Necessary Updates

[Sharysa]

No, nobody here said none of the above. They invited you, very politely and without the condiscendence you are using toward them now, to consider that there were more than a few inconsistencies between the way you experience those 'gods' and the way they usually present themselves to others, or even in relation to their socio-cultural context.

I can't recall anyone who even considered implying that Aengus or any other god, celtic or otherwise, 'doesn't work with someone out of nowhere'.

Okay, I looked through the thread and I definitely only got that idea because people kept asking "Are you sure this is a god (or the RIGHT god) and not some spirit trying to trick you, or just all in your head?"

To me that implied two things: Either he was lying, or I was lying (to myself). Which, yet again, made me defensive because I went, "Why would he lie to me?" or "Why would I lie about this? / Why would I make all this up?" So I went, "We can't be wrong, so you must have gotten the wrong idea."

And that was a really bad misinterpretation that I should have caught myself doing earlier.

And even if they had done that, you were already sharing in detail your experiences of abuse since you began posting in the Morrigan thread, long before Aengus was ever mentioned on this board and without that nobody prompted that direction even minimally.

I just realized another problem I've been sliding back into: Refusing to take responsibility for my misconceptions or confusion.

Once more, I'm sorry for doing that.

Since I keep getting confused, defensive, and constantly struggle to translate context- or subtext-heavy interactions into written text, I really think one of the mods should lock this thread.

I'll try not to talk about this anymore. And if I do, I'll definitely watch myself more closely.

[Sharysa]

 
I was reminded by a staff member that we don't lock/delete threads.

I also realized that my overarching problem is that I never really stopped to think about what's too much, not enough, or "likely to be misunderstood if I don't word things really well" information. Finding a large, active pagan forum after seven-ish years of religious isolation kind of made me go "HOLY CRAP, I NEED TO ASK ABOUT THIS RIGHT NOW."

Definitely going to start thinking "Should I post this (right now)?" before I end up doing this again.

Also, I did two tangible steps today:

1) Walking meditation. I went to pick Mom up, found out I was half an hour early, and so I decided to walk around. After five-ish minutes I started feeling like crap and tried to ignore it, but then I remembered that my theater director said to "let distractions go through you."

Had to go back to the car after ten minutes of acknowledging all the "How do I sort out everything that's been going on? Crap, I'm supposed to be focusing on my walking--thank god the blocks are so big, because I could have walked through a red light by accident, and when will I stop feeling like this?" thoughts, but at least I wasn't trying to ignore it again.

It felt like I was coming apart, and I started trying really hard to "hold on" to all the pieces/thoughts flying out in different directions, and then I realized that this is what I've been doing for the past few months. After a few minutes of trying to hold on out of habit, I just went "Fine, I give up. The bastards are all in my head, anyway--it's not like they're literally flying off and getting lost."

And now I feel sort of better, because they all... came back, I guess. Because they never really left in the first place? I don't know.

2) Buying The Courage to Heal when I was at the mall earlier. Thought about buying the workbook as well, but the first book alone is twenty-ish dollars.

I skimmed the quotes before I started trying to ignore all the flashbacks, so I bought it and dropped it in my trunk. And then shoved it in my book cupboard after just enough time to take it out of the bag. Right now it's still there, waiting for me to read it.

[Annie Roonie]

...

Now about that school free therapist... or any therapist! At least try, female. No need to go it alone, quite the reverse. Have a pro to call and see. Take the salt shaker with the book please, but you already know how to get creative and be skeptical to find what you need.

Btw, not stalky or anything, just googling. And I found you in several places. I ask your forgiveness but I wanted to make sure there wasn't any fan fic out there that involved commenting in a forum like this. In other words, I wanted to make sure you weren't using pagansim or abuse as a tool to mine for dialogue etc.

I don't think you are. Sorry, but I've seen that happen and I do not put myself out there much about it precisely because of such things. I usually remain vague b/c most everybody has gone through something.

Anyway, the only non-evidence I found was that you role play, cosplay (very nice costumes btw) contribute to fanfic and have dedicated yourself to those worlds to some degree. The creativity shines. Part of me thinks that these gods talk to you like they do because you have written so much dialogue and for some pretty face paced things like anime. Wish I could chat about that but after a year of advising an informal group of anime kids years back, the only thing that rubbed off was an abiding love for a dog named Potato. piku piku.

Anyway, good luck. I'm saying goodbye to this thread and wishing you well, Sharysa.

[MadZealot]

Christ.  How has this gone on for 10 pages?

[Starglade]

1) Walking meditation. I went to pick Mom up, found out I was half an hour early, and so I decided to walk around. After five-ish minutes I started feeling like crap and tried to ignore it, but then I remembered that my theater director said to "let distractions go through you."

Had to go back to the car after ten minutes of acknowledging all the "How do I sort out everything that's been going on? Crap, I'm supposed to be focusing on my walking--thank god the blocks are so big, because I could have walked through a red light by accident, and when will I stop feeling like this?" thoughts, but at least I wasn't trying to ignore it again.

