Enigmatic Amaryllis

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I am hoping to get back on the proverbial horse and start posting regularly again. I have slowly been adding good habits back in to my life one at a time. So today marks the impetus of the next chapter towards my spirits salvation.

The last post I made was days before attending the Shinedown concert. Above is a picture from said concert during one of my favorite songs by them. I got to be that close to their extended stage, and they performed that favorite song of mine while on that portion of the stage. The graphics in the back are of stained glass windows, which is a perfect segue to the next portion of this post. But before that transition, I am going to make today’s post a two

Song of the Day post

Amaryllis

By: Shinedown
In a while now
I will feel better
Ill face the weather before me
In a while now ill race the irony
And buy back each word of my eulogy

All the uninvited tragedies
Step outside

Ask yourself now
Where would you be without
Days like this
When you finally collide
With the moments you cant forget

So do I remind you of
Someone you never met
A lonely sillouette
And do I remind you of
Somewhere you wanna be
So far out of reach
Oh I wish youd open up for me
‘Cause I wanna know you
Amaryllis
Bloom

Stay a while now
Undress your colors
‘Cause there like no other
Ive ever seen
I could get used to your company
Step inside

Ask yourself now
Where would you be without
Days like this
When you finally collide
With the moment you cant resist

So do I remind you of
Someone you never met
A lonely sillouette
And do I remind you of
Somewhere you wanna be
So far out of reach
Oh I wish youd open up for me
‘Cause I wanna know you
Amaryllis

In a while now
I will feel better
I will be better

So do I remind you of
Someone you never met
A lonely sillouette
And do I remind you of
Somewhere you wanna be
So far out of reach
Oh I wish youd open up for me
‘Cause I wanna know you
Amaryllis
Bloom
Amaryllis
Bloom
Amaryllis

In many of my posts I speak of my Great Depression, or my Dark Night of the Soul that began in 2015. The first thing to begin pulling me out of that and helping me gain some true clarity about my life was my “Tea Time” or my “Spirit Space”. It is truly an enigma to me how much power this ceremonial ritual can hold over me and how much it has shaped my recent path and journey. I’m not sure if I have posted on this before at all, but I know I haven’t probably posted about it in much depth. I began developing my own personalized ritual ceremony back in December of 2017 and it has been continuing to evolve and grow ever since.

I have had my share of set backs with it. I am never able to be consistent with it due to my ridiculous schedule, especially during a school year, so I am not faithful to it daily. But in the past month I have done better than I ever have since it’s inception. It began with a suggestion from my friend to develop one ritual habit, perhaps of a cup of tea to myself at say 10 pm. I had been contemplating going back to my nightly tea and sweets and adding an element of spiritualistic ritual to it at that point. I was desperate to find answers and needed guidance. I vowed to not allow my 40s be like my 30s were, and December 2017 marked my 40th birthday.

My ceremony doesn’t follow any prescribed format, though it is derived from some of the basics of a pagan altar and Wiccan tenets, but I have much of my own flair involved including some Christian based traditions, journaling, work with crystals, journaling, tea, music, candle “magic”, chakra balancing, god and goddess devotions, spirit animal devotions, daily intentions, manifesting, simple spells, cleansing, aromatherapy, sigils, divination with Oracle cards and pendulum, and other personal touches.

I am just now starting to experiment with and learn about crystal grids. I am still quite the novice and have MUCH to learn. The pictures above are the first two I have experimented with. I have a lot of research to do in this area. I am fascinated by this subset and am excited to learn more. It is quite involved and very intricate when learning to do it right and with correctly set intention and meaning. The two I created here are mainly just on intuition and not through much knowledge.

These Oracle cards are readings I got from the other night which are quite accurate when I asked for what we’re the most important things I needed to know right now in my current path and journey. I used two different decks. The top picture is the deck I am most comfortable with where I did a past, present and future reading and the bottom picture is my newest deck that I only pulled one card to help me familiarize myself more with the deck.

