I’ve done this exercise before from the book The Magic of the Iron Pentacle by Jane Meredith and Gede Parma, and when I did it last time, I felt very “different” coming out of it and felt like I was vibrating a lot. But long periods of “running the iron” through the body, from my experience, can leave the practitioner feeling that way. “Running the iron,” in my opinion is similar to EMDR, which is a modality for dealing with trauma, but has more of an acute and short-lived period of side effects like the vibrating and feeling “off” in some way; but I think that may be attributed to running a pentagram through the body – head to right foot, to left hand, to right hand, to left foot, and back up to the head, over and over again. This exercise is executed in 2 parts – a ritual bath, then running the iron while focused on what it is about yourself you are proud of. This is how it went….

I cleansed and consecrated my bath water and salt that I added to the bath, then I steeped a large tea bag of 3 herbs/plants – High John the Conqueror, Cedar, and Rose petals ground up in a mortar and pestle. I added dragon’s blood oil for some oomph and reverence to my Mother Goddess the Morrigan, and I added some Brigid oil because she’s my patron Goddess who I work with, and I burned some red cedar incense for reverence to my Father God the Dagda. I threw in some crystal totem animals as well. I prayed to the water for cleansing me of everything that stands in the way of my pride, for my highest good, harming none, and I meditated in the bath and asked my inner child what shall we do this pride ritual on. The term “resilience” came through.

I wasn’t sure about resilience being a proud part, but I also couldn’t shake it. So I continued to bath and kind of stay out of my head and allow the energy to run its course. Then some clarity came – I may not bounce back like everyone else in their normal lives, but my resilience is my own. This year is the first time in 20 years that I haven’t been on prescription anti-depressants and all I’ve had to suffer with is lack of motivation and activation. 20 years ago without antidepressants I was SSSSSOOOO depressed, a despairing mess, and going nowhere. Also, this year is a new 1st year in sobriety! Without anti-depressants????? Holy shit! I really should just give huge thanks to Spirit and All that have helped me and pat myself as well on the back. I haven’t done things perfectly this year; I gained a bunch of weight, I struggle with motivation, and I tend to get overwhelmed with tasks and get disorganized. But mentally and emotionally I’m pretty good considering the circumstances. So resilience it is.

For the rest of the exercise I needed to have 5 candles – 4 red and 1 white. The white candle represented pride, and the rest represented the rest of the Iron Pentacle points. I used tea light candles and put them around my bed so I could lay out in between them like the exercise suggested at the end. I lit the candle for “sex,” and focused my thoughts on how the creation of me contributes to my resilience. The focus went to the God/dess, how Spirit seemed to use my shadows against me (you can probably find information on that in previous blogs on my site) and drop bread crumbs (little ominous events that would persuede me to choose recovery) when I was at the end of my addiction and struggling to get back in recovery. This shows that God/dess loves me, has faith in me, and knew I was capable and wanted me to succeed. The next candle was lit for “self,” and the focus went towards how I contributed to my own resilience. It was my ability to discern the world around me and see it in a way that, regardless how coo-coo it may appear to others, it was poetic and meaningful to me – from ideas of how my own darkness shapes my light, to understanding how Cernunnos will help me with “my Herne” so I won’t be tempted by the Wild Hunt, to….I can’t think of anything at the moment but I know there’s more. My abstract thinking allows for many different angles to find meaning in everything if I so choose to do so. Then I lit the candle representing “power,” and all I could focus on was the energy work that I do – meditation, daily grounding and centering (frequently twice a day), shielding, cord cutting, call my energy back, willing positivity, shutting my mind off, etc. All those things, much that can be down in 10+ minutes a day, has been really helpful. Then I lit the candle representing “passion,” and the focus was on the friendships and fellowship that has sprung up around me, the “ah-ha” moments that manifest when I “do the work” and step out in the world; they all contribute and perpetuate the purpose and meaning for my life to be lived and enjoyed. Finally, I lit the candle representing pride, and the focus was on the showing up and the love for myself even though there were times I didn’t really see it. God/dess showed up for me, friends showed up for me, new friends and fellowship have been showing up for me and helping me stay accountable for my spiritual growth. It’s been beautiful, and something to be proud of, because Spirit took pride in me to be here for me. Because of all this, I take in pride in sharing the love and spirit with others. Now that all the candles are lit, I lay down between all the candles and “run the iron” through my body and repeat the reflections I had with each candle I lit; starting with sex, then self, then power, then passion, and finally pride. I pulled the energy from each point together and centered it in body as I continued to “run the iron.” I felt in honor of the Gods and honored by them at the same time. My skin felt only a little vibratory for this exercise (for some reason it took longer to get the visualization well executed for this exercise), and I came out of it feeling only a little “off;” but yet, I feel good. I feel strong. I feel proud, but not egoic.

This working intercepted my working on “Opening to Rapture” in the book the The Magick of the Iron Pentacle by Jane Meredith and Gede Parma. I started a ritual bath consisting of herbs and crystals, and as I stripped to enter the bath, I looked at myself in the mirror and was saddened by what I saw – how overweight I’ve become since getting sober again last year. My intuition chimed in and suggested doing the “Acknowledging Shame” exercise from the Iron Pentacle book I just mentioned. So I did.

I grabbed my body paint and began the exercise. “I’m fat,” I said into the reflection in the mirror. I reflected on it. What crossed my mind was the laziness, lacking of willingness, and taking comfort in food and hiding from my feelings in that. That hiding transpired to even hiding from the gym. Feeling defeated from my setbacks with meth and gaining all this weight resulted in a feeling of disgust with self which showed up in hiding from the gym – not facing or accepting this reality. Naturally, everything I have been doing this past year crept in as well – therapy, step work, iron-pentacle work, finding myself, even the distractions such as psychic development and magickal practices. Although those practices are important to me have bore fruit in being tools for looking into my life and connecting me with spirit, they have demanded energy from me nonetheless. What I notice in all this, standing before the mirror, is movement; a strive for betterment and meaning. I’ve been here before. I’ve done a lot to be proud of, and I’m strong enough to endure and move forward. It’s funny how the body keeps score, regardless of what I’m hiding in – meth, food, or avoidance, the changes in my body are remarkable and as if it has a mind of its own, demanding to be seen – whether sickly and skinny from meth or over-weight in the comfort and stress eating I participate in. A new respect for my body slowly emerges and I chant to the mirror “your body is your own, beautiful and sacred,” which soon turns into “my body is my own, beautiful and sacred.” I paint an equal armed cross in yellow over my belly to represent sacrifice, a blue heart over my left chest for healing and compassion, a red Aesculapius staff over my right chest for power in healing, and a purple dot over my third eye for seeing this. I then got into the bath.

