m having emotions. I’m raw. Is it worth being this raw about it? I look at my old essential realities popping up–”Everyone always rejects me.” Well, that’s not true, I have plenty of physical reality to back that up.

I look at my emotional level. “Is this worth being at an anxiety level of 9?” I think. Nope, probably not. This is more of a 2 or a 3. Yes, it sucks to have an article/proposal get denied, but, this isn’t the End of the World.

So I recognize:
1. That I’m having an emotion and that’s ok, and the adrenaline will taper off, and there’s some other stuff that I can do right now that will help me ease through that. Sorting files, facebook, whatever. Something I can do to relieve stress.

2. That this isn’t the end of my career/life, and that there will be other opportunities, and other folks like my work. And yes, perhaps that article could have been written better. Or, perhaps that person’s blog wasn’t a good fit for my work. 

3. That this doesn’t make me a bad person. That my work being rejected doesn’t make me bad, it just means I might need another pass at editing, or, that they didn’t have time, or, whatever the reason was. 

For me, the key to all of this is keeping the oversensitive emotional reaction from leading me into the spiral of depression. My tendency in the past has been:

1. Get bad email,
2. Get hurt/angry/overwhelmed,
3. Ignore emails for days and crawl into bed and be dysfunctional for a week because, everyone hates me, why do I bother, I’ll always be rejected.

I’m summing up complicated feelings, and I can’t properly articulate the sheer exhaustion that I feel when dealing with some challenging situations. Eating healthy helped a lot with that, I’m a lot less tired, less brain fog. But, big emotional moments exhaust me and the self-loathing leads me into depression.

Nipping it in the bud from the start with physical reality (I don’t suck, people do like me) as well as being ok that I have a big oversensitive reaction, has helped.

Another Scenario:
Let’s go for a scenario that could be romantic, or, it could even be friend/business related. I’ll lean toward romantic, as those are more highly charged.

I’m waiting for an email from someone, and they aren’t emailing me. And it’s killing me waiting for that email and I’m envisioning all the terrible things. They don’t like me any more, whatever. Maybe it’s a romantic thing, maybe it’s a professional thing, whatever it is. I’m stuck in mythic hamsterwheeling.

So physical reality here is, they haven’t emailed me. So I remind myself that, I don’t know why they haven’t emailed me. Being in mythic hamsterwheeling land means that I’m in emotional oversensitivity land, I’m angry, hurt, sad, whatever is going on.

So I just keep going back to what I know is true/physical reality.

I try to wait a reasonable time before following up. And, when I’m less emotionally charged but still charged enough to be bold enough, I will have direct communication and ask what’s going on.

If it’s a romantic thing, I might say, “Hey, so, we’re in XYZ relationship but it’s often days between when you contact me, and I sometimes message you and don’t hear back. I want to find out if you’re ignoring me, if I’m annoying you, or if you’re having second thoughts about us, or, if you just aren’t as communicative as I am wanting you to be.” etc. That would be a truncated version of what I might say, and if at all possible I’m doing that in person or over the phone so it’s conversational, not a run-0n line of oversensitive-sounding text.

Now–the unfortunate side of boundaries-land is that the answer is often “no.”

Many of the times I’ve had that conversation, the answer has been either, “No I don’t want to communicate that frequently, ” or, “No, I don’t want a relationship.” And that can sting…or, it can be a knife in my chest.

But I also know that it’s better than sitting there angsting and wondering and waiting for a response. I’ve tried to take to heart the “He’s just not into you” approach with romantic relationships, as well as with some professional relationships.

What that means for me is recognizing when I’m getting emotionally invested, and when someone else doesn’t seem to be, and then trying to clarify that as soon as possible rather than dancing around and avoiding the conversation. My tendencies to be oversensitive lead me to heightened anxiety which makes me want to avoid these conversations like the plague. However, I always do feel better.

So that’s another physical reality I can focus on.

Yes. I’m oversensitive. My emotions are sometimes raw. But I know I’ll be raw, I know it’ll hurt. And I can keep going back to What I Know, to Physical Reality. That relationship wasn’t going to be satisfying for me if he’s not communicative or not that into me. It sucks, but I’ve cut my angsting down quite a bit by focusing on the Physical Reality.

I’ve kept myself out of a number of Black Pits of Depression that would have sucked me in a few years ago by focusing on physical reality and what I know.

Maybe one of these years I’ll be able to go through a course of therapy with a therapist skilled in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but for the moment, my own work has led me to at least some stability and greater mental health. You can learn more about CBT online, but I also highly recommend working with a therapist if you have the opportunity. They’ll help you do a better job of this than my years-long stumbling.

Reblog: Are You a Highly Sensitive Person?

Natural Magic

Reblogged from animist jottings:

Natural magic sounds as though it should be compatible with animism.  Marian Green, in her introduction to the subject, writes that Nature, our mother, 'mistress of arcane alchemy', has all the answers.  'We are the stuff of stars ... every tree, plant, animal, jewel, and other person shares this ancient heritage'.  Natural magic reconnects us with natural cycles.  Likewise, Nigel Pennick writes that natural magic teaches us we're not separate from nature, and that we have no special privileges. 

Read more… 1,982 more words

Reblog: Ritual Safety

I’m reblogging this excellent post from Patheos by author Yvonne Aburrow

“Learn what the warning signs are of a manipulative group, and withdraw from any situation where those warning signs appear….Find out about group dynamics and how they work. Be aware of what triggers you into a state of passivity or compliance, and seek to avoid situations where that may occur. I once attended a ritual where the temple (a basement room) had a polystyrene ceiling, and there was a cauldron of burning methylated spirit, which we danced round. I was very scared when I thought about it afterwards – but I didn’t leave the ritual…”

Check out the full post here.

Excerpt from A Mantle of Stars

A Mantle of Stars: A Devotional for the Queen of Heaven

I’m very excited to announce the publication of an anthology featuring one of my essays. I’ve included a few brief excerpts from my essay, and I’m really excited to read all of the other pieces. The anthology is edited by Jen McConnel and published by Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

About the Book:
Peel back the layers that comprise the Queen of Heaven. She is Mother Mary weeping at the cross, and Hathor dancing in the sky. She is Freyja with her wild eyes, and Frigg with her open arms. She is Yemaya, keeper of the sea; compassionate Kuan Yin; and she is winged Isis. Her starry body stretches across the sky in the guise of Nut, and she is Saraswati’s gentle song. She is Juno, and Hera, and Tanit, and a thousand forgotten names, and she is Inanna, descending to the underworld to be reborn.