This candle is a Yin and Yang candle I got at an Illuminate Crystal Fest. The very first time I lit it, the two crystals moved together within the first half hour and snuffed the wick out and wouldnt allow me to relight it. I began an email thread with the candle maker to see if I could return it and have her send me a new one. During this thread, it was very enlightening for many reasons. That dialogue and the contemplation of what it all meant also caused me to post about it in a group on FB asking others takes on the higher meaning of it. Some of the things I learned from this experience are….The crystals were probably drawn to each other and wanted to be closer together. Even though they are supposed to represent opposite polarities, they are drawn together. Upon reflecting that I needed to treat my polarities as more of an integration rather than a separation, I came to an epiphany regarding how I see it represented in my favorite colors (also representative of my dual identities from my opposite birth parents, also resulting in alot of inner conflict and turmoil). I have said for a long time that my favorite colors are black (my birth dad) and rainbow (my birth mom). This also is very representative of my moods and attitudes. But when I thought of this as an integration, what is black but all of the colors of the rainbow at once rather than as a separation of them. Black encompasses all colors, it is all colors.

Since getting back to my spirit Space more vehemently, it has been unfathomable how much strength I have found inside of myself and how much wisdom I feel intuitively about my path. Even if I am walking it slowly, I feel an inner confidence like never before that I know the path and am walking the path. It just might take me a little while longer to walk it after having 41 years worth of muck to shake off and swampland to trek through. But I am getting there.

Other song of the day:

Return to Innocence

By: Enigma

That’s not the beginning of the end
That’s the return to yourself
The return to innocence.

Love
Devotion
Feeling
Emotion

Love
Devotion
Feeling
Emotion

Don’t be afraid to be weak
Don’t be too proud to be strong
Just look into your heart my friend
That will be the return to yourself
The return to innocence.

If you want, then start to laugh
If you must, then start to cry
Be yourself don’t hide
Just believe in destiny.

Don’t care what people say
Just follow your own way
Don’t give up and use the chance
To return to innocence.

That’s not the beginning of the end
That’s the return to yourself
The return to innocence.

Don’t care what people say
Follow just your own way
Follow just your own way
Don’t give up, don’t give up
To return, to return to innocence.

If you want then laugh
If you must then cry
Be yourself don’t hide
Just believe in destiny.

https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/07/28/your-daily-word-prompt-unfathomable-july-28-2019/

Sick Cycle Carousel

I feel like my life is in a constant state of emergency. And it is always such mainly due to the choices that everyone else makes that is in my life. And while I do take responsibility for making the choice for who I married which brought some of those people in to my life, and every day that I choose to stay married, I guess is also my choice, but there were choices that I didn’t make at the beginning of my life that shaped who I am. I did not choose to be taken from my birth mother. I did not choose to be put up for adoption. I did not choose the narcissistic parents that raised me. And all of this impacts, every day, how I react to my environment and the people that are in it. And yes, I know that no one chooses who they are born to. At least we don’t make those choices here on Earth. However, people who experience a normal birth with their parents, do not come in to this world with trauma from the second they were born, or even before that, from the moment they were conceived.

I have been traveling down a very independent spiritual path which began mainly once I reached college. There was always something inside of me that knew the religion(s) I was being taught and raised by when I was young weren’t the ones for me. When I made my confirmation at 13, I cried as I walked down the aisle, not because I was happy or moved, but because the priest had told us that confirmation was now our decision as opposed to Baptism which was our parents decision. But I still felt at 13 that it was my parents decision, because I was highly controlled by my parents at 13. There was no way I could tell them at 13 I didn’t want to be confirmed in the Catholic faith and that I didn’t really agree with what I was attesting to. I began researching many of the different religions when I reached college. I wrote all my research down in a large text book sized book with blank pages that I called a Book of Shadows, after the sacred book of Wicca.

I abandoned the research for a while after I filled the book and just did my own thing spiritually/religiously for a while and just floated about. Recently I began to seek more again in that realm and to read more on the topics again.

On my point that I made earlier about the fact that we don’t make our own choices about who we are born to, at least not while we’re here on Earth. I was alluding to my newly gained knowledge regarding the Akashic Records. While I don’t know much about the topic yet, it is something I intend to explore. Many of those that I have been in conversation with about spiritual topics speak of the fact that we/our souls write our own script and contract (in the Akashic Records) before each life time on Earth and that we do choose our own path, no matter how hard that may be to accept, that we may have chosen a hard path for ourselves for a specific reason. This is a hard nut for me to swallow as I have struggled a lot in this lifetime. And it feels as though the way that I have chosen to love my life in terms of my virtues and actions are not in karmic relation to what I am dealt. I am told that karma is built up over multiple lifetimes though. This is also a very difficult nut to swallow. It is hard to continue living a virtuous life in this lifetime when it doesn’t seem as though I will reap any benefit from it in this lifetime. I feel as though I am destined for a constant life of hardships this go around. It is hard to continue to live for the advancement of my soul to raise to a higher level for the next lifetime or dimension or plane when I won’t remember the experience as the person that I am right now. Somehow I know people make good with themselves for the idea of life in Heaven or whatever it is they believe for the afterlife. And maybe it is selfish of me to want to get some sort of reprieve within this lifetime. It is hard for me to look around at those for whom life sometimes seems so easy.