The bath – first I cleansed, consecrated, and charged all the elements with the intentions I desired. Epson salt (cleansing), black salt (protection), pure dragon’s blood oil for Mother Morrigan, Brigid oil for my patroness; herbs of lavender (purification), mugwort (shamanic work), wormwood for spirit contact, rose petals (self love). I cleansed and consecrated the bath water, and added the salt first. After that, I threw in the rest of the ingredients (herbs in a giant tea bag). I added gemstone totem animals from my altar that represent my inner child, my ego, and higher self along with rhodochrosite for self-love. I used amber soap for sentimental value in amber’s correspondence to Brigid.

In the bath, a dialogue began between me and my higher self. I was reflecting on another ritual I was going to do where I chant “I’ve been with you from the beginning,” which is from the “Opening to Rapture” ritual in the chapter on Sex from the Magic of the Iron Pentacle. I suddenly asked God/dess, “If you were there the whole time, why all the tragedy, trauma, and shame?” This question comes from the wounded self. The answer came in as I gazed at the water, “Free will, and conjunction with that, I kept you as safe as I could.” A pause while I was sitting there, and suddenly, “What does your light matter that touches others without your darkness? What credence do you have to help others, what worth or power is your word to inspire, heal, and triumph without knowing despair, pain, and loss? Who would that ‘perfect Matt’ be without those things?” This brought immense comfort and validation; and thus I silently scream-cried it out onto the bath water. A new sense of being centered resulted. The beauty in experiencing tragedy from those with the free will to be terrible people is the ability to heal those that have suffered. Empathy and the evolving word through transmutation of despair into meaning and purpose allows the light in others to emerge from their own darkness. There is a reverence to particle theory here as well, where the degree to which particles move is determined by the amount of energy they have and their relationship to other particles. Changing or adding new meaning and purpose to something changes their effects. Darkness/shadow shapes the light in human beings. I washed it all away down the tub, showered, and left the bathroom refreshed and maybe with a new grain of enlightenment as I journey my life forward.

Further contemplation, a conversation with Higher Self – “Although you hid in your secrets and fears growing up, the drugs and alcohol that followed that, it didn’t make you present or whole, fully connect, or secure you. Running from your darkness disconnected you from your light. In fact all that running, fighting, and hiding added so much more shadow to that darkness. But the journey through and back b/c of the Light….that process bears much more value, meaning, and purpose than if you hadn’t experienced any of it along with the bad at all. It has the capacity to touch more lives that are stuck in their own darkness (whatever forms they be) because in some form, you’ve been there. All that war your inner child waged and raged gave you more shit to feel, and thus more empathy to inspire others in marching their journey out of shame. On a side note – You were a very strong individual to endure what you had the way you had, but strength and freedom are not mutually inclusive.”

My perception on what dialogue with Higher Self is – aha moments. As the saying goes – the teacher emerges when the student is ready, aha moments appear when I’m ready and willing to receive them. The conversations with Higher Self appear more so as introspection. The sources of the voices in our heads depends on the tone – emotional = inner child; judgment whether good or bad = ego; new understanding and positive direction = Higher Self. I think the stream of conversation and use of words is like a radio wave and/or filter that takes place in the conscious mind.

The Iron Pentacle is a healing modality from the Feri Tradition of witchcraft that assist the practitioner in recentering oneself. This is my journey through the Iron Pentacle as laid out in the book “The Magick of the Iron Pentacle” by Jane Meredith and Gede Parma. The first exercise is sexual wounding. After creating sacred space, casting a circle, calling on my deities, and lit my God/dess candle from my altar, the process went as follows:

The exercise asks the reader to reflect. This is a gist of what is to be reflected on, paraphrased: Journal on a little about sexual wounding as I see it from a history and social perspective. Do I think people’s experiences and attitudes have changed throughout time? How has society dealt or failed to deal with this? Think for a moment how my parents and grandparents would have dealt with this. Consider different types of sexual wounding – emotional, psychic, and physical. There is more, but this is where my spirit takes me….

What I wrote in reflection – History – slaves were subservient and property, corresponding to man’s greed and inflated ego. Women and even effeminate men were looked at as property or inferior under the construct of the patriarchy. Men ruled by strength and power; those inferior were held in contempt. Contempt leads to disgust which then leads to dehumanization; next perversion sets in as inequality dehumanizes races, women, and even men not measuring up the corrupted society standard, to a point where violations of another’s human body is accepted and permissible, because human desire holds place and power over those considered sub-human (slaves/property, outcasts, marginalized peoples). Response to this is internalized shame and hiding. In a world where heterosexuality is super-normalized and even sanctified due to ignorance of Nature, anything not falling into the constructs of heterosexuality is pushed underground, shamed, and ignored. No voice. A lot has changed, but the travesty against sexuality still exists. Women can vote and hold power, but they are paid less. People of color have to fight beyond the normas of white society to get where they are. Cultures are feared. The LGBTQ+ remains marginalized as we have to power through fear to share our truths and merely exist, instead of walking bedside heterosexuals in peace, harmony, and respect.

In reference to my family going back through history and how they would have handled my sexuality – My sexuality (homosexuality) would have been swept completely under the rug, or I would have been sent to a conversion camp. Whether or not anything would have physically happened, it would have still been demonized. I think supporting that claim is the reality that my confused, scared, inner child chose to remain hidden in silence for so many developmental years, until it was safe to come out; but even then self-knowledge and acceptance was a process for several years.

Under the Christian narrative, I was “abnormal” and an “abomination.” And for the duration of my hiding, sexual escapades, and exploring, giving into my nature and feeling ashamed for it due to that internalized “something is wrong with me”… I thought I might have caused it. Why? Because I like girls (or so I thought I did) up till my first sexual experiences which happened to be with a boy best friend which continued on for a few years. Comparison – he remained “straight” and I was/am “gay” and just didn’t know it at the time. Praying the gay away for years without dare speaking a word of it. But that level of hiding, self-esteem crushing, confidence silencing, was learned by internalizing the patriarchal emotional model of “don’t trust, don’t feel, and keep silent” as exemplified by my father who suffered his own traumas of what his fathers said, didn’t say, did or didn’t do, or weren’t there for. This with my mother driving him and trying to “fix” him in their codependent relationship trickled down to me – a boy living in a Christian world, not knowing I was gay. Hush, hide, and change the abomination in me was a theme of adolescent youth. Courage and confidence were and still are things I struggle with today, though my fears are limited to a few, some silly, but rooted in a damaged inner child. Years of maladjustment naturally led to drowning myself in addiction.

