#mood doodles

Spiral

Photo by Francesco Paggiaro on Pexels.com

I start here

Here, in the darkness

Here, in the first traumatic encounter

Here, at the bottom of the well

I look up

A pinpoint, beaming

The light, it reaches me

Here, at the bottom of the well

It’s not so dark now

I can see the wall

I can see there are steps

Mossy, dripping

Steps curving round

Steps reaching upward

Steps finding a way

Here, at the bottom of the well

I name the demon

I take the first step

I struggle, fight

I do all I can to release

Something shifts, lifted

I think

I’ve found freedom

Climbing up the spiral

Out into the world I go

Smiling and impassioned

It’s summer all day long

Goals, certainty and drive

I leave the well

Far, far behind

One day life happens

And I’m turning inward

Some center, pulling

Back, back, staring at the wall

Mossy, drippy

Shadows overtake me

Struggles…same, but different

Bawling, screaming, pleading

Struck by the illusion

The slaying was not final

Here, at the bottom of the well

Am I

At the bottom of the well?

I did not descend the staircase

And yet I am writhing with this demon again

I peer down into the darkness

Into that which I have risen up from

I am there, but I am also here

Can we call this progress?

Or like the seasons

A spring, returning to winter?

A spiral, dancing with serpent

Dancing, not battling, with darkness?

In and out

Rising, but always returning?

Peeling the layers once anew?

Why would I think it’s any different

Creation, destruction

In and out again

But still

This mind yearns for the final

Release

I peer down into the darkness

Into that which I have risen up from

I am there, but I am also here

Here

In the never-ending

Healing

Spiral

Sunshine

Before, I was the Sun

Beaming heart across the eons

Warming all near and distant planets

I couldn’t see them

But I knew my children were there

Somewhere out in the vast darkness

I held them, in love

I thought I knew them,

Each of my offspring

Although at a distance

I thought I understood

But, after the terror

Somehow, I am now in the cold

Trans-Neptunian

I have become, one of them

Now, I hope that the Sun exists

Now, I yearn for Her rays to find me

Now, I just wish something would hold me

Alone, out here, for so so long

Now, I understand

Before, I was the Sun

Warming all near and distant planets

I thought I knew them

And held them in love

Now,

Out here in the cold, aching

I can hardly see

I don’t even know if She exists

I fear I may self-combust, with no presence to notice

Now, I am children

Now

I understand

Who Am I

Exercise One: Who am I?

I am a woman

I am a prisoner in my body

I am 50 years old

I am someone who has been through a lot

I am someone who has felt strong as a result of this

I am someone who usually sees the positive in things

I am compassionate

And

I am angry

I am scared

I am tired of being in pain

I am not sure I can keep doing this

I am a shell of who I used to be

I am tired of feeling fragile and powerless

I am tired of being sick and unable to do the things I love

I am not sure what to say anymore

I am not sure who I am anymore

I am nothing

I am nothingness

I am presence

I am acceptance

And

I am rage, resenting

I am a fire burning, perhaps burning clean

I am a Tower

I am crumbling

I am old foundations disappearing

I am all comforts and surety erasing

And when this is done, I hope

I hope I am dancing

I hope I am laughing

I hope I am writing

I hope

I am free

Silly Me

Silly me

Here I was thinking that The Underworld

Is a place you visit once

Here I was, sacredly surrendering

To the Descent, fingernails clawing down

To the Abyss, wandering hollow for years on end

Unable to rise to another day

The Protector, struggling, to keep the light alive

Trusting I was going through some once-in-a-lifetime trial

To birthe the healer within

Silly me

Thinking that the Ascent

Was my final release

Was the way towards integration, finding my way

To bring the gifts, back from her slaying, to serve

Here I was, seeing the Sun for the first time in decades

Shouting hallelujah like I’d never leave it’s rays

Silly me

How many times do I keep track

And does it even matter anymore?

Like nature,

Cyclic, sometimes blessed and sometimes devastating

I do not understand why she is trying to kill me

Again

And I wonder if it is really better

To be able to know

To be able to ask that question

Sometimes I wonder if it is superior

Like the wet and emerging butterfly

To not know, to not be aware to ask

Why it is raped, its life force threatened

Upon trying to emerge, to fly

It happens, all the time, nonetheless

This nature

Does it ask?

