I’ve had an odd couple of days. I’ve been examining my image of myself, both awake and in my dreams, but the cold, objective evaluation shows my self-image doesn’t match reality. And not in a positive way, I fall short of how I imagine myself. It was a painful and shameful realization.
But understanding yourself is critical to the task of improving yourself. Hopefully this process will help clear away some of the self-imposed obstacles to my progress.
Σαυτὸν ἴσθι
Know Thyself
I’m glad SC released a multi-stage healing sub. It’s not for me at this point in time, but if I eventually rebuild Renew I’ll look at adding one of the DR stages.
Feeling worn out, didn’t get much work done today. Also have some tension in my chest, and feeling vaguely sad.
Don’t want to do anything right now, so will probably just watch a movie and zone out for a bit, then go to bed. Maybe mix myself an Old Fashioned or two.
Rest day tomorrow.
Watched this video and now feeling angry instead of sad. I guess that’s better?
Love the song, love the video, love the lyrics.
Been listening to Lyfjaberg (Healing Mountain) from Wardruna as well. Now I feel happy.
I cannot wait until they release their next album Kvitravn.
I had an unpleasant dream last night.
I was in a derelict house, rectangular in shape with only a central room and two smaller side rooms. The walls looked like they were bare concrete, they were slightly cracked and had dead vines running up them, and there were no windows. The walls of the side rooms had square pillars every few feet. There was no roof. All the rooms were empty apart from a bit of rubble, but otherwise clean and with little dust. The house was located near where my grandparents used to live.
Both of the side rooms contained a “presence”. Something hateful and malignant and evil. I could feel its rage and malice engulf me as I stood there, like foul smoke surrounding my body. I felt fear, but remained steadfast and refused to let it overcome me.
I woke up, still feeling that fear. It’s very, very rare for me to feel fear in a dream, irrespective of what happens in the dream, so this indicates it was an very meaningful and important dream.
Houses in dreams usually represent ourselves, so an abandoned house could represent discarded aspects of ourselves. Since it was near my grandparent’s house it may represent aspects of my childhood. Since the rooms were almost completely clear and empty it’s likely a very, very old part of me that has almost no connection to my life today. The dead vines may represent loss and neglect. The pillars may indicate that this used to be something important to me, as pillars usually support and strengthen a structure. I think this represents a part of my childhood that was abandoned a very long time ago but never completely died. Possibly it relates to some trauma that I don’t remember now.
Whatever it was may have been abandoned, but it’s still part of me. These things still affect our lives in insidious ways, especially when there’s so much emotion involved.
I think this dream gave me a glimpse of something important, something I need to resolve. I’m going to spend some time on exploring this and trying to understand what it is.
perhaps you broke through the ceiling and need to step out
but also of course, the neglect, and structure indicate abandonment and the fear is a push away, it could also be that you abonded or neglected an aspect of yourself years ago, the fear even put there by you as a mechanism to move away from, hence the open roof, it never became a limitation of your but was also never addressed.
Not really sure about the roof, but I thought it was just another part of it being derelict. Maybe it means something though, I’m no expert at dream analysis.
There were no good feelings about the place at all, I could just feel all that hatred and rage directed at me. My best guess is it represents some abandoned aspect of my childhood that resents being abandoned, but I could be wrong.
But I think it’s something important. I’m going to try to explore it a bit more through dreamwork.
Today was a rest day. It was the complete opposite of yesterday. I powered through my work with a focus and determination I haven’t felt in a while. It felt great. Yay for rest days.
In honor of the new Dragon Reborn sub I’ve decided to call this “Mashadar”.
It’ll make it easier to work with if it has a name.
I read on here about people using a pendulum to check their sub usage. I’m not really into pendulums but I decided to try it.
Titan the correct sub to run now = Yes
Run it for more than 1 month = Yes
Run it for more than 2 months = No
Run it for 6 weeks = Yes
Run Istari after Titan = Unknown
Run Renew after Titan = Unknown
Run Dragon Reborn after Titan = Unknown
All answers were very clear.
So, it indicates I should run Titan until Dec 18, but no advice about what to run next.
Interesting. But can’t say it tells me much. I was already planning to do Titan until the middle of Dec anyway, this would maybe add a week.
Well once you get off it in december decide from there, depends on how you feel and your next goals in life, which even sub will halp with that
I had intended to do a month of Istari next, but you’re absolutely right, I should wait until I finish Titan before I decide. I have another month of Titan to go, and that’s a long time. I may be inspired to go down a different path.