I have always been afraid of death. And I still am, but my soul and earthly psyche is exhausted. I am weary of all of this pain and struggle and horrifying stuff I keep experiencing and witnessing on Earth. I am mentally more and more ready to leave this Earth as each day passes. I am ready at age 40 to step off this Sick Cycle of a Carousel for good. This entire reincarnation journey. I hope I am awakened enough that I am close to the end of my path and ready to ascend the final staircase to Nirvana or Heaven or the highest astral plane, or whatever the final destination may be.

In my newer research studies of religions and spirituality, I have come upon another new term as well. Starseed. A starseed is defined as someone who originates from another planet or star/celestial body but resides here on Earth. This concept is one that is difficult for me to grasp as I was raised by very closed minded parents who are very conventional and poo-poo anything that is esoteric in nature. I feel as though I need to keep my mind open to things that I cannot know to be untrue. Especially when the characteristics of those who are defined as a Starseed fit who I am to a tee. There are very few qualities that do not describe me. Here are the traits of a Starseed.

• From a young age, you have had an inherent wisdom that usually comes later in life for other people.

• You’ve been told you’re an old soul and you agree. You feel ancient to the core

• No matter where you are, you always have a feeling of homesickness. You know what home feels like, even if you can’t express it, and you know that your house is not it. This may even lead to depression in some cases.

• Even as a child, you have always felt different, as though you are unique and others cannot understand you. You feel divided from the world — as if it is a constant battle of “them” vs. “you.”

• You often feel morally superior to others, regardless of education or social stature.

• Your sense of empathy is overwhelming.

• You feel different from those around you, however, you have a natural inclination to relate to their struggles.

• Your physical body is an enigma to doctors. It functions differently than everyone else’s and the medical world struggles to understand it. This may manifest itself in ways as small as a lower than average body temperature or inability to withstand heat.

• You are incredibly intelligent, but bored easily by traditional academics.

• You have had a paranormal or psychic experience. You may have seen a ghost, heard other’s thoughts, had dreams that became reality, etc.

• You feel as though you have a purpose or mission to fulfill, but struggle to find what you want to do with your life.

• You lack the passion or intrigue to truly devote yourself to one area and understand the banality of life.

• The physical limitations of your body often frustrate you.

• You feel as though you should be able to do more but are vexed by your restrictions. This is because Starseeds remember far more freedom in their physical form.

• Your dreams are vivid and exceptional, and waking life never seems to measure up. Often, your dreams will seem other worldly — as though your mind has created a completely separate universe.

• Others are often wary of you or feel uncomfortable in your presence. People instinctually know that you are different, but struggle to verbalize why. You may even feel isolated within your own family.

• You have very few friends, but those who are seem to understand you without need of explanation

• Animals trust you and are naturally drawn to you. You understand them to the point that it feels as though you can communicate. The same is true for babies and small children. They find you fascinating and seem mesmerized in your presence.

• You are interested in spirituality but see the divine beyond books and religion. You may not be able to put it into words, but you have a deep understanding that spirituality has always been an intrinsic part of you.

• You are drawn to metaphysics and the science behind other worlds.

• You can feel who people are without them ever saying a word. You see beyond the external façade and instinctually know when they are lying. You may seem rude in conversations because you know what the other person is going to say before they’ve even started. People think you are disinterested, when in reality you are frustrated by the pace of the conversation.

• From a young age, you questioned the ways of society and still feel perplexed as to how other’s don’t see its mistakes.

• Though your dreams are exceptional, you’ve always had trouble sleeping.

• You have a natural ability to make others feel better – whether through medicine or your words. Strangers will often open up about their problems without even realizing it.

• People’s first impression of you is often aloof or cold, however, once they get to know you, they consider you to be one of the most loving people that they know.

• You avoid large crowds and find it hard to handle people in large doses — even friends. To you, people are overwhelming and their emotions and actions seem chaotic.

