Rainbow Cat Unicorn

   
Last week was a very challenging week. There were some things that had me quite triggered, bad nightmares, bad anxiety  and migraines as well. After waking up from a bad nightmare one of the days, my outlook on the day and life just starting off at the morning was very negative. My thoughts were negative. I was finding only the negative in my environment around me.

     It was good that I got to see my therapist that day. We talked about Opposite To Emotion Action which is a Dialectical Behavioral Skill that is based on the fact that if you do something opposite to your emotion your emotion would change.  So instead of listening to sad music while your sad one would listen to upbeat music. So for example, on my way to the therapist, when I noticed my negative thoughts to be all consuming, I switched my music selection to go for some Hawaiian music that was upbeat and reminded me of a place that I loved. This helped lift my mood and I was still struggling. My therapist also reminded me that when we do stuff for others in the Opposite to Emotion Action that it further increases are likelihood of changing our mood. I thought about how I like to send a friend funny stuff. I knew that it would be pretty hard for me to get triggered if I googled Rainbow Cat Unicorn and looked at these images that came up from that search. Yes, we found some funny ones.

Hope you enjoyed those and have a nice day. Maybe do something nice for someone else or look for something that you know you will love like Rainbows, Cats and Unicorns.

PS. I forgot to say that Opposite to Emotion Action isn't there so that you don't feel emotions. Feeling emotions and validating them are important. Opposite to Emotion Action is there for when feeling emotions is causing hindrances in ones life or no longer serves the desire of the individual. I hope that makes sense.

Respective: Martin Luther King Day

 

   Its Martin Luther King day and I have a feeling that I haven't done enough. I spoke about my anxiety and issues with rallies and protests in this entry about chanting OM MANI PADME HUM.  I've been working on some grounding, some visualization that has helped my anxiety some. Basically, this idea of something that I can not do needs to be changed to something that I am willing to try to do. It may be scary, it may be unpleasant and it may lead to results that could be predictable. Then again, it could be empowering, uniting, in line with my values, supportive, important, the list of adjectives could go on.

     Today I listened to speeches of Martin Luther King while I fussed about the house, prepped veggies, and did that stuff and it filled my soul with inspiration. I found his strength, his fierceness, his compassion and his dreams as something that really spoke to my heart and maybe awakened some courage inside of me. I ended the day wishing that I had gone to a rally, that I had protested, that I had put my body and my soul out there with others. I didn't though. The one thing I did do was pass out a Prayer for Justice, that if I get permission will post here.

     Like I said in my entry about chanting, I know there is more work to be done and part of that work starts with myself. Believing in myself. Envisioning myself being successful at things that I think "I can't do" I've realized that somewhere along this life a voice crept up on me feeding me lies. This voice likes to tell me that I am not good enough to do something, not strong enough nor capable of doing it. I've been acknowledging how that holds me back in my own life and today it really made me think of how it is holding my back on my journey towards working for social justice and working within my values.

     I'll admit that in the past I have silenced my beliefs, to not disturb the status quo. It was one of the ways I was raised. I grew up in an environment where having an opinion that went against what I was supposed to think meant that I would be punished and that unconditional love would be withdrawn.
At times as well, I have turned a blind eye. I have not watched the news because of the phobias it makes me have. I stay away in an effort to find some sense of calm. My soul is very sensitive.
This sensitive soul has to also been a catalyst for change in my life.

     To all of you who took to the streets. Thank you! To all of you who speak your truth despite the discomfort it may create in your life. Thank you! To everyone out there working to make this world a better place. Thank you!. You are an inspiration to me. I see these aspects of you that I want to have in myself, that in some ways I have in myself.

     I envision a world where everyone has clean water to drink and food to eat. Where justice does not have a blind eye towards race, prestige, gender, religion or economic power. Where we all fight for each other for we realize that each of us is one. We are all humans on this earth. Some of us are more privileged than others yet that ought to not separate us from the world conscious, instead help one another

     I hope that some day soon I may share with you other ways that I have been brave so that I can contribute to this world the things that I hold dear to my heart. So that I may help myself and help others. So that this light of inspiration does not die out and instead inspires others. So that I may look past my own ego to truly see where I stand.

     Thank you for all that you do!

