I’ll have more later today and this week.

I won’t go into how heinous I find that, although I’m tempted. My own views on psychopharmacology are not very positive, as I’ve mentioned at least a few times before. But what interests me is that we have a very different relationship to depression, to all unpleasant emotional states, than our counterparts all over the world.

That is to say, we have a culture of unhappiness, but we don’t revere or honor that unhappiness. A great deal of our social mores, norms, and patterns are designed to make us unhappy. There are hundreds of things we can do or experience that will make us unhappy. It’s practically impossible to live a life virtuous enough to be happy. Instead, every day, we are surrounded by things to make us upset. We’re fucking depressed by the rain. Seriously. What’s with that? We’re not happy with our health, our bodies, our income, our family, our insurance, our government, our celebrities, or our relationships. We feel we’re entitled to live a complete untroubled life, and when that turns out to be impossible we get depressed about it.

It’s very hard to find a person who is truly happy in our culture. And that’s OK. We aren’t supposed to be happy all the time. We’re supposed to experience all sorts of emotions, because that’s how our psyche is built. Unpleasant emotions help teach us how to thrive, how to be fruitful. From an evolutionary standpoint, rejecting the acceptability of unpleasant emotions and trying to supress them is akin to reinforcing negative traits in our genetic line.

Everything we do is aimed at depression, unahppiness, and dissatisfaction, and yet we’re surprised that we aren’t happy. I’ll be honest and say I don’t have a clue what is going on there. It makes absolutely no sense to me. More importantly, and more frustratingly, most people seem to accept it and think it makes perfect sense.

But we’re in denial about the nature of our culture. We are encouraged to be unhappy, and in fact our social structures enforce (sometimes violently) that unhappiness. But we hate that we are unhappy, and consider it a disease or a failing in the person. Somehow our unhappiness is a sign of defect.

I think this is a fundamental conflict in our culture. In fact, I think it’s the defining trait of our culture. Our culture is defined by the fact that we believe ourselves to be flawed, and that the product of our work is equally flawed. “Nobody’s Perfect” tends to be our catch-all excuse for our failings. We repeat it like a mantra whenever we make a mistake, and accept that we will never be perfect. We ridicule and shun people who are trying to improve themselves, and indeed the desire to better oneself is looked down upon by our culture. We are intransient, and we do our best to prevent each other from changing or growing.

How many times have you heard someone say “This isn’t like you.” or “What have they done to you.” or “You’re not the person I thought you were.” Our expectations of each other are rigid and demanding, and any deviation from those expectations is often met with emotional violence. I could easily blame this on our Puritanical ancestors, but I don’t think that’s fair, or even accurate. The truth is, we make our culture every day. We buy in to the idea that we’re broken and need to be fixed. We support it every time we devalue unhappiness, or pain. Every attempt to manipulate eachother for our own comfort, to bring another person down or rail against their harmless decisions.

It’s not something that’s easy to fix, but I want to fix it. I want to fix it very badly, and I don’t really know how. Except by creating a counter to it. A cultural shift that is based on principles, acceptance, and respect. By living as an example against that culture, a different face, a different voice, striking clearly through the din. But it will take many voices, many strengths, many truths. I choose to be one of them. Maybe you do as well.

Share the gift

It wouldn’t be so overwhelming if I weren’t caught in a cycle of obsession about my weight. I’ve been feeling fat lately. Not just a little fat, but incredibly fat. Fat like I won’t properly fit through doors or into chairs.

That type of feeling makes everything else harder to deal with. Harder to focus on. It makes me want to focus on detail, on structure, on organization, and not the substance of things. It makes it difficult to focus on doing work, and makes me want to create an environment in which doing the work will be optimal, healthy, easy.

It’s never that easy though. All the preparation is really just avoidance. All the work to make things easy to manage is a waste of time if nothing ever gets done. There are a whole lot of things that I want to get done, many of them just things that I want to write, that I never seem to have time for, particularly since I fill up so much of that time with work to prepare myself to do the things I want done.

Despite all that, I have been thinking a lot lately. About numerous topics.

HerbisOrbis and I have gotten into a few discussions about vocation, much about what I mentioned in a previous post. It’s an important discussion. One of the things that we didn’t discuss in detail, but that I will admit is interesting me quite a bit, is what exactly a vocation is.

We generally talk about vocation with a simple definition. A calling to service. That service is usually a service to the church, some would say to God/dess. But vocation is used in a broader sense. It is not inaccurate for a teacher to describe his or her work as a vocation. Or a research scientist or a doctor.

A vocation is really a defining attribute about the work we do. More importantly, it describes the reason a person does the work. You can be a teacher without having a vocation, just as you can be a priest or a nun or a doctor or a carpenter. No job requires a person with a vocation to fill it. Having a vocation simply means that your purpose, your reason for doing your job, is altruistic.

