The Wall

I started this blog to explore things that have brought me healing and growth.  It is purely an online diary of mine.  I share my stories with the hope that they may help another soul out there, but I make no promises.  Again, it's just my online diary and my spiritual path as it develops.

I make nothing from running this blog and I do it by spending my own time.  I don't owe anyone anything, nor do I expect reward for what I do.

Any techniques, rituals, or processes I post are used by you at your own risk.  I'm me, you're you. I'm responsible for me, not you.

I get quite intimate as I describe my spiritual and emotional thoughts.  I can do that because I am hidden behind the name of "Rafe".

However, what I share is highly personal, and I share it because I can.  No other reason.

I've struggled with bipolar 1 for around 30 years now.  From extreme bouts of depression, to the demigod-like states of hypomania and it's big brother:  Mania, it's been fun.  This winter has been exceptionally cruel.  I also suffer from a deadening case of seasonal effective disorder which leaves me with the feeling of "vacationing in hell" for half the year.  At this level of depression I sometimes just hover above the level of suicidal:  But do to my past experiences and the knowledge of what bipolar is:  A deadly mental disease with a 20% chance of death by suicide, I uncomfortably bounce around slightly above that level with a firm "internal monitoring" mechanism and seek medical help when I can no longer help myself from falling past that proverbial point of self-destruction.

In my states of hypomania I am a creative whirlwind:  Yet a stick of dynamite who's fuse is already lit and burning:  I've learned the hard way:  What comes up must come down, and crash it does, and hard.

It's taken 6 long years of "boot camp" that I pursued to cure my own trauma from the past.  I couldn't have done it without "being led" there and to what would cure me, nor without magick and ritual which would change me instead of my environment. Actually, what it did IS change me which then changed my environment.

My "boot camp" consisted of learning everything I could from Neo-Paganism, Wicca and Witchcraft, Metaphysics, Christian new-thought theory, Swedenborgianism, general occultism, a shit-ton of energy work from Reiki and other energy systems, and most of all getting acquainted with the spirits who live around me.

Now, heh, a lot of this making friends with the local spirits might be due to them considering me the kid on the back of the short bus picking his nose.

Metaphorically.

Making friends with the local "Genius Loci" was a great help to understanding the spiritual map of my world here in this general area in which I live in.

The point is that I learned that spirits are in everything, everywhere.  Just knowing that opened up my worldview, and perhaps my prison.

I also feel that the Genius Loci has helped me in ways I can't imagine personal healing wise.  That's what my instinct and intuition tell me.

Probably again, enter the short bus anthology but who knows?  Maybe I genuinely made a friend?

The spirits who have become attached to me and my home (a witch elder says it's because my bipolar offers them a very unique energetic environment paired with the results of all the energy work I have done.  She says in the spirit world I'm basically a fucking unicorn.  Yay.) have helped immensly with my pursuit of knowledge.

And my special needs "Multipass" I guess.

And, helpful spirits being helpful, I think they willfully acted as a catalyst for my personal tranformation.

To fairies I was just another garden to tend.  Hey, don't knock it.  Don't piss off the fairies :)

I allowed myself to revere Kali, St. Mary, Aphrodite, Selene and Hecate.  By doing so I got slammed with energy.  Energy which transformed, which fed me.  It changed me along with everything else.

One large boon has been, well... I'm crazy.

Have you ever heard the line, "You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps."?

Well, that's what gave me the ability to enter magickal states of consciousness at will.  When I first started magickal training I was warned how difficult it was to enter an altered state.

Uh, 30 years of changing from hypomania (or worse, mania) to deep depression as a constant cycle? Having to figure who I was in between and within those cycles?

Altered mental states are mother fucking romper room material at this point.  Being able to sense and contact spirits?  After trying 30 years to keep constant tabs on my "center" so that I wasn't blown to and frow?  I simply concentrate on what I am, and investigate energetically what I am not.  I then expand that awareness around me.

Cake.  Fucking cake.

