Responding to childhood complexes
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I find for myself that dealing with rage and anger in the short-term is easiest, I'll dive into some angry music or thrash my guitar for an hour or so. Its a release, and feels good for a while, but it has no effect on the root cause, not really.
The only way to deal with anger long-term, is to defeat it with its opposite. Love and forgiveness, and to let it go that way.
However, often we face a mighty internal struggle before we can be able to allow ourselves to let it go that way, the root of the anger sometimes being something we consider part of "who I am", it can feel like giving up an old comfortable friend. But its not really a friend is it? -
"I'm at the halfway point now of a week-long self-exploration, entheogenic in practice, designed to carefully evaluate what differs between my current state of consciousness and that of a better balanced mind."
That's pretty ambitious - no judgement intended, just an honest reaction. I hope you are working with at least a watcher if not a more experienced guide (I swear I hate to sound so patronizing), but I'm remembering both your age as well as the deep parts of yourself that you're seeking to explore.
I'm assuming you've gone to Erowid to do research on the entheogen you're using. I guess that's about like saying, "Well, if you're gonna do it, remember to be safe..."
I'll shut up now...
Either way, writing letters to people (without sending them) is a really tried and true way to understand yourself and have a record of your own internal legion of emotions about a person or traumatic event. It helps you to name your demons and your angels. And that's the key to ordering your kingdom.
Re: Current state versus the better-balanced mind. I offer you a meditation from a Libra whose uses that sign and symbol to hack his own mind a little. When thinking of the Scales, perfect balance = perfect stillness. When thinking of the act of Balancing, freedom of motion is absolutely necessary. Two seemingly divergent laws work to achieve the same goal through Time. The action seems the antithesis of the goal. Take walking for example - you implement these principles every time you walk.
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Oracle of Delphi "Know thyself"
G.I. Joe "Knowing is half the battle"You have an unconscious and a conscious side. The suppression by your conscious side is a technique you've learned to avoid dealing with any of the unpleasant aspects of your unconscious self. Your job is to get to know the unconscious self, but it's in your best interests to do this carefully, while in (as much as you can manage) conscious control of yourself.
Drugs tend to inhibit the conscious self, allowing the unconscious to come to the surface more readily. If you're starting out with repression and damaged contents of the unconscious, you can imagine how this could be a bit dangerous.
And a ceremonial magick ritual is designed to bypass the conscious mind so that you can speak directly to unconscious aspects of yourself, trying to communicate a message to them, or giving them tasks. But if you're starting out with repression and damaged contents of the unconscious, then communication needs to go both ways, so you can learn what's going on.
Do you dream? Do you experience reactive emotions? Then you already have a wealth of information, from your unconscious, waiting to be deciphered. Learn what your dreams are telling you about your hopes and fears, learn what your reactive emotions are telling you about your desires. Learn your motivations for every behavior, especially destructive behavior.
Your results should be: much less internal conflict, less prone to having your buttons pushed by a situation or person, acceptance of trauma, and much less resistance to spiritual magickal progress (perhaps even spontaneous progress).
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I agree with everything in the previous post, and would like to add my own 2 cents:
If you broke your leg and couldn't walk on it if someone paid you a million dollars (just to give you a sense of scale), would your first reaction be to perform a ritual to fix it, or to go to a hospital? I think, if one finds oneself avoiding "traditional," non-ritual ways of dealing with problems, that one should attempt them.
Every intentional act is a Magical act; there is nothing more Magical about doing a ritual and taking some drugs than there is going to a therapist and/or writing in one's journal afterward.
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You can read Jung and dream journal for free. But, maybe someone else will chime in and tell you what you want to hear.
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@Blythe A. Blanche said
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Money is quite a bit of an issue though. Entheogens are so much cheaper, financially. I'm doing my best to keep the psychological costs at bay as well."When you break your finger, it's cheaper to scotch tape some gauze around it and tape it to a piece of wood; when it heals, it may eventually even feel decent, but that doesn't mean it healed correctly, and you're planning to use that hand to do intricate crafting some day soon, right?
When money is an issue, getting a job is the best solution when one is unemployed, IMO.
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Well, I don't recommend this for higher-level work, but if you present it as trying to work through childhood complexes, you might be able to find some free counseling at your local university with a graduate-level psych department. They tend to have "clinics" in which their students offer professor-supervised counseling as they work on their practicum hours, and they're often open to the community (read: they need their practicum hours to graduate... lol...).
