Queen of Swords

On Thursday I had a fascinating experience with shifting energy in my body, one that led to a couple of important insights.

I was home sick that day, after Wolfling had the flu for three days and I spent most of the earliest hours of the morning awake, in a mild fever, and fraught with fear and pessimism about my ability to provide for myself and my child in the years to come. I got up sometime after 9am, twiddled around the computer for a while, then took some aspirin and went back to bed. I didn't fall asleep, but eventually the headache which had plagued me all morning subsided.

I lay there in bed and realized that my energy was too jangled to sleep. I called on LM, and he helped me "comb out" the tangles -- but then I realized that it felt like my center was full of the energetic equivalent of pus. I had the unusual desire to take a spiritual knife to the place and lance myself, letting all the nastiness drain away.

Hmmm. . . . just now remembering that it's only been a few week since I felt like I was putting my guts back into that space. Maybe this is an indication of a need for additional healing around that process. . .

My phone beeped, and I found a site notification from a friend, A, asking if I was alright, because he hadn't seen me online for a while. I decided I might as well get up. I logged into chat, and one of the first things he said was that it felt to him as if I was "filled with miasma" -- which startled me. He then strongly suggested that I do a full-day cleanse.

( Cut for your friends page )

Then I called my teacher to tell her about the experience. We agreed that this is pretty firm support for the hypothesis that I have some kind of binding that's trying to keep me from this particular aspect of my work. We don't know where it comes from, but a past-life situation seems the most likely, that someone -- whether myself or someone(s) else -- at some point decided that it was not desireable to have me practicing ceremonial magic.

I'm intrigued and curious about the possibilities, but I'm not going to spend much energy worrying about when/why/how. My immediate task is to continue to do the work of facing my internal obstacles as they arise. When I flail and growl and get upset, they get stronger. When I sit quietly and look them in the eye, they slink away.

The challenge is remembering to stop and look them in the eye rather than muscling my way through or allowing avoidance patterns to take over.

[x-posted]

A lot of what's been moving in my life since my ordination has involved power: as energy, as potency, as authority. It started with B in the encounter at Pantheacon, where we moved into a space where he started addressing me as "Mistress" as he gave me a massage, and I accepted the power with a sense of pleasure and ease that was entirely new, and then enjoyed exercising the power. And I had a very strong sense that both the sensuality and power elements of that encounter were a direct gift from Ereshkigal and Inanna, and the interaction with B was an essential step in integrating the energies I'd received.

One of the challenges I've dealt with my entire adult life has been feeling that I can't claim and exercise authority -- and by that I mean the authority of knowledge or skill as much or more as the authority of holding a position of privilege over others -- if I haven't been given some kind of stamp of approval by an outside institution or established authority. This has made starting my spiritual direction practice problematic, since by definition my path is outside of such structures.

( Power, Lohain, The Emperor, Limits, Sovereignty )

Sunday evening L's and I took the Daughter up to southernselkie's house. My daughter and her stepdaughter went off to play and the grown-ups (her, me, my men, her husband) sat around for several hours, ate pizza, and talked about spirituality and energy work. It was the first time that uncrowned_king had formally met my brother-in-law, and it was nice to finally get that relationship established. I gave them both the details about the powerful and unprecedented-in-my-experience events which have been happening with me in the spiritual-energetic area, and we all shared the kinds of experiences that don't usually get talked about in normal conversation. It was especially neat to hear my BIL share that way, since I'd never heard any of his stories.

We left when my daughter came downstairs a little after eight to remind me that it was a school night and she needed to go home and get to bed.

I'm tired this morning, still a bit foggy-brained. I need to drink more water today than I did yesterday, and make sure to ground better than I did after yesterday's meditation class. a_belletrist helped a lot, but I suspect that I didn't finish off her work as I should have, since I had to rush off to an appointment.

Better get to work. . .