my first obe

I fell asleep under normal circumstances, no drugs or alcohol in my system. It was a weekday, a Tuesday I believe. I 'awoke' to the loudest most atrocious buzzing sound in my ears. It sounded as though my head was actually stuck inside of a church bell at the top of a tower. My entire body was buzzing and vibrating in a way I can never fully describe. I could hear all these voices talking about things I should do with my life now that I was being 'awoken.' "She could finish learning Spanish." "She could go back to school." So on and so on.

Image from here

I was terrified and 'woke up,' but I was still in an altered state and elevated above my body. There I was staring at myself in bed. In one corner was another me, dressed in a white gown. In the room, there was a total of 3. Me as I knew myself to be, me as my body in bed and me as a "ghost" dressed in a white gown in the corner.

I didn't know what was happening, but I elevated with the utmost ease and exited my room through the window. No joke, it was exactly like the scene in Ghost where Patrick Swayze goes through the door and you see all the fibers of the door. I could see everything about the shades and the window that I went through and they can only be described as feeling thick. I hurled myself into the air and started to fly and quickly began descending. I panicked, but instinctively thought of water and the ground below morphed into a magical teal colored sea filled with beautiful creatures.

The 'ghost me' was apparently there as some sort of guide. She applauded my instincts and said "nobody can ever fly the first time, don't worry." She said let's try again. We flew around for awhile and I kept plummeting quickly to the ground. It was the most amazing, frustrating and freeing experience.

The dream turned lucid from there and I finally woke up, for real, wide eyed, terrified, stunned and everything else. I was afraid to go back to sleep...

I turned immediately to Google and the bookstore the next day to try to understand what the hell had happened to me. I was very naive at the time and had no hesitations about telling people this experience. I honestly didn't realize that it sounded crazy and/or made up to the general public. I told my older brother about it who said, and I quote, "If you didn't sound so convincing, I'd tell you that you're full of shit."

I spent an enormous amount of time that year taking naps and invoking this rarity with ample success. I got used to the buzzing vibrations and the accompanying sounds. It's more of a dull roar now and it tickles the base of your spine. I discovered new and interesting ways to induce these experiences when I felt them coming on and found out all kinds of ways that bring you immediately back to your body. For example, a single thought about your actual physical body reels you right back in.

Although these experiences have dwindled some, I still will never forget that first time. I don't take it as seriously as I used to. It's more of an escape from having to deal with physical limitations. It's amazing to be able to fly and do flips in the air or swing from tree to tree. It's also a great way to obtain guidance on life and to understand what's going on in your subconscious. A lot of times these experiences turn into lucid dreams and when I wake up, I know what's going on in my head because I created it in the dream.

So, that's what I know about out of body experiences. They are mysterious, amazing, confusing and everything in between. I'm wondering if anyone else has had one and/or a similar oddity they'd be willing to share. Anonymity, as always, is welcomed.

rootless

Sometimes I think the best way to explain astrology is just to tell your experience of it. So, here goes. I was born with the Moon in the 4th house and this is my story.

I'm perpetually rootless. With the constant and quick fluctuating cycle of the moon instead of having a solid footing on the ground, it's like treading water in a sea that has no knowable bottom. There are inner tubes all over and the only way to rest is to go under water and pull myself up into one of them. And then it runs out of air and I tread my way over to a new tube. But, it's never my tube, it's never my "home." I feel this is the reason for my heart wrenching affinity for the homeless and hobo's of all kinds. Even though I always have shelter, we share a common bond. I've spent more time with homeless people than most people would gather. In fact they seek me out, in my opinion, for this kinship. Some suggest it's because my face invites people to take advantage of me, but in truth none of them ever have.

Back to this placement, so the moon is where we are most 'at home' and the 4th house is our home. It's where we go to just be who we are and immerse into ourselves. Protected from the outside world. Now finding myself caught between inner tubes I'm tiring, anxious and flailing limbs about wasting energy because nothing is solid and nothing is known. There's a subtle unrest in these waters that can bring up all kinds of fears. Was that a weed or a shark? What's going to pull me under and when will the tempest brew?