The acknowledgement portion of the exercise – the why. – I’m doing this (this work through the Iron Pentacle) to get back to myself and my truth. To find myself and embrace all the parts of me that were ridiculed and pushed into hiding; to re-empower them, because Something Greater than myself had the faith in me to endure that and the confidence in my gifts and success I have achieved, to hell and back.

In the Iron Pentacle sex is the creation power of the universe. My life has been created in both light and shadow, and I call back the pieces I surrendered to Shadow. I call them back to the Light within the star that I am.

The Process – visiting a trauma and soothing the pain. The original exercise is geared toward sexual trauma, and I adapted it to the hiding of my sexuality for years at a young age. I visited the moments of “praying the gay away,” the secret escapades and exploring, and my moments of being angry at God. I used the chant in the book “My body is my own, beautiful and sacred.” I also adapted the chant into a new one – “My sex is my own, beautiful and sacred,” which I found to be powerful in the process of healing the inner child…

During the process, I went back to childhood, I found him – my inner child, held him, and replayed pivitol moments during those dark ages of sexual growth. As I envisioned all this, I channeled healing energy and placed my healing hands upon the lower portion of my belly (the seat of the inner child – sacral chakra), and I chanted “My body is my own beautiful and sacred” numerous times and also chanted “my sex is my own, beautiful and sacred.” After a while of doing this, and seeing myself in a handful of excluded places, some seedy, I began to see I was just using them, the people I was with. How? Why? The truth was in the hiding. I certainly couldn’t share this love and finding of self with the world, I was “straight!” But nonetheless they were used for the benefit of desire and pleasure; their humanness and personhood never embraced because I was there all the while hiding mine. Very few times was I “truly” with someone and not using them sexually. The word fish love comes to mind – it’s when you love someone because what he or she provides for you and your life; it’s a common misconception to love and what it is. Fish love isn’t true love. I then revisited many of these moments, and my intuition nudged at me to change my chant to “your body is your own, beautiful and sacred; your sex is your own, beautiful and sacred. In those following moments I began to see them as their own sovereign selves, and not just occurrences, or mishaps in my life. I SAW THEM, for in honoring the moments and them, I’m honoring myself for the moments we shared; the energy shifts from objectification to being with the person. I think only once did I ever do that before and I didn’t need a magickal healing modality to provide it; it just came naturally and innocently.

Debriefing in completion – journaling. Going back to that inner child, I examined the turns my life would take. There was love, laughter, and much tragedy. I was neither graceful nor diplomatic in facing the expectations I had of myself, and in response to that (as my inner child emerges to put his 2 cents in) – I raged war! I RAGED WAR! I RAGED WAR!!!!! The exercise mentioned drawing a picture to represent the theme of this exercise. Being rather tired after this exercise, I half-assed it by drawing a stick figured, angry boy with pitch forks in his hands screaming “I raged war!” Due to the exercises content on sexuality and identity, my inner child thought it appropriate to draw rather pronounced genitalia on my angry inner child. It all does in fact look like a 6 year old drew this, and it’s hilarious. Underneath it, I wrote “Angry Inner Child, Beautiful and Sacred, DARE TO RAGE WAR!!!” I think it’s important to add that it’s To Wage War, not rage war. I’m not sure if this is was a mistake in my adult mind, or an anecdote from my inner child. Oh, out of nowhere after doing all this, the words came on their own, out of no where, from my mouth – “My dad sacrificed everything for me.” Which he did. When I came out, he didn’t understand, but he was and is completely supportive of who I am. Even though for a little while my mother said that he didn’t accept it, it didn’t matter, because even if that were true, he put it aside for his love and support of me; and the same goes for my life as a witch. He did in fact go up and beyond his fathers in being a father to me. For that I’m immensely grateful.

Finally – What was discovered during the process wasn’t anticipated. I didn’t expect the empathy and compassion that came through. And I’m grateful for the understanding my inner child and ego are beginning to have.

I recently went to Pagan Spirit Gathering 2022 and walked a meditative labyrinth. In that labyrinth I was kind of called to by Cernunnos and I wanted to know why, and He mentioned Herne. As I’m writing this I’m a little perplexed on who exactly called me. I felt ushered to Herne. I looked up His story and it very much resonated with me. His suicide due to the woes of a world resonate with my slow suicide by drugs and alcohol. In further research on Herne, I learned about the Wild Hunt. The Wild Hunt reflects the specters, dark fae, demons, all things dark that speak to our shadows and lure us out into oblivion. The pagan ritual of the Wild Hunt is about facing and conquering those shadows, defeating your own darkness. Before my relapse last year, becoming more and more spiritually bankrupt due to not working a good spiritual program, I was moving towards that darkness, till I finally picked up drugs again and was swept into oblivion. I’m currently in a personal spiritual movement of facing my shadows via shadow-work and inner-child work. In a meditation at home Herne knelt before me and declared He would help me with my shadows and Brigid shined in and declared she would help me with my light. Cernunnos has shined in on meditations before, and I believe He will help me with my light too. Anyway; further information is to be revealed.

