Dear Neophyte,
My sister (room mate) is on a journey of self-rediscovery right now. I've been supportive for the last two and a half months. During that time she pulled away from me and I let her have her space. She filled that space with talking non-stop about herself and nothing but herself. One night I couldn't take it anymore and used drinking as an excuse to make her talk about something other than her guy problems.
Everything was good for several days until the other day when she accused me of inappropriate behavior while I was drunk. We discussed the issue, I apologize while explaining my side, and that was suppose to be that. A few days latter I brought up an issue I was having in a non-aggressive way and literally got yelled at for 45 minutes straight and right before I had to go to work.
It's been three days and it's still bothering me. The main reason it's still bothering me is because she's fine now that she's gotten all her aggression and accusations out and is glowing in the light of getting demons off her chest. However I still have things I want to discuss that didn't get discussed. On top of that the problem we did discuss which were on her are not being addressed.
Basically I had problems to discuss and instead of listening to me in a mature fashion she yelled at me a lot for having the audacity to expect her to honor her word that she'd stop doing the things she was doing. She's made no attempt to stop talking non-stop about herself (and has in fact fallen off the narcissistic deep end today by making me repeatedly stop what I'm doing to take pictures of her while she puts makeup on and poses). Instead of the balance being restored it's gone even further out of balance.
Normally when someone says something that isn't true to me, such as when she accused me of inappropriate touching, I just tell them my part and move on. Water off a duck. But this duck isn't beading anymore. The water soaked in and is sitting in my chest and not going away. I've been having to make nice for days now and I don't like having to feel that way. It's mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally draining me.
Tonight I had the end of it and decided to look up therapists, read a book from my shamanism instructor called Soul Retrieval by Sandra Ingerman, and see if I couldn't exercise whatever it was out of me. Turns out that while looking up shamanic practitioners in my area I came across a phrase "sharing negative emotions and experiences". An 'ah-ha!' moment happened wherein I realized the reason she feels so good is because she set me up to reenact a traumatic experience and then something happened where something jumped out of her and into me. Each time we talked about that night I got angrier and angrier about it and dwelled on it and I don't dwell on anything that's happened since I left the woman-hating, abusive, rape-culture loving South. I don't even dwell on the South being so woman raping and child neglecting. That's on them. I"m in a better place.
So, seeking ways to remove this whatever it was (Demon? Soul part? Emotions?) from myself I opened the Gate, pulled it out of myself and let it get sucked into the Otherworld. It seemed to go willingly, almost like a frightened child running out of a burnt down building and into the green, cool woods.
That's when I realized there was a huge chance that thing was a soul piece of her's that jumped onto me. These are just my impressions that I gathered over the course of the night, but it seems to me she was working on her sexual healing and calling her pieces back. They were coming back under the condition that she get and remain strong enough to not let them get hurt again. She violated that by deliberately throwing me under the trigger bus and running over me with her trauma. She put me in the role of the other people who had done that and set up the situation to have me re-enact it. Since she didn't react strongly the soul part fled again to someone stronger than her and that's me. The misery and anxiety of that time has stuck with me because I can't fix the problem for either of them.
Before I shut the Gate I hoped the soul piece (if that's what it was) would find a friend that would take it to a safe place where it would relax and heal before coming back. I got the distinct impression Horus was there and guiding the piece. I don't work with Horus but I do have a statue of Him in Tennessee. Lady Google tells me Horus is seen as a healing deity and has been since antiquity.
I merged with my spirit helpers after that and asked them to fill the remaining void with light. I'm no longer angry and dwelling on it, but I still am upset and there is a need in me to talk once again about the issue with my sister, just to clarify my firm position that I did not cause the trauma, I just reopened an old and unhealed wound. For this situation to be resolved she needs to admit her part in retraumatizing herself and release me from the burdens she placed on me by forcing her negative emotions and experiences onto our present relationship. The demon is gone but the damage can't heal until that happens.
After that I still felt something in my chest so I chose the red stone that "s**" chose for me last semester I was in the shamanism class. Using the technique that my teacher taught me I took down the stone (it "called" to me, I think?) and breathed into it for about 5 minutes trying to transfer the rest of the negative feelings into it. Usually you earth the stone and let the ground mulch the energy. Living in a second story condo I am planning to have a walk around somewhere to bury it for a turn of the moon.
That didn't fully work. I felt unsettled energeticly so I took down the healing rattle I got in class and shook it around myself to realign my energy. It worked to a certain degree. I think I feel Bast or Hather telling me they want that rattle. It's not really dedicated. I've forgotten most of the tidbits about the where-from, who-dedicated, made-with, and used-for of most of my spiritual supplies acquired in that class. The rattle worked to settle me but picked up a LOT of negative energy. I blew it into the ground and gave it to Geb and the Goddess to mulch.