• You have an ability to emotionally or spiritually grow much faster than those around you. Your sense of morality keeps you grounded, even when presented with emotions that are difficult for others to handle.

 

The older I get, the more solitary I feel in my plight in life. And yet I feel like all I am made to do these days is to serve others. And this is weighing me down and stifling the greatness that I know of inside of me. There are so many things I want to accomplish in life that have gone on the back burner because I am burdened by dealing with everyone else’s “stuff” in life. It feels like my life’s direction is hardly ever due to my own needs and desires and path. And even though I might not be the bread winner, as always, that is one of the driving forces as to why my own pursuits take a back seat. My role as a woman and mother is another reason that I become the responsible one for everyone else and have to be the self sacrificing one. And the fact that I take responsibility for my actions and deal with my problems instead of trying to escape them furthers my stuckedness. And right now the only vision I have to shift my priorities is to abandon my current life path altogether. And that is much easier said than done. But I have been making real steps towards this instead of just imagining it in my head and talking about it. It feels as though it will be a when rather than an if at this point. I’m scared and I’m sad, but I don’t know how else to fix things anymore for everyone. And I need my 40s to be better than my 30s. I spent 10 years stuck in a holding pattern, and my souls signature is better than this. The world deserves all I have to offer, and there is so much more that I have to put out there that I haven’t been able to with where I’m at and I won’t be able to if life continues this way. Working on finding my power.

Sick Cycle Carousel
By: Lifehouse

If shame had a face I think it
would kind of look like mine
If it had a home would it be my eyes
Would you believe me if I said I’m tired of this
Well here we go now one more timeI tried to climb your steps
I tried to chase you down
I tried to see how low I could get it down to the ground
I tried to earn my way
I tried to tame this mind
You better believe that I tried to beat this[CHORUS]
So when will this end it goes on and on
Over and over and over again
Keep spinning around I know that it won’t stop
Till I step down from this for goodI never thought I’d end up here
Never thought I’d be standing where I am
I guess I kinda thought it would be easier than this
I guess I was wrong now one more timeI tried to climb your steps
I tried to chase you down
I tried to see how long I could get it down to the ground
I tried to earn my way
I tried to tame this mind
You better believe that I tried yo beat this

[REPEAT CHORUS]
Sick cycle carousel
This is a sick sycle, yeah
Sick cycle carousel
This is a sick cycle, yeah

[REPEAT CHORUS TWICE]
Sick cycle carousel
Sick cycle carousel
Sick cycle carousel…

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/carousel/

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/solitary/

 

Crank it up

Crank it up. Crank up the truth. Watching a show about those who write music inspired me tonight. I usually am not very creative in the composition arena of the music. I often can have lyrics flow, but they are really more often poetic and not in a form for rock or pop music. This time the lyrics and Melody and background music are all happening at once. It’s quite nice. I have only ever written one other rock/pop song. Right now for this one I only have the first verse (at least part of it) and the first/main chorus. It has been a more constructive way to channel the emotions that invaded my brain over the weekend.

Who I am

Dark meets Light

Two worlds collide

Created I

 

Seen as sin

Lost within

New Beginning

 

Chorus:

Left me in the atmosphere

Left me with this heart of fear

Wishing up upon a star

Always wondered where you are

Ended up in Wonderland

Never knew just who I am

Never knew just I who I am…

 

My song of the day comes because I saw it on an episode of Friends that came on today and it also came on my playlist today as well. The Lion in me has been sleeping for far too long. But that Lion is beginning to awaken! He might be sleeping tonight, but he’s a stirring!

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/crank/

I am luminescent

I, myself, by the very definitions,

Am luminescent.

I have evolved to new forms.

Converged what is genealogically encoded in me,

Merged with that which is environmentally subjected upon me,

And I radiate from within.

It has only been the chemical changes, the motions and changes of the subatomic particles within me

Rather than any heat induction (read: love)

Only the cold I am left with,

That illuminate my soul

For all to bear witness.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/luminescent/

My song of the day:

“One Light”
By: Skid Row

There’s a sound in my head
Holy wine, breakin’ bread
between time and what we said
drifts the innocence we’ve shed

In this moment there’s a day
for a sad and broken babe
there’s a fracture on this hallowed ground where we lay

One light burns, one light fades
Behind the door are better days
When the light shines on me
I’ll know the world still turns
One light burns, one light burns