Does it wonder?

Does it dread the

violent

cycle?

Silly me

Here I was thinking that The Underworld

Is a place you visit once

Yet here I am again

In this dank, bloody, hopeless cavern

Even now, wondering,

If it will be the last time

Silly me

Questions In A Dark Forest

Questions, questions

She’s asking all these questions

She’s leading me back

To you

At first, a choke in the throat

I’m crying, overtaken in sobs

Not quite sure where the trail begins

Am I in

Or just entering

The dark forest

Questions, questions

She’s asking all these questions

And now you’re answering

A slow, throbbing mass

Nauseous, I’m nauseous

Cramping

And now, the pulsing rises up to my heart

Questions, questions

She’s asking all these questions

I’m trying to hear you

You’re sending pictures, not words

Of childhood rooms and raging

Of a brightness, eclipsed

Of starving, of tossing and turning

Of kneeling, slobbering

Of vast purposelessness in tropical jungles

Of introjected yearnings

Of death

I cannot understand this, these communications

Please help me know why you’re here

You’ve been by my side, so long

Slicing my tender shoots away

As they try to grown, thrive

I feel you, ancient

Hopping from one tortured mind to another

Here you rest now

In my throbbing gut, reaching up

To my heart

What

Is the message?

What

Is the message?

I don’t know what you are

Or if your eonic presence even speaks

In words

And she’s asking all these questions

And it’s loud

And I’m lost

And I’ve no map

In this dark, dark forest

I wish I could hear you

I wish I could understand

You, ancient

Annihilator of anything I try to believe

You who have tried to kill me

Over and over again

Why

Are you here?

Questions, questions

She’s asking

Many

Questions

I cannot hear you

It is so loud

The time is up

And I’m racing

Before the sun sets

Before the cold, emptiness

Takes me

Will You ever tell me

Will I ever know

Before you finally accomplish your goal,

My death

Re-Membering

Photo by Hakeem James Hausley on Pexels.com

Re-member

I keep trying to

Re-member

Mostly, though

I walk through life

In a daze

Who am I?

What do I love?

Where do I want to go?

How do I want to contribute?

The response is silence

Just

Echoing

Silence

It’s as if I can see though my hands

And

I woke up this morning

To the voice of someone assuring

These are all just signs of spiritual awakening

These are all just signs of the old being cleared

These are signs of being prepared

For the new to arrive

Truth? Is this awakening?

Or is this apathy, is this insanity

After grinding through the work

Decades of release, healing, understanding

I sure hope it’s the former

I sure hope that I am aligning

With some Pleadian DNA strands

Just waiting to download me with my True Purpose^TM

I sure hope

This is awakening

Re-membering

Am I just re-membering?

Dissolved one more time, turned to goo

So that I may re-form and walk with clarity?

Is one more layer of old programming being removed

So I can finally let the ancestral gifts express?

Or is this just apathy

Insanity

Is this just emptiness

Meaninglessness

Illness

And despair

Chronic pain

Ripping into my reality

With no purpose

With no lesson

But to destroy me

Like the decimated carcass

Rotting after winter’s thaw

I hope it’s not apathy

The kind that only bitterness and stoicism bears

Or of course the turn towards medication

Living a life, veering opposite of my value

That everything is soul

That everything is a lesson

That everything

Is sacred

Instead, swallowing a choice

To create an alternate reality

So I don’t have to be with

The one so clearly present

Re-membering

I hope

I am

Re-membering

All of my well ancestors clearing me

All of their wisdoms preparing to stream into core

All my parts screaming out for my care, one last time

I hope I am re-membering

And not just descending

Into

Some

Crazy

Hell

Emanations

From the Zero

All pervasive, fullness, emptiness

Electric whizzings throughout the whole

Comes the One

Centration

The definition of Self

Some say this Self is unique

Never having existed before

A state-of-the-art singular embodiment

Of the Universe

This One, then

Becomes attracted to another

Be it in flesh or mind,

This One becomes the Two

Setting its focus, day and night

Something grows, resulting

Between the One and its focus of

Desire

This Two begets the Three

This Three

Formed by the uniqueness of the One

Formed by the desire and passion of the attraction

Begins to grow, stabilize

All is well

The garden flourishes,

Bright blossoms reveal

The Sun shines

Suddenly great tremors cross the land

Violent shooting crevices slicing

The petals, the careful tended formation

Torn to shreds

The Four becomes the Five

It always comes

This necessary destruction

Devastated, the One stares down

At the mess of the garden

That focus, that desire, that beauty

Gone, gone, gone

And has two choices

To wish for the Four, to pine

For what once was

Or to leap into the terrifying unknown

To trust, to release, to open

To what wants to now become

With risk of the next severity

To take on, and into the Six

Granted the abyss is crossed

(These choices do not always move forward)

