Being here and now

Here and Now... the oracle card I've been pulling over and over again and still not quite integrating the message!

I think this is a particularly important time to be in control of our own thoughts.

Last night I had an unfortunate THC experience, but perhaps it was good for a few things. First of all, I used to have terrible paranoia after smoking weed. I would feel more confused and lost than normally so I stopped it about 10 years ago. Then there's the mental aspect of psychotropic drugs. DMT in Ayahuasca would overtake my brain and spirit so much, I'd get anxiety with all the physical symptoms - hot and cold sweat, shaking, and generally feeling as if my nervous system was in someone else's possession. Was someone gathering information from my body? - may be another aspect of the paranoia. 

Last night, I ingested my friend's homemade cannabis oil with the full spectrum of compounds... Rather than going to sleep right away, I stayed up to wait for the full effects, and see how it makes me feel... I didn't like the feeling! A complete overtaking of my body and mind, slight psychosis you could say... I was so paranoid that there was someone in the room, or that I'd try to harm myself, or that my blanket was a man lying on top of me...

At one point, well after midnight, I was side stepping in front of my housemate's bedroom door, contemplating whether I should wake her up and tell her to keep an eye on me.

Even during this little madness happening in my brain, I still knew that that too shall pass... and if it was anything like the hash brownie I once ate on an empty stomach in Amsterdam, it would pass after a solid sleep... I tried, tried to calm down, and drift off... it happened at some point. 

I'm okay today but I don't recommend participating in psychedelics, especially, in these turbulent times. If I was considering Ayahuasca again, or even the readily available mushrooms here in Playa, I think that I just changed my mind.

I wanna be in control of my mind, especially now during my last days in Mexico while I'm preparing for a new chapter. And I shall live this new beautiful chapter, as I've written it a long time ago.

I need to make some important decisions for the future while living in the present moment - creating from nothing. How?

Taking it one step at the time, paying attention to my thoughts, acting 'as if', and raising my frequency. 

It's hard to stay present when the mistakes of past are still unforgiven, or lurk around threatening to be repeated... 

By the way, don't participate in other people's games... the games that boost their ego or even the narrative of heartache, blame, and separation... do not give your consent to participate.

All the best xxx

The void be gone - not! The void be there and be nourished!

I am celebrating my befriending of the void. It's like my whole 34 years of existence I aspired to this moment 😂
My entire life I felt swallowed by it, so alone - separate, unsafe, and insecure (well, there are still some confidence issues to be tackled). In essence, the hollowness across my chest seemed palpable - this long!
All the shamans, psychics, and clairsentient people would tell me - it's your heart chakra, the impenetrable shield across your chest, nothing can get in, nothing can come out... Thanks for the confirmation!

I've always been drawn to heart-healing crystals and colors, namely, the rose quartz and the color green. But the sad song continued like a broken record in the background. 

Recently, I came to the realization that the void will always be there.... so what can I do to live in harmony with it? Fill it with more self-love and other healthier things, whispered my heart.

I am now nourishing it, I nourish my void with healthier habits and lots of self-love and self-acceptance. My new living situation, and arguing housemates retraumatized me. I had to forgive myself for recreating a familiar situation because clearly, it needed to be healed. Instead of drinking my trauma away or looking for ways to mentally check out, I joined the gym. Spending days taking care of the body means true self-appreciation. It's not a painkiller, escape, or punishment. 

I pat myself on the back for showering my inner child, inner teenager, and the adult self with love, forgiveness, and unconditional acceptance. Nothing bothers me anymore. Ehm, the cow's milk in my morning coffee instead of the coconut milk I paid for extra? Well, it fuckin' pissed me off when I found out around the corner from the cafe! But instead of returning to cause a scene, I figured that it's not gonna kill me to just finish the damn cup!

Getting to know the void all over again has been a blessing :)

I feel so different!

Pre-full moon musings, shadow-work, and self-love

We shall experience Libra's full moon over the weekend, yay!
Yesterday, a rare planetary constellation occurred that apparently stirred up some interesting energy. That wave should have inspired surrender and forgiveness - which are also the themes of the upcoming full moon. 

I went to a public sound healing by the beach, it was magical. I was looking at the star-less sky, replaying the recent dramas that felt so familiar they retraumatized me. But instead of feeling anxious, sad, or bitter, I felt peace. It was as if the void finally stopped bothering me, or doing anything bad to me - has it ever?

I loved the outdoor event, exactly what I needed. I felt so blessed to have spent time in Mexico and found my soul family in Playa del Carmen.

Right there and then, I forgave everyone everything. All I had to do was begin with myself, take my power back, and forgive myself for forgetting my goddessness. 

Forgiveness and surrender... My oracle cards confirmed it, and so did my higher self upon waking up this morning... What if, it's not that simple with self-love.

What if unless we do a proper shadow-sweep first (I'll explain the concept later), self-love will always be half-arsed and frankly, quite a vague idea?

So what is shadowwork?

Can we capture our shadow and bash it hard? Haha, try it! 

You'll realize that force doesn't work here. What's needed is GENTLENESS.

Be brave enough to look at all the dark parts of yourself and stay gentle. All the negativity you despise, the traits you're not proud of, the self-sabotaging behavior, the toxic co-dependency, the overthinking, the criticizing, the self-bullying, the perceived mistakes you've made in the past, and all the parts you wish you've never seen because now they can't be unseen, they lurk in the shadow. Every time life gets you down, you get you down, you remind yourself of all these shortcomings in mere seconds - and it feels yucky! Lay all the yuckiness out in front of you and - LOVE IT. Love it with fiery acceptance, love it to health because what is not loved will fester.

You can heal the wound with forgiveness...

