All right. I’m giving myself permission to write a quick-and-dirty blog post, because I really wanted to post something today, and if I don’t allow it to be not-perfect, I will not post at all.
I desperately want to have a blog with some actual content in it.
So: here’s what I want to write about.
For years now, I’ve had a giant book on chakras* sitting on my bookshelf. It was a gift, from a friend with whom I did some exploration of fairly woo-woo stuff a few years ago. (She then got even more woo than I was, and I ran away. Ashamed of that, but the things she was exploring kind of scared me.) It’s huge, and I don’t think I’d ever looked at it, because I expected it to be full of tiny print and scary. Why the idea of tiny print scared me, when I’m usually pretty damn good with academic-style books, I have no idea.
After yesterday’s flirt with chakras, I opened that book today for the first time.
It’s not as dense and scary as I thought. It’s full of all the kinds of stuff that I used to be crazy about as a teenager – lists of symbols, associated colours, herbs, flowers, gemstones, gods… I used to buy great books on symbology and be fascinated by how all these things were connected. I’d stare at my chart for hours and wonder how to get more of the energy in that chart into my life. And now, it seems, I’m doing the same thing.
The third chakra, the solar plexus chakra, is associated with the element of fire. It’s an element that’s pretty strong in my chart, or at least it would be if it wasn’t being eaten by all that air and earth. Fire is passion, willpower, and… well, power, in general. That’s something I have big issues with.
It’s not that I don’t have the strength, willpower, and passion. It’s there. I can feel it there some of the time. There’s a badass Lucy in there somewhere, trying to get out. But I let so much else get on top of her: mostly overthinking stuff, and worrying, and depression.
I want to connect with Badass Lucy.
I want to connect with the fiery bit of me, the bit that’s been super-neglected for most of my life.
I want to spend more time with the part of me that says, “yes, I could go back to work, but not without risking my health – and my health comes first, dammit”.
I want to be able to feel angry without repressing it or imploding.
Fire: I want it. But I need safety, too. I need to protect myself from explosions and implosions and burning up. I want to meet it, gently and for short periods of time, on neutral ground – not go bounding into its lair without an exit strategy.
It’s all about being kind to myself, I think, and being able to acknowledge all my needs at once, not trample on one part of me to satisfy another. I want to be able to negotiate. With myself.
Which means there’s lots of stuff to process.
Comment zen.
I’m going to come up with my own name for “comment zen” at some point. I don’t want to be borrowing Havi’s voice for everything (much as I love Havi).
Anyway – comment zen for today. I still don’t want advice or tips on where to go next! This is too new, too unsteady ground for me, and I need to walk it by myself for now.
But I would totally love to hear what bits of yourself you’d like to meet. Or what skills you’d like to learn as you’re interacting with yourself.
And of course, you don’t have to comment. Even if I do sometimes bitch on Twitter about having no readers.
See you tomorrow!
*That’s the link to the Amazon page for this book. I don’t approve of Amazon particularly, and I’ll maybe get into why in another post. But I’m lazy, and that was the first link that came up on Google when I searched the title.
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I love that you already had precisely the thing that you asked for in yesterday’s post at your disposal… that reminds me of one of Havi’s recent post.
To answer your questions, the skill I’d like to learn is how to listen and really hear what’s going on inside of me – you know, being able to interact with my stuff, and not just talk to it. As for the bits of myself I’d like to meet… not sure I have a specific answer, but here’s something I was thinking about today: I’d like to get to know the me that is here and now, beyond the me that I know quite well but is made up of stories that belong to there and then. Interesting: I knew there was a blog post in there, but I wouldn’t have sat down to write it. And here I am, practically writing it all, prompted by your question. Now to find what I need to keep going and publish those thoughts on my blog…
Josiane´s last blog ..Taking action instead of resolving to do so
I’d really like to learn how to ask for emotional help. I can ask for physical help with no problems, but when it comes to emotional support or to ask someone just to listen to me I find it really hard, so it all gets bottled up for months.
I’d really like to make friends with the performing part of me again – it’s been way too long. My brother Neal keeps talking about putting a band together and doing so gigs, so fingers crossed.
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