There’s a prayer on the wall
One by one say them all
Why we run before we crawl
Stands the reason that we fall
In the flower there’s a field
Sublime but so surreal
There’s a fracture on this sacred ground to be healed

One light burns, one light fades
Behind the door are better days
When the light shines on me
I’ll know the world still turns
One light burns, one light burns
One light burns

[Solo]

One light burns, one light fades
Behind the door are better days
When the light shines on me
I’ll know the world still turns

 

Only fools rush in

And so I will start where I left off 2 days ago. In my post “Perception”, I left off with the following quote from the TV show of the same name:

Does free will exist? Do I exert conscious control over my actions? Did I do that on purpose? Or was I forced to do it by some unseen neural process? Fact is, most of the neuro scientific data suggests free will is an illusion. But if that’s true, are we simply meat puppets? All of our choices made for us? -Daniel Pierce

Here is what the band Rush has to say on the matter of free will….

But then, do they in a later album contradict themselves within these lyrics?

So, now let us examine a couple of terms and definitions that are often argued and contemplated when philosophizing about freewill.

Pre-Determinism: the idea that the entire past (as well as the future) was determined at the origin of the universe.

Casual Determinism: Causal determinists believe that there is nothing in the universe that is uncaused or self-caused.

The basic scientific idea of hereditary determination fulfills the definition of causal determinism, a metaphysical concept.

Determinism: Determinism is the philosophical idea that every event or state of affairs, including every human decision and action, is the inevitable and necessary consequence of antecedent states of affairs.

Determination: Determination is the  idea that our decisions are determined by our motives and deliberations, by our character and values, and by our feelings and desires. The idea that events (including human actions) can be adequately determined by immediately prior events (such as an agent’s reasons, motives, desires), without being pre-determined back to before the agent’s birth or even back to the origin of the universe.

Free will:

the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion.

synonyms:

self-determination, freedom of choice, autonomy, liberty, independence

The photo meme above was one that was generated by one of those Facebook “find your quote of the year, made specially for you” sites….It is of value to this meandering…I would like to start here and work backwards through the definitions. The canvas analogy of this quote resonated in me as an Adoptee because in many ways I felt like a blank canvas with no reference picture, as I was not brought up around my birthfamily. I was floundering around as a child, always trying to fit in, trying to draw from those in my environment, but always knowing that the boxes I was trying to fit in to were not who I was deep inside. By high school and college, the true me, my true identity, emerged and it was very different from anyone I was raised around. When I finally got in touch with my birthfamilies, it was uncanny how much of the identity that I was so drawn to, that emerged despite never having met them until I was in my late 30s, was a perfect blend of my birthmom and birthdad. My identity seems to me (to use the terms within the confines of this argument), to be a casual determinism. In fact, no matter how hard my adoptive parents have tried to quash that identity, it has remained in tact, partially out of choice, partially because it is “who I was”, despite never knowing this on the conscious level at that time.

Moving along to the actual definitions and debate.

Back in college I took several social science classes, a variety of psychology classes, philosophy classes (even one of my math requirement classes was a blended math/philosophy class), sociology, social psychology etc….I will admit it has been some time since I have read up on the classic Philosophers, and unfortunately, due to my ADHD, one of my coping techniques was to purge the info I learned for each exam in order to learn the info for the next exam. Sadly, I have not retained much of my knowledge. So, what I put forth may not be factually accurate and may have already been covered by someone, and I may be behind the game on this one. I am only beginning to re-emerge in to the world of research and knowledge seeking, so please forgive any indiscretions and misinformation.

My opinion on free will simply boils down to what is stated in the above meme. “You are free to choose, but you are not free from the consequence of your choice.” I do believe that the definitions of the terms work in conjunction with each other, in the consecutive order that I listed them. I believe we do all have free will, that we are free to choose, and make any choice we want, but that our choices are influenced by all of the factors (Pre-Determinism, Casual Determinism, Determinism and Determination). We ultimately have to answer to our own minds (as that is the main jail cell we are stuck in 24/7), and then there is the other barrage of possible consequences, depending upon what the choice to be made is. Those who are religiously minded have the fear of their higher power looking over them as a consequence. There is fear of losing some type of relationship as a possible outcome. Fear of losing income, or a job. Somehow, free will seems to coincide with a decision between something that could possibly be beneficial and something that could potentially be harmful or negative in some way. There always seems to be that “what if” chance on the other side of free will. Do I have the free will to leave my house right now and go for a drive in my car? Absolutely. No one is stopping me. Someone else might choose to do so under the given circumstances. Nothing really bad happened. Just some negative energy. Could getting out the house right now possibly be beneficial? Maybe. Would it really do much harm? No. My daughter just went up to go to bed. My husband is home. I wouldn’t be endangering anyone. But it also raises the risk of me getting in to a car accident by being on the road later at night. There really aren’t any places for me to go other than bars at this point, and I’m not a drinker. So what is the benefit? Not much. Options are weighed and there seems less benefit to it than it is worth. But do I have the free will? Yes. Could I exercise it if I choose to? Yes. I choose not to (even though it was really only a hypothetical situation that I came up with merely for this mental experiment). And I still have made a choice not to have to decide, as Rush points out in their song.

