Root Chakra Journaling

So, in my (perhaps ill-advised) attempt to make my body hurt less, I’ve decided to try some chakra work. Given that I’m not working with any energy experts on this, I’m not sure how well this will work out. This is the journaling section of the chakra work, and I found some prompts that I’ll be working off of, so bear with me.

---

I deserve to have… a place to live where I don’t have to walk on eggshells around anyone… food that promotes and supports my health… Clothes that fit well and don’t have holes or stains… clean drinking water…

Do I deserve to have love? Sometimes I’m not sure. My head knows that it’s important, but my heart is harder to convince.

I’m tempted to add single-payer health care to this list…

---

I am afraid of:

• Losing my job / being yelled at / Can I even do anything right? / failure
• Small spaces / tight clothing / not being able to breathe
• Confrontations / yelling / anger / angry men / physical violence / authority figures (police?)
• Having more regrets / not being happy

---

Prosperity means … (a.k.a. I’ll know I’ve ‘made it’ when…)

• I have bedding sets that match my bed / I don’t have to cut down a set of sheets to fit my bed because they were free / I can get a memory foam mattress pad / my blankets are the appropriate size for my bed
• I can take my nieces on trips / I don’t have to worry about ticket prices to events / I can travel
• A house on/near the beach
• Living in such a way that I can wear historical costumes every day
• I can get a car that I actually like (I’ve wanted a hybrid for about a decade so far)
• Not stressing about paying bills every month.

---

How do you feel about your body? Woof, that’s a loaded question.

I like my hourglass figure, how my waist is actually really small compared to my hips & shoulders. I like that I can support a strong muscular system. I love having blue eyes and long blond hair. I have great night vision.

I don’t like how hard it is to lose weight/inches. I don’t like how much pain I’ve been in recently, and how sitting can make it way worse. I don’t appreciate not being able to wear heels, and I certainly don’t like that I’m addicted to sugar.

I guess my body is okay? I certainly feel better about living in this body than I did when I was younger, and I’m more accepting of parts of my body than I used to be. Which is weird, considering that my health has declined and I’ve had to wear bigger sizes. I think part of that has been the realization that a lot of modern styles of clothing aren’t designed for people with curves / my body type, but I have the power / skills to make myself clothes that will work with what I have; Victorian styles are all designed to give the illusion of a small waist. I already got that. Now how can I rock it?

---

“Are there belief patterns that still influence your thinking but are no longer valid?” Um… I’m not sure how to answer that. If I flip it around: Do I hold beliefs that are no longer valid, but still influence my thoughts/actions/feelings?

Sometimes I wonder if I’m hard to love; I know there was a time where I felt that all I was good for was sex. (I didn’t know my ex-boyfriend was an abusive narcissist at the time, and it took me awhile to see that he really messed me up.) I now know that this isn’t true, but it still sometimes comes up in my thoughts.

---

What would my 10-year-old self tell me today? Assuming that my past self took her nose out of a book and was brave enough to talk to me…

I hope that my younger self would tell me about how bad things were at home. How responsible she was trying to be. How afraid she was sometimes. (That last one just made me cry a bit.)

I hope that my younger self would tell me about what our older cousin did, back in the hay barn. She would show me the kitten we adopted from a farm cat’s litter and named Holly. (And holy shit, I’m making myself cry now.)

Finding My Life’s Purpose?

This article appeared in my Facebook newsfeed earlier today; The author, Mark Manson, poses and discusses “Seven Strange Questions That Help You Find Your Life Purpose.”  I found it a fascinating read, and wanted to spend more time considering his Questions.  Maybe this will help shed some light on what I should be doing with myself.

Here’s the truth. We exist on this earth for some undetermined period of time. During that time we do things. Some of these things are important. Some of them are unimportant. And those important things give our lives meaning and happiness. The unimportant ones basically just kill time.

So when people say, “What should I do with my life?” or “What is my life purpose?” what they’re actually asking is: “What can I do with my time that is important?””

So here are Manson’s seven questions (some with explanations), and my hopefully-thoughtful personal responses.

1. “What’s your favorite flavor of shit sandwich, and does it come with an olive?”  In other words: “Everything involves sacrifice.  What unpleasant experiences are you able to handle?”

• I’m not afraid of answering phones.
• I can wake up at 6 to be at work for 8:30 or 9.  (I much prefer staying up late.)
• I can write some programming code.
• I can clean up cat sick without being sick myself.
• Proofreading for grammar, spelling, & punctuation.

(Side note: Olives would not make said sandwich any more appetizing for me.)

2. “What is true about you today that would make your 8-year-old self cry?”  What did I used to love doing that I don’t do anymore?

• I liked playing hide & seek as a kid, both in the house and in the woody swamp in the backyard.
• I haven’t played in the snow or danced in the rain in a long time.
• I used to absolutely obsess over swords & other weaponry.
• I wanted to go on adventures.
• I used to do a lot more baking than I have been.
• I love swimming, almost to the point of frolicking.
• I don’t read nearly as many books as I used to.

3. “What makes you forget to eat?  Don’t just look at the activities that keep you up all night, but look at the cognitive principles behind those activities that enthrall you.”

• Reading (specifically getting lost in a different time / place)
• Organizing & spatial optimization
• Designing costumes (mostly historical garb), to absurd levels of detail
• Project ideas for fabric or yarn (related to point above)
• Planning and researching for travel

4.  “How can you better embarrass yourself?”  Translation: “There’s something that you think about, fantasize about doing.  If your reasons for not doing it are based on what others would think, then you’re screwing yourself over.  Chances are you’re actually avoiding something you truly care about because caring about that thing is what scares the shit out of you.”