The Emperor

   
                    *warning, this contains a graphic meditation and also mentions abuse*
     
     Holy Shit balls! That was interesting. Quite a way to create an introduction. One of the thing that I do every morning, that is if I haven't woken up late, is I pull an angel oracle card, reflect on it, and toke notes on any information that I get from the card. Today I pulled creative writing. I knew that later on today I would be attending Michelle Blooms class Healing the Tarot:The emperor and decided that I would have my creative writing piece be about the meditation that would happen in the class. In the past on days where I have attended classes like this I would often pull The Learning and Teaching card.  It has been pretty current. I haven't ever written much about these classes or these works that I have been doing and thought that writing would be a good way of Teaching and Learning. So voila, there is how I came to decided that my writing piece would be about todays meditation.

     First off a little introduction. Every month Michelle Bloom teaches a class called Healing with the Tarot and each month we go through, in order, one of the archetypes.  She discusses what the card means, characteristics all that kind of stuff and then everyone pulls cards to get a reading for "What does the (insert archetype of the month here, in this case the emperor) have to teach me. We then do a reading, she has always been great help for me reading the cards as tarot does not come as intuitively, I feel like that is an incorrect statement, as the angel cards. She gives ways in which we can work with that archetype through the month, how to create an altar for it, what types of stones would be good and why, and any other information. Then the guided meditation where we go and meet the archetype and and receive whatever type of information there is to receive. In the past these have all been quite magical and left me feeling upbeat and wonderful. Todays mood wasn't the case and I felt the "oh fuck here comes the shitball" when she said that when she did channeling for this it was going to be especially significant for anyone that has a dysfunctional or abusive relationship with their father. Yes, she did just mention the F word. I knew I was in for it. I thought later on, well if there is one thing that I have learned is that there are lots of people who have very hurtful relationships with their fathers.  I could feel myself getting tense, I began to doodle and I felt the urge to disassociate as people talked about their abusive relationships with their fathers.

     We partnered up and did a four card spread. The first card was to be; What does the emperor want us to focus on internally. The second card was to be what does the emperor want us to reflect on externally. The third card was to be what does the emperor want us to let go of and the fourth card was to be the theme for the month. I pulled The Seven of Wands, The Hermit, The Eight of Swords and the Six of Swords. Michelle helped me come up with a concise sentence after my partner and I tried to interpret it and the message was "I need to pull away from the world and focus within"

     Now it's time to meet the emperor. Everyone closes their eyes, and my guard drops and I lose the of I am cool and strong exterior and the tears start to fall down my face I feel myself choking up.  I will from this moment on do my best to write about the meditation.

     I am traveling in the air, my heart sends a root down to the center of the earth, up from that root energy travels to my body and there it goes to my heart and my heart blooms a gigantic flower that blooms out of my body and takes up all visual space.

     I am then walking down a staircase, it is not like the staircase in the past meditation that was one that went to a hobit hole. This one was made of marble. I could see that I was wearing elegant clothes, I might have been the empress at this time. I ascend the stairs and come to a door, the door is made of marble, crystal and rubies and some other blue stone. Engraved on the door is a cobra head.  We are to open the door and step into our sanctuary. Except when I open the door there is only a cliff there, I have a fear of heights and a fear of falling, there is nothing in my sanctuary except for fear. So I know I don't want to stand on this ledge so I use my powers and build a house, but my house is floating in air so then I build a tower of earth to meet the house but the house is still in the air, so then I build an ocean around it so there is no more this falling feeling. I do my best to try and make this place peaceful but it isn't so. I can't remember stuff that happens here either that or the order is all a mess so I am going to gloss over it. The emperor comes and he is dressed as a man of royalty and wearing a purple robe. We talk. He tells me that I am loved and that I am not alone, that I have all my ancestors and spirit guides here and they love me and will always be with me and are her to help me in my journey.

     The emperor then transforms into a black cobra, I had a nightmare about black cobras last night, I also have a fear of snakes. The cobra bites me over and over. The emperor is attacking me. This is not how guided meditations are supposed to go, they are supposed to be lovey dovey and make you feel good. The cobra kept on biting me so I had to take my sword and decapitated it. Then when it was time for me to become the emperor another black cobra entered the body of the emperor and then entered my body by going up my vagina. I think I might have began thinking about how I don't want to be here anymore, how I want the meditation to be over. More stuff happened and then she said it was time to leave our "sanctuary" and when I did, the land behind the door, where the staircase was was more like my sanctuary than the land of the emperor. There were flowers and birds and everything was happy.

     I was not so happy. I felt totally disregulated by the stories people shared, by confronting my own memories and by this super scary guided meditation. I told Michelle about it cause I didn't know what to make of it. Why was it awful and scary and terrible? I told her and she said "Sounds like you have some fears to deal with."  Also, that not all work is beautiful. Some of it is very dark and scary.