The voices in this anthology are as diverse as the different goddesses who have claimed the title Queen of Heaven, but each sparkles like the stars in Our Lady’s mantle.

Excerpt from A Mantle of Stars:
Below are a number of short excerpts taken from my longer essay. Think of them as stones skipping on a pond; little glimpses in a basically linear flow.

My Path to the Lady in the Blue Light
–Shauna Aura Knight

“I didn’t know her name. I started talking to her at night, talking to that huge bright moon, to the glittering stars. I think I was twelve when I started pouring out my sorrows to her. I was young enough that everything was emotionally overwhelming. Old enough to understand that people were cruel, that my classmates were cruel, and that they were never, ever going to stop teasing me. I think it was around that age that I started wondering, every once in a while, if life was worth living if every day meant verbal, emotional, and sometimes physical torture at the hands of my peers.

Somehow, at night when I looked up at the moon, I felt that she was with me. Angel, goddess, I didn’t know….Feeling her close made me feel like I was worth something, like maybe life was worth surviving….”

***

“In my twenties, the dreams changed. The visions were harder to connect to, further and farther between. I began to dream less of the angel/goddess directly, and more of something I first called the Water Chapel, later, the Water Temple. In this Temple of the Goddess of moonlight and water, there were spiral grooves carved into the floor, sometimes carvings of water shapes and grails almost in the way the ramps up to the Forbidden City in China are carved in relief. There was always a fountain in the center, water falling down, or a grail overflowing.”

***

“When I joined the leadership program at Diana’s Grove, my intention was to learn the skills to help serve Pagan community, but also to be a better leader in order to accomplish some of the larger creative projects I had in mind, some of those being projects like building standing stones, temples, or something more mundane like art installations. I knew I had been called to Pagan leadership, and I knew that Diana’s Grove was one of the very few places where I could actually get the training to do it.

But as I began doing that work of learning Pagan leadership and priestess skills, it felt like my Goddess was further and further away from me. Those moments of divine communion seemed a thousand miles out of reach.”

***

“I’ve been reading about sacred geometry, ancient temples, and ancient legends for a while, but it seemed like suddenly the synchronicities were coming faster. Michael and Gabriel, sword and chalice. There also seemed to frequently be a connection between the Grail and the cosmic mountain or Omphalos—world navel—and at times, a connection to the dome of the heavens, the zodiac.”

***

“Archaeoastronomy is still considered fringe science to some, although I personally find the evidence fairly compelling that our ancient ancestors built computers in the form of stone megaliths and temples to track the movement of the stars and the heavens. As a kid I had those dreams about Stonehenge all the time, and for a while I thought about just building stone circles, but it wasn’t until I learned more about the actual solar and stellar alignments of some of the megaliths that it began to make sense why our ancestors might have done that kind of work. And perhaps, why I myself might have become obsessed with the idea without even knowing why.”

***

“I believe that our ancient ancestors understood the sky. And for whatever reason, they knew that it was essential to chart the stars, to record their observations in stone. It’s relatively easy to track the solstices and equinoxes, which would be essential for tracking the seasons. But some of these sites seem to have tracked incredibly complicated stellar phenomena. Eclipses, the 8-year and 40-year cycle of Venus. Even the 25,800 -year cycle of axial precession caused by the slight wobble of the Earth’s rotation on its axis.”

***

“Queen of Heaven, Venus, and Astronomical Megaliths
With a dozen wooden posts and a flat field, our priest-astronomer-megalith builders could have tracked the simple seasonal cycles. One post goes in the center as a sightline. You start at the Equinox, and put a post on one half of the circle for sunrise, one for sunset. Over the next months, you track the sun as it moves north, putting another post in to mark the sightline for the solstice. Solstice means “sun is standing still,” so you mark the northernmost sunrise of the summer solstice, and the northernmost sunset on the other side of your circle. Same thing for the latter half of the year, marking out the sunset. That calendar takes just one year to build and is fairly tolerant of error.”

***

“The truth is, I think a great deal of the “magic” of our ancient ancestors can be found in a modern cell phone: calendars, moon phases, a compass. Imagine the power that the shaman-priests had by being able to tell when the solstices and equinoxes fell. By knowing when the warm rains would come, when the snows would come, when it was time to plant. This knowledge was carried in the language of stone, in the language of myth.”

***

“My search began with the dreams, with visions of an unnamed goddess. Later, dreams of megaliths, dreams of temples filled with water and with images of a Grail, temples filled with spiral grooves, temples where water was always flowing, and where I felt connected to that goddess of the nighttime sky. In those dreams and visions, I felt completely connected to her, transcendent.

And yet, in my quest to follow the path I saw to spiritual leadership, and the path to learn more about labyrinths and temples, I seemed to have lost her….When I began leading public rituals, I thought surely I would find that place of communion, and it eluded me over and over. 

….For years, I felt a bitterness. How unfair was it that I finally understood some of the messages from my dreams, even if they were vague, and I couldn’t actually directly commune with this goddess that had inspired me and kept me from harming myself in my youth?”

***

“In my vision, I felt myself become a part of the entire universe. The universe was an ocean of love; I was laying on a bed that was the waters of the ocean that was the mother that loves us all and that is all of us, that we are not separate from. It was my goddess, but warmer, larger, more encompassing.

I felt the golden honey-light of the heartbreak of the universe breaking open on my skin in that moment, I felt the cradling rocking loving. That I was not separate from the divine. That indeed, I was not separate from anyone, that we were like water in the ocean, that the skin that separates us is an illusion. That it was all bliss and agony and love together—that the separation the universe must endure from us is agony, but only with that grief and loss can we truly recognize how potent it is to come home again….”

Table of Contents and more information at: 
http://neosalexandria.org/bibliotheca-alexandrina/current-titles/a-mantle-of-stars-a-devotional-for-the-queen-of-heaven/

Edited by: Jen McConnel
Published by: Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Price: $14.99
Publication Date: 20 December 2013
ISBN: 978-1494357948 / 1494357941
Pages: 302 pp

Purchase at:
https://www.createspace.com/4553772
http://www.amazon.com/Mantle-Stars-Devotional-Queen-Heaven/dp/1494357941

The Devil, the Tower, and the Star: Tarot Blog Hop

I’m going through a Dark Night of the Soul. It’s seasonally appropriate during the dark time of the year, though I find I’m facing the darkness of winter again while  going through a “Tower” moment. If you’re not conversant in Tarot-reader lingo, the “Tower” is generally shorthand for, “life-altering disaster.” The Tower is one of the cards in the Major Arcana.