You might also want to look into Bowen's Family Systems Therapy and the theory behind that. I've found it very agreeable to my understanding of qabalah, my own family, and my meditations on the Holy Family as well.
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In fact, let me give you a rundown of a theoretical construct for the future of psychology, though I have neither the money, time, nor credentials to put forth such a work.
Karl Popper's Three Worlds of Knowledge
Object Relations theory
Seymour Epstein's Cognitive Experiential Self Theory
C. G. Jung's Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious
Murray Bowen's Family Systems Therapy
Garth Allen's Taking the Kid Gloves off Astrology (a DEEPLY psychological work)
Morris Bell's Bell Object Relations and Reality Testing Inventory (BORRTI), which I am currently mentally analyzing according to its ability to correctly label and measure the weaknesses of the astro-psychological planets, as I am learning about those from Mr. Allen.This last key helps to provide some objective measure for critical analysis and discussion of a person's sanity (with their own therapist) and a reference point for advising others who are going through ordeals and perhaps experiencing trouble with them... imho. At the very least, I think it provides objective definitions and measure around which to begin isolating and analyzing relationships in terms of which subscale (potentially read: astro-psychological planet) is out of whack, and therefore, magickally, may help point in a direction for necessary work with the associated symbols.
And, of course, the Qabalistic Tree of Life, which maps the connection between these worlds, and provides the ageless wisdom and symbolism of priests, magi, prophets, and mystics - the key to it all.
But as my own institution is not interested in such an analysis, I find myself frustrated with the degree to which my impulse to heal has reached the limitations of the present psychological discourse, which I consider nearsighted and incomplete (there's My Saturn in this transit... lol...).
It's information. I can't own it, but if it will do anyone else some good, or lead in a healthy direction, or if getting it out of my system will free me up to more successfully accomplish my Will (or at least my thesis), there it is...
I submit it to the scrutiny of those whose leanings are similar to my own. But, either way, those concepts have helped me to keep my boat relatively steady and do a great deal of work on my own - after a rather shocking and terribly noisy and confusing first experience with Kundalini.
Just my two...
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@Blythe A. Blanche said
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@Ash said
"Every intentional act is a Magical act; there is nothing more Magical about doing a ritual and taking some drugs than there is going to a therapist and/or writing in one's journal afterward."Money is quite a bit of an issue though. Entheogens are so much cheaper, financially. I'm doing my best to keep the psychological costs at bay as well."
Personally, I've had a great deal of success using "entheogens" to restructure my psyche. They've revealed to me a great deal about myself: things no therapist could reveal in a thousand years. Drugs are a rather under-rated tool when it comes to psychological housecleaning. For a while, doctors were using MDMA for couples-therapy with good results.
This being said, I've also had a great deal of success using meditation, ritual, and yoga as well, so as always,
There is no law but Do What Thou Wilt!
Also, I might add, success with Entheogens (or any drug at all) depends entirely on the purity of the specimin.
(I learned this the hard way.) -
Something that I have tried to keep in my mind is a little phrase I heard years ago....what you resist persists....I didnt get that for a long time, and I will try to explain what I have got from it....IME our being attempts to be whole and healthy-in a state of balance, harmony, equalibrium. Yet life gives us rotten tomatoes sometimes it seems, and that just buggers us. And we feel bad, angry, resentful, out of sorts (whihc is actually a chemical reaction in our being to what our perceptions have interprested).
Imagine that I am mad cause I was terribly assulted as a child, for no good reason. What has happened is briefly, I was hurt...so my body physically reacted, I felt pain, horror, humilation, what ever the specific feeling was. I was wounded, in a way not seen on the physical, (thouhg there of course may be physical scars). But time lessened the pain, the minutes lsipped by and the throbiing stopped, the body worked on fixing the physcial issue, yet there often is nothing done to help fascilitate the inner healing. So while the outer wound cannot be seen, the inner wound does not heal, beacuse it was not adressed, or delt with.
I have been taught to see these issues like a silver linning leading to a kite. Often unconciously we keep these wounds alive, feeding it with "negitive" emotions-guilt, resentment, judegementalism. It takes alot of energy to actaully keep these inner wounds alive. If you think of you anger like a hot coal, you have to feed it and tend it to keep it alive. We hold on to these issues, for we are not done with them yet, we have not resolved the issue. We have not forgiven and let go and accepted, we have no compassion or understanding towards ourself or the issue, we have not gotten out of the past and future (thinking about the past-what "happened to us" and thinking about the future-retribution, justice, do-over).