More reconciliation, lots of tension and a feeling of being trapped. For some reason this guy came to mind.
I’m resisting running Renew unless I absolutely have to, I’d rather just see how this plays out.
I normally do 4 loops, but I only got through 2 today due to meetings. Tomorrow I’ll try to get through at least 6 loops to see if I can push through it.
I was trying to figure out which modules might be causing this degree of reconciliation, but that’s the wrong way of thinking about it. Titan is just a vehicle for manifesting change. It’s my own goals in this area that are triggering such resistance as I try to move in that direction. Part of me seems to be strongly against what I’m trying to do here. I guess it’s some form of fear of failure, but I don’t think it really matters.
I think I’ll try something new this weekend. I’m a big fan of the Chöd technique of “feeding your demons”, but I never thought to try it with whatever is causing reconciliation. I’m thinking it’s worth a shot.
I’ve noticed a couple of unexpected changes lately that I don’t believe are related to Titan.
First, I seem to be a lot less understanding and empathetic with others, and uncompromising about my actions, even if they can potentially hurt others. The goal is all that matters. Although this might be related to Titan, I feel it’s actually due to Leonidas. It’s very much a masculine energy, focused on moving in a straight line towards the goal, and destroying any obstacles in the way. I’m still feeling my way through this, and not quite sure what to make of it, or how far I want to take it. Obviously this isn’t actually caused by Leonidas, it’s my own subconscious deciding how to integrate the masculine programming - but now I need reconcile these new subconscious desires with the conscious ones and come up with something I’m comfortable with.
Second, energy work has recently taken a large jump in terms of physical sensations. I’ve always been able to feel sensations with energy work, but the now it’s much stronger and very physical in intensity. I don’t think I can tie this to Titan, unless it’s related to the manifestation modules. I suspect this is actually Istari continuing to support my energy work even though I haven’t run it in 2 months.
The last two mornings I’ve woken up with the faintest sense of grief inside my heart. A feeling of precious things lost forever, replaced by ugly things. Dark, heavy, fetid, humid. Something consuming itself in an ever smaller, ever contracting spiral of despair.
It was just a memory of a whisper, an echo of an echo, a shadow of a feeling. But like many subtle things it was felt at the deepest level, like a kind of resonance. Something so insubstantial, yet almost unbearable, fraying the edges of my soul.
So I’ve been listening to Renew these last two days, it helps me remember joy. The whisper of grief fades away, and I get on with my day. But behind the happiness, behind the optimism, behind the stoic acceptance of the vagaries of life, a discordance remains.
What is this thing, that tears at me with claws so fine and delicate?
Hard to say, it’s come and gone in waves since then. I think it’s related to the energy work I’ve been doing, removing and opening up emotional blockages and releasing old trauma. I suspect Dragon Reborn does a lot of work at the energetic level, so I’m listening to that now since I believe it’ll help release the blockages more effectively. I’m running 3-4 loops a day.
I’ve also come to think of Mind’s Eye as the foundational sub for any stack, so I’m running 1 loop of that (Q version) each day as well. Since I added ME my dreams have been insane - numerous and vivid and unusually weird, and every time I close my eyes for a few seconds I get a rush of images coming through.
An example of a dream from last night, I climbed into bed (in the dream) and closed my eyes and actually went to sleep in the dream where there was a period of nothingness, but was woken up (again in the dream) by the bed rocking. I turned over and Donald Trump was in bed next to me, facing away, jerking off furiously. Disgusted I turned away and pulled the covers over my head so I couldn’t see, but immediately felt a heavy weight on my feet, which moved up my body. It felt like something heavy walking up my body, and where it stepped my body became paralyzed. I managed to pulled the covers off my face before my arms were paralyzed, and saw a demon, in the shape of a small anthropomorphic elephant with a wooden mask covering its face, sitting on my chest. It was looking down at me, but there was only blackness through the eyeholes in the mask. My body was completely paralyzed at this point, so I called up Divine light and threw it at the demon, which flew backwards away from me, and releasing me from the paralysis. Trump was still jerking off next to me. I thought “fuck this” and made myself wake up.
I should note I’ve never suffered from sleep paralysis, and to do it in a dream is even weirder, especially with the classic demon sitting on the chest.
No doubt some elements in the dream were influenced to an extent by recent events, but I’m not sure what they symbolize. I don’t think the dream was actually about politics though.