     So, I have the choice of working with this. I can make an altar, put a photo of my father in the center of it and work with the energy of the emperor.  I am feeling pretty hungry, zapped and like it is time to close this piece up. There is more that I learned about the emperor that would be good to share and I don't feel like doing that now. I think I've done enough work for now. If you want to learn more about the emperor and how working with the emperor if you have had a dysfunctional or abusive relationship with your father, let me know. It was pretty mind-blowing and pretty accurate the stuff I learned today.

     I feel a bit strange sharing all of that, I don't really know what the purpose was and today I wrote down in my book that I would write about my guided meditation and post it here. So there you have it. Goodnight, Good Morning, Good day, may there be some good and love in your life.

xoxo

Chrystal Brooke

OM MANI PADME HUM

   

      Since december, The Tea & Chanting Sangha has been working to accumulate 100,000 recitations of OM MANI PADME HUM for all those affected by police violence, brutality and militarization. Yesterday, we met our goal and accumulated 101,276.  When I found out I rejoiced. With time, dedication and perseverance we had met our goal.

     Towards the end of the collection, I learned that it was ok to do recitations while walking, all this time before I was doing recitations while sitting. While I could get some done my body would get really tense and would want to move. I took my recitations off of the chair and they went with me when I walked anywhere. Often times doing more recitations was a motivation for me to walk to the store to get a shot of wheatgrass, take the time to walk to the pretty overlook of the river with trees in the distance.

     The days leading up to this I had a feeling that we were going to reach it soon and when I was faced with this I noticed there to be a certain sadness in my heart.  Doing these recitations became such a big part of my day and I knew that after we reached our goal, I wouldn't know what to do next.    It made me remember a talk I had with a cousin who is also an artist. We talked about the wonderful feeling of finishing a project and also that sometimes sadness came along with that. How one could cling to the project that had been completed for one might not know what will come yet, or if there is something to come, there might not be the attachment for it. It's interesting that of course attachment comes up in this. It is something that I have been being more mindful of since someone introduced me to the concept in December.

     Before I began collecting recitations of OM MANI PADME HUM for the Tea & Chanting Sangha, I wasn't really involved in a chanting practice. It was interesting to just dive right in. We would get together once a week online and chant for 40 minutes. I had never done that before, and we would do it at a pace that at the time I could not keep up with, but through practice became more plausible.  The amount of recitations I collected daily also grew with the discovery that chanting can get rid of anxiety! Seriosouly! This was a most amazing discovery for me for I have been struggling for a very long time with anxiety and trying to cope with it without the use of medication has been extremely challenging. It's absolutely exhausting most times. I noticed after the first 40 minute chanting session that we had together that afterwards I felt this sense of peace. Kind of like after getting acupuncture, or maybe working out for some or having sex for others. A couple days later I had been struggling with my anxiety, I remembered that moment after chanting where I felt so at peace that I thought it would be worth a try, if it doesn't work at least I will have had a break where I could get my mind off of the anxiety. I did 5 recitations and my anxiety was gone. I was so happy that I think I cried. My anxiety did come back four hours later, so I just did more chanting and then it went away again. My therapist was so happy when I shared this with her. I don't know if I would have learned this had I not just found myself engaging in the practice of the collection of 100,000 recitations of OM MANI PADME HUM.

     Being able to collect these recitations was really important because like many people I was upset about what was happening with Ferguson and everywhere else around the world were police officers were using their power in excess and no longer protecting the people they serve but rather killing and beating them without any justice.  I've only been a part of one protest (other than the ones I do on my own by choosing where I spend my money, who gets my time and how to protect the environment) and it was a really peaceful protest on a college campus.  As of today, the idea of being in a crowd protesting makes me feel incredibly anxious, maybe one day I will be able to do it without having a panic attack but that day hasn't yet come. I've had several panic attacks at Burning Man in the crowds there. Reciting OM MANI PADME HUM, educating myself more, and opening myself up to what it really meant to be someone of privilege allowed me to be at a space where I knew I was doing something. I was working hard at envisioning a world where police are there to love, protect and be a friend of the citizens of this planet.  With that being said, I know that this is a small step in this grand scope of social justice. I know there is more work to be done.
   
          May all beings be well. May all being find peace. May all beings receive justice.

Offerings

     After a lovely day attending an online retreat of the Tea and Chanting Sangha, I was ready to go for a walk, get the blood moving, feel the cold air on my skin and go on adventure. I was pleased to find all types of offerings along the way, things that spoke to me as either magical, strange or poetic. So I decided to take some photos and share them with you. 

 Someone spread some rose petals on the ground

                                      

                                                Wishing you many blessings!