• Ever since I started going to renfaires, I’ve wanted to become a merchant and travel around, selling my wares at faires & festivals across the country.
• Relatedly, I want to have a storefront to sell my stuff from, but am somehow terrified of actually setting up an Etsy store.
• I daydream of the historical dresses I want to make, and the balls & parties I would wear them to.

“Great things are, by their very nature, unique and unconventional. Therefore, to achieve them, we must go against the herd mentality. And to do that is scary.”

Yes.  Yes it is.

5.  “How are you going to save the world?”  Find a problem you care about and start solving it.

• Animal welfare
• Climate change
• Women’s health & rights
• Education

6.  “If you had to leave the house all day, every day, where would you go and what would you do?”

• Hiking to discover woody trails and scenic vistas and waterfalls
• Dancing!
• Time with cats (somehow…)
• Travel to national parks & monuments
• Renaissance Faires
• JoAnn’s for fabric and yarns
• Maybe join a book club
• Learn new languages

7.  “If you knew you were going to die one year from today, what would you do and how would you want to be remembered?”

• Adventurer
• Cat Lady
• Badass Dancer
• I would want to leave inspirational life-wisdom for my people.
• Honestly, I kinda want to be like the Dos Equis guy, The Most Interesting Man in the World.

---

So, what are some common things among my responses?  What is important to me?

• Animals, esp. cats
• Being active (hiking, swimming, dancing)
• Adventures (travel, renfaires)
• Keeping my mind active (languages, planning, design, organizing, problem solving, coding, reading)
• Creating (actually making the things I design)

OK.  Now, Self, we just have to get past the fear to go do the things…

Full Contact Magick – Part 3 – Response

I found the chapters on Water magick a little odd… Like, why were there only three chapters?  And the reading didn’t seem to flow very well, though that could just be me;  I’m a self-identified fire mage, so water magick isn’t my forte.  And that includes all the emotional stuff that water deals with.

This carries over into why I don’t do much with Water energies.  If Daring is “emotional intensity,” then admittedly I’ve muted a great many of my emotions over the years.  Though I’m not sure I’ve ever really had the self-confidence that the author references as most-conducive to successful spellcasting. Hmm…  Maybe the process of building my emotions back up will help with making magick.

The gods help those who help themselves.

I’ve never really held with the practice of prayer fixing all ills.  The gods aren’t there to solve all our problems.  I like the spiritual faith that comes up in Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar books, as practiced by the Shin’a’in, and their Star-Eyed Goddess who (for the most part) gives her people just enough tools so they can help themselves.

For example:  Praying for more money won’t net you anything if you’re unemployed and not actively applying for jobs.  OR, you’ll get what you’re asking for, just not the way you wanted (ie, someone close to you dies & you get a life insurance payment).  You have to be really careful what you ask for.

If it was easy, everyone would do it.

As regarding fear…   Admittedly, fear is a rather large part of why I do things (or not).  I deliberately don’t experience the depth of my emotions because I kinda fear their intensity.  I don’t think about things that have happened because I don’t want to experience all the associated bad stuff.  I don’t get close to people because I fear getting hurt again and I fear losing the ones I love.  Kinda makes me wonder what form my boggart would take…

At any rate, I really really really want to travel, all over the planet, and while I get really excited about the idea, I also have a lot of fear about it.  Fear of the unknown, fear of all the bad stuff that could happen on the road… I still want to do this.  I know it’ll be good for me.  But that doesn’t stop me from being really really nervous about the whole thing…

One of my schemes is to have a sewing business, and travel between renfaires & sell the stuff I make.  Maybe I’m romanticizing the faires a bit, but I think this would be really fun.  The problems start when I remember (or someone reminds me) that I have bills to pay (damn you, student loans!).  There’s a lot of doubt wrapped up in, “Can I really make enough to pay my bills doing this?”  And I know that my family is hoping I’ll choose a more conventional way of making a living, and won’t really support me in this.  As a matter of fact, I asked my dad if he would help me build a vardo so I could travel, and he dismissed the idea before I could explain my plans.  I’m not really sure why I was so disappointed by that reaction…

“Let each of your acts be your last battle on earth.”  This.  This exactly is why I’m taking time off from school, why I’m trying to figure out what makes me happy and what to do with myself.  Life is too short to be unhappy, too brief to do work that kills your soul.

A major transformation

This is the image from the Death card of my Lord of the Rings tarot deck.  When I read the lines about a “little death,” this was what I immediately thought of.  It’s honestly one of the few cards I’ve memorized, despite having the deck for… at least a decade.  (It seems this one is not a very diligent student.)  Though that could be in part because the images on the cards are (mostly) incompatible with the language of my subconscious?  I’ve been debating looking for a new tarot deck lately, hopefully something whose images speak to me more.  I’d like to become better at reading tarot.  (It’s kinda embarassing, needing to look up most of the cards in a book…)

I’ve also dabbled in runes, though that went less-well than tarot.  I think I’m more inclined to use runes to enhance spells, and not as an oracle.  I can, however, read tea leaves.  I’m pants at interpreting what I see, though I suspect that’s due to not holding the altered state of consciousness long enough to attempt interpretation.

As for purification, staying hydrated is one of the bits of water magick I diligently practice.  I try to drink about three liters of water each day, depending on the weather and the day’s activity level.

Also, I do love tea.