I realized then that I needed to do something else. I can't very well lay down and journey with my sister and her company being loud in the next room. Just then she comes in and asks if I want to be left alone or would I like to join them. That really ran home to me that the thing I took out of me was part of her or had been on here. At that moment I also realized I need to practice psychic shielding against anything else that might be on her from here on out, and not forget to shield either when she talks to me either.
I told her I had something I was doing and I wanted to be in the living room alone. She offered to turn off her TV and take the cat in but I said no to both. I'd be zoned in on fire and there is nothing the cat or TV can do to disrupt me when I'm in front of a fire. My sister really is sweet. She genuinely doesn't understand the damage that she's done and she genuinely isn't going to want to take responsibility for it when I tell her about it.
I went into the living room with the stone, started a fire and prayed. I prayed and prayed and prayed. I opened the Gate, let more energy out and kept it open, letting whatever wanted to go out go. First I prayed in ryhm that I can't remember now for removal of negativity and unwanted emotions. Then I prayed for removal of negative entities and beings that were trying to harm me. For most of it I forgot to be fiercely compassionate but when I did I changed my wording to be more gentle, inviting the beings to leave me because I can't help them and to go to the Gate where Someone who can hep them is waiting. A lot of energy went out. Most of it wasn't even from me. I think the fire stone did a lot of it's work.
After a while of playing with the fire, letting it flicker and meditating on the situation, emotions and consequences of playing the role I was thrust into I asked my spirit helpers to come and merge with me again, to fill me up with their light so the hole in my chest would fill up. I've asked Fox to do that before and He had. This time it didn't work. None of the times I asked Them to fill me up did They. Or maybe They did and it's something else I'm feeling.
Tending the fire has always been soothing to me. It gives me peace and joy and is one of the few times an aspect of my personality was noted as a child. When there was a fire around people would see how I looked at it and notice I was an individual. Near the end of tending it I spontaneously got the urge to invoke Hestia as a Hearth Goddess(tm). Something tells me She wants my attention because it was a hearth I'm at and it's Her domain. I called on Bridgit too since Her holiday of Imbolc is coming up and I'm planning to celebrate it. I'm not used to working with these Goddesses and a little bit of the trauma came back from being in the shamanism class. Back then I was gaining so many new helpers so fast I didn't have time (and also didn't make time when I had it) to give each and every one of them my attention. The result is that I stopped paying attention to my main Two and just worked on Anubis and my Spirit Helpers. I also invited fire into myself for a moment to burn out whatever was inside me.
This seriously damaged my relationship with my Two. There was no way I could juggle so many different magical systems (Egyptian, Celtic, Druid, Norse, Shamanism, Greek and Roman all at once) and make heads or tales. I'm a personality that likes to compartmentalize things in order to make sense of them and mixing Egyptian and Celtic deities on top of Druidic tree worship (for starters) threw me for a loop. I either had to do each and every one of them every day in separate ceremonies in order to avoid offending some of Their delicate sensibilities or I had to narrow it down to one or two. The two I narrowed it down to was Anubis and Spirit Helpers. Then Thoth jumped in. They are far less picky than She-Of-The-Broken-Crockery Who won't share an altar with Hekate and choked my sister in her sleep one night because she was snoring too loudly on the other side of the wall.
Slowly I'm trying to reestablish the relationships I lost, but there are still more helpers than I know what to do with. Now adding Hestia and maybe Bridget? What am I going to do with all these Goddesses!? Anyway, that's not really the point of this exercise. At this point I just played with the fire for the pure joy of tending a fire. I believe I'm going to make this my daily meditation. I can't just sit still and close my eyes and see pictures in my head. I have way too much ADHD for that. From now on when I go for walks I'll pick up any sized sticks I can and bring them back home with me to burn in the fireplace.
I let the fire burn itself out after a while while I went through the forgotten Yule bough basket and picked out stems that were still green to use on Imbolc if they are still green on Imbolk. It's been over a month since I took those branches in after they came down in a wind storm so I'm surprise they are still green. I said goodbye to the Hearth Goddesses and noticed how badly stained with soot my hands were. The greens went into a trash bag in my room and put with my religious supplies. Hopefully that keeps them green, with the holes in the bags giving them enough air to breath without letting them dry out before Feb 2ed.
Getting back to my room the first thing I did was take a shower. This was to remove the horrid smell of camp fire out of my skin. I say horrid because it's so overpoweringly strong when I try to sleep at night and every time I twitch the smell of smoke chokes me from under the blankets. The clothes I was wearing went strait into the hamper. In the shower I took my sweet time, but halfway through felt the need for even more cleansing. So I cleaned my chakras top to bottom and let Geb and the Goddess have the much to mulch. My heart chakra, over the very area of my body I'm feeling the constant sensation in, was shredded and weak. It didn't want to bloom open for me. I pulled a lot of gunk out of it and it took a bit longer than the rest. It was also the one that "splattered" and had to be rinsed off the sides of the stall. It took longer to get it off my hand as well.