 
I can speak to the meditation a little bit. One of the big things in Buddhist-style meditation is learning to just let the thoughts and feelings arise and keep moving. Rather than "OH SHIT A THOUGHT! I'm SO FUCKED now!" it's a case of "There's a thought. And there it goes . . . hm. There's another one. And there it went . . ." They'll come up as they must, and the trick is to not think about them past acknowledging their presence. They arise, they leave. They arise, they leave. It's not all about "emptiness," necessarily. That's a trap too many Westerners fall into, thinking that they--shouldn't be thinking.

I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying it doesn't have to be as hard as we think it should be. Not all the time.

[mlr52]

That's a trap too many Westerners fall into, thinking that they--shouldn't be thinking.

Pause.
My off topic comment: my problems always start with me thinking.
Thank you.
End of pause.

[Sharysa]

Christ.  How has this gone on for 10 pages?

This has gone on for ten pages because I did three stupid things:

1) Finding out my hometown was putting on a production of my dream musical Spring Awakening, then telling the Morrigan (a goddess known for being intense) that "I WILL BE ILSE FUCKING NEUMANN IF I HAVE TO CUT A BITCH."

2) Upon getting rejected due to Shit Happening(TM), I unknowingly did the imbas forosnai ritual. Not knowing that it was "life-or-death emergency" material because I had no idea I was even doing it, I went through ten epiphanies in five days. Which led to me wondering if I was crazy, until I finally got advice from my Tarot deck to look through Celtic Reconstructionist sites.

3) In the meantime, I'd been having visions about meeting a guy and being happy with him, and at the time I felt so much like shit that I contacted Aengus Og (another god known for being intense) to help me find him. Which had Aengus say "Sorry, sweetie, I can't help you with that," but helping me out with my various issues, and putting me through more epiphanies in the process. Which led to me wondering if I was crazy yet again, misinterpreting one hell of a lot of what he said, and I realized around page 7 of this thread that it was mostly because I forgot to ask him who he was and had been subconsciously worried that it wasn't him. He then told me that I'd dodged a huuuuge bullet.

4) In the OTHER meantime, I started asking people for help because I really hoped this kind of thing had happened before, or at least that I wasn't crazy. I failed to comprehend that a) my "conversations" with the gods were extremely hard to translate into written text, and b) My efforts to do so were fraught with mistakes, like forgetting that "You can't just run off and see a therapist because people tell you to!" is a REALLY ALARMING STATEMENT without the context of "You're just avoiding the real problem that you still can't trust people!"

5) This whole thing happened because I've been spiritually isolated for eight years and had no idea that I'd done the equivalent of going from zero to five-hundred miles an hour.

So I'm making the effort to take things down a notch.

Or ten.

They'll come up as they must, and the trick is to not think about them past acknowledging their presence. They arise, they leave. They arise, they leave. It's not all about "emptiness," necessarily. That's a trap too many Westerners fall into, thinking that they--shouldn't be thinking.

It's actually a combination of "can't think because I'm supposed to meditate," and "can't think because THESE FEELINGS ARE CONFUSING AND UNCOMFORTABLE."

[Sharysa]

Okay, something weird happened last night. The less-weird part was that Aengus showed up and told me, "Congratulations, you (finally) let go!" And I went, "What, with the meditation? It was five minutes." And he said, "It doesn't matter--you let go. And you'll do it again later."

Then I felt the Morrigan come up, and I asked her if I'd done a good job in her mind as well. Then I blinked, and I saw her face, and suddenly I realized that despite following her for nearly eight years, I've never actually seen her before now.

When I blinked, I saw a pale, stark woman with sunken dark eyes and a mass of black hair. She was gaunt and her skin was stretched tight over her bones. She smiled at me with her teeth, and it felt like the reflection from a knife. I knew logically that she was happy/proud/satisfied (?), but I was still on edge because she wasn't saying anything--just standing perfectly still, looking at me and smiling.

I asked, "So what does that mean?" And she started laughing. Not the "haha, that's funny" laugh or a hysterical laugh, she gave this low, throbbing chuckle that put me on edge even more.

Then I saw myself standing on a field with them, and I realized how huge they were. I'm five feet tall and I barely reached their chests, so they'd be at least six feet. For a size comparison, here's Rachel and Finn from Glee. And in addition to their physical size, they kind of... shone, but in different ways. The Morrigan's was really contained and harsh like a fluorescent light, and Aengus' was... magnetic? Like, he'd be the "flame" in "like moths to a flame."

Keep in mind that this took place in the span of a few seconds.

If I don't pay attention, I start hearing the Morrigan's laughing again, and the only thing I know is that it isn't not bad.

-
On the tangible side: I threw away that wish bracelet I made in March. I've been forgetting it a lot lately anyway, and now it feels more like "I am in extreme pain and desperation" than "I want help achieving [X]."

[spoOk]

Christ.  How has this gone on for 10 pages?

ah,sigh. I remember high school.
I don't miss it one bit,or any of the theatrics that come of it either.

[Sharysa]

ah,sigh. I remember high school.
I don't miss it one bit,or any of the theatrics that come of it either.

 
...Which makes me a REALLY late bloomer, considering I graduated nearly five years ago. :ashamed: But one thing I noticed looking at all my threads (holy crap) is that every time I had an epiphany, something "broke/unlocked/came loose."

