Lead into Gold

"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change." 

- Carl Rogers

Self-Acceptance Saturday.  What I learned.  What I need to learn.  What I hope to share with others.  "The only thing more frightening than changing, is not changing." - Ronda  

I am terrified.  My energy is stuck and blocked, and I feel like I am dying and being born.  I did six pages of morning pages at 5 am.  I'm "supposed" to do three.  What an over achiever.  Full of drivel and fear and disappointments and gross crap that is meant for no one but the universe to see.  I'm not even supposed to put eyes on them again myself for at least awhile.  But they didn't fix me and how I've been feeling today.

All I want to do is sleep but my eyes won't let me.  They are heavy and I see everything when I close them.  Everything that terrifies me.  Everything that could set me free.  I am awake.  My mind is going fast.  I am feeling too much.  I am trying to calm myself and breathe and remember THIS is the journey.  Just slow the fuck down and let my Self go through it.  

But this, this is my shit, and going through it stinks.  Yet I understand that going through it IS the journey and there is NO spiritual bypassing here.  This is part of my authentic self, and she feels like she is about to come off the rails...sorry about that.  Quit apologizing.

But why am I always making myself look bad.  Why?  As I am going through this, why do I feel the need to remind everyone else of how afraid of failure I am?  That's just my stupid story.  Why do I have to blurt out to the world that I am afraid to succeed?  Another dumb story I tell myself to justify my current state of affairs. 

Why can't I just fucking keep it all to myself and write my happy script like a good little robot?  Why can't I just use the words and write something really good and creative and inspiring about myself and how I can help my hungry customers magically transform?  Why do I feel the need to be a god damned wide-open book.  And I am here, doing it all again now.  Thank you for being my morning (mourning?) pages 2.0.  This blog is definitely not ready for the real world.  I am pretty damned sure the real world is not ready for it.

Self-deprecation is so much easier for me than actually saying something good about myself.  What the hell good is an elevator pitch if I don't believe it?  And trust me, I have a hard time believing.  I have a hell of a hard time doing the fake it until you make it shtick.  That feels grossly unauthentic to me.  Yet never being any good at anything is never going to get me there.  Where the hell is there again?  Am I just depressed?  No.  I believe I am just calcinatio.

I pulled a few of those alchemy cards, like the ones pictured above, for a message from my guides or the universe, or whoever it is that I think I am getting "communication" from (which is another thing that is freaking me out, because if this stuff isn't real, if my intuition is shit, then I absolutely have NOTHING to offer people except some artwork that is weird and full of conspiracy shit and crazy ideas and OMG I am just going through it.  That's all.)  I "pulled" a card for me, for you and for us. (I shuffled and I asked for a card to come out for each: me, you, us.  A card "flew" out each time.)  Here is what I "got".

I am represented by Calcinatio - Calcification.  I am heat, fire, desire.  (Straight from the book...) Calcinatio is the great alchemical operation of fire.  It occurs when there is enough heat in the vessel to transform the nature of that which is solid or fixed.  How does calcinatio begin?  With a tiny glimmer, an urge, a desire that builds into a robust flame.  On a psychic level, this stage may be an uprising of emotion that has been repressed or dismissed.  It wants something big to change, to be brought to the light and purified - perhaps flawed ideology, institution, or outlook.  Frustration and anger are wonderous changmakers if their heat is channeled with space, time and awareness.  The transformation that occurs from calcinatio is rarely harmonious; it requires commitment and a willingness to sit through discomfort as old patterns fall into the ashes. The flame initiates sacred change, and eventually the Phoenix rises.

You are represented by Mercurius - Mercury.  You are signals, messages, tricks.  (Straight from the book...)  In the realm of Mercury, anything is possible.  The energy is transfixing and seductive - just like the metal itself.  Since this planet rules commerce and communication, it's likely there are deals, contracts, and calls being exchanged that will spin you into a whirl of Mercurial wonder.  Don't rush big decisions or get caught in the mesmerizing energy.  Rather, pay particular attention to the precise words that are being spoken and written.  There may be a trick underway.  Maybe not.  No one is sure yet.  It is said that the energy of Mercury is found in the pinky finger, and that its ally color is green.  Enjoy your time in this emerald hall of mirrors...just don't sign your name on the dotted line until what is liquid becomes solid, until clear words are expressed in an honest tongue.