Lets talk about my red chakra for a second. That sucker popped open and shone like lime light next to a gas lamp. It was smaller than the rest, being the one I use the least IRL, but that didn't stop it from shining almost half again as bright as the rest. The gunk came right off and down the drain it went. This just goes to reiterate the horse dreams I've been having! Cleaning my chakras is going to become a new activity for me in the shower now. It only takes a minute or two and with as long as I spend just standing there enjoying the water I can use some of that time to clean chakras. I also need to balance mine, but that is for another day!
Getting out of the shower I put my PJs on and as soon as I go to sit back down at my desk I feel my sister's negative energy all over it. It's where I've been sitting sweating that vibe for days now. Immediately I grab my grandmother's brass bell (Hekate's now) and ring it all over my room purifying the space with sound. GODS ON HIGH does my space need to be purified! Just like with the rattle I didn't care if they heard me in the next room. I hope she heard me and I hope it sticks into her head that my space gets purified at the drop of a dime tonight and that I didn't want to be near her tonight.
After I put the bell up I do an additional word clearing near the computer verbally telling the energy to get lost, go to Geb and get mulched. Rearranging the items on my desk helped to clear out the rest of the energy ("stuck" , as the saying goes). Part of me wanted to debate whether I should redo the house blessing at Imbolc but now the house blessing is the number one thing getting done! Along with making the robe from the pattern I bought. The entire house needs to be removed and cleaned of all negative energy. Everything needs to be cleaned from top to bottom with magic wash and lemons. Lots and lots and lots of lemons. In fact, can it just be straight up lemon juice and pure castile soap? I just need purity and springiness right now.
So, after doing a cleansing in my room I put out three new altar bowls on my shrine shelves and poured a toast to everyone. "Cool water in thanks for help with the 'fire'." I even toasted to Fire for It's help tonight, telling it that air feeds fire and water becomes air as it evaporates. Appropriate offering? It's not threatening if you just patiently wait for it to become usable.
Then I got to sit down and take all of this in. Even as I write this, and probably because I'm writing this, I feel the hole in my chest mending over. My instinct said that something was wrong but didn't quite tell me what it was. I kept trying to eject things out of it and also fill it up at the same time. It occurred to me as I sat by the fire contemplating my sister's healing that it could be that it's just a wound. Like any wound it needs to heal on it's own.
This lead me to the conclusion that I need to start shielding since right now I have no shield, I'm not merged and I have a gaping hole in my 'spiritual chest' that might look mighty inviting to whomever else might be out there looking for a home, meal or healer. I do believe now that whatever jumped off my sister and stuck to me did so because she betrayed it, causing more of the same trauma and since I was not actually the bad guy here it sought me out in the role of healer.
All of this leads me back to the path of Priestess and down the role of Healer. Imbolc is the holiday for rededications, house cleaning, Bridgit and healing. I wanted to get back on my path and I guess I showed I was willing enough to do the effort if the Universe met me halfway and gave me a reason to work. I have far, far more reasons to serve Them now than I did in previous months and I feel my own self-healing beginning to take place. Oh, the healing that comes from just a written word!
I need to learn or relearn:
1) Psychic shielding.
2) Fireside meditation.
3) Chakra cleansing.
4) Chakra balancing.
5) Home clearing and blessing.
6) Home warding.
7) Imbolc robe.
8) Imbolc rededication ritual.
9) Soul loss and spiritual healing.
10) Herbalism and physical healing.
Taken into consideration I want to do all this in order to stamp this house as my domain I wish I hadn't told my sister to ask for Imbolc off with me. She doesn't celebrate it and par for the course is using my birthday and the holy day as an excuse to just do errands. That miffs me something rough, though I didn't think about it till now that I really just wish she'd go to work so I'd have the day to myself for rituals, blessings, cleansing, wardings, etc.
No, one last thought before I go: originally I wasn't going to tell my sister about the soul piece. With all that's happened as a result of her "self-growth = ignore my sister and get b*tchy when she forces me to remember she's still a person who needs reciprocation" I honestly don't think she'll own up to it. I can't get healing from this angle. Even as I type this the irritation in my chest is just turning to loving compassion for her situation. In order to tell her she needs to confront that trauma and heal it she'll think I'm attacking if I don't explain why. Explaining why would be attacking since she's not going to want to admit to the damage she caused, regardless of soul pieces to be gained or lost.
It's been a long day so I'm going to dose some sleepy meds and head off into what I can imagine are going to be hellaciously wonderful dreams or no dreams at all. The latter tends to happen when I ask for dreams of a specifically religious nature. The religious dreams happens when I ask for advice on mundane issues, haha!
Salutations,
Sesh
