A Blogger’s Journey: Into the Matrix (Symbolism)
Taking the red pill
Much debate has been had on the meaning of this. I leave it to you to decide what it is, for me.
The son becomes the father.. (The Yoke of Generations is the Yoke of Ieosus, the Anointed)
COMING SOON
Inactivity.
Yes, it’s been a year and a half since I’ve written here.
The post A shout-out for new followers… still applies. Chronic/persistent pain is such a terrible beast.
Then there is Binge eating — one of the last of my dirty little secrets. I’m going to meet with an RDN once again. I have to do it with the intent of diabetes education, first and foremost, because health insurance simply demands it be that way. But I got a referral to meet with someone who also has training and expertise in treating eating disorders. To sum up the post, yes, I got diagnosed with binge eating disorder by a previous RDN I was seeing for diabetes education. I went on to look into bariatric weight loss surgery, specifically the sleeve (think of it as stomach stapling 2.0). I went through the process they have all patients do, up until it was time for me to take a psychological evaluation (which is probably the VERY same one I took before having a trial neurostimulator implanted in my spine- see Electric Fences and Spinal Cord Stim and The trial version of the electric fence). I then decided I needed to get a better handle on my binge eating disorder before having the size of my stomach reduced.
This is all aside from losing weight on my own after many years, dropping from 383 pounds down to 286 the last time I stepped on the digital scale at my physician’s clinic. It didn’t happen all at once. I was at 316 for a long while, but this was after following the counting carbohydrates system the aforementioned RDN taught me- the one that gave me my eating disorder diagnosis. Then I did some intermittent fasting, and my newest physician started me on an injectable diabetes drug.. but I digress.
Then there are new developments that I think will give new posts for the A Blogger’s Journey series. I did start blogging at LiveJournal in 2002 to try to unpack all the abuse my mother heaped on me for many, many years. But it was SEVERAL years before I had a name for a lot of the abuse: narcissistic abuse. And it took me a while to realize that narcissists were ALL OVER my family of origin. Not just my mother, but my maternal grandmother, both my aunts, and at least one cousin. Not unique or unusual, no, but I am coming to understand my particular experience of family dysfunction. I had to find new online communities to better process this, because… I was blacklisted from one I’d been with for about 5 years. That was what Return to Path of the Sage was about, although I was very cryptic at the time. I was scared that I’d catch more ire from the host of that community, or any of her active followers. It’s not a story I wish to recount right now. But it’s the same story I’m referring to here:
Yes, I have a huge winter beard here. It’s not quite that long this winter season… but that’s another story.
Anyways, I hope to get back into the swing of posting again. I wish to welcome new readers! And to one in particular (you know who you are)… do you see what I mean when I told you “oh, this is just the tip of the iceberg”? I mean, I still haven’t mentioned the half of it!
But such is blogging.. I have time to unpack more of it. And finding the right balance to heal and grow, without oversharing, is tough. The masses on the Internet can be pretty vicious, and that’s counting a LOT of stories, including the one about my Internet stalker. I’ll do my best to write more. Thanks for your patience!
(Sharing Gratitude) The Wheelers
Someone stopped by to Like a recent post. We’ve done a bit of bathroom remodeling in the last few years. Should I consider that some future updates should look like this one?
A Return to Equilibrium
Dear readers (those of you that are still here),
I don’t have much of a post for you today. I do have a video, however, regarding a film I greatly enjoy. It was a film I picked to do a Hero’s Journey series on, and when I really dug in, I discovered it was one of the most masterful tellings I’d ever seen, taking Campbell’s classic steps, and intertwining them with a few male version steps from The Heroine’s Journey.
Please note that a lot of this video will probably make more sense if you’re a film student, and actually know about cinematography, and how a director puts a movie together. The channel name “CinemaWins” I think is a play on the name of a different channel, called “Cinema Sins”.
Here’s the video. It only came out a few weeks ago, so please send Likes and comment love:
A Hero’s Journey: Superman & the Ordeal
This scene may be much better understood as an example of Jung’s concept of the shadow self, rather than by classical interpretation of The Hero’s Journey. Superman III was a clunker of a movie. But the late Christopher Reeves is said to have been very proud of this junkyard scene. Maybe he understood its psychological implications, especially as such cerebral, intellectual messages tend to be rarer- even in today’s era of the superhero genre in movies and television. A special thank you to Kristal Garcia for highlighting this concept in her blog, and how it relates to recovery work, and loving men.
Challenges & Temptations revisited: the Ordeal
I will admit this selection is probably not an obvious one. This scene from Superman III is near the middle of the movie, and is not especially set up well for a Monomyth interpretation by other story elements. I think it is easier to understand, however, from the ideas explored in the previous movies.
Juxtaposed images of Superman and Clark Kent (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The original challenge and temptation was the love of Lois Lane. In both her discovery of his identity and his decision to become mortal as she, it was a Refusal of the Call of sorts. Although his return to the Fortress of Solitude (see Superman & the At-One-Ment With the Father) led to atonement with Jor-El, Kal-El was not fully reconciled with his dual roles as Superman and Clark Kent. Having failed the original challenge, another Ordeal…
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#MentalHealthAwareness
If any of you dear readers are still around– maybe you remember that I’ve written some posts on mental health in the past. I met Phil through Twitter, and the #mentalhealthformen chat he hosts, and was very pleasantly surprised to see he blogs on WordPress. Please take a moment to read. Thank you.
So last week was #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek and you would have seen numerous blog posts about it and people being so open about it. I think we should encourage more people, not just males or just females, just PEOPLE to talk about it.
For everybody who suffers with Mental Health issues I bet you wish you had the support that you saw or gave on Twitter everyday in your life, let me just say YOU WILL. So long as you talk about it. In my opinion we need to focus more on Mental Health and trying to increase the awareness so more people will understand it and not judge.
I suffer with it now and have done for a long time and in this post I am going to open up for the first time PUBLICLY and talk about what I have been through and how…
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an awakening, but not quite a rude one
There’s two things that brought sudden understanding to me, and the first one is probably more of a shock to YOU, dear readers.
A week ago, I spent two days in jail. I did know this was coming, though.
The second thing was more of a shock to ME, although it wasn’t a total surprise. It was more that things sunk in on a deeper level.
Wednesday night, discussing details of a family get-together for my son’s birthday, I realized that my mother really is a narcissist. Again, I don’t think she’s a textbook case of NPD, and her narcissism is definitely of the covert variety, but I can’t describe her controlling antics as borderline narcissism anymore. It IS narcissism, and discussing things with one of my sisters (who lives in town) made it that more concrete for me. In other words, she agrees.
I’m not in the best space for writing– and yes, I reckon I’m piquing your interest. I will write more later. It is upsetting, and it is disappointing. But I knew this… practically forever, and I mean forever on a very esoteric level, especially if any of you have read ..the father becomes the son.
Return to Path of the Sage
“I seek not to know all the answers, but to understand the questions.”
— Kwai Chang (Grasshopper) Caine, as portrayed by David Carradine on Kung Fu (TV series, 1972-1975)
It has been a while.
The time has come, it seems- to wander, to ponder and contemplate where I went wrong. A course correction, some time to be alone and try to figure out where my place should be.
I have overstepped.
What is the nature of the Uncarved Block? What potential lies in being nothing, so that one might have everything to give?
Taoist monks observed the universe, as well as the immediate earth around them; physicists of today confirm much of what they wrote. Where is my proper place amongst all things?
There has been an imbalance. I cannot remain secluded, for this is not Tao- but I need time to myself, time to just be, and see if my path will move back to its rightful place.
the tao of jaklumen 