I've been quite vague with my sh*t lately so let's put this work into perspective:

I laid out in front of me all my past messy behavior, my early twenties' escapism into drugs, alcohol, and promiscuity, my mildly ADD personality, my despise of long-term commitments, fear of deeper intimacy with a man, panic about whether I want to raise children or not, whether I believe in marriage and monogamy, my unhealthy handling of recent rejection, love-starving, and then the ways I find to flee it all and check out. I forgave the child, the teenager, and the adult in me. I've seen misdirected love and unconscious evil quite early in life, yet I'm here, alive, healthy, and happy.

I feel so fuckin' blessed that I live/d a life many cannot even imagine... so blessed and so grateful.

My fixation on the omnipresent void has been fruitful after all. I feel I've grown since I started experiencing it again and not casting it back into the shadows. I explored it, I played with it...

What if the void never leaves, was my question, then what? Will I die from feeling this lost in space?

(Well, yes and no. I will die from old age, and it might be a different sensation altogether but first - let's reframe the meaning of the void anyway!)

Maybe the void is not that scary.

Love yourself with forgiveness and acceptance, all of you.

This is what this full moon asks you to do with higher intensity now, but it's what your body-mind-spirit asks of you on a daily basis.
This type of work is crucial for your mental and your physical health.

Not until the shadow-work is done, may we fully understand the void of self-love.

What are you rejecting about yourself?

I hope you can see how important it is that you get to know your demons.

If you're a carer like me, you must realize that forgiveness and unconditional acceptance are not only for others. They start with you.

Come to my thing next Tuesday:

When the void never leaves...

... it waits for its phenomenal comeback, like a paparazzi creeping from around the corner, waiting for the perfect moment to just bam - get his best shot, shot at you... and you're frickin' shocked, puzzled, wondering how the hell did he get there... again?

I've done so much shadow-work, I wonder how much deeper should one dig! How far does that shadow go? 

It has started properly 3 years ago when I first sat down in Vipassana meditation for a total of 10 hours a day for 10 days, then continued that work a year later, sitting in quarantine in a bungalow in Koh Phangan with my dark eros thoughts. The void let itself be known more strongly than ever before... 

I tested that I could not sleep it away, eat it away, drink it away, and certainly not fuck it away because I tried that way too many times.

The void was still there, at first it felt like it was located in the middle of my chest, but in fact, lately, it feels like a vacuum cleaner swallowing me whole, leaving my spirit floating in space unprotected by my physical body, afraid of utter lostness and aloneness. 

What to do when the void comes to swallow you whole? You have to deal with it. ALONE. There, you don’t need to read the whole blog post to find the answer. 

Yet... keep asking me away and reach out anytime the void comes on the stage again. Coz' I know that if we don't address it appropriately, we resort to filling it with external substances, wine, chips, sweets, casual sex, you name it. Sometimes it looks healthy - lots of sports, maybe a lot of new work projects - we bury it under anything that keeps us 'busy'.

No, we don't have to wallow in negative emotions, but if we don't take the time to understand them, they'll come back and we'll never find true satisfaction in anything.

I deal with my stuff, all the time. That's why it surprised me when the void came on so suddenly recently, and I felt the urge to fill it immediately. Anything, anyone, let's stuff it now. Oh, yucky feelings, go away! Can I gorge myself, smash myself, find a victim to stuff it with, please?

There’s no one to blame, not yourself, your parents, nor your ex…. You feel the void when it gets triggered. So recognize your triggers... And what's next, then dissolve them?

Let's see.

For me, a trigger can be an insincere hug, an invitation that never came, someone exchanging my company for someone else's, a smile not being returned, or being left behind by those who were supposed to take care of me.

the feeling that arises - is it rejection, disappointment, sadness, thoughts of not-enoughness, abandonment, or general emptiness?

I'd say it certainly feels like all of that is experienced all at once in mere seconds.
A hollow sensation can spread across your chest, right there, around your heart chakra, and sit there so empty, yet so heavy…

I came to a conclusion that I might have been born with the void, maybe we all were, the notion of separation felt real. Therefore, there’s no getting rid of the void… because it’s already a nonbinding vacuum empty of any substance... like the space, it’s not there, yet it's everpresent. 

What are you lacking?

Give that that you're lacking, fill the world with beautiful things, intentions, and actions of love, no need to dissolve anything.

Love and blessings xxx

P.S: Still keen to read about the void? Check my older article here: https://www.elephantjournal.com/2020/03/what-covid-19-is-teaching-us-about-sex-pleasure-seeking-pavlina-angel-lioness/

Aries New Moon comes with more clarity about WHO WE ARE.

This is a brief update on my mental health, lol. It's been an interesting week and I'm grateful. I'm feeling amazing now... super clear on who I am, what I need, and what I wanna do in life. I'm decided to sabotage myself nomore, no more deliberate retraumatizing.

I'm surrounded by wonderful friends, masterminds, and so much magical energy right now.

It's the new moon in Aries. This is what you can work with now:

By Dawn M. Harrison:

This month’s New Moon in Aries marks the “beginning of beginnings”. As the first New Moon that follows the Spring Equinox, it heralds a time of soulful kindling and conscious emergence, as we wake to those parts of ourselves that are finding their way to the light.

To be born.
To be taken seriously.
To be given a chance.
To be seen.
To be heard.
To be held.
And, yes… to be loved.

It’s time to face our fears head on and give voice to that thing called desire.

If there’s any part of you that was taught that your desires are not worthy, are not valid, or have no place in your world, then this New Moon invites you to unlearn that conditioning and burn those barriers down.
Full article:
https://risingwoman.com/new-moon-in-aries-april-2022/

Don't let the external ups and downs influence your inner Terrain for too long. Learn, accept the lessons, and move on to what feels right for you.

I am light.