Here the One lands in a shimmering light

Where all filaments connecting, felt, seen, heard

Beating, beaming, filling with gold

The Five has become the Six, overflowing

With the Great Fool’s knowing

That this too shall pass

Surely, as if by mode of prediction

The Six feels the illusory beams dissolving

The center standing strong

But all else, everywhere, flounders

Here again, a question

Dissolve into past’s bitterness

The inevitable victimhood of the Five

Or make another leap

Choose the vision quest

Dream a new dream to reach for,

Rack the mind for meaning

Turn inward, reflection

Reframing initiation

Again?

This then, is the choice of the Seven

Holding onto these reins

Staying centered, open, alive

Feeling the great void, the risks

All that has been

In the Silence, in the Seven

The One begins

To receive

Codes, new language, receiving

A symbolization of The Journey

It takes root, the One becomes scribe

Pages and pages of the tale

Begin to gather

In the Eight, the One somehow knows

The task will be to bring all of this into view

To give it life, to walk it out into the world

But first, the One also somehow conceives

That time in the Nine is necessary before the birth

The Nine of absorption, of preparation

Of sinking into subconscious terrors

That may protest

In the Nine, this One tends

To all that was forgotten

And, again as if prediction

The One arrives into the Ten

Feeling, knowing

It is time to bring their understandings forward

To serve, to deliver, to shine

This great brilliance they have maintained, bellowed

On their path of unfolding

Here, at the Ten

The One walks daily, humbly beaming

And knowing, that soon

Into the Zero

They will become again

If then,

This whole structure is truth

We can see that to

Know Thyself

We can see that to

Follow true desire, true passion

Is what turns this whole Wheel

So if it fits, if these words somehow spark alive

Tend to that unique flame within you

Follow its yearnings, imaginings

Even if it is so very dark

Believe and trust it is there, with all of your will

And that you too, have a great and burning orb within you

Keeping all of your planets alive

Follow it, let it lead you through the night

And may the journey of Emanation hold you

On this wild, devastating, brilliant and unbelievably

Beautiful ride

Reaching Back

Photo by Marie-u00c8ve Beaulieu on Pexels.com

Suddenly, somehow

There is a Request

One domino leads to another and

I am reaching back

Into the files, credits, teachings

Into the litany of practitioners

Into the words of Hetfield, my brother

Into the dreams, showing that night I couldn’t remember

Into the accomplishments I left behind

Into the white halls,

The numbed heart,

The locked doors

Suddenly, somehow

I am reaching back

I am remembering

The pain is so bad it is coming out of my eyeballs

I try to put on my mask, plug up the outflow

But around its edges, through its cracks

Spurts vicious rivers, uncontrollable

Coming, it just keeps coming

Pummeling through my waking days

Startling from deep in dream

Demanding, demanding

That I reach back

Somehow, suddenly

I find myself breathing

Breathing with a rock close to my heart

Breathing her pain in, deep deep into my center

Holding it, transforming it, sending it back

To her as Love

To her as peace

To her, hoping that at some point

She will be free from suffering

Free from pain

Somehow, suddenly

The crashing, sloshing waves

They keep coming

And I am on the phone

Getting evaluated

Answering the questions

Reaching back

Suddenly, somehow

I wonder

I keep wondering

With this rock by my heart

Breathing

Breathing from her, into her

I wonder if this pain

And all this wetness

Is her

Reaching out to me

Incapacitating me

Limiting me, all my lofty flight plans

And distractive mental menageries

Ripping me, from all my avoidance cords

Spiraling me, back into

Her

Is this all her?

Calling me back home?

Calling me to review?