My relationship with God has been a love/hate relationship, crossed between being humbled and loathing him. I have spent much energy having expectations on Him. My expectations have lowered His value. When those expectations aren’t met, I get mad at Him and feel devalued and punished. But haven’t my expectations devalued Him? Expectations create and image, which is in itself a label. I learned from a friend when we label something, we limit it. When I look at a tree and say, “tree.” I’ve limited it. I say I look at God as limitless, but a lack of trust of his design for my life confine his prowess, for if I have expectation on his design for my life, I point his movement in this or that direction, putting the blinders on His Will exceeding those expectations. I suppose that since the expectations I put on Him then put blinders on myself for a possible dream He have for me that may be bigger than I have for myself. If that’s the case, then the reality is more likely that I put a devaluing limit on myself. All things possible through God as they say. But possibilities are limited when I’m not open to them when I’m limited by expectations. I would cuss God out on a daily basis for not meeting my expectations. Also, as people would not meet my expectations, I would cut them out of my life before they got the chance to hurt me. However, have I been there for myself truly? Have I not turned my back on myself through escapism? Have I not allowed myself to be human in facing myself and feeling my feelings? Have I not allowed others to be human in their fallibilities? Continuing to stand next to them, despite their short comings, like God has with me? Have I not allowed God to be God? Has forcing him into a box of my expectations only allowed me to fall short, or even more so fall from Grace to a point of being stripped of all things I put in His way? Has being unplugged from the Source and yet successfully Willing everything I had into existence only been allowed by His Grace? A Grace that was a reflection of His Love and Faith in me to find a true sense of pride in my existence with all in things Q.E.D. humility? But have I allowed the expectations I placed on others, society, and then of course God, my limited view shrinking more and more as people, places, things, God fall short of my limited view to the point where Grace no longer existed? I did. I fell into the dark. Ironically that darkness swirled around me so much in the perversion I willed to perceive so much that I had to let it all go and start anew. I was able to keep my job and some things, but I had to start over with a new perception of self and the world. A start with I don’t know. The reason I stayed out was denial. I refused to see the reality. I had everything but was spiritually empty. Expectations for myself were driven out of self-centered fear. Still being addicted to MORE in my sobriety, I wanted more because I was less, despite how hard my Higher Power tried to show me otherwise. I denied my feelings by drowning them in alcohol, drugs, food, working out, sex, what someone’s love would provide for me, thus the void persisted. If I let go, and allow God to take His all powerful, all encompassing, and all knowing form into my life, will I not become aware of a more powerful, more encompassing more knowing form of myself? Even then as I abandon my yesterday in all its glory, would I not become? I cannot become, if I never divert my eyes from what I am not, whether it be in a good light or dark. I can see all these things but I must embrace both. God is focused on me, and others. If God stayed focused on Himself, we wouldn’t be here. But it is through us He is loved and known. And he stays close despite falling short of our potential. I showed no grace or humility before the people that micro cut me, as I straight up decapitated them from my life. It’s no wonder I lost my way. Not knowing or loving God or others, drowning in my resentments, I saw no other choice but to proverbially step off the cliff and into oblivion. But even then, God was there; using my darkness against me, for my own good. I remained to pray. To be continued…..

So today I had a conversation with a friend who was unwittingly showing her defects of character. They were based out of trauma like a lot if not all defects of character are born out of. And I frown on them, hypocritically. I knew she was wrong, and yet I preached to her how and why they were wrong, while I sat in my own resentment towards a whole fucking fellowship of people. Persons that wronged me and/or didn’t live up to my expectations of what a true friend is, yet again in my own design of reacting, become what I hate. Hold that thought. I head to a meeting, and the meeting is on fear and how they drive us. Also shared is how our own resentments feed those fears. Being hurt and betrayed often when I was younger led me down a path of character defects that eventually, as I stopped working on them in my recovery, took me out. Fear of betrayal, fear of not respecting myself and enforcing or reinforcing boundaries made it easy to take normal, balanced judgments and overcharge them into being hypercritical. I easily cut people out of myself. I would say that I didn’t judge people, just their actions. But the way I feel I may have gone about it was that I identified people by their actions. Who would want to sit at my table if their implied status at my table was ignorant, selfish, and fake. How could my giving of self be received as authentic when they feel lesser than by my implied labels? Because we’re sick people, we’re all recovering, and this is a fellowship. But that doesn’t change the hurt that is created, exists, or persists. One’s words defining another as a sick man don’t resonate well when the tone of definition is that man’s a piece of shit. I’m in a place now where that reality of how I may have made people feel finally ring in my head. And it’s not that I thought that they were a piece of shit. But it is the thought that the people that did hurt me in my past still were. Forgiving has to do with acceptance. And when I haven’t accepted the things that happened to me or the people involved, they live on as pieces of shit in my head. And anyone’s actions that remotely corresponds to the people that hurt me end up suffering the same connotation that they are pieces of shit too by the judging verbiage I use to describe them and by the very possible connotation they may experience in my actions driven by fear to protect myself and others. In the Big Book of AA it asks us in step 4 to take inventory of the people that hurt us, our fears, our wrongs, and our shame. Within all that we dissect it and discover the nature of it all, and it almost entirely has to do with selfishness, self-centeredness, fear, or all the above. “We began to see the world and its people really dominated us. In that state, the wrong-doing of others, fancied or real, had power to actually kill. How could we escape?” I’m pretty sure drugs and alcohol saved me from the pains growing up that might have driven me to suicide. There are other addictions after we recover that we find ourselves in and defects of character that live on or develop as we face everything and try to heal. “Though we we did not like their symptoms and they way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended we said to ourselves, “This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done.” It goes on to say, “Where were we to blame? The inventory is ours, not the other man’s.” And in that moment after years of hearing the same shit over and over again, something again clicks and a new layer of the onion is finally being noticed. In my resentment to certain persons, I know I’m right. They were wrong for what they did to me; simply not being there when I needed them suffices to possession of this resentment. But I think to myself, I used to cuss God out on a daily basis before, during, and shortly after my relapse. Yet, God still showed up and gave me grace, granted me forgiveness. Where had I shown any of these people an ounce or grace that God has shown me? Also, how has the trauma of my past been evoked to end the relationships I’ve had with these people. When have I allowed them time to grow? How am I taking their perceived trespasses and charging them with the traumas during my youth? It’s not fair. And all it has done is isolate me. My compassion went out the window when I saw a close friend be betrayed by people she reached out to. And in turn my judgments have casted out anyone in my life who’s shortcoming I took as personal as the traumas and betrayals of my people. The names of the people were different, but the charges with their severity were just the same. Again, I was right, they were wrong. But how is overcompensating for the injustice in my past any useful in being handed to other people today? It has served no solution. How ironic it is that being right can become so problem oriented. All boiling down to fears. Fear of being betrayed and hurt again. Fear of being alone. Fear of betraying myself for not standing up for myself or others for that matter. Watching injustice happen and yet created it myself. Grace. How grace leads to repentance. How can I be afforded grace when I haven’t afforded it to others? Mercy. I can start with being a little more gentle and forgiving myself. I can start forgiving people in my past by letting go of the hope that the past could have been any different. The past happened. I’m not the person I used to be nor is anyone else who they used to be or are who I perceive them as. I can be or get honest with myself in my own humanity; I’m human and fallible. I can hope the world is warmer from a different perspective and have faith that it is more real than the one I had before. I can evoke courage to dare allow others to be better or to simply be human. I can start with that to create a brotherly love for others that I too wish to have for myself; living by spiritual principles.