Regardless of any one person’s decision, the world will still keep on turning, until the day it doesn’t. So everyone is free to decide however they choose. But they are not free from the consequences (good or bad) of those choices. Even if one person is the reason for the final act that causes the extinction of the world as we know it, there will always be acts and people involved in those steps leading up to it that played their role. No person is ever a complete lone soldier in their mission.

Free will, always something leading up to it, always free to use it, always a consequence and outcome from it. Only fools rush in…

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/rush/

 

White Rabbit

 

My song of the day…..coinciding with my chess piece…and so many other things about my life…..

Perception

As with many people, binge watching TV shows has become “one of my things”. God bless the Netflix and Hulu! The difference between me and alot of other people is that I am very particular about the shows and movies that I chose to watch. I generally don’t watch much “mindless” tv. Most things I chose to watch have some relation to my life and some deeper meaning that I can grow and learn from.

One of my latest is the TV series “Perception”. It appeals to the social sciences deep thinking side of me.This side is a very dominant side. If I wasn’t a musician by career, I would have gone in to Psychology. In high school, when I was visiting the college fairs in my sophmore year, I was putting down on all of the cards that my intended major was Psychology and my intended minor was Music. One of the college representatives asked me if I had heard about Music Therapy which was a combination of my major and minor. By the time I got to my senior year of high school, that would be my intended major for college. Long story short, and this will be a longer story for another post (because it is quite the story in an of itself), I ended up becoming a Music Performance Major while in college. I took many social science classes, however, during my undergraduate work. And I still have an exuberant interest in all social sciences. I am a very unique private lessons instructor in my approach, in that, I utilize a lot of social science techniques in my teaching, as well as my students often confiding in me as a counselor because they take comfort in our relationship and can feel the stretch of my knowledge beyond music.

I often feel that I am more conscious than the majority of people I come across. But often, I feel I come across to others as a bit insane or overly eccentric because my emotions and self esteem are very inchoate due to the situations and circumstances I have gone through in this lifetime in order to obtain that wisdom. The greatest minds run a fine line between genius and insanity, so perhaps that is a good sign.

For my daughter, it is not her life circumstances that cause her emotions to be inchoate, but rather her innate genius brain. That is the paradoxical mind of someone with Asperger’s. It is as if one is so overdeveloped and firing at such a rapid rate that the other is also firing at such a rapid rate that it also misfires or doesn’t connect the proper emotion with the proper situation. Everything is just going a mile a minute up there for her. The intellectual information seems to organize itself, but the emotional stuff doesn’t. Either way, we both struggle with the emotional area and how to properly appropriate it.

A thought came to my mind the other day. We are given all of these emotions in life for a reason. Many from my generation (I am 40) were brought up under the belief to control your emotions, hold back on all the negative emotions such as anger, sadness etc…we were not permitted to express our opinions to our elders, our elders were always right….even if they were wrong. We were an oppressed generation emotionally and we were not respected as individuals. The old saying of “children are meant to be seen and not heard” was often said or implied when we were children. And as parents, my generation has gone to the opposite extreme and become a little too loosey-goosey and allowed the children to walk all over the authority figures whereas they think they run the households now. The perception of authority shifted and has changed the reality of the way of life. Hopefully the next generation will find the right balance.

