Some assimilation required

I’ve been stuck. Far as I can figure, it’s been about five years or so.  Took me until this year to realize it, though.

Sometimes events that come off as mundane or unnecessarily dramatic (’cause you gotta look at the dynamic of that kind of spectrum) are actually learnin’ moments  that we’d otherwise either take for granted or distance ourselves from, in order not to get involved.

Good or evil? Can you tell the difference?

Well, darlin’s, ya are. Involved, I mean, in that drama or that house cleanin’ when you found something in the couch cushions you didn’t know you’d lost.

If I look at the couch cushions as a metaphor, the cushion-cleanin’ was my mundane and the something I found was the drama.

As is so popular a turn of phrase on the Southern Fried Witch — a witch’s duh.

It was a connecting of the dots from point A to point C, where before I figured there weren’t nothin’ but points A and B.

Look at it this way: If’n you’re on a diet for three months, steadily losing weight and getting healthier with trackable results, and suddenly, you haven’t lost a pound in a month, you’ve hit a plateau. You can’t lose any more weight without making some adjustments. There’s no more forward momentum without taking a couple of steps back to re-examine your routine, the food you’re putting in your body and everything else that goes along with maintaining a weight-loss program.

It would then stand to reason that the same thing happens spiritually. You hit a plateau in spiritual growth (which I realize is more difficult to pinpoint, with infinite potential for adjustment and may take longer to  recognize) and start diggin’ around in yer spiritual closet to hunt that hair in the herb drawer.

Movin’ from the point that you realize there’s no growth and findin’ that hair may take a while, as well.

For me, it took conversations with myself, my Goddess (who can, at times, be metaphorical and vague) and my bestie over the course of four months. I re-examined old dreams and auto-writings, dug into my psychological history (‘nother story), meditated and prayed, cast and cleansed.

The hard part wasn’t the research, though. It was a comin’-to-terms with something I’d held on to, which in turn held on to me harder, from my past. It was an ideal, a romanticized notion I’d planted while ignoring those things about it that had bothered me at the time.

Goddess would tell me that there was somethin’ inside of me that didn’t belong. It wasn’t mine.

My dreams were dichotomous, as was my auto-writing.

I heard someone refer to me many years ago as a paradox.

For most of my life, I’ve heard two voices in my head: One, the more optimistic, caring voice that most people hear come out of my mouth. (All things being equal!) The other, vicious and rancid.

Star Trek, “The Enemy Within”

For you fellow geeks out there, ever see the original Star Trek episode “The Enemy Within?” Kirk is split into two people: One good, one evil. But neither can survive without the other. Some assimilation required.

That cruel voice was the one I managed, recognizing what it had to say, letting it run its course in my head. Sometimes it would take a few minutes, sometimes hours or even days. There were times I’d even argue with it. Then I’d be able to hear the calm voice.

In recent years, it was becoming harder to manage that second voice. It was getting louder, saying increasingly meaner things. If it had its way, I’d have no friends, be border-line abusive, and a completely self-absorbed drama queen.

It wasn’t until I started writing this post that I realized I haven’t heard it in almost a month.

It didn’t belong to me entirely. The source of the voice was all the negative voices I’ve heard throughout my life that I had allowed to feed it, and even, at times, was fed by my hand. It was creating inside me a dichotomy of extremes that at some point I would not have been able to contain.

Breaking bonds

It was becoming a bloody battle between forced restraint and the will that does, has ever, belonged to me. The distinction between “forced restraint” and “will,” being that “will” is of my own.

Some assimilation required. Because part of that voice, I need in order to make decisions, defend myself and my loved ones, to be strong for whatever situation calls for it.

Unlike Kirk, however, I am not the same person afterward as before. Now is the process of rediscovering post-construction which hallways are mine and where they lead.

And the hallways are whisper-quiet, just the way I like them.