Last October I had a couple of dark nights of the soul. I sat on the porch in the rain, listening to music that stirred the grief within me. It was a reckoning. I used to be sober and fell off the wagon. I was an egoic person with everything in my hands. And in a blink of an eye, it all came crashing down by my hand. What happened? How did I get here? So much angst and resentment filled my body and ate away at my soul for so long in spite of my achievements. It didn’t matter. Without God, I was nothing. And without inviting Him into my world on a daily basis and into everything I did, He was nothing. And if I’m an extension of God, a finger, a hair, a thought, then if He were nothing, then I was nothing. With all my angst and resentment towards things, places, and people that transmuted into bigger things, places, and people, everything I had meant nothing. My inflated ego wouldn’t allow me to concede that, because well, I was achieving. My inflated ego is like, “Hey keep looking at the greatness you’re doing, achieving, and becoming. Don’t peak behind the curtain.” The blinders were on. Slowly taking my will back on everything, piece by piece; shutting God out bit by bit, there was no way I could see the truth with it always at my back and me never turning around. The more I shut God out, cussed Him out on a daily basis, the more spiritually bankrupt I got. I worshipped the Morrigan, Cernunnos, The Dagda, and Brigid. None of them I cussed out on a daily basis. They were part of the envisioned world I created and worshipped through my ego. The God I cussed out was Loki and I think deep in my heart I was cussing out the Christian God. If I’m an extension of God, if God is within me, then the ruckus that caused the pain in my life couldn’t have been caused by me or the Gods I worship. Denial. If I deny looking at myself, I deny truth in my Gods allowing this to happen. Or if I did look at my Gods allowing this to happen, then it was victimhood I wore and shame I somehow fed without facing it. Even though I practiced the craft, meditated, and the like I still couldn’t make God’s world my own nor outrun my own darkness. I blamed God for everything when people were no long there to blame. And when I shut the light out at every turn and facet of myself because it’s not right or good enough, then Light I no longer stand in. “Not right, not good enough. Wrong,” – The way I perceived the world, to which my inflated ego, my entitled, self-righteous self kept me from seeing that it was in direct correlation to how I felt about myself. I would deny it for years. I was successful, I was working out all the time, getting in shape, had a man I was planning my life with, a coven and magickal community I was a part of, and a dream of travel nursing was in the works to come true. Unbeknownst to me was the goal-oriented standard I held for myself was hiding the perfectionistic cancer that permeated my soul. Not facing it. Not working a program to even begin to catch on to the truth. When I distort the truth, it is naturally muddled and eventually flat out ugly. Refusing to do the things that would heal me, because I just didn’t have time for that with all this great life I was building, it was just a matter of time till it would all boil over and I would need a fix to escape. I didn’t take time for my spiritual growth and development, at the time aka healing; but I did choose instant relief and gratification of acting out. I no longer had faith in God. I said and thought I did, but my behavior expressed otherwise. I ran to things that would make me feel better in the moment in flesh and then substance in predatory fashion rather than explore my pain and work through it by diving deeper into my shame and allowing vulnerability to lead me towards the light of empathy that would dissolve my demons. In order to do that I had to have faith that I lost. Without faith, loss of hope quickly follows. No inner peace, no real love there anymore no matter what I did, and the perception that God was to blame, what was the point of moving forward. I was far from suicidal. My inflated ego wouldn’t allow that. But I wasn’t far from picking up drugs again. And there I was, at the end of my rope. All light finally shut out and back into the darkness only Goddess would understand and grace me enough with the dark mirror that surrounded me the night I sat on my porch, listening to sad music and reflecting on how I was losing it all. Face to face with not nothing, for that would be numb. Worse than that. My own personal, spiritually bankrupt hell. Having an existential crisis that night, my whole perception of myself and the world was crashing down around me. I was junkie again. I was disconnected again. I was again destroying myself. And the only relief I had was the sobering feeling of how worthless I felt for causing it all. For years I didn’t authentically bring God into my daily life as I willed so much on my own, and I damned Him in the end for things not going my way. It seemed I was even so powerless to prevent my fall from grace. And as I am writing this I hear the words, “may he remain to pray.” See, in my own will, I was powerless. In my own self-centeredness, I’m powerless. I didn’t pray to God for anything than for my own selfish ends. I didn’t seek to understand, no to comfort, nor to love. It was all about me being understood, comforted, and loved. And again, with no effort put into understanding, comforting, or loving others, I then lost my spot in being understood, comforted, and loved. There is a saying in wicca that before the Big Bang, before the creation of Light, the Goddess was there, alone, and saw Her aloneness. She had so much love to give and share and She couldn’t bear for it to not be given or shared. She saw her reflection in the black abyss and said, “Let there be Light,” and the Universe was born. God was born. Man was born. But for that to happen she had to give of Herself. Split off from just being dark and go into the Light. She was worth it. She is worth it. And it is true because it is. They also say in recovery, “you cannot transmit something you haven’t got.” I lost myself in perfectionism so much, I ate up everything around me and unwittingly turned on myself. If I’m living in perfectionism, then I must not think I’m enough. And if I don’t think I’m enough as I am, then I won’t give anything away. And if I don’t give anything away, it won’t have any value for it isn’t shared with the world. It might as well be nothing. And there I was in that moment in front of the drugs. In that moment that “nothing” sucked in that escape from reality and kept on for several more months until the dark spell of addiction would turn my inner “nothing” outward and I was becoming nothing and losing everything. All that came to a head that night on the porch, in the rain, listening to sad music stir to articulate the truth that I felt but couldn’t fathom. Into the arms of the Goddess, I sat, crying my eyes out in total grief of myself till no more. I’ll never forget the words of my future husband regarding that depressing night. I told him it was therapeutic. What does he say? “Yes, but we cannot stay there.” And here I am. My value is in my efforts of giving to others and taking care of myself in order to do that. For if their value is only valued if shared, then value I must give them. And I can trust that I will not be without, for they are no more valuable than I. The love, the light, the esteem, the purpose, it cannot be bought or achieved. So….as it says in Ephesians 2:8-9 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not by works of men, so that no one can boast.” I remember as well that night, that I was being carried back into recovery. I didn’t want to come back in, but I was being reminded and re-awakened as to why recovery was the answer, and certain occurrences were transpiring that reflected my way back in wasn’t all by my own doing. I was sort of being tricked back in. Certain defects of character were being used against me to bring me back in. Deep down I didn’t want to relapse. Deep down I didn’t hate God. I just didn’t understand and He knew that. Despite my kicking, screaming, destruction in my wake, and damning God, She was still there to hold me and carry me to the Light till I was ready to walk in it again. If that isn’t testimony of being good enough, I don’t know what is. Let there be Light.