Hey, every dark cloud has it's silver lining:  Even Bipolar 1 with all the gifts it brings.

I've had so many people say that they have felt great peace here in my home, and that even when I come over to their house they feel it with me.  I'm a farking whirlwind of bipolar peanutbutter and jelly inside, but hey, whatever works I guess.

I wouldn't be surprised if those "feelings of peace" that people experience around me and in my home are boons in the form of spirits sent by those wonderful Goddesses I mentioned.  Wouldn't surprise me one bit.  I do truly revere them, each in their own way.  If I wasn't sincere I'd say it.

My point is that spirits, and magick, and devotion are amazing things.  They are alive. Very much alive.  They exist.  They are here, they are there, they are everywhere.

I've had people say, both friends and family, that I've grown so much in the past 6 years that they can't understand how it's even possible.

I'm good friends with my ex-wife (who says that our relationship now is wonderful but very strange: We are more like brother and sister. She also says that her friends are jealous of her that she is close to me, her ex-husband.  I don't understand that one, but whatever), very close to my children and closer to my mother and my grandmother than I ever have been.  The ability to "detach and heal", and to quit blaming the world for what I have suffered, hell I fixed so much about myself that no one understands how anyone could, much less "me".

I still suffer from some anger outbursts over the stupidest shit there is.  Or in worrying about something so stupid that it's comical when I am able to see the problem in hindsight for what it is: Nothing.  And self-created, or at least over-reacted to.

Yes:  There's the part of me that will always be sick with mental disease.  And there's the part of me that is untouched that is rising.  It's very much as if I'm chipping away at the last brick wall of the part I can in order to reach ever higher:  And yes, while always shackled with that part of me that I cannot escape from, the "bipolar me", the mentally diseased me.

The irony is that I am feeling a strong urge, along with feeling the promise of reward in breaking through that wall.

What is it?  I do not know.

I will never be cured from my mental disease.  It is my "life lesson".  My cross to bear: My little play on the stage of this life.

But I can't help feeling I'm chipping away chip by chip on that wall of what I can.

What is it that I am lacking?  And more importantly, what in me is building momentum?

Faith?  But faith in what?  I don't even know what I'm trying to break through!

I wonder sometimes... It's becoming more and more clear about how spirits work. Does it have anything to do with that?

Perhaps I'm about to break through something hidden even to me, at least consciously.

Whatever it is, I know it's necessary.  I have to release the reins, and yield to faith, and hope, and that I am on the right path:  That I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing.

Faith is the key.  Faith in something I feel is right without knowing why.  A strong feeling of synchronicity and coincidence that is timed so perfectly it has to be a part of it.  

You know, before you start to drill on something you first give the surface a good tap with a steel punch.  If you don't, you'll drill all over the damn thing and not find purchase.  If you do that one little step, that one little tap to guide your drill bit, you can then drill through quite easily.

Faith must be in following that "little tap" and using that to get through the wall.

If this is correct, then once that happens I must be prepared, for then I can finally break through using all of my will, all of my being, all of my soul energy to do so, concentrated in one violent burst at one precise point.

I just have this wild feeling that there is something beyond this milestone that I am to grasp.  There has to be something for it to drive me so.

It's strange, really.  I've been highly conscious of my Angel as of late.  As in the Abramelin kind.  I see her as this stern taskmistress, a woman who drives me at the end of a stick.

I have no idea why.  Perhaps a collective of perceptions from my past experiences in growing up?  

Regardless, it's both revealing and sad that I feel this way about her.  I've done a divination lately that showed how we feel about each other:

I felt of her as the stern taskmistress, ready to rule me with an iron fist.

For her part in the divination I saw her love for me as completely unconditional.

Even though capable of easily concentrating on my faults (and 10x easier for her to do so than any other), there was nothing but idealization with regards to me.  

Brightness, unity, completion.