Before I get too far– this post is part of the “Darkness into Light” Tarot blog hop. The previous blogger is Chloe McCracken and you can check out her post, or there’s a link to all the posts at the bottom.

Tarot and Personal Spiritual Work
I teach workshops on spiritual, esoteric, and personal transformation topics. One workshop I offer is “The Devil, the Tower, and the Star,” which helps participants to work through current/past Tower moments. My work with the Tarot is less about doing readings, and more about working with the archetypes for deep transformative work.

So I definitely have tools when lightning strikes and the Tower is burning down around me. However– having tools to work through an experience doesn’t mean I’m not going through the stress, the impact. I can teach these tools, but I’d be a liar if I didn’t own up to going through my own dark nights where I doubt everything. My self, my work, my spirituality. I wonder, “Why me,” the same as anyone else. I wonder if I can survive it, wonder if I can pull myself up by my bootstraps yet again.

Because…I am very tired of hauling myself up by my bootstraps.

The Devil, the Tower, and the Star
Let’s talk about these three cards. My Tarot mentors at Diana’s Grove referred to the Devil card as contracts we signed, stories that we agreed to. These contracts bind up our identity, our life force.

I looked at those three cards and thought…the Tower falling is supposed to ultimately be a good thing. The Tower is a symbol for structures that keep us safe and insulated but that really doesn’t serve us. I saw the Tower as structures built out of contract after contract, story after story. It becomes a symbol for the old patterns we’ve bound ourselves into that  are more cage than protection.

Then, the Tower is destroyed in lightning and fire. The Star is the waters of starlight pouring down, it is unbound life force, healing, inspiration, and hope.

I think of it as, we’d never have seen that luscious starlight pouring down if we were stuck in that Tower. So while the ashes are burning down behind us, if we look, we can feel those waters, let that starlight pour into our heart and replenish us, and then we can do what we will with that energy. We aren’t bound by the old contracts.

The Tower
A “classic” Tower moment is losing a job. I was laid off once  from a job I hated. But I was stuck in that, “I can’t afford to not have a job, but I hate it,” position. My department getting downsized led me to the work I’m doing now–leadership, writing, artwork. Would I have ever gone down that path without getting laid off?

Other Tower moments are a major breakup or having a group blow up. Tower moments break up old structures–and it’s usually not pretty.

However, if you can look at those terrible life-shaking moments, you may see where this also broke the chains that bound you.

Two years ago my fiance left me without warning after stealing from me and leaving me in an apartment with months of unpaid rent and utilities. I’m still paying off debt incurred from his actions. Days after he left I thought I might to die. Not because I was in love–not after all the cheating, stealing, and emotional abuse.

But because I didn’t know if I could pull myself up by my bootstraps again. The financials were dire, and I thought, why keep fighting?

Why we Require Shock
However costly his leaving was, him being gone unshackled my hands. I tend to think, in for a penny, in for a pound. With him, I felt that I’d covered up his indiscretions so many times, done so much to make our relationship work, that I felt like I couldn’t back out. That would mean that the years I’d put into making it work had been a waste.

If he hadn’t left, I’d have kept trying to fix things. Sometimes the known, comfortable situation feels safer than the unknown–even if it’s hurting us.

I’m so glad I’m not bound by that particular contract any longer, that I’m not stuck in the “story” that I had to make things work. I’ll never thank him–but, I’m glad he’s gone. I didn’t have the strength to end things. Suddenly I was free and could move on.

Starlight Interrupted
It took a while for the light to come back. I was only just starting to feel the glimmer of hope. This summer I published my first book, and I have others coming out. Just when I thought that I was eking past that Dark Night and the wreckage of that Tower from two years ago…

Two weeks ago I was in a car accident. Nobody was seriously hurt, but the accident totaled my car. The other driver took an illegal left, though there may be no way for me to prove it. I’m waiting to hear if I’ll get any financial compensation. If I don’t, I’m stuck without a car and without any way to get one.

It really hasn’t set in yet that I could have died. The police were shocked I walked away from the accident with only a bump on the head. 

Dark Night
Here’s how my panic over this financial gut-punch leads to my current Dark Night of the Soul. The limited amount of income I’ve had in the past years has come from from traveling and teaching and selling my artwork. I had to cancel my teaching engagement this weekend. I currently live in a rural area. I’m really sunk without a car.

On one hand, I’m aware this is a Tower moment that might open the way to something else…but, I’m also still caught in the emotional undertow.

My dark night is about the deeper question–should I keep trying to follow my calling of teaching leadership, ritual facilitation, personal growth work, and writing and painting?

I’ve sacrificed a lot in order to follow my spiritual calling. I‘ve managed to hang on by the edges of my fingernails the past years by living simply, trying to make the work I do to start bringing in more income.

I was already running out of time–my current living situation won’t last forever and I’ll have to start paying for an apartment again. And yet, without a car, I can’t even get a local retail job, much less something that works with my skillsets as a graphic designer, consultant, or even temp secretary work.

Now–you might think, published author = raking in the dough. Did you know 3500 print books are published every day? That doesn’t count eBooks. My books are starting to sell, but it’ll take a while–and having more books out–before I start bringing in actual revenue.

Sacrifice and Fear
I have given up so much in my life, so many conveniences that people think of as basic, in order to live lean so I could do the work that calls to me. In working to make myself affordable for local Pagan groups to hire me for workshops, I’ve ultimately paid more out of pocket to travel and teach than I ever have made back in class stipends.

I just can’t do it any more. I can’t keep on going and wonder, am I ever going to be able to afford going to the doctor again? Can I afford the gas money it would take to be able to go out on a date? Can I afford food?

I’ve started to wonder, is it all worthless? Did I give up years of my life for nothing?

Even worse, I wonder, am I teaching people a bunch of crap? When I teach personal growth classes and lead rituals, I work to help people open up to their desires, to wanting, to reaching for the dreams and hopes they haven’t dared give name to. I work to help people identify what kind of work would bring meaning to their lives.

I’ve done my best to live that, to reach for my own dreams with both hands. And I’ve hung on, I’ve sacrificed a lot to make this work.

The Devil’s in the Contracts
The other day my mom’s words that fell on me like a hammerstroke. “You might have to put your dream on hold.” And all I could think was, no. NO. No, I will not put my dream on hold again. No, I will not put myself back into those chains and contracts.

I think of all the people shackled by the contracts they signed in their own blood, putting their dreams on hold. “I’ll just do this for a few years, and then I’ll live my dream.” And five years turned into ten years turned into twenty years.