Us is represented by the energy of Coagulatio - Coagulation.  We are solidity, adherence, stuckness.  (Again, straight from the book...)  Coagulation is the great alchemical Operation of Earth.  By way of this operation, we experience that which was fluid churning into a solid formation.  The formerly disparate ingredients begin adhering together into a fixed and solid unit.  The result is visible, reliable, and eventually...concrete.  When you hear the phrase "It's finally taking shape," coagulatio is underway.  The shadow aspect of coagulatio is that the elements may have come together without much awareness, and in turn they become unconsciously attached.  Inertia and resentment set in.  The parts can no longer separate, even if they wish to.  Many long-term relationships have coagulatio aspects - a naturally occurring codependency by which both parties feel unseen or unknown as individuals.  The work of coagulation is to experience the merging with other while not losing oneself in the mush. 

So, you tell me.  Do I have a connection?  Do I have a gift?  Can I trust my guides?  Does any of this energy reading mean anything?  Because if it doesn't, I have made a terrible mistake and I need to figure a way to safely get myself out of it.  I realized this deeply and difficultly the other day.  I'm not looking for anything except the truth about what I am and what I am able to do.  If I have no gift, no ability to intuitively see and read the energies, then I have to accept that and figure out another way to make my way forward.  I need to understand how I have been misinterpreting the signs and signals and information that I really believed that I was getting.  

Because even if I can say something good about myself, there is always the underlying belief that I am fighting against, my fear of what I really THINK...that I have no gift.  All of this is my imagination.  I am nothing.  Nothing special.  If I don't have a gift and try to give people information to "help" them based on what I am feeling and intuiting...well if I can't do it honestly, then I am just a charlatan, just a fraud, and I could not live with myself.  I could NOT do that intentionally.  I may have been mistaken with all of this and all of these energies, but I was honest.  

To make a new path forward work for me, I am supposed to be the EXPERT at something.  I am supposed to be able to offer someone something.  Who would want what I have to offer?  What do I have to offer?  I don't know. But I am going to need to figure something out damned soon.  Consider this step one in my market research.

And if I was just all wrong, well, I guess it's not the end of the world, or maybe it is, for that connection, but I know that it was there all along to teach me something, just not what I thought it was supposed to teach me.  And I can learn to change my thoughts.  I can learn to change my mind.  That is something that I know I can do.  But to not trust my gut, to say that my feeling were lying to me, that I just cannot do.  It had to be coming from somewhere else, like maybe some coagulatio from some lifetime past.  There are ways of taking care of that.  That can all be healed.  I think.  I believe.

Service to others vs. service to self.  Open the heart chakra.  Come as you are.  Authentically.  Know thyself.  Do the inner work and know others.  I talk a good talk.  Inner work?  This is my inner work.  This is my shit.  I have to walk through it, set it on fire and rise from the ashes smelling like a god damned rose.  And you know I will.  I don't have a choice, except that I do...but I don't.  It could just really hurt like hell from time to time along the way, but fire will do that if you get in it.

I must come into alignment with REALITY for exactly what it is.  I must first learn to understand and accept myself for exactly what I am, what I am not and what I can be in time.  That is truth.  That is self-love.  Don't try to manipulate myself.  Give myself a fucking break.  Just love myself for exactly who I am now.  Keep growing.  And then, love myself for what I want to become, what I am becoming.  Then ALLOW myself to learn to walk, then run, then fly, in time.  Only then will I be able to share any gift that I have with others.  My EGO hates this.  My EGO must die. 

Love is freedom. Love does not manipulate.  Love does not coerce.  Love is open.  Why don't I love myself?  Open my heart chakra, to love myself first.  Put on my oxygen mask first.  Only then can I be anything for anyone.  It's hard.  It's so hard. Why is it so hard?

Love is open.  Love doesn't project.  Love connects, through intimacy with another or with the self.  My will not be done.  Let go.  Allow myself to change my mind.  See what is there.  Not just what I want to see. This is the beginning of a free me.  Then I will believe my intuition.  Then I can trust myself to become a channel for truly helping others.