How wrong can my perspective be, anyway?  I guess completely ass-backwards.  Something I have to unlearn and to be open to her.  It's not her fault I've projected all this bullshit on her.  She doesn't deserve that shit.

Without her help, I would never break through.  And strangely enough, perhaps realizing her love and watchcare for me IS that metaphorical "little tap" on the wall that I need in order to break through.

Heh.  How ironic that is.  Normally I love irony and with a passing nod I guess I see it for what it is.  But it's not so funny when it's me.  Is that ironic too?  Haha.  Why yes it is.

So there she must be:  Right across the wall.  And to there I must go:  Breaking through my own bullshit.  My own walls.  European castles have nothing on my walls.  Nukes can't get through my walls.  Nothing can, not even light.  I've built an airtight personal hell.  Perhaps this is the last great bastion to fall?  I'm sure there are others of increasing complexity and height that must be conquered with her help.

  

I have a feeling I'll see her soon.  Well, see as in I'll know her soon.  Is it the angel from 6 years ago who saved my life?  Possibly.  But I'm kinda scared of her, lol.  Don't get me wrong:  She was loving and powerful and wonderful.  But she was power incarnate.  But you know what?  That was 6 years ago.  You know, the 6 years ago that nobody believes I'm the same person as back then?

I've mastered the lessons thrown at me, and while I don't think I'll get a cookie for it, maybe, just maybe... I'm ready for her, for whatever purpose I need to be.

Maybe it's about time I quit doubting and listen to my own advice on this blog.  Maybe it's because I already know the answer.  Being ready doesn't mean fearless:  It means doing it through the fear.

"...Do it afraid." ~ Joyce Meyer

In this life, there are no shortcuts.  There is no cold calculation that lasts the test of time.  There is your heart, your mind that interprets this world to your soul.

All that stands in the way of freedom are our own self-made walls.

My last, or at least my greatest bastion is about to be destroyed.

Perhaps we were put here to create our own walls, then break through them with the help of others.  I sure have had and do have spiritual help now.

So do you if you open your eyes.

I dedicate this song to those, like me, who face mental illness daily, and to those who have faced those wounds not so easily cured in the form of emotional trauma.

I was diagnosed with Dependent Personality Disorder 6 years ago.  Now I'm symptom free.  The medical care providers say that this is impossible and cannot understand that I am cured of it.  Yet, here I am without any symptom of the disorder.  Some things can be cured, some are a cross to bear.  That's just my opinion.  

I do get a chuckle when they are boggled as to it being gone in my case.

"Hell Above" by Pierce the Veil

Upset woman in the background:

If you wanted to set me free...
Why the fuck wouldn't you say something?
See, I was just over 17
Made of poison, cave in free
Oh no, please don't abandon me
Mother, Father I love you so
But this is just me disguised as me
I'm the killer who burned your home!

This Home!

This is the street youth rising up!

I cannot spend another night in this home

I close my eyes and take a breath real slow

The consequence is if I leave I'm alone

But what's the difference when you beg for love?

As I run through glass in the street

Kerosene hearts carry the name that my father gave me

And take the face of the wolf

'Cause this is a wasteland, my only retreat

With heaven above you, there's hell over me

I met a girl who never looked so alone

Like sugar water in your mouth lukewarm

She tied a cherry stem for me with her tongue

We fell in love and now we're both alone

'Cause I don't need any more friends

And another kiss like a fire on pavement

We'll burn it down till the end

Oh, oh

This is a wasteland, my only retreat

With heaven above you, there's hell over me

The water is rusted, the air is unclean.

And there for a second I feel free

This is a wasteland, my only retreat

I've waited all this night to honor you and say,

"I know it's hard, but who are you to fall apart on me, on me?"

This is a wasteland, my only retreat

With heaven above you, there's hell over me

'Cause this is a wasteland, my only retreat

With heaven above you, there's hell over me

You said what about us, well, what about me?

Hang from the gallows asleep in the rain

'Cause this is a wasteland, my only retreat

Paralyze me

Don't let me jump, don't let me fall