Contracts.

I reject the chains of shame and “should” and “We’re supposed to.” I want to live in–and I work to build–a world where we get to do work that calls to our souls, where we get to live our dreams.

Yet, getting hit by that car brought reality into my windshield.

I don’t know what’s worse–wondering if I’m going to have to give up my dream, or wondering if I’ve been teaching a lie, a fancy dream that nobody can actually fulfill.

I need that unveiled light of the Star, that healing and life force, the waters of beauty and love. I need to remember why I bothered doing this work at all.  The only thread of hope I’m really holding onto right now is a dream I had about six months ago.

Tarot and Dreams
Dreams and Tarot share similar mythic, archetypal symbolism. I often teach people exploring Tarot to look into their dreams.

I had a dream in June relevant to my current Dark Night.

I’m running late, racing to get to an airplane in New York. I manage to get onto the plane. Then we’re flying over the pitch-black sea over the Atlantic, along the East Coast. Around Georgia, some people throw me off the plane, and I fall from the sky down into the  black waters.

I begin to swim, but the waves keep going over my head, the waves are high, nauseating. I don’t have words for the horror and fear, I’m swimming in the terrifying dark. I don’t know how many hundreds of miles I must swim but I keep going. I wish for someone to help me. Or even just someone to witness what I’m going through. I keep swimming.

It seem that I wake up on a beach in Florida, and I’m found by Pagans who take me to the Pagan conference I’d been traveling to. Though I was swimming for days, I’m only one day late for the conference. Everyone there is glad I’m ok and talks about how I broke the

“Hex.” A notable Pagan leader is running a workshop and mentions that in the weeks I was swimming, several anthologies have come out that have my published works in them. One is an anthology on how I broke the “Hex” of the people who were on the plane who tried to kill me.

Dream Prophecies and Symbolism
On occasion, I have dreams that come true, but usually the symbolism is difficult to discern at best. It’s rare for a dream to just come directly true. In this case, symbol mixed with reality.

Right now, those waves are over my head. However, it has come to pass that several anthologies with my writing plus several standalone books are all coming out at about the same time–right before I’m supposed to be teaching at several Pagan conferences in February. I did teach in New York recently, though I drove. My mom will move to Florida once her house is fixed up; there have been delays but it’s looking like maybe spring.

If I read the dream correctly, late winter/early spring may see things easing up.

Tarot, Dark Nights, and Returning Light
Right now, I’m holding onto just a thin beam of light through the clouds. Just a couple of days ago, my book Dreamwork for the Initiate’s Path was released, and you can read the first chapter available as an excerpt.  

My Dark Night is not over, my mind is full of questions. I know that I must renegotiate a “contract” I hadn’t realized I’d made–the contract that I’d sacrifice everything to serve community. That “contract” I chose has helped to place me in this situation. I must find a way to take care of my own needs or I cannot do this work. There are things that I started thinking of as luxuries that are actually basic necessities, and I got into “contract tunnel vision.” I was so focused on my calling that I managed to convince myself that I could live without certain things–like health care. I took that to a dangerous place and thought it was ok.

And it’s not.

I know the light returns. I’ll climb out, though I’m unsure how. For me, it’s less about doing a Tarot reading than understanding the progression of the archetypes. The contracts are broken, and the light–somehow–returns. Until then, I’ll use this dark time of year to seek answers while I slog through dark waters to shore.

Tarot Blog Hop
Next in the Yule Tarot Blog Hop is Christiana Gaudet. You can see the entire lineup of Tarot bloggers at http://sungoddesstarot.blogspot.com/2013/12/yule-tarot-blog-hop-masterlist

Excerpt: Dreamwork for the Initiate’s Path

 My book, Dreamwork for the Initiate’s Path, was just released. Below is an excerpt from the first chapter.

About the book: Dreamwork is a core part of the path of seekers and initiates. Learn basic and in-depth techniques to work with your dreams in a concise, easy-to-understand way. This includes: remembering your dreams, exploring dream symbolism, unraveling nightmares, working with spiritual/personal transformation, better understanding prophetic dreams, and exploring your mythic and deeply internal programming.

 Working with our dreams is a potent way to understand and explore ourselves at a deeper level. Our nightmares show us our fears, other dreams show us our power, a glimpse of the future, or bring messages from the divine.

In our dreams, we face many situations that we never would in the waking world. You might achieve the Grail or find yourself terrified, falling from an airplane into a night-dark sea. Dreams are multilayered and difficult to unravel, but they will tell you more about yourself than you might believe.

BEGINNING DREAMWORK

Dreamwork goes beyond just remembering our dreams, though that is certainly the beginning. This book will begin with foundations in dreamwork moving into deepening your dreamwork practice. I’ll focus on practical ways you can use dreamwork in your personal growth and spiritual practice.

“Dreams make available to us a mine of psychological and spiritual treasures. They provide guidance vital to the journey, and they point to areas of ourselves where we need to work.”

–Wayne Teasdale, The Mystic Heart

Dreaming: One path of the initiate

Dreams are an invaluable tool for transformative personal growth. I can experience entire worlds in my dreams that I could have no access to in the conscious world. In my dreams, I might interact with deities, archetypes, facets of the divine, of mystery. I might pass through a dark night of the soul that transforms me. An abundance of wisdom is available to us through our dreams that we might have no other way of gaining.

Taking on a personal practice of dreamwork is an initiate’s path. It is a discipline. To begin, I must know, “Why would I do this?” I must make the choice to do it. And I must follow it through with a consistent practice.

A Basic Dreamwork Practice :

1. Formalize your intention
2. Prepare to dream
3. Dream
4. Remember your dream
5. Interpret your dream

Formalizing your intention
Much like in any magical, spiritual, or psychological work, possibly the single most critical piece is intention. What do you want? Do you want to get better at remembering your dreams? Do you want to use dreams to get to know yourself better, to transform yourself? Do you want insight into a major life decision? Do you want to deepen a connection with a specific deity or archetype?

Once you have an intention, you can make dreamwork a workable part of your personal practice.

Preparing to Dream
This might be as simple as stating aloud, “I will remember my dreams tonight.” It should involve a physical commitment such as keeping a pen and journal or tape recorder by your bedside. It might involve working with an archetype, such as Morpheus, Greek god of dreams. All these are practices that will help you formalize your intent, and should help you remember your dreams.

Dreaming
This is the easy part. Many people say they do not remember their dreams. Enough research assures me that while almost everyone dreams, not everyone remembers them. The exception is that certain sleep disorders prevent dream sleep, but these conditions are fairly rare. If you want to learn more about sleep disorders such as night terrors or sleepwalking, I recommend doing your own research. And of course, if you have some of the symptoms of a sleep disorder you should check in with your physician.

