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[nitou]

It started with the energetic elevation of falling in love with a friend, followed by the painful realization that it is unrequited. He observed that it seems as if my potential is crushed or locked up. At first my wounded ego howled in protest... Alas, he is right, and he is not the first to notice and remark on my apparent dullness/death. So now I'm dealing with my ego butt-hurt and digging up old bones.  I have been lost to myself for ten, maybe fifteen years.

It happened gradually at first while I was in college and noticed that my creativity was waning. After some pains and failures, I crashed hard. I became ill with some schizo-bipolar illness which lasted for about six years. I finally found relief when my daughter came and gave me something to live for. I felt calm and peaceful while I was pregnant.  Unfortunately, I made some poor life choices during this episode. I can barely make a living on my own, and that is a constant thorn. I am trapped in a dead marriage. (Yes, I have a crush on a man while I am married. No, I don't want to have an affair. I have been living in a fantasy all along, but I chose to maintain it because it made me feel good.)  
While digging into my psyche looking for my lost self, I came to face some skeletons I had buried. They look kind of like this:

Imagine that your people (spirits) are murdered, annihilated. Your sacred places destroyed. Everything is gone. Then one day you wake up and find yourself among your oppressor. You are one of them. Your old people are gone or they no longer recognize you, maybe you have been banished. You are alienated from your new people. You hate them and you hate yourself. What can you do then, but assimilate... and forget?

There was the traumatized wolf spirit that occupied me when I was eighteen. I think it passed to the other side- after some years I saw its carcass in my mind's eye and I felt at peace.  Yet, a little of it is still with me, I think. My dad was there and he helped me through it.  He warned me that if I allowed myself to be open like that too many times, I would lose myself.  Does it have something to do with my sense of loss now? Since I was a teen I have experienced myself as a dual mind, part new/scientific and part old/spiritual. These sides used to fight each other, until I buried one of them.

Now I wear scientific materialism as an Aegis Shield against spiritual assault, and it works very well.  I am a very skeptical thinker and have found that things of spirit dissipate like dew in the sun when you subject them to critical analysis. Since I adopted this creed I have been at peace- my head is clear and the spooks no longer bother me.

But the sleeper is stirring and I am thinking about matters of the soul again.  Yet I am still asleep, comatose, dead inside. I have taken an interest in the subject of the "Dark Night if the Soul." I went through that once, and what did I gain? Humility for one, though I am not sure that is a good thing because my self-confidence is sagging badly. I learned to be more self-aware as I tried to analyze to my own mental states in a desperate attempt to discern reality and regain control. But there was nothing I could do to save myself, and I had little guidance so I could not complete the journey.

I feel that I should complete the journey someday, and I am afraid. I have other things to do right now. I am back in school to try to get my career on track, and I have a young daughter who needs me to be present and reasonably healthy. I have loneliness like a small black hole in my heart, though I mostly ignore it too. The dark night is a journey that one must take alone, but it would help to have understanding people nearby to offer comfort.

If I step into the dark, I will need clear guidance so I do not fail. I have read parts of St. John's book "Dark Night of the Soul." But I cannot relate with Christian theology. Buddhism is appealing for a number of reasons, so that is a possibility. But my heart is pulled toward Shamanic or nature spirituality. Why? Maybe because I used to feel some affinity with the forest spirits. Maybe because it is dark and earthy, or maybe because it is most frightening to me. But this choice seems a bit dubious for lack of good information, and it seems to lack a clear structure and ethical code that other religions have. Both Christianity and Buddhism discourage that route and I can understand their reasons why.

A lot of questions running through my head... If you live with your foot in the other world, how can you function in this one? What has happened to me? What should I do? Am I asking for trouble now? Can there be any relief for the anguished ghosts? Are they me or not-me? I have a vague sense of responsibility that comes at the end of the tunnel... what is that? Should I just forget it all again? Can I? What to do about the duality, if anything?