But the thought that came to me was that I have realized that I seem to function with different people from different emotion banks. It is different emotions that drive me to make changes within different relationships in my life. I try to tell my daughter that it is always ok to have the gambut of emotions, but it is how she handles them and reacts to them as to whether it makes them “ok”. IE: It is ok to feel angry, but it is not ok to punch someone because you are angry, etc….But what I am noticing, at least for myself, and I’d be curious to know if other people experience this same phenomenon, is that sometimes the necessary impetus of change for me to make a paradigm shift is based in different emotions for different relationships. But this, unfortunately causes me to switch in negative emotions. And I don’t know how to break this. For example. It is anger or hurt that finally drives me to make the necessary boundary changes I need to with my adoptive parents. This is a positive change that I am always in need of, but I lose the courage to do this, unless I swarm myself with a million reasons to be angry and hurt by them enough to convince myself of why I need to put up these boundaries. I have to make myself miserable in order to make a healthy change for myself. It sounds so self-defeating, but I chicken out if I don’t do this ritualistic barrage of hurtful input information until I finally make my move. I want to stop hurting myself, but I can’t seem to find another way to muster up the courage.

If anyone has any suggestions, I am all ears. I am still in the inchoate stages of my redefinition of self. But I leave with the following quotes from the show “Perception” which cause me to feel that I will continue to function in similar patterns.

Walt Whitman wrote, “I contain multitudes.” Turns out he was more right than he knew. The self is really a collection of several distinct neural networks all running on this glob of jelly between your ears. So through your different versions of yourself, floating around inside your skull, which one is the real you? And even if you do change, something about yourself, your face, your name, where you live, you might feel different, you might even be able to fool people, for a little while, but can you ever actually change who you really are? -Daniel

Does free will exist? Do I exert conscious control over my actions? Did I do that on purpose? Or was I forced to do it by some unseen neural process? Fact is, most of the neuro scientific data suggests free will is an illusion. But if that’s true, are we simply meat puppets? All of our choices made for us? -Daniel

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/inchoate/

Warning!!

Warning!! The man in this picture above and these videos below is going to go insane a few years ago…It’s an unfortunate reality that I saw in his eyes a few months before it happened. I have a way of reading people’s energy, as I have intimated before in some of my past posts. As I watched a concert of theirs that was televised, I told my husband that he was starting to look and act evil, that some switch had flipped in him. It was only a few months after that concert that the band split and the controversy started to come to light regarding all of the trouble Geoff was causing.

It was this concert below that my husband and I were watching on TV where I could see a change in him. I had seen them live several times and he had never acted like this before. It would be one thing if that was a singers act, but it wasn’t his. This was a different person on stage, far more angry, evil and arrogant than I’d ever seen him. A switch had flipped.

When we met him, in the picture above, he had seemed a bit off then, so he never was quite right. He was quite arrogant then and the tangents he went off on seemed disconnected and far fetched even for my esoteric mind. The band made great music. It saddens me that this happened and that the magic can’t happen any longer. This song isn’t one of my favorites musically speaking. But it follows today’s prompt…SOOOOO…….

“Warning”
By: Queensryche

I remember I was asking why
And someday you said I’d know
All these years, of fighting hard
And now it’s finally come too closeI can’t believe it’s now happening to me
Oh, couldn’t it wait a few hundred years
Destiny can’t rest you see, now it’s time
Time to cry your tears! Now cry!The child of centuries, forgotten in time
You talk in circles of rhyme
Seer of places future and past
The warning you gave us is surely our lastWarning!Behold the child, his pointing hand
Is raised in solemn grace
His eyes once wide with learning wonder
Now leave stains upon his faceNow see the hands of the working man
He’s leaning back against the wall
Once busy hands are idle now
Standing ready for the fall! Our fall!

The signs will come as days past by
For those that claim to see
The blind will stay not choosing to die
Not believing the visions I’ve seen

Warning!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/warning/

If there is no question…

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

A very common philosophy problem/argument. If no one is aware that the tree has made the sound, does the sound in fact occur? Some have answered the question stating that it would not make a sound. Their reasoning for this is that sound is something that only occurs in a human ear when something (air or object) is set in motion. Therefore, if no one is in the vicinity to observe with an ear, to input the motion of the tree, the the tree would not in fact make a sound.

However, the tree will make a noise (which is a hearable noise), even if no one is around to hear it. The noise would be hearable IF someone was around to hear it.

Sometimes we, as a human nature characteristic, become frantic when we get caught up in our desperation to solve our problems when everything seems to be going wrong. We start trying to fix every single thing and begin trying to change everything in our midst. We respond with frustration and anger and turn everything in to a huge philosophical problem that, like the tree making a sound question, we go around and around with and see no end or solution. Sometimes, we need to stop asking the questions, and stop trying to fix everything and work towards acceptance. If we constantly focus on all things negative in our lives, that is what we will continue to dwell on. In doing this, a negative cyclical pattern emerges.