Calling me to pay attention to the only thing that matters

This soul

Finding me, her begging me to find

That which will help her, me, smile, feel safe

And free and real again?

Suddenly, somehow

There is a Request

One domino leads to another

And I am reaching back

I am remembering

Soggy and writhing

Hoping, hoping, praying

That this isn’t just a meaningless chamber I will have to endure

Hoping, hoping, praying

It is her

Her

It is her

In this throbbing torment

Calling me home

The Cage, Rage

*A previous post/poem about The Cage focused on a sun-shiny view of suffering. This version is a bit more real.

From galactic extensions of nebular beingness

That expansive pulsing once merged with all

Creating and destroying simultaneously

Everywhere everything all at once

To this something, condensed

Here in flesh-form

Likewise pulsing, but contained in this one

From this star-stretched awesomeness

Into the bloody walls of placenta

Receiving there, smoke-infused emaciated platelets

Receiving there, visceral waves of despair

Her chanting, chanting for death

And then at times, a momentary mad and brilliant hope

This was, the first Cage

Then, the shut door

Then, the stained stucco plaster

Then, the squeaky bed, and book

And windows to gaze into fantasy gardens

Her, outside

Rage and steam hurling

Her, pounding on locked steel

Although now free from that visceral womb

I could still hear Her, chanting death

These childhood walls confining, and protecting

This, was the second Cage

Slowly my mind

And body began to falter

Introjection of Her chanting

The Death, it took over

Days darkened, a veil of forgetfulness

Depression became the third Cage

From here it was rituals

Measuring, weighing, restricting

Lifeforce and will dwindling

Beating on Her doors I could not control

Pleading, pleading

To just live a life again

Free

Watching myself dying by my own hand

Operated by Her puppetry

Eating Disorder was the fourth Cage

A temporary, illusory freedom

Came with blue and white pills

And ironically, the beige walls of a sanitarium

Safe from Her, safe from my own suicide

Suddenly it felt like I could do anything

Sun brighter, wings stretching

I thought I was flying

Flying, flying, living, living

Joy and sex and art and Love

The pills, those diagnostic walls

Were my fifth Cage

At some point I realized

The fakeness of my existence

And once again I began banging

On these bars,

These twisted pharmaceutical stories

And thought, once away from it all

Freedom would come

Freedom!

But to my dismay

Slowly it came creeping

This body

This room

This Mind

This Cage

Her screaming

Her death chants

All came rushing

Back into view

Suffocating

The Pen

I found the Pen

In one of those mad rays

And for a short period thought it, too

Would free me

Together we expressed and the bars seemed to fade

I thought, the Pen

Was my key out of this dungeon

But then, one stormy January evening

A flash of lightning entered my body

Flat on the floor, terror seizing

The Pen was swallowed

By the howling, hell-building beasts

Once more

This, enter, my —-th Cage

The one I am currently struggling

Inside

This pain

It has created double-reinforced

Steel around every and all things of joy

I cannot see anything but the way they

Glisten, taunting

I try

With the decades of experience in

Knowing how to suffer

To bring myself present

To accept, to surrender

To see what the gift is

To see why I have found myself here, again

But

I cannot

I cannot do this anymore

I find myself bawling

I find myself praying, spit-slobbered

I find myself opening to the light of the universe

For some miraculous healing

I call upon the angels I’ve never believed in

I call upon it all

I wait, and the same bars stare

Glistening, taunting

Glistening

Taunting

So much builds up inside of me

That I begin to pound

Like She pounded on my childhood door

I pound to get out, like She pounded to get in

I scream, like She screamed

I chant death

Like She chanted death

Anger

Rage

Will this

Be the key?

Will this

Be the key?

From galactic extensions of nebular beingness

That expansive pulsing once merged with all

Creating and destroying simultaneously

Everywhere everything all at once

To this something, condensed

Here in flesh-form

Likewise pulsing, but contained in this one

Who called me here?

Did I agree to this madness?

Was I forced into this body

Sent to suffer, and wander and

Sludge blind and meaningless throughout this world?

I do not know

I hope someday to see

The way out

The way in

The reason why

I have created, or found myself in

This fucking

Keyless

Glistening

Taunting

Cage

~Images from Tarot of The Spirit by Joyce and Pamela Eakins, and from Pinterest