[Sigmund]

You have a lot going on.  En route to anything else, I 'd suggest surrendering them to Goddess or your favorite deity and asking for assistance or/and guidance, if you haven't already done that.  Let them take it from you and handle it.  Just remember to ask that they fill the holes and spaces where the stuff used to be with their light and grace.  That prevents unwanted stuff and hungers from settling in.

I hope to post more later.  Meanwhile, I wish things to be in a manner and at a pace that you can manage and that promote your spiritual growth and development. 

[nitou]

We do not have reason to trust or believe in a higher power. The closest thing to a higher power that I can believe in is Qi. I have been studying it some, but habits are slow to change. Nevertheless, I can see sense in your advice and will think about how to incorporate it.  I do appreciate your response here.

I don't usually refer to myself as "we," and don't meet the criteria for a dissociative disorder. We present seemlessly as one person, but sometimes I just feel more comfortable referring to myself as "we." One thing we have noticed is that it seems we are more at ease with each other than before. "Old Sister" has gotten quiet again lately. I asked her where she went and she responded, "well, you said you needed to do your homework..." and I am in IT which is very much the domain of the "New Sister." Maybe it is therapeutic just to express these strange things among people who can understand them, even if they seem nonsensical and even embarrassing to "me."

[Mari]

Hi!

Unrequited love is a painful but effective way to get kundalini awakened. Pain forces us deep into ourselves, and eventually we surrender seeing the bigger picture. He plays a part of a distant icon, close enough but unreachable, so you have safe environment to be heartsick and obsessed until you get clear enough to fully realize it's all happening inside of yourself. Starting to think about the fantasy as a love affair with your masculine side, Divine Beloved, might get your creativity flow again. He's your Muse... Get in touch with Him.

http://kundalini-teacher.com/guidance/db.php

I have a sense that a big chunk of skulls and bones in your underworld is your repressed power as a woman. Women are their own prison guards too, it's not only men. Generations of mothers put forward the repressive programmings, because they want to keep their daughters safe in patriarchy, even when it's not really needed in the western world anymore. Reclaiming your power as a woman, women's mysteries, leads us to underworld journey. Being a powerful creative sexual woman was a ticket to torture and death, maybe even death to our loved ones, at one time... So during that journey, fears come up. But I assure you, it's worth it.

If you have had some mental issues in the past I think it's good that you have  scientific mind. When psychic experiences go very strange, the scientific mind has a cold detached attitude towards your experience and you can be at peace again sooner. Of course it takes some magic and wonder away from life, but some science sounds like a good safety net for you at the moment. Most psychic experiences deserve to be ignored anyway. Science and magical living can be combined, I am doing it every day. Surrender your old beliefs so you get some room for new ones.

You got a break for a few years and now you're being called to continue the journey. If you look at yourself now, are you the same young woman you were when you crashed last time? Your motherhood, life experience and scientific mind give you nice grounding on physical reality. Even tho your marriage isn't perfect it's still there, you're not completely alone with your daughter. You probably have some friends too. Count your blessings, appreciate what you already have and contemplate how you could make your resources even stronger. Goddesses call makes you suffer, but otherwise your life seems to be in order. Yep, students have money problems, tell me about it... What you need the most, if you start again spiritual seeking and there might be some rough parts ahead, is support network. Friends who can give realistic perspective on your psychic experiences when you're lost in the forest, and give comfort. Some help with your daughter if you're in the middle of emotional or psychic crisis. Maybe a good therapist and a spiritual community where you feel you belong, where you can ask for help and get peer support when needed.

Well yeah, patriarchal religions discourage everything that has something to do with women mysteries and magic. Listen to your heart on this. I have gone through deep fears related to earth magic, fear of the devil and stuff, and I haven't even been raised as a Christian. But the ancient fears are there, in the collective unconsciousness. St. John's book is good, but admittedly difficult to read. Much easier for me to dig into this website and Kundalini gateway archives to get information about this subject.

