Secrets and Refusals

I really hope I am not boring everyone with the soul searching lately, it just seems like at this moment in my life I have been focused more on inner rather than outer working. Alot of thoughts and feelings about my past and my self have been sort of coalescing in the past few weeks, and I find them interesting. Maybe it is good to share, part of being pagan is improving the self too isn't it? I think many times we let the external get the best of our attention and neglect the development of our inner selves. At this time I am trying to incorporate these inner changes into a more holistic approach to spirituality and life in general. So bear with me if you are interested, and pass along until next time.

I fell in love a few years ago, and this time it was real love. Maybe the first time I actually knew what that felt like. Its been nearly four years now with this person and if anything the love between us has only grown. Its been a greater blessing to me than I could describe. It has verified many of my hopes and dreams. But it has also been quite difficult. Being long distance for much of the time, plus many other external difficulties sometimes makes it a challenge. That is not the real difficulty though, its simply a real but surmountable obstacle. The real difficulty has been how much the relationship has revealed to me about myself, and some of the damage life has done to my inner beliefs about myself and others.

I have learned many things the hard way in this relationship, and feel truly amazed at how much my SO has had to bear with in terms of trust issues and my own doubts, particularly in the early years of the relationship. This was when I was just coming out of a very dark time in my life after I pretty much severed ties with a good number of people that I had known for many years simply because I realized that these relationships were and always had been toxic. I don't think I really realized at that point the level of damage that I had allowed those relationships to do to my mind, body, and spirit. It seems like little bits and pieces of it come to the surface from time to time.

Not long ago I had another one of those times when things came to the surface, and I began to distance myself from my SO. I realized that there is a part of me that will simply turn off my emotional attachment to someone as a defense mechanism if I am triggered with memories of past traumatic events. Then of course a cycle of guilt starts when I realize that I am treating the SO coldly simply because they unknowingly triggered something messed up in my emotions. I go through it every so often and I am still learning about myself when it comes to these things.

I remember a conversation not long ago where I was explaining this to the SO and stated that "there are things that have happened that lead me to behave this way, and things that have happened that I will never speak of, and will probably never speak of." Then I started thinking about this a few days later, and wondering what it means to me to keep these secrets.

I realized that a part of me believes that by keeping these things secret, I am denying them existence and in some way any power. That which does not exist can't have power, can it? Well anyway I promptly fell ill with a third bout of sickness in the past two months, this one the worst of all. I am still a bit sick now, but in the first or second night I had a very strange experience. In trying to sleep in the midst of a fever, I had a sort of hallucinatory conversation with myself or something* while teetering on the edge of sleep and miserable wakefulness.

It led me to sort of epiphany about the secrets I keep, the memories I lock away. I realized that my refusal to tell was not denying them power but rather putting those memories on a pedestal of sorts. By setting those particularly negative events apart as something secret, I had given them a sort of sacredness in my subconscious that only gave them a greater power to influence me and my thoughts and behavior.

It honestly felt like something was telling me I needed to speak those things somehow, to expose them, in order to fully heal from them and move forward. And even more strangely is now when I think of it, I only feel repelled by the idea. Which leads me to believe that that repulsion is not coming from intuition, but rather ego. The very fact I am afraid of it makes me think that it is something I NEED to do. Which may be hard for someone to understand who has not experienced the mentality of anxiety and panic that I have. It is always the things we fear that are the things we need the most.

The experience has made me think of many things, particularly the idea of shamanic cleansing and the soul and how our emotions can create power or even perhaps seperate entities when we bury them for long enough to escape the pain. Most of all I wonder, who or what was this thing that spoke to me that night. Was it my own spirit, my own mind? Did the ordeal of sickness I went through that night enable me to break some sort of boundary and communicate with another level of existence or knowledge? It reminded me so much of the way I felt during labor when I saw the face of Hel and abandoned Christianity forever. I mean it truly felt like a breakthrough.

Whatever it was felt like it was benevolent, I felt no fear or negativity, rather an immense compassion. The next day I compared the energy to that of the Goddess Quan Yin, though I don't feel it was actually her. It felt like me, like my body and spirit had split. Like myself, but removed from material cares and pressure.

Anyway, just to clarify, I promise I am not going crazy or anything LOL. As the fever left I returned to normal, and if anything feel relieved by the experience. I do not know if I have the strength to spill those secrets, but I did feel like I was given a gift of hope. If anything it revealed to me an alternate path when I have been feeling a bit lost in material cares. I also realized that it is the winter and the turning of the seasons that have made me feel a bit lackluster lately, coupled with several events in the past month that have forced the future into uncertainty.

It is a time of change for me but also a time of rest. A time to be kind to myself and simply be open to the future, something that can be difficult for someone like me with anxiety. I like control, or at least the illusion of it. LOL. I think what I got from the experience was that I need to work on acceptance, both of the unknown and the past. I need to be open to change and open to communication. And most of all I need to do whatever I can to expose those memories to the light of day, to allow them to be not some crippling secret event, but rather a sad but strengthening past experience that is but a blip of the wide variety of good and bad that have been my life. Because regardless of that experience, I have so much to be thankful for NOW.

Have you ever had a strange epiphany or similar experience?