After five years of using a couch older than I am (that was never really meant for long term sitting), I finally got a new one. Despite how it may look, I can assure you it is not leather (those were way too expensive, even on sale).

It looks and feels so much better than the old one (which is now on another edge of the living room... still have to figure that all out).

Now I just have to get used to actually being comfortable sitting here... and figure out how to best position the laptop and whatnot. The angles are all different now!

Yay! :)

(Of course, now that other chair I have--the one that matches the old couch--looks all the worse...)

Originally published at The Searcher Journal. You can comment here or there.

In the past thirty years, I’ve died at least three times.

These deaths I speak of are not a physical death. No, they are more of a metaphorical death followed by a glorious return to a whole new life. It is the death of one version of “I” and the beginning of a new “I”.

As I learned more about who I actually was, I discovered a great number of things I didn’t like about myself. More importantly, I began to develop a sense of who I could be.

Back when I was a miserable, isolated and lonely high school student, I made a lot of excuses for why I was the way I was. “I’m just different than everyone else,” I would tell myself. “It’s their loss for not taking the time to get to understand me.” I let my hopes become expectations and my personal delusions become my reality. I was depressed, constantly, and, to a lesser extent, angry with the world.

At the time, I didn’t know it, but that was all holding me back. Keeping me in my rut, steeped in an unhealthy darkness of mood and mind–blind to the similarities I shared with those around me.

That’s when I got my first glimpse of my Adversary… and of the beauty of the Universe.

In the gloom of my darkest hours, I began to notice things. I began to notice patterns in my life. To see that every time my life just plain sucked in one way, some other area would open up and be better than ever. Now, that other area wasn’t always my area of choice–which is why it was so hard to see back then–but when I did finally realize how interconnected everything was, the final pieces fell into place.

Before those pieces fell into place, though, they had to be shaken loose from the pile of crap they had been mixed in with.

In order to “deal” with all the pain and suffering of my middle school and high school experience, I had built up walls around myself. That’s a common defense against The Adversary that many use. The “Strange Me” I had cultivated was insulation against some of the suffering I felt I was subjected to. It was also a prison of my own creation.

The simple fact is, any construct–be it physical, emotional, mental or spiritual–that keeps something out also keeps something in.

As my walls built up, things piled up inside them. By the time I was graduating high school, I was up to my neck in crap. Crap that I had generated in my own mind. Crap that society had thrown on me (just high enough to get over the top of my wall). Crap that was very soon going to blot out any view I had of anything good in the world. Crap that began, in my internal wanderings, to take on a life of its own.

Without knowing it, I had given my Adversary the most fertile ground to thrive on it could ever hope for.

Within weeks of discovering the wonderful world of “not the place I grew up in” (also known as college), I had made some real friends and found a level of acceptance that I had never before known. I shared those first few weeks with a number of great people–most of whom had been outcasts in high school.

But inside, I was still the high school me. I was still almost over my head in crap, trapped inside the walls I had built. I could feel those walls becoming weak, being pressed well beyond their limits from both sides. I could feel the separation those walls were creating between the people I now cared about and myself. And on an even more terrifying level, I could feel something else within those walls struggling to get the best of me.

Like it or not, those walls were going to come down.

That’s when I got my first full view of my Adversary.

It was more than I could really handle on my own.

And so, a tentatively asked my new friends Chris and Sarah if I could talk to them for a bit.

They got to hear about everything that had been going on in my head. About all the dark things I knew I had running around inside me. About the little bits of Divinity I had glimpsed and the connections I felt among events.

I talked a lot.

To their credit, they managed to not look too freaked out. (I know I must have worried them a bit, though… it was pretty intense, even by my own standards.)

Suddenly, the world was a different place.

I was a different person.

Through telling the story–through sharing my burden–I dragged my Adversary out into the light. It was difficult to do. The thing wanted me to keep quiet about it, it’s power was mostly in getting me to isolate myself. Alone, it could taunt and tear one little bit at a time from my self control and happiness. The Adversary is always cunning and for a while I had been playing right into its twisted hands.

Once I got a good look at it, though, I could see how familiar it was. I could see that it was me.

In that moment of realization, I accepted it as a vital part of myself. My Adversary lost a lot of power that day… and I came out of the meeting a different person.

The old “I” was dead and gone. In his place was a completely different individual.

The walls that had been built up had collapsed and their rubble had settled into a new foundation. The useless, broken pieces were easy to discard after that break. I was able, for the first time since a weekend long hike in the mountains a couple of years earlier, to feel part of the Universe.

I had finally found stable, permanent happiness.

It lasted for a year and a half.

Originally published at The Searcher Journal. You can comment here or there.

“You are your own worst enemy” is an old saw, without question. But like many of its ilk, it holds more than a grain of truth.

Nothing can mess with us more than our own mind. And here it is important to note that the mind is different from the brain in this context. The brain is the functional part, the mind is the thing that gets in the way. It drifts, it becomes fixated on certain ideas, it chatters incessantly about nothing, it jumps from idea to idea (generated by the brain or inspired by spirit). All in all, it’s more often than not just a whole lot of noise that needs to be filtered.

For most people, it doesn’t get much more serious than that.

For some, it gets a bit worse. Not only does the mind chatter incessantly, that chatter takes on a sinister tone. It becomes that voice in your head telling you you’re not good enough, the one that erodes your confidence by reminding you of all the times you’ve failed, by dredging up the most tenuous supporting “evidence” as to why you’ll fail again. Maybe that’s tone is being caused by a short in the brain (which can be treated in most cases). Maybe it’s being caused by a broken shard of your mind from past traumatic experience (which can also be treated, though not as surely as a physical or chemical problem).

For those who choose a spiritual path, things can go one step further.

As an initiate makes his way down the road of self-discovery, that voice can become personified. It can take on shapes and forms in visions. It can be reflected in those we interact with. And all the while it seeks only to undermine that desired progress.

It becomes The Adversary.

It can take many forms, an annoying trickster, a fickle ally, that dark voice in the back of your head telling you you’re not good enough. It can even show up as the main Big Bad who seems to be behind all things unpleasant. The Adversary is as cunning as it is insidious. It knows your every move, sometimes before you do. Always, it is there, waiting for a chance to muck things up. A chance to set you back.

The Adversary is everywhere at once. It lashes back at us when dealing with others who share our strengths and weaknesses. Using them, it reflects and amplifies everything we dislike about ourselves… and then clouds the actual source of the annoyance we feel at others.

It distracts us from our actual goals–by making us chase it, by presenting challenges that pique our interest more than the task we should be doing, by outright opposing us.

But there is no “us” against “them” here. The Adversary is a part of our whole self. It’s that dark part that we try to hide–and hide from. It’s those deep rumblings of untapped power and knowledge, looking to get out on their own.

It is an integral part of not just who we are, but who we could be.

For better, or for worse.

How we deal with our Adversaries can determine a lot. The natural reaction is to fight. To fight long and hard, expending tremendous amounts of energy trying to beat them into submission or to outright destroy them. Neither of those options is possible. The more you fight it, the more powerful The Adversary becomes.

The best you can do is use The Adversary as a guide. See it for what it is–a deep source of knowledge and insight into yourself. It can even be an ally, once you understand what it wants