Last night I read some cards. I alternate between tarot and oracle cards, depending on my mood. I might read the oracle cards when I begin to feel a little lost. How can I feel lost at all when things are going so well. Well, as with the only consistent in this world being change, things going so well isn’t somewhere where we can all stay. Things going so well all the time leads to complacency, or it at least gets that way without exercising gratitude. We have things to be grateful for, but sometimes we forget to be grateful for things that haven’t happened, or to be grateful for the journey that invokes the concession to one’s innermost self the understanding of why we have gratitude. I get wrapped up sometimes in ideas of myself and the world around me, and in those moments, I feel great. But how quickly things change when I keep my focus there. My perception of the world is fixed from experiences and developed intellect over the past 39 years of my life. But as I focus on the product of those 39 years, the world continues to turn and evolve and if I don’t turn with it, I can quickly get caught up in resentment of how things aren’t working out. The past week built up a lot of angst. Nothing was at all bad, I had a great week, but I also went all out, exhausted myself and it feels like you run out of air almost. Focus on what matters and continue with faith. During the past week, I had a couple of really hard days at work. I made it through and went home satisfied. Then over the weekend, I reconnected with family-like friends and had a great time! Granted I didn’t sleep much and thus I wore myself out, and I had commitments today to tend to. Afterwards I took a long ass nap. And woke up, knowing I had a meeting to go to that I didn’t want to go to. I was too tired. Focus on what matters and continue with faith. I’m a recovering drug addict and alcoholic, and I’ll always be one. Allergy of the body to mind-altering substances and obsession of the mind. What that adds up to is a delusion that something is wrong with me and/or the world. I didn’t like the way the world looked, so I would change how I saw it through substances. Figuratively speaking, I was saying the world is wrong. And also, I didn’t like the way I felt, so I changed it through substances. Figuratively speaking, I was saying there was something wrong with me. Truth is there is nothing wrong with me or the world. Just the way I see myself and the world, which is way more than enough of a problem. I was powerless. And I was without knowledge. Knowledge is power, but it isn’t ALL the power. I knew I needed to rest tonight, but I also know that I am still an alcoholic and that I haven’t been to a meeting since at least last Wednesday. Today is Monday. Tonight before the meeting it was like I knew I needed the rest for tomorrow. But I didn’t know where that rest was actually needed. I needed to give myself a rest. Let go of control, focus on what matters and continue with faith. With everything being God, sort of speak, and the one thing that is consistent in my life is that I’m an alcoholic and that will never change, the exhaustion I might have felt is spiritual. When I’m mentally and emotionally exhausted, which can occur even after a great week…….I get pulled from my center. Yes, my job is important, my friends are important, and I can give my all to them in those moments granted to me, but I can’t give my all to that or this or them continuously. I become disproportioned in my life, not right-sized or balanced, and I then I get burned out. Again, as I started this blog, last night I read my cards, this time from an oracle deck. And I pulled the gratitude card. And I’m like, what? What do I need this card for, I’m filled with gratitude! I pulled more cards and they were complicated beyond comprehension, so I reshuffled and settled on just drawing one card. Keep it simple. Behold, I pull the gratitude card again. It doesn’t matter so much as what the book of the deck meant in this moment tonight, even though the reading inspired me. As I got ready tonight at the last minute to go to my meeting, I saw the card on my table. Bingo, attitude of gratitude. If I am going to experience the joys, grace, and gratitude of my sobriety, I am to treat it with respect. I am not showing gratitude for the program if I’m not participating in it. So I head out with confidence that I am doing the right thing. I still didn’t want to go at the same time, for I was tired. But tonight at the meeting, I was inspired to kind of journal and take notes in my phone, to an extent that I haven’t done in about a month. I also connected with a couple of really cool, solution-oriented, spiritual people, and that also put in perspective of what matters, who I allow in my court, and who or what I’m chasing or should be going after. The Big Book of AA states that this spiritual program of action will solve all our problems. Not some of them, but all of them. This book isn’t something that was just written off the top of someone’s head, but a collective understanding of treating and recovering from a spiritual malady through the author’s experience, strength, and hope; not opinions. In pursuit of solving my problems and creating my change, I cannot help but turn to God/dess. I pray, meditate, and practice magick. But in all of that, I’m living and practicing on the wisdom collected from birth up to the moment that has just past. In my prayer, meditation and practicing my Craft, I’m still acting on self to control everything. Praying for change and even sometimes praying for willingness is a testimony, that even though there is great power within me, but the act alone is still testimony of how powerless I really am. It puts in perspective on how powerless I am without God. I have a solid idea of who and what I am and how the world is, but I truly don’t know any of that. It’s all based on the last 39 years, and from my perspective alone, tomorrow is new life I haven’t lived yet and the world continues to do the same on Its own as well. Step 2 – come to believe, and step 3 – turn it all over to God. I have working hands, legs, and a brain to use so I have to walk and work the path set before me, but many times do we come to the reminder that walking into a world new day and world tomorrow that I cannot move forward without operating on faith instead of what I know, for theoretically I will perish. Operating and moving forward on solely what I know keeps my stuck in the past carried over to day after next and I slowly fade away or go insane. I hear God say, surrender your power to me and I will show you how to guide it. We change the land, but the land we are forever dependent on. We cannot push back the waves or something or someone will suffer from it, but we can ride the waves. Air must move or we will die. And fire doesn’t magickally appear but though force we can create it. No matter where I am, I cannot stay there, figuratively speaking. I cannot do everything at once, although I sure as hell try to. But I can do things one at a time. And when I give my all to that one thing or all my focus to that one thing, wholeheartedly, even for an hour, I give full appreciation to it, and for that it or the universe feels grateful. And for that I feel grateful. How? Why? Because I am in a relationship with the Creator and Its Creation. When two people who love each other dance, are they not having a good time? And are they not more enthralled by the excitement and energy of the dance and spinning each other around and around, over and over again? To be grateful for these moments, I have to be present for them. Present with my entire being. So I go to the meeting and I went from tired to spiritually charged and writing this blog. The Craft is still here, the lesson I have with tarot, meditation, energy work is all still there and not going away. But even as I try to will it all together in the single box of a day, I am thus saying that there aren’t enough hours in the day, thus God is wrong in His creation of the 24 hour day, wrong in His creation of time, and that I’m wrong for not being at the destination I think I should be at. I’m trying to be true to a future that hasn’t even lived yet, and that doesn’t even make sense. And thus, I’m saying something is wrong with me and that I’m wrong. If I’m so focused on the future self and not me in the now in these moments, I’m not showing myself in the now in these moments appreciation, and thus I lose gratitude. It’s not that I have to quit doing everything or put so many things off for a few months. It’s about being mindful with my time and showing appreciation for the things there, for each aspect of self will have its time. And I can give wholeheartedly to each aspect, spend more quality time in each and with each aspect of self, and they will all feel appreciated, and I will feel whole and grateful. Now enough. Blessed be.