People do function in this world while having the other foot in the otherworld. It's possible and it's been done. You hear the call of the Goddess and it's getting loud and clear. Cultivate trust on Her. Trust yourself. Give love to your fear and be compassionate towards yourself. Take one small step at a time when you feel like, if things go overboard focus on your daughter, your studies and your daily life for a while. You're able to take bigger leaps of faith when your trust grows. So don't push yourself too much. From this website you find essays about ghosts, entities and spirits. You don't have to be afraid of them, if you sense them. They are you and then they are not. You are all that is, but it's a non-duality insight, and you're not there yet so it would be a living truth to you. At some point, the shift happens and you realize the duality issue clearer.

Call of the Goddess is very hard to resist. But She wont give you more than you can handle, even if you sometimes might feel you cannot handle anymore.

[Sigmund]

I can't help but be touched by what you say, nitou, and to feel your struggle.  I'm glad you posted here. 

In reading what you say, these things come to mind as things you could easily do to be more comfortable and to have more of the life you want. 

For clarity and stability, grounding is a real pillar.  It will stabilize and carry you safely along especially when the flow of energy increases or gets uncomfortable.  There's a link on this site to a great animation.  You can be comfortably in grounding as it flows, moreso as you breathe normally while in it, that is, letting the breath happen, not making it happen.  Its flow stabilzes the flow of energy and burns off dross.  It also opens your crown which is important so that energy has an exit and doesn't pool in or scatter to one organ or another.   

Likewise, if you do an entity clearing, you'll be free of accummulated energy that has taken on a life of its own and is feeding on you.   That way, your energy could go to better purposes.  You'll be more focused  too, and will get more precise results as well. 

This is a tip from this site about clearing them - "The simplest way to clear entities, is simply to ask your Guardian Angels, or whatever you put faith in, to take them into the Light.  This is enough."  Say "Thank you" afterwards to potentiate what happens. 

Another thing you could try to clear stuff you've picked up, from your regular comings and goings and from things undealt with, is to see, feel, imagine (whatever works for you), yellow light radiating at your solar plexus radiating in all directions.   Combining that with letting your body breathe at its own pace helps in nice ways.  You may spend time with this or you may only need do this a minute or so at any time to clear yourself. 

In closing, one way of dealing with conflict is to give it over to whatever you have faith in to use for your spiritual growth and development.  To potentiate things, say "Thank you" and feel gratitude. 

Namaste. 

[nitou]

My friend has been good to me. Unwittingly, he let me have the illusion that gave me a taste of life, then he let me down without hurting me. He has a way of showing me a mirror to my unconscious. I will look for the Divine Beloved to help alleviate loneliness, and so I can disentangle this romantic attachment and appreciate my friend as he really is rather than as the images I project onto him.

I have used the Enneagram system which offers self-development practices specific to personality type. One recommendation for me is to practice bodily awareness and moving meditation; that seems to be an effective way for me to ground myself.  I work on being aware of my body, my breathing, and observing/quieting my mind. I seem to do it best while walking or doing chores. If I am not mistaken the result is the same as grounding.

I had a bit of a break through last night. I stepped into the river below where the tears are and I just let them out. I sunk into the grief but without really feeling it, just crying and purging. I thought of the pain in the world, of the evil and injustice and I wailed and purged. I saw a glimpse of non-duality while crying, that is, a sense of connection to it all.   Coincidentally (hmm), I got what I think was a migraine aura (without headache) in my sleep. My head felt strange and I saw sparks, and it wakened me into that strange half-wake state. I was paralyzed, awake and dreaming. It was unsettling, but I understand these things as neurological glitches so it wasn't scary. No demon sitting on my chest. I am not so afraid anymore.

When I was at work today I was practicing the meditative mind like I described above, and it was a little easier to maintain without getting bored and distracted. I was more aware of my surroundings.  I could see some of non-duality, as if through a peephole maybe. But it made me tired- the events from the night before and trying to maintain that mental state made me feel tired.  I wonder, if anyone can answer, why does it seem to take so much energy to be in that state of mind? 

There are a lot of things I haven't read yet and it will take time to study them in between everything else. My challenge is in reminding myself to take a step each day, to keep practicing and be more disciplined, and to resist the temptation to "check out."

Thank you for your responses.