Remembering Your Dream
I find that writing the dreams down is absolutely the most challenging part of the discipline. The most important moments of dreaming are the first few minutes  after waking, when I really want to tuck back under the covers. I can’t stress enough how important it is to begin writing down your dream as soon as you wake up enough to do so. Particularly if you have challenges remembering your dreams, capturing even just a small essence of the dream will help improve your dream recall a little bit at a time. Dreams slip away very quickly sometimes.

When I’ve woken up enough that I can hold the pen, I write down my dream. Sometimes I make a few notes first to capture bullet points of different “phases” of the dream if it was complicated.

If I am having trouble remembering, I will lie in the position in which I slept, as sometimes this will help the dream return. It might sound strange, but it works. If you had an intense dream and had to get right up and go to work or an appointment and couldn’t write it down, sometimes you can get back into the dream and recall it by lying down in your sleeping position when you get home. I’ve tried this numerous times, and it really does help.

It might take a while to really remember your dreams. For me, the key is to write it down as soon as possible. Sometimes this is a brief snippet on waking; sometimes it’s two pages. The dream might keep until I’m on the bus to work. What I have found is that the closer to the time I awaken that I write down my dream, the more details I remember.

There are times in my life where I have diligently written down my dreams every day, and other times when I have gone months without writing down a dream. And, though I have fairly strong dream recall in general, when I haven’t written down a dream in weeks or months, my recall ability for dreams begins to fade. However, once I start writing them down again, my dream recall improves dramatically.

Again, even if your dreams are short, vague, or hard to remember, write down anything you can remember. Maybe it’s a color, a sense, a movement, or a snippet. Over days and weeks, your dreams will most likely become clearer.

It also helps to schedule your sleeping and waking so that you can awaken naturally. It’s very common to awaken naturally after a dream cycle. In fact, I would hazard a guess that one reason I have really good dream recall is because I tend to awaken numerous times during the night to flip over as my arm falls asleep.

I’m not going to go too much into the science of dreams and REM sleep here. However, oversimplified, we sleep in 90-minute increments. The sleep cycles get slightly longer as the night progresses. Whenever I’m taking a short nap, I try to plan for it to be either a 90-minute nap, or a 3 hour nap, so that I’m waking up more naturally after a full dream cycle. You will feel more rested than if you wake up in the middle of deep sleep. Your dream recall is also far better when you wake up right after a dream.

Interpreting Your Dream
Dreamwork is a difficult but rewarding discipline; not only do I need to write down my dreams, but I have to then unravel the mess of symbolism. And, sometimes it really can be a mess; dreams are notorious for not making logical sense. In addition, our dreams often bring out huge, frightening symbols in order to call attention to something that is going on, and it can be a challenge of my own personal fortitude to deal with uncomfortable imagery and feelings.

“… a dream is quite unlike a story told by the conscious mind. In everyday life one thinks out what one wants to say, selects the most telling way of saying it, and tries to make one’s remarks logically coherent. For instance, an educated person will seek to avoid a mixed metaphor because it may give a muddled impression of his point. But dreams have a different texture. Images that seem contradictory and ridiculous crowd in on the dreamer, the normal sense of time is lost, and commonplace things can assume a fascinating or threatening aspect.”
–Carl Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

In my personal dream practice, I am constantly exploring these dream symbols that may or may not make sense. Some dream symbols may not make sense to me for many years. Like any initiate’s path, it can take a long time to become proficient at. I look at the first dreams I wrote down and how it took perhaps two years to get any kind of depth and detail to my dream recall to get enough detail to really start interpreting my dreams.

***

Dreamwork for the Initiate’s Path
by Shauna Aura Knight

On sale for $2.79 at Jupiter Gardens Press, available in all major eBook formats.
Also available at:  Amazon  &  Barnes and Noble

You can also view the Interior Illustrations

Dreamwork for the Initiate’s Path Image Gallery

Here are the interior illustrations for my Dreamwork for the Initiate’s Path book. They give a bit of  a peak into the work of the book. Enjoy!

Dreamwork for the Initiate’s Path
by Shauna Aura Knight

Dreamwork is a core part of the path of seekers and initiates. Learn basic and in-depth techniques to work with your dreams in a concise and easy-to-understand way including: remembering dreams, dream symbolism, nightmares, spiritual/personal transformation, and exploring your own internal programming. Dreams will tell you more about yourself than you might believe.

On sale for $2.79 at Jupiter Gardens Press, available in all major eBook formats.
Also available at:  Amazon  &  Barnes and Noble

First Chapter Excerpt  

Reblog: Why We Shouldn’t Have to Keep Pregnancy a Secret for the First Trimester

Reblog of an article. Some potent thoughts around the stigma, and challenges, of dealing with a miscarriage and why most women feel they have to keep it a secret. I know that even within the Pagan community, which works to be more accepting of women’s bodies and cycles, it’s only in the past years I’ve seen women coming out about going through a miscarriage.

WHY WE SHOULDN’T HAVE TO KEEP PREGNANCY A SECRET FOR THE FIRST TRIMESTER

“But as I stumbled my way through the online world of miscarriage and infertility and pregnancy and loss, I discovered a virtual sea of women who were reaching out to someone, something, so as not to drown in their own feelings of isolation and guilt.”

“The realities of making a baby are thus: 10 to 20 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage.”

http://www.xojane.com/issues/first-trimester-miscarriage-stories?utm_medium=facebook

Fairly Take and Fairly Give

Reblogged from The Poet Priestess:

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Enlightenment and spirituality doesn't require a price tag - that is a personal journey and cannot be given to you, although it may be guided and supported. Knowledge should freely available, but the providers of knowledge should not be expected to devote time, skills and experience for free. So here lies the constant, and often heated, debate about paying for training in Witchcraft, Wicca or Pagan Spirituality.

Read more… 1,613 more words

The Dance of Mental Illness

Sometimes, there are some things that just don’t do well as a Facebook update. How much detail to offer? How much pain to reveal? If I tell the world, am I whining, or am I being brave by sharing my process?

Tonight I had to shut someone out of my life. He’s a long-ago ex boyfriend. We were together for 2 years when I lived in St. Louis. He’s on disability for Bipolar. For a while, he seemed sane enough, but things deteriorated, and eventually he just disappeared from my life without telling me he was going. Took me a few months to realize that I might never hear from him again. That may have been one of the more miserable Christmases I’ve ever had.