So my sister still thinks being gay is a choice. I really wish she would truly open her heart to God and not the bible, for the mistake many Christians make, and yes this is just my opinion, is that they blindly follow the good book and turn their brains off. Like, why did God give you a brain anyway? There’s TONS of good stuff in the bible, and Jesus is still very much and might forever be applicable to the turning world; but I just wish people of the Christian faith would follow Christianity, not Churchianity. There are so many books and gospels hidden or banned by the Vatican, and one is the Gospel of St. Thomas – stating the kingdom of God is within you and all around you; also referring to the idea that the church isn’t necessary to find and understand God. The church doesn’t like that because they want control, especially back when they ran politics hundreds of years ago. Anyway, I’m rambling. Hate the ignorance, not the ignorant. The same goes for Christians. Many people faded out of Christian practice due to exclusive dogma, and despise God altogether because of how people used His book. It’s sad really. Jesus is great! He basically outlined the fast track to heaven. Do as he did, and you’ll be free. Which brings me to love your neighbor as yourself, and turning the other cheek. We witches hate turning the other cheek. We do not allow others to hit us and lay down to be beaten more. But is that what Jesus was really talking about? One night I was watching a biography on Dean Martin. It mentioned that Dean, even though he didn’t like some family members, he would always keep his home welcome to them. And then I sat for a moment and asked Goddess how I can do this for Thanksgiving with my sister and her erroneous and degrading beliefs. And within a couple of minutes, “Hate the ignorance but not the ignorant.” Perfect! I get to embrace the clap back at “hate the sin but not the sinner” and be present for the holidays! The reason that her beliefs bother me so much is because it eludes to gay being a sin. It says that there is something fundamentally wrong with me. Stealing is a sin, murder is a sin. The saying, “hate the sin not the sinner” applies to them. I cannot stop being gay. I prayed the gay away before I ever heard of such a thing and Jesus didn’t do shit. I did some EMDR today over my childhood with the torture of the silence I chose then, the inner turmoil I endured, and the shame I carried over being gay. I know there is nothing wrong with me and God made me the way I am – a truth I grew into. But my inner child still feels the pain that exists back then; and it’s time for that child to concede to his innermost self what I know as a grown man today. I break down just typing that. It’s like me finally coming home and removing the old programming that kept him down. I see myself, my inner child, fill up my own body this moment as I continue to write. He is strong. He is good. So many bad arrows he’s endured, and they fall away as he now stands up. I did a little EMDR just now, but I’ll further reserve doing that with my therapist for I risk introducing negative programming from any possible inflated ego that may exist. Anyway, back to my sister and turning the other cheek. It’s not that we turn the other cheek to be slapped again. It’s to face them; and not with the pain we’ve endured or resulting resentment and hate that follows. Doing that is overcompensating one’s ego and insecurity and thus allowing it to spread and subconsciously validating the other person’s views that we’re wrong, thus they are right, because look at how we’re behaving and attacking them now. Turning the other cheek, if I may, is fighting back with tolerance and acceptance, and even love if that’s capable within the person. It’s facing them with our personal truth. It’s me facing her with my personal truth. I don’t need to push her away in order for to understand me or to see me (that doesn’t even make sense). I don’t need to hide my truth behind animosity, angst, or resentment. I can be secure in myself, stand with love in myself, for her slap in my face doesn’t erase who or what I am. If her slap doesn’t erase who or what I am, then her slap lacks power. And if her slap lacks power then her slap is a lie in the face of my truth. I am a gay man. I have always been a gay man. It is not a sin to be gay. I tried to be straight, but if I were straight, then me being straight would be true, and thus push through the lie of being gay. And in that, it would be brushed off as a phase. But it didn’t, even when I asked God to because I wore the shame a narrative my family chose to blanket me with – “being gay is a sin, thus I’m a sinner, thus something is wrong with me.” God doesn’t forsake those who earnestly seek Him, and God does nothing with “pray the gay away,” because there isn’t anything wrong to pray away. There was nothing wrong in how He made me. The only sad thing left is my sister’s willful ignorance. She doesn’t see that it does mean something to me for her to see me as I am, completely. But all I can do right now is love the ignorant, but not the ignorance. It isn’t my job to make her see. Persisting in doing so just exacerbates that something is wrong with me as I focus on her side of the street instead of my path in these moments. We can allow ourselves to be seen. But proving myself again and again for her favor just turns my eyes to her and my back on my path – these moments in the now. When struck, figuratively speaking, I can march forward with my good cheek. I admire the courage flamboyant gay boys have in their younger years as they clung to their personal truths in the face of adversity. I wish I had that, and for that I strike myself; but because of that I must march forward with my good cheek. Blessed be.