Conversely, pondering the first meme posted on this writing….Sometimes, when you simply surrender, and quiet yourself, answers will appear. Even when you have not asked a specific question, or if you have asked a very generalized question a very long time ago and stopped searching for the answers, often times something will come along in your life and you will not even realize that was the key or one of the components that was missing. That was one of the turning points when it wasn’t ever something on your radar when you had tried so very hard to change everything that you thought was plaguing you.

Or when you’re Sheldon Cooper from the “Big Bang Theory” and your formulas or theories “just won’t coalesce”. Sometimes after pounding formulas or thought processes from the approach you think it should logically come from for what seems like forever, when you’re on the brink of giving up, maybe you have given up, and suddenly, like a bolt of lightning, the answer itself, or the method for solving the problem comes to you.

My music research project illuminated a problem with an answer to a question I was never even asking in the first place. I saw the answer first which made me ask the question next.

If there is no question, or if you are not asking the right question, is there an answer? What is the answer called if the answer came before the question? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? All of the problems and solutions the thinkers of the world grapple with frantically, until they decide not to.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/frantic/

A Trio of Quartets

 

“What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient… highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed – fully understood – that sticks; right in there somewhere.” -Dom Cobb, “Inception”

A quartet of dreams, four layers down. A dream within a dream within a dream within a dream. To plant an idea, a thought so deep in someone’s brain that it will permeate like a disease. In my experience, dreams aren’t necessary to do this. Inception within a dream isn’t necessary for what is essentially mind control. Repetition of ideas and thoughts can accomplish this often times, and experiencing emotions at a primal level can also accomplish this as well. There are many ways an idea or thought can take hold, but it is very true that it can be stronger than a virus and more resilient than a parasite. Thoughts and ideas can be more powerful than death. Thoughts and ideas resonate and continue to regenerate and pass down long after the person who first uttered the idea or thought has passed.

Quatour pour la Fin du Temps

Quartet for the End of Time. The solo movement for clarinet alone-The Abyss of the Birds. Composed by Oliver Messiaen.

This piece is in eight movements. It is scored for Clarinet, Violin, Cello and Piano. This is a very unique pairing of instruments. Messiaen wrote the piece while he was a prisoner in German captivity during the war. The piece was premiered in 1941. It was originally written as a trio and then the piano part was added in, which he played in the premiere. The piece was premiered by himself and his fellow prisoners. The complete work has a duration of approximately 50 minutes.

In the preface inside the score, Messiaen wrote that the piece was inspired by the Book of Revelation from the Bible. The text that he was inspired by that is in the inscription reads as follows:

And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire … and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth …. And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever … that there should be time no longer: But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished …

There are separate inscriptions to describe each movement. Some of the movements are for the full quartet, but some of the movements are for different variations of instrumentation within the quartet.

The third movement is the Abyss of the Birds, which is the recording above of me performing this movement live at one of my former recitals. I played this movement during a recital that I themed as “Journey through the Woods”. I specifically painted the painting that is on my home page for that recital and I dressed within the theme and had a slide show in the background of Wooded scenes as pictured above. I also wrote a poem and had other poetry read in between pieces. It was a multimedia experience. I was very proud of this recital. It was very stressful putting it all together, but some day I hope to do something like this again, perhaps when my daughter is a bit older and I have a little more time to focus and dedicate the time needed to pull something like that off.

 

Humorous Scherzo by: Prokofiev

Performed by: Galaxy Quartet

Earlier this year, I had a faculty recital performance at the college that I used to teach Adjunct Applied Clarinet Lessons at. I just tendered my resignation this semester for several reasons (all for my own sanity purposes). At any rate, in the past for this faculty recital I had always done a duet with a fellow friend and colleague flutist. Last year I wasn’t able to perform so she had her quartet play. This year I was able to play again and her quartet wanted to play again, but they were short a clarinet player, so I subbed for their missing clarinet player and we all played the recital together. The quartet consists of 2 flutes and 2 clarinets. I had never played in this instrumentation of an ensemble before. It was unique. I enjoyed it, but the other clarinetist and I (who was the leader of the group) had a clash in personalities. So it will be a one time thing. But it was fun to play with a new instrumentation and explore music I had not played before.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/quartet/