Some people wonder why I spend the bulk of my mental energies on astrology. What is the point of explaining things you already know. I know I'm rootless, yes. But when we are able to put a spin on something and view ourselves objectively we can become more self aware and at least attempt to mitigate the fears and self undoing. In other words "Knowing is Half the Battle."

Now I'm not saying that knowing prevents stupidity or irrationality (which is the moons job). Believe me I'm not. In fact last night I blew up all over the place as the moon activated my Mars/Uranus conjunction. (Aggression + Erratic + Emotions = Making reckless decisions due to over active emotions.) But at least reflecting on it later I can take the blame and feel responsible for said stupidity and keep an eye out for the moon next time. You know maybe not have so many beers to keep it under wraps, or run really hard, or paint something. Find an outlet for madness.

Anyways, I hope this touches on this placement at least a little. To wrap it up more tightly, I can say within all this unrest, I feel the least lonely when I'm alone and I get the sense of having roots from lunar activities. Some nights I can just stare at her for hours and write poetry and sing songs in my head and it gives me a renewed sense of balance to pull myself into a new tube.

I suppose the bonus to this position is life is rarely boring. When your constantly adjusting to new surroundings (in a sense) you have no choice but to gather ample experience and tools to tuck into your pocket for that hopeful time that a shore appears. One more opportunity to gear up and experience life a new.

And that's all I have to say right now.

mystic mythic

Malaspina Glacier, Alaska from Outer Space

There's nothing mystical about mystical things. It's all just synchronicity. The tying of loose ends to create a natural whole. Everything is significant and possibilities are infinite. There is always something to discover in the large and in the small.

Maybe that's why these things are scary or strange to so many. They cannot be packaged or bought. It's more of a mindset in my opinion. It's a decision to see life as significant, as a way to understand that everything is connected, ergo, nothing is separate.

It's a fundamental desire to find a reason for everything, to make it okay and let it be part of some enormous canvas that we can't get far enough away to fully see.

Still the creation process is in motion and it's beauty is only fostered by the imagination.

Ocean Sand, Bahamas from Outer Space

So, is that a coping mechanism? To deal with the harsher realities of life? Or do these oddities truly exist? I feel that anything we want to exist does, because our mind believes it to be so. But what do I know...

That's all I have to say right now. Opinions/Experiences welcome, as always.

4 of Pentacles

Have you ever boxed yourself in? Blocked yourself from there very things you want so dearly with refusal of change? Maybe held onto some attitude or habit that allowed you to distance yourself from the future you know is on the horizon?

This is my question. There seem to be times where the entire history behind me unrolls with every breath like a Japanese scroll painting. It keeps unfolding and clinging to heels until we arrive, present. The scroll is filled with a beautiful mystery. Like I can't even imagine all those things have already happened. And in the present you look around and know there are a couple roads before you and you have to choose. Something must be left behind, but it's like your feet are stuck and you turn around in circles trying to see how you even got here.

Stagnant is the enemy of the flow. The Four of Pentacles in Tarot represents this stagnancy. Sitting on your own thrown, holding your coins, unwilling to use them for fear of loss. Sometimes these images weigh so heavily in this mind's eye there appears no fathoming a way out. And what about patterns in this graph of the past? Even though I can see the patterns so clearly, I can't help but wonder that if I chose one again that maybe it's still building towards something. Or maybe it's just building a brick wall on all sides to keep me in.

And that's all I have to say right now.

Fallow

Today I long to dress and represent morbidity. Like the zombie ghost of soldier woman in camouflage, wearing wounds, face bruised, white and painted with the word incognito. To be as such and allow this face not to smile with bulbous laughter. Let the cheeks sink to the bone and reveal nothing except the bare.

And what is this fascination with the gruesome? Is it masochism or some other fancy term for the love of the rawness in the suffer? Not really, it's the love of seeing the beauty in the dead and disgusting. Have you ever looked at a dead bird and thought how beautiful it was, at peace, at rest. All the trials and survivals of its' life lay fallow in cold eyes.