Staying present is a challenge sometimes. My ego wants everything yesterday. Just recently I think I’ve begun the process of accepting the journey. I’m 39, no where close to being a millionaire or a big shot. I’m single, probably won’t have kids, and for good reason with my emotional maturity needing a lot of growth. I’m recovering from addiction and codependency. I just got my inner child to trust me again. I have a great career which I love and hate. I just now am beginning to trust my intuition, setting boundaries, and cutting cords (with people and with energies not conducive to my well-being). Wow, all this I, which yes is still important; but with a whole world turning with other people’s wills, blessings to be had, and trials and tribulations to endure and grow from, it’s no surprise how not mindful I have been. I hear in recovery if I have one foot in the past and one in the future, I’m pissing all over the day. That is true for someone that obsesses. But I can’t forget the past – it made me who I am today, and I can only move forward from a place of honesty. The future isn’t here yet, but I can hope, aspire, and set goals. Truth is a matter of perception that changes on the regular as I learn and experience new things, but I have to stay in the present to fully embrace those things for what they are now. Now what it was way back when and not for entirely for the future, because what I think my future should be might not even be what I want when the time comes. What does this have to do with mindfulness? Prejudice and judgement. We have them. We all do it. Taking inventory of our world (let me be clear – our world or my world, but not the world) is how we survive and decide what our next move is. But I can really screw that up if I’m applying emotionally charged history to the present, adding story to the present reality which can really distort my perception. My sponsor suggested to me the power of “ok,” as in saying “ok” to any real thing, real as in happening in the now, not to the now in reference to the yesteryear that isn’t now and not the magical illusion of the future that isn’t happening now. Another sponsor want has me meditating in silence for 15 minutes a day, which I can do better at. Part of staying in the now is using positive language that isn’t overly emotionally charged. As an addict/alcoholic/codependent having always found a way to not be present, I only know how to operate in an extreme of fight or flight – triggered reacting. I feel old traumas, bad experiences, misunderstandings as a result of that and drugs and alcohol helped facilitate poor responses to life; which is why so many like me feel and appear maladjusted to life. We’re great survivors, but terrible at living. The power of pause, ok, letting go, grounding, shielding, cutting cords, walking away and coming back level headed, all things I’ve never fully committed to practicing till now. I sucks after being sober for 11.5 years and allowing your own ego’s insanity tear you down and you “go back out.” I had to stop there for a second a cry, which is good because my ego needs deflation to be right-sized and properly fit for the right now. Writing has always been a therapeutic meditation for me. It takes the hamster wheel in my head and flattens it out to a linear track so I can move forward into clarity without my ego looping back to bullshit or getting distracted from the truth. I have to remember to invite my Higher Power in before I do it. I ought to invite my Higher Power in before anything when I think about it. All this has to do with being mindful. Everyone and everything around me is a mirror. I truly don’t know person in front of me, or know the place I’m standing before. My perception of my reality is based on past experiences and mental calculations (judgments) to define what in front of me in the now is. But that’s part of the problem. If my life sucked, then life sucks, reality sucks. But it doesn’t have to. There’s another side to every coin. The now is dark for people that made poor choices up till the present. But I don’t have to keep making poor choices. I can practice positive thinking, even then that is dangerous in that it can invoke expectations. Reality just is. The car that cut me off might not be an asshole; he might be bleeding out on the way to hospital or rushing to a family member in the hospital because he or she might die; or he’s actually a really nice guy unaware of how fast he’s going or is simply in a rush for no reason and has no beef with me. Life is happening, but with everybody experiencing life, then life isn’t happening to me; it’s just happening. My life doesn’t suck; it’s not falling apart, I’m just experiencing effect my actions produced or even then life can move just as unaware of me sometimes like the guy who cut me off, just like the acorn that fell out of the sky and banged on my windshield. I can meditate, in silence or not; the monkey mind in either meditation will produce images in my minds eye that can be distracting me from my purpose if I let it. The universe is never still, so why would my mind be? Ah, I think I can forgive myself more now for not having a still image when I practice creative visualization (I can easily keep an image, but it likes to vibrate, slightly get bigger or smaller outside my control, but it’s still there)….interesting, I just tried to stare at something, and I notice how my eyes feel like their vibrating as my brain, I assume, is processing the everything in sight, including colors and depth perception, but I keep all other thoughts out, not let a single one in – something I achieved the first time I got sober when I prayed the crave feeding, fleeting thoughts of an addict away; if I wasn’t reading or doing something then to distract myself from myself, I would just focus on a single thing in front of me till it passed (usually riding in a car till I got out). Anyway, I digress, but that realization I just had was neat. Back to mindfulness. During meditation I don’t allow emotional attachment to the images that crop up, unless that is the goal like in a trauma mediation; I just acknowledge and bring my attention back to the present – focusing on breath or visualization. What I gained from this is that from not reacting to the random thoughts or images during meditation, I in turn don’t react or at least react less to life as it is happening. The images in my mind weren’t actually doing anything to me, so why should life happening be any different? So, I naturally stop reacting. It takes practice. And often I don’t want to do it. I’m not sure if it’s because my inner child wants attention or that my ego doesn’t want change. I either allowed some things to happen to me in the past and didn’t resolve them in a healthy manner or I coped with abusing myself with drugs and alcohol and thus didn’t grow further and develop for the years that I was using. It’s quite reasonable that my inner child wouldn’t trust me and thus fight any reprogramming because of anti-programming I allowed with drugs and alcohol for so long. Trauma meditations help. Again, I digress. So, what is happening during this non-reacting? I’m no longer flexing my emotionally charged history of bad experiences onto other or life in general. The same should go for good present times too – I’m not degrading them via perceptions based in my dark past, and I’m also not possibly cheapening the reality or others’ present reality with my good history because they aren’t me. Sure, I can inspire and lift people up with my word and guide with my wisdom, but that doesn’t mean that its pertinent to the present now or another person’s journey. I guess it’s possible to be a good person and have good intentions and still fuck some shit up or fuck someone else’s life up. The road to hell was….you get it. Hell, who’s to say my intentions are correct if my perception of the now is distorted or my understanding of my past was delusional? So, for now, pause, ok, release the hang ups and prejudices, stop adding story to the current circumstances. Be open-minded to the deeper meaning of things, but grounded enough to stand in the present now that the fat ass acorn that started a new star on my windshield isn’t punishment, life happening to me, or God telling me to pay attention (that is only true, in my opinion, if an acorn or something is hitting my windshield every single day). I remember my first sponsor told me I was not allowed to think for 6 months. What is that? Being mindful. Kind of ironic when I seems like the wording should be mind-empty. But I do remember the 4th dimension of existence hits pretty I think 30+ days in of not thinking for 6 months, because your mind is no longer clouded with expectations, obsessions, or worry.