Gods, maybe all this was the pent-up EVERYTHING lurking in my system--especially from when I was a teenager. I'm sorry you guys had to bear the brunt of it.

[FizzyCat]

Upon getting rejected due to Shit Happening(TM)

I haven't jumped into the fray before because there were many more knowledgeable people here helping, but I cannot let this one go by once more without commenting.

Other people have recommended that you need concrete things to work on, and I think that this is a big one, both for your "mundane" and spiritual life, if you consider yourself a bard. If you want to be a performer in any close-to-approaching-professional capacity, you need to learn to roll with the punches, take responsibility when you do not perform as you had expected, and learn from it. It is not anyone else's fault that you messed up your audition, and it does you no good in the long run to keep deflecting blame, because then you will never improve. From what I remember of the story, you let yourself get thrown by having to wait a long while to audition, yes? (Sorry...the explanation was in a different thread, I believe, and I don't remember which one to look up specifics.) This and far more distracting and upsetting audition circumstances are going to come up; it is unfortunately the nature of the beast. By just blaming the "Shit Happening (TM)", you are dooming yourself to mess up the same way if circumstances happen again, because you won't have strategies to deal with it.

I know from experience here that the best thing you can do is to accept that you did not do as well as you could, and put your energy into learning how to do better the next time. I used to get hung up on all the ways that I thought I was treated unfairly in auditions, so my craft stagnated a lot and I ultimately only kept hurting my own chances. Focus on training yourself in the art of the audition, which is a very different thing than an actual performance, and needs its own dedicated practice time (I have seen terrible performers get cast because they audition well, and amazing performers fail to be cast because they have no audition technique--I'm sure you have also). Please, I urge you to take some ownership of the audition snafu, and use the experience to further your goals.

[Sharysa]

Other people have recommended that you need concrete things to work on, and I think that this is a big one, both for your "mundane" and spiritual life, if you consider yourself a bard. If you want to be a performer in any close-to-approaching-professional capacity, you need to learn to roll with the punches, take responsibility when you do not perform as you had expected, and learn from it.

I have started accepting that, actually--sorry for not making things clearer, but before I auditioned for SA, I wouldn't accept that shit even happened at all. And I did accept that I didn't perform as I expected--it's just when I did, I started getting tangled up in the Morrigan's insistence that I CANNOT GIVE UP ON THIS UNTIL THERE IS LITERALLY NO MORE TIME LEFT.

I'm not saying that I have nothing else to do besides accepting things, and I will indeed work on this for my future auditions.

This and far more distracting and upsetting audition circumstances are going to come up; it is unfortunately the nature of the beast. By just blaming the "Shit Happening (TM)", you are dooming yourself to mess up the same way if circumstances happen again, because you won't have strategies to deal with it.

Well, another part that REALLY threw me was my mother and sister insisting that I "should have planned things better, because now you're making us go out of our way to go to YOUR audition!" when I knew that they were just bothered that theater was starting to affect their real lives.

Focus on training yourself in the art of the audition, which is a very different thing than an actual performance, and needs its own dedicated practice time (I have seen terrible performers get cast because they audition well, and amazing performers fail to be cast because they have no audition technique--I'm sure you have also). Please, I urge you to take some ownership of the audition snafu, and use the experience to further your goals.

One problem is that my teacher is starting to distance his teaching from auditioning for this very reason, but I will definitely start practicing audition work on my own. Maybe I should bring a book or something? The main problem with me waiting is that I get caught up in my OH GOD WHY IS IT TAKING SO LONG thoughts that I trip myself up. Hopefully this is just a learning curve and I won't actually fall prey to the "bad auditioner/great actor" curse.

[SunflowerP]

...Which makes me a REALLY late bloomer, considering I graduated nearly five years ago. :ashamed: But one thing I noticed looking at all my threads (holy crap) is that every time I had an epiphany, something "broke/unlocked/came loose."

Gods, maybe all this was the pent-up EVERYTHING lurking in my system--especially from when I was a teenager. I'm sorry you guys had to bear the brunt of it.

 
Yeah, I've been thinking exactly that about you and your stuff, for weeks.  I'm inclined to attribute it to the abuse - that can delay stuff quite a lot.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I appreciate the apology.  But, now that you've made it, follow it up: it's one thing for us to bear the brunt when you don't realize the impact of it, and quite another if it kept happening now that you do.

Sunflower

[Sharysa]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I appreciate the apology.  But, now that you've made it, follow it up: it's one thing for us to bear the brunt when you don't realize the impact of it, and quite another if it kept happening now that you do.

Yeah, now that I've calmed down, I definitely know that I sound like I've reverted to seventeen years old. Making REALLY huge claims without realizing that someone might actually hold me to it; horrible, horrible confusion; "MY FAMILY IS WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING BECAUSE THEY ARE WRONG AND THEY WANT TO RUIN MY LIIIIIIIFE!" ; and I almost literally went crazy for a boy.

Side-note: I still hear the Morrigan laughing, and a worrying implication I'm getting is "Well, THIS part's over."