Months later, he resurfaced; he’d moved up to the Twin Cities and was living with another woman he’d met. But, he’d gotten into a situation where he felt stuck. He was with her for years, sometimes he’d ask me to come and get him, but neither he nor I ever had the gas money, and to be honest, I was leery of getting entangled with his hot mess.

Just over a year ago we saw each other while I was passing through Central Illinois. It was nice, a little awkward. Without diving overly into personal details, we had always been attracted to one another, it was just the relationship stuff that didn’t work out. So we went out on a date.

There was some emotional stuff that happened after I left town that I won’t get into. At least, not at the moment. It’s stuff that I might talk about some day if there’s a reason for it, but I’m not willing to open up publicly about what I went through a year ago just yet. He moved back up to the Twin Cities after that and tried another round with his ex girlfriend up there, but that didn’t last too long.

Actually, he tried to hang himself while he was still living with her. He was hospitalized for attempted suicide. The good thing of that was, he was able to get some help, finally get on some medication, get on food stamps, get connected to a job program.

We’d been trying to schedule a time for him to come down and visit me for a week or so since June. Neither of us looking for anything long term, but there’s something nice about reconnecting with an ex when you are lonely. There aren’t surprises, you know each other’s shorthand. It’s not like dating someone brand new where I’m not sure what likes we share or how compatible we’ll be or a host of other things.

Then the system failed him…not that I think he was doing everything he could to jump through hoops. But I understand depression and avoidance. I understand that monster all too well. The times when we’re in the worst headspace and need the most help are the times when we’re least capable of navigating a system like that. Then his food stamps got reduced.

Now, I didn’t know all of what was going on at the time, but I knew his living situation was deteriorating and even though he was staying in a horrible little apartment complex with sex offenders and crazy people, it still ate up almost all of his monthly disability check. I’d though he was still on his anxiety meds but it turns out his insurance was switched and he got frustrated and said “fuck it.”

So I knew that this man–this friend–was up there starving. I’ve starved before.

I suggested that he come down to see me and I could feed him for a couple of weeks and he could help me with some projects around here. I desperately needed a second pair of hands to get some work done here at my mom’s house, from cleaning up construction messes to finishing up art projects.

And, he and I genuinely did miss each other. Like I said, attraction wasn’t ever the problem, and he and I both knew that it wasn’t a “we’re getting back together” thing.

But I told him up front,no drama. I didn’t want to deal with his big moody meltdowns. I just wanted a nice visit.

I bought him a bus ticket for Megabus for Wednesday. He told me he went to the bus stop but couldn’t find it, and then had to walk 4 miles home in the snow because he didn’t have bus fare. Now–Megabus doesn’t invest in stations, so the bus stops are usually at an intersection. They can be a little tricky to find; I even had a hard time finding the one at Union Station in Chicago because I had to find the actual correct cross streets. Plus, it’s freezing in the Twin Cities.

So I tapped local resources and found someone who could pick him up and take him to the Megabus stop, and bought a second ticket. Tickets are cheap, but I’m still strapped right now, especially battening down the hatches for what’s going on with the car accident.

Last night my friend had a meltdown. He seemed to come back out of it. I was clear with him in a way I wasn’t when he and I were together. I talked to him about how he’d done the emotional meltdown thing to me in the past, and if he did this again, I was cutting him out of my life completely. That I wasn’t going to be emotionally jerked around again like that. That I wasn’t going to be the good little codependent and dance around and try and keep him from having an emotional meltdown.

I was clear that if he bailed on me again, that that was it. And then he did. When my other friend went to pick him up, he’d shut off his phone and didn’t answer texts or Facebook or the door. She stayed until they couldn’t possibly make it to get him to the bus, and then she had to leave, there wasn’t anything else she could do.

Here’s the problem with emotional hostage-taking like this. I have those codependent urges. That control urge. If I can control the situation I can keep him in the ‘good” mood, right? And when he’s in the “good” mood, he and I get along great. We have a lot of fun together. And, I could really use a week or two of just having fun, and I know he could too.

On the other hand, if I am actually firm and have boundaries and say, “No, your behavior is not ok,” I genuinely risk this guy going into a full meltdown and possibly attempting suicide again. And then I’ve got that on my conscience.

And here’s where I finally come to the larger point of what I’m trying to write about. Mental illness is a tough thing. And once you’re stuck in the spiral of it, there’s not a good, clean way out. All the therapy work I’ve done, all the personal growth, all the boundaries, all the communication…there’s a point where I do all I can, and the other person is still going to have their meltdown.

I’ve been with three long-term partners now who have either used suicide as an emotional hostage-taking threat either actively or passively. Active is, “Yeah, I was thinking I’d just step in front of a bus, then you’d….” Passive is just them telling the story of how they tried to kill themselves that one time. Because, then you know it happened, you know it’s there, it’s something they could do again. And if you–if I–have a boundary, get too uppity, get too upset, call them on the carpet, it’s something they might try again.

I’m not sure if it’s called emotional hostage-taking in professional psychology, but I’ve heard the term a few times before.

And here’s the thing. I can’t blame someone for being ill. For being suicidal. For hating themselves so much, for being so desperate for attention that they would use the threat of suicide to keep me there.

(And yeah, we can talk about my choice in men some other time. There’s a reason I’m not in a long-term relationship at the moment.)

My experience interacting with people who are severely mentally ill–whether friends or lovers–whether diagnosed or not–has challenged me over and over. As a Gemini, I’m so often of two minds about things.

I have mentally ill people in my community. I want to help them. I believe they deserve spiritual work just as much as anyone else; in fact, they may need it more. Maybe it can help them get to a place of healing and balance. I believe in the power of intention and personal work to heal. Call it magic if you want.

And on the other hand, I’ve seen nothing more destructive to relationships and to communities than people who are mentally ill.

I have experienced mental illness in participants and leaders that have contributed to the downfall of group after group. My own mental illness in the form of depression/exhaustion/avoidance has caused me more problems than I can count, as a community leader.

I’ve also seen people with mental illness who have worked to manage their illness through medication, therapy, changes in diet. I can tell you several things that drastically improved my depression that aren’t anti-depressants–Vitamin D, B, and Thyroid pills, and eliminating wheat, dairy, and almost all processed foods from my diet.

Am I perfect? Nope, but, most of my symptoms are pretty manageable at this point. I’ve also done work with some of the theories/techniques of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to keep myself out of the debilitating shame spiral that has led to heavy depressive episodes in the past.