I’m not interested in getting into the altruism debate, for which there is no satisfactory stance other than to leave it alone. When you have a vocation, you do the work you do not because it helps you, but because something outside of yourself prompts you to do it. Some people describe it as a calling, as though someone or something outside of themselves is telling them to do this, to teach, to minister, to heal. The motive for your job is external to yourself.

Earlier this evening I did some bowl scrying. I’ve done this before and had varied results. Tonight was unexpected. Almost immediately upon starting to scry I received very potent spiritual contact. I was told, almost audibly, “Look not into the bowl to hear us.” What followed was some very interesting channeled communication and a bout of automatic writing.

Fortunately for me, I got some very interesting information and some pointers. Unfortunately for you, this isn’t a communication that is meant for sharing, so you don’t get to read all about it. I am going to do another tarot reading tonight though, so here it goes. 

I like to alternate with my divination. Sometimes I ask a specific question or give a topic that I’m interested in. Other times I think it’s important to simply ask if there are any messages the spirits have for me. More often than not, I get some compelling readings this way. That is what I’m doing tonight.

Images from the Alchemical Tarot (copyright Robert M. Place): Used with Permission

As is often the case, it’s clear the the spirits have much to say. Firstly, there is a great deal of water imagery here. Vessels, of which I see both the Queen and the Five, are the water suit. The High Priestess stands upon a boat made of the crescent moon, sailing the waters of the sea, much like the Queen crosses the waters carrying her giant Christmas Tree Ornament looking vessel of water.

the Hight Priestess is my goal and my watchword. She is the lesson that I am trying to learn in all this communication. Yesterday I saw the Heirophant, and he is the male counterpart to the High Priestess. Where he masures the skies and seeks the portents, the High Priestess simply counsels herself to silence, and experiences it all. She holds the book of prophesy, the keys to our emotions and wisdom, but it is closed. It is the wisdom of the universe, but it is not meant to be read from. The knowledge is passed through an understanding of it’s possession.

The Queen of Vessels moves securely across the water that makes her home. She lives and dwells in the mysteries of the sea, as each of us does in our own time. Her very existence is an mystery, a woman who lives beneath the waves. The truth is we are all the mermaid, the merman, carrying the vessel. In reality we are all submerged, existing within the mystery of the universe, but our perceptions are of the illusion. We see the sun and experience that which is outside the ocean of our experience, but in truth we are the sum of our interactions and experiences, of our emotions and perceptions. The Queen of Vessels, by rising from the current where we make our home reminds us that we are not defined by the sum of our experiences or perceptions. She teaches us that we can take the water of our existence, the mystery that surrounds us, and capture it so it can be communicated, brought across the sea, and used for some purpose.

This path is tempting, and so it comes with a warning. The five of vessels. Chaos beginning. Vessels have been knocked from shelves by the vigorous flapping of birds wings. The birds appear to be escaping from the vessel that has just shattered, suggesting that they purposefully tipped it over to facilitate their escape. The Queen of Vessels teaches us that we can contain our components, that we can harness them inside the contractive force of the feminine divine and the expansive understanding of the masculine, but that we must not reign them in too powerfully lest we relegate ourselves to so many perceptions resting in jars upon shelves. This fate is bad enough, but it is a balance that can not be maintained. No matter how we care for these vessels, eventually the contents will become condensed and volatile, and force their way out.

That’s it for the night. Namaste.

Tonight I am asking the spirits how I can better be open to their messages and communications.

Images from the Alchemical Tarot (copyright Robert M. Place): Used with Permission

It seems as though the Knight of Staffs represents where I am now. Proud of myself and my accomplishments. The power of my will, of my ability to work my will, is a blazing torch that i hold firmly, sometimes jauntily.

But the light my fiery staff sheds upon the world hides as much as it reveals. To see and hear better, to communicate better I must find the waters of understanding. There is the recognition that each emotion and perception I have, no matter what shape it may take is in its own way a part of the communication, of my communion with the universe. And no matter how I may turn myself or my attention, my thoughts, perceptions, and emotions will not leave me in peace unless I have addressed their vessel and prepared myself to be emptied.

With that emptiness, that quietness of mind and spirit I stand to become the Hierophant. He who sits on the boundaries of the mundane, neither well lit nor truly shrouded, he is keen and observant to the portents and movements of the world around him, as well as listening to the voices of spirits and gods in his ears.

It seems I need to spend some of my energy on emptying myself. I have felt many times that my insides are too busy. It feels as though emptying myself, giving myself real quiet well make room for a stronger communion with the subnoumenal world.