Still it is a decision to see this beauty. Just like anything else, the experience is up to the mind. In other company I confess I might just screech in disgust, and that too is a decision. Yet which is more real?

Maybe I got too much sun and I'm drawing back inward to the realness of living on this Earth. With all it's challenges and growing pains. Still, there's beauty in the heights. But it lives for the high! It lives for the consumption of enjoyment, waste and favor. Instead of the pits and shadows where you scrape your strongest roots in the dark to feed a soul that's weathered by bright light and materialism.

And this is the ramble that lived in this shell today. Sharing is always welcome...

to seethe is to bleed

Have you ever noticed how when you're really hostile about something it's almost a given that you will stub your toe or ram your shin into the corner of something, or almost get into an accident. Which only seeks to increase the RAGE.

I found myself under such conditions last night for reasons I'll keep to myself. Regardless, nearly every damned bleeping step I took found me ramming a body part into something. I smashed the inside of my ankle on the corner of the bed frame. My knee into a night table. Shut the door over my toe and got my arm skin caught on something else. Well, suffice it to say I didn't talk about it and instead found myself coughing up my own irrational frustration. In short, life was seemingly mocking me. Unfortunately, I have an innate belief that we create our own realities with our minds, so I couldn't blame anybody or The Moirae...

Awesome Drawing from here

These are those times I'm reminded that as I am within I also am out. Seething and feeling steam blowing through the holes in my teeth. The kind of seethery that makes your insides hot and you can almost feel your ribs turn red and blue like the coils of an electric stove. And it's as harmful to your physical body as it is your mental and emotional well being.

The only thing creative that came out of it were the extreme Macabre mind images and stories about the burning rib coils slow cooking my heart and liver right there in my chest cavity for my spleen to devour. If I were a painter, I would've painted this feast and been purged of the madness.

Instead I suffered fools, took a gash out of another body part after shutting off the lights and cursed my way to bed, where I couldn't get the TV remote to cooperate at which I just said F^&K IT! I'm out.

I have to say, typically I find these scenarios funny the next day, but today, I don't. Been there done that anyone?

wake up, wake up. WAKE up and look around you.

I had a dream a few years ago that I was dying. I was laying on an operating table under Frankenstein like circumstances. There were two of me. One was on the table and there was another me (which I knew was my soul) standing next to me. She was slowly disappearing from the feet upwards as she worked feverishly to try to save my physical body. I was screaming from the table, shouting for me to stop and save herself but she kept at it until only her eyes were left as visible. I leapt from the table through the confines and gave her this little vile of potion and she began to reappear (yes, sort of like in Back to the Future, only still with the Frankenstein feel.)

I bolted awake sitting upright with the images cleft in my minds eye. Much like in the movies, there was lots of heavy breathing, sighing with giant wide eyed terror. At that exact moment in time; I truly 'woke up' from a long fruitless slumber.

It was one of those dreams that was so real and such a blatant warning message it changed the course of my world forever. At the time I'd left behind all the wonder and mystery that I adore. I wasn't writing, I was reading, but not discovering. I was dreaming, but not flying. I was living, but the 'I' was missing.

Since that time I gauge my level of soul integration on the aforementioned. If I'm not writing, reading, assimilating, or growing. I'm dying and it's time to wake back up.

Out of curiosity, has anyone had a dream that was some sort of message that really got your attention. Stories welcome. As always you can choose to write anonymously on my blog; if you're of the shy sort.

Peace.

isolation and emersion

I still talk about my dog as though I'm a dog owner. As though she's still waiting for me, hogging the bed and kicking me and woofing in her sleep. And here in this bar, in my 12th house element I think of how all of my favorite things belong there. In the 12th, where things disintegrate and evaporate back into the whole.

The experience of writing where you are immersed in the world of every thought but still isolated and indolent. Or dreaming where we swim in the most surreal surroundings and wake transformed. One might think these activities a waste of time, but their value is immeasurable to me. This is where I live. In this sector of isolation where I'm one with all but separate.

Where empathy and intrigue meet is where you will find me.