If I could afford it, I’d be doing that with a therapist right now. But, if I could afford that, I’d also be going to the doctor regularly instead of free clinics when I can get into them. And that’s a side effect of my endeavor these past years to make a living as an independent writer and artist in a system that isn’t supportive of such nontraditional lifestyles.

But I think that’s part of my point too. The folks who are mentally ill need more help, and they are often least able to get that help. The folks that need medical attention, medication for bipolar like my friend, are least able to navigate the system.

When my friend’s state insurance coverage changed, he suddenly couldn’t get his meds refilled. His anxiety skyrocketed. He couldn’t figure out how he got medication. I’m unclear as to whether his caseworker didn’t get back to him or if he just stopped bothering to follow up. He stopped going to therapy and nobody followed up with him.

He was informed by letter that his food stamps were being cut, and then, that his medical might be cut completely. When he’s been off his meds for months and can’t cope with life, much less jumping through additional hoops.

He slipped through the cracks.

I’ve slipped through the cracks too. There’s a lot of things in the past years where I really needed help, but I lacked the resources to get that help. When I was in the worst of my depression, the thought of 1. searching out a clinic, 2. going there, 3. going through paperwork hoops, was enough to keep me in my bed with the covers over my head.

This guy lives in a city where he really knows only a few people; his ex girlfriend and two of her friends. He’s practically a shut in. His anxiety is bad enough that going grocery shopping is hard, getting on the bus is hard.

And–while part of me would like to say, “His friends should help him,” I also know the other side of that coin. That it’s hard to help someone who’s that helpless, who’s that dysfunctional. Each person has a different well of compassion, a different amount of crap they can put up with to help someone they love before they burn out and have to hold a boundary and say no.

Which is where I keep coming to on this challenge of mental illness. I know that I do not have the capacity to really help people with mental illness in my community. I’ve tried, and tried, and tried. I have sometimes referred to this jokingly as “beyond my paygrade,” but it’s really true. I didn’t get into social work, I got into leadership training.

Beyond that, I want to be able to “fix” people. To help them. But there’s some things that I can’t fix. I can put a finger in the dam, but I can’t keep it from flowing over.

And those of us who are fixers want to be able to fix.

Tonight, I feel more angry at myself for giving my ex the room to hurt me again. The problem is, I do still care about him. I understand he’s ill, he doesn’t mean to do these things. But, once upon a time I held a boundary that I wasn’t going to let him do this to me again…and tonight, I had to re-establish that.

Tonight I had to remember that, I can’t fix him. No matter how much I wanted to help him, I can’t “fix” him. Only he can fix him. And, I don’t know that he has the resources to do that.

Tonight I did the kindest thing that I thought I could. I called the St. Paul police to do a wellness check on him. Given his history, and that I know he’s in full meltdown mode and the stern words I spoke to him last night, I thought the liklihood of him trying to kill himself again was fairly high. I knew his address, not his apartment number.

I messaged him on Facebook to let him know that I had called the police to check on him, and it showed that he’d seen the message. Right after that, I saw that he’d unfriended me. So, all I can really assume at this point is that my friend did not try to kill himself.

Maybe the police will be able to help him. Or maybe not. Maybe he’ll slip through the cracks and end up homeless, or maybe someone will take him in as has happened before.

I am in the terrible place in this moment of having done what I could to help him–having gotten roped into his downward spiral again even though I vowed to never do so again–and, realizing that this is a man who will never be able to take care of himself. And, he probably will never get the help and care he needs.

And I have so many thoughts and emotions around that I can’t even articulate them. I’ve come to the wall of realizing that there are so many mentally ill people out there slipping through the cracks. I find myself on a pendulum swing–on one end, I want to help them, I feel they deserve help and if more people were helping then these folks wouldn’t slip through the cracks.

On the other end, there’s my boundaries on what I need in my own life to stay stable, sane, and happy. It’s not my job to fix these folks. And even when I’ve really put myself out to try and help someone with a mental illness, it’s almost never resulted in them being able to sustain a relationship or, continue on in a Pagan or other group in a healthy way.

All I’m left with are questions and frustration. Wishing I could help, but, the best thing I can offer this person is calling the police. That may or may not help him.

And knowing that this time I’m really losing him as a friend for good. That I can no longer allow him into my life, that his situation has deteriorated to the point where, as much as my compassion drives me to try and help him, I cannot put myself into that position again, because it doesn’t get better, it doesn’t help him, and he continues to deteriorate.

And also knowing that the next time I hear about him–if I hear about him at all–will probably be because he got hurt, or tried to hurt himself.

It’s a hard moment to realize that–in some cases–my boundaries, my saying “No, I’m not getting involved in your BS any longer,” might be the tipping point that leads to someone harming themselves. Or at least, leads to their emotional meltdown that takes them into a complete nonfunctioning headspace.

Relationships are hard. People are hard. People do horrible, terrible things to each other. Sometimes, that’s why I’m such a recluse. When I see the terrible things people do to each other, it’s hard for me to do the work I do, the work of healing and inspiring. Part of me does believe that anyone can be healed…and I work for that. I work to build that better world, to inspire people for it.

But then there’s reality. I just heard about a Pagan mother and child killed in a murder/suicide by an abusive ex husband in Michigan.

I got queasy prickles at the thought of it, at hearing from people who knew this woman. How this woman had finally left her abusive husband, and had worked to get her life together. And I thought of all the other abused people in relationships–whatever gender–who keep hanging on to someone who’s ill. “They’ll get better.” “They just need help.” “They’re ill, they don’t mean it.”

How many times have I done that?

A lot.

And I get it, and I believe it–there are people with treatable mental illnesses. Alcoholics are treatable. People with issues are treatable. Theoretically. Possibly.

And yet…these are the folks that snap, too. Verbal abuse, physical abuse, and then the day it escalates and they go over the deep end and take the life of the other person and their own.

I wish, over and over, that I had some magic wand that would heal people. That would take away those old patterns that lead someone to be abusive, or nonfunctional, or an alcoholic.

And I don’t.

So tonight, I have cut myself off from someone whom I’ve tried to help. I tried to take some responsibility for where he is at. And I have to relinquish that responsibility. There’s nothing more I can do for this man. All I can do is hope that he does, some day, get help.

Maybe as Pagans have more people trained as counselors and therapists in clergy roles, we’ll have more capacity to help people like this within our community. To keep these folks from slipping through the cracks. And maybe there’s folks who can’t be helped.

This one’s above my pay grade.