I highly recommend that you provide yourself with a support group of some sort. While you are working through issues it is vital that you are able to have human connections, to bring you a much needed buffer.
Different issues need different resolutions. My sister and I were angry that her teenage son was killed. We spent alot of time venting in healthy ways...mostly breaking dishes, screaming, crying, fighting.....we had to have a physical release. When I worked through some torture issues I had, I wrote out a very simple concise ritual to let go of the attachment. I have used visualizations to pull back to me these energies that I am feeding (reeling in my kite-and seeing what it truely was). Some people go through a rebirthing process, and initiation also can help in some regards.
Catholic charities, the SAlvation Army, Alternatives for Battered Women, and even your local librarian can all help you find free or affordable counseling as well.
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93,
"Or would it be like "banishing" dirt from the floor with both a broom AND a mop?"
If you are going to mop, its best to sweep up the loose dirt first. Otherwise it makes the mop water dirtier than it should be, and you end up spreading dirt water around in a wide area.
Some floors, however, will never come clean.93 93/93
Jason -
Which is why I use swiffer mops... If you can't clean the surface, put down a new floor covering! I like hardwood myself, a conscientious person can maintain it for a life time.
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@Blythe A. Blanche said
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I'm at the halfway point now of a week-long self-exploration, entheogenic in practice, designed to carefully evaluate what differs between my current state of consciousness and that of a better balanced mind.
Throughout the operation, I've reached back to parts of my childhood that I've learned well not to mess with, due to their highly combustive and self-destrctive nature. My question for the readers of this thread is as simple as this: How does one "get over" a traumitizing past? Hear me out...
I repress a lot of things, and while rituals such as the LBRP may settle the commotion for the duration of a working, the background noise will always return. In my case, it's probably a therapist who would be best suited to aid me in this self-cleansing ordeal, but being that I have taken it upon myself to be the therapist, I'm beginning to backtrack.
Let's say the repressed emotion is anger; would something so simple as writing a letter and burning it work? (i.e. If such an action made the individual feel better while it was burning, would it last, truly fixing a complex?)
Would there be any particular harm in participating in some such psychodrama as LaVey's rituals (Destruction ritual, in this case) for the same purpose as burning an angry letter? Should one banish before and/or after the psychodrama? I imagine afterwards would be a necessity, to dispell the harmful energy released through the ceremony, but being that the Destruction ritual is essentially banishing by ways of the "Four Crown Princes of Hell" rather than the four Pentagrams and Archangels, wouldn't it be redundant, and thus open to error, to perform two seperate rituals for the same purpose? Or would it be like "banishing" dirt from the floor with both a broom AND a mop?
Thank you for any insight you may be able to provide.
Love is the law, love under will."
Im no expert and have plenty of issues from childhood myself, but i think asana meditation helps with anger. If you can learn to keep still for a long time you can stop anger before it takes over.
Sapere Aude
LLLL
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"My question for the readers of this thread is as simple as this: How does one "get over" a traumitizing past?"
HI,
ive done alot of work with entheogens, with magick, yoga, and in therapy of all kinds though mostly Transpersonal Counselling. Life's a long hard road for some.
I respect your searching and the way i feel you openning into honesty about yourself. It's certainly hard to know which people's advice is really for you as well.
The main thing that comes to my mind is 'support', do you have any? is that why you reached out to this forum?
I know friends can offer supprt in many ways and thats important, though theres nothing quite like the supprt from someone who has the heart, experience, and training.
My own experience is that Magick (particularly working with a 'map' and 'tool' such as the tree, and a 'tradition') and entheogenic work goes very well with the 'right' counselling. A lot of 'progress' can be made in the direction you are seeking through combining what you are doing with honest, open, quality support.Also currently my take on your question that i included above my post, is that, i know i have not, and currently dont feel i will ever really get over the deep experiences of hurt and trauma from my childhood, and i dont feel im meant to in the way i might have wanted as a younger person.
Its more that much of these experiences has found a place of worth and value inside of me, they have given my life purpose and meaning. I am learning to respect my wounds and know them with dignity.
But, i'm only going through it for myself and this is the best sense i can make from your question as it applies to my life and the experiences that inform it.
evolluap