A Winter Knight’s Vigil: Pagans, Leadership, and Romance

I’m sure that many of you probably don’t read romance. However, for those that do–I have a novella that came out today, A Winter Knight’s Vigil. Unlike most romance novels, this one deals with Pagan characters–and, not witches cursed with ancient powers, or druids who happen to be werewolves. Actual, regular Pagans.

The characters in the story are all members of a coven. The twelve of them are on a Winter Solstice retreat weekend in a woodland cabin. During the weekend, the two main characters, Tristan and Amber, both go through the various rituals and work through their own personal shadows.

Among these shadows are them dealing with their attraction to one another. Their coven has a rule that covenmates can’t get romantically entangled in order to prevent group dynamics and drama. After a hot night together, they have to face the consequences, and figure out if they’re going to hide what they did, or risk one or both of them getting kicked out of the coven.

Pagan Group Dynamics
While the book is not intended to teach in-depth ritual facilitation techniques or leadership for group dynamics, or even a guide to shadow work through Arthurian myth, all of those are components of the book. I hope to show a healthy way that things like that can be handled. Because, if you’ve read any of my blog posts about sex and ethics or other group dynamics, romances within the Pagan community tend to be one of the big problems with groups that go kablooey.

That being said, the book is an erotic romance, which means that there’s no closed doors. It’s rather spicy! So if that’s not your thing, you should know that up front

In the novella, Amber and Tristan are going through their own journey through the Longest Night vigil to step into Knighthood. To step into Service. To stand with integrity and make a commitment to their coven.

I think that non-Pagans will certainly enjoy the book–it’s about two people finding love together, it’s not about being Pagan. But, I also think that Pagans will get something special out of this story because it has some of the unique quirks of our community, of the things that we do. There’s Arthurian myth, there’s ritual work, there’s characters who do the Renaissance Faire and SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism), and just for fun, the coven hosts Heather Dale for a house concert.

Word of Mouth
If you like romance, consider checking out the book. And, if you know folks who like romance, consider the book as a Solstice gift or just mentioning it to people that might enjoy the story.

As more and more books are published, it’s sometimes difficult as an author without a massive marketing budget to get the word out about my works. Advertising is expensive. As I work to bring in enough income as an author and artist to fund my work so that I have time to write about Pagan leadership and ritual facilitation, I definitely appreciate any help my readers can offer in spreading the word.

I often say words are powerful magic, but it’s true. Word of mouth is pretty potent, particularly when promoting small and independent writers, artists, musicians, and publishers.

Pagan-Owned Businesses
I also want to give a shout-out here to Pagan Writers Press. All month long, Pagan Writers Press is offering discounts and giveaways to celebrate the Winter Solstice. Buying from PWP supports another Pagan-owned business and Pagan authors. PWP is a small press, and can also use any help you might offer in promoting their books.

What’s the best way you can help Pagan authors and Pagan-owned businesses? Other than buying books that you enjoy, the best way you can help is by sharing the link to the book on your Facebook or Twitter, and even just telling people about books that you like. Writing a nice review–even a short one–is a great way to help a book get more attention and sell more copies.

And, for those of you where Romance novels aren’t your thing, no worries. I have a book on Dreamwork coming out from Jupiter Gardens Press in a couple of weeks. Jupiter Gardens Press is another Pagan-owned business. More on that soon!

A Winter Knight’s Vigil is an erotic romance novella available through Pagan Writers Press.

About the Book:
Sexy, kilt-wearing Tristan has captured Amber’s attention on many occasions. But as members of the Kingsword coven, which has strict rules about intimate relationships inside the circle, dating him is out of the question.

When the coven heads to a secluded woodland cabin to celebrate the Winter Solstice, Amber finds herself closer than ever to Tristan. As the Longest Night approaches and their group’s ritual workings intensify, the pair realizes that they can no longer hide from their feelings.

Just as King Arthur held vigil before being knighted, Tristan and Amber face their shadows—and the realization that one or both of them might have to leave the coven.

Or can they be together without breaking their honor?

***

Excerpt (PG-13) Amber experiences a trancing and drumming ritual   |  Excerpt (Spicy hot)
Buy the book for $2.99  | Smashwords   | Amazon  |  Barnes & Noble  |  All Romance eBooks

Free Giveaway: 
I’m hosting a giveaway including one hardcopy of the Wild Shifters anthology (with my story Werewolves in the Kitchen in it), one eBook of A Winter Knight’s Vigil, several pieces of hand-made jewelry, 3 gently used Sherrilyn Kenyon books, one set of 4 handmade cards, and one small painting. Click the link to enter by liking my FB page, following me on Twitter, and a host of other ways to gain additional entries.  9 winners will be chosen.

Ritual Arts: Techniques for Aspecting

Hey folks,

Reclaiming Quarterly has been releasing features of past issues. They’ve uploaded a feature on Aspecting. Below is the information to see it. If you’re interested in ritual techniques around Aspecting/Drawing Down, this is a pretty good introduction.

Aspecting Feature -
http://www.reclaimingquarterly.org/86/RQ86-18-Theme-Aspecting.pdf

ASPECTING: EXPERIENCING THE DIVINE
Theme section – RQ #86 – Spring 2002
From the RQ Archives – see link below

A PDF collection of articles on the magical practices of Aspecting
and Anchoring, from Reclaiming Quarterly Issue 86, Spring 2002.

Included are articles from a number of people who have helped
integrate this material into the dynamic mix of Reclaiming:
- Pomegranate Doyle
- Sage
- Robin La Sirena
- Laurel Kadish
- Inanna Hazel
- Ortha Splingaerd

This feature is part of the ongoing release of the Reclaiming
Quarterly Archives. Selected features online. Or get the complete
collection for just $25 per disk (each disk contains ten back issues
and dozens of bonus features – first disk available now!).

Visit our website for more info:

RQ Archives - http://www.reclaimingquarterly.org/archives/

Reblog: The Wild Hunt — What Paganism Offers Me, What I Offer Paganism

A great post from Jason Pitzl-Waters on why he writes for the Wild Hunt. Some of his words could be the words of any of us Pagan leaders that step out to do this work.

“I would be lying if I said that the strain of expectation wasn’t sometimes more than I feel I can bear, and for the last several years I have wrestled with intermittent bouts of burn-out. No matter how excellent you strive to be, there will always be someone who is unhappy with the way things are done. The main accusation made against my person is that I’m some sort of sell-out, that I’m secretly batting for some faction, religion, or viewpoint. The truth is far more mundane, and far less exciting.”

- See more at: http://wildhunt.org/2013/11/what-paganism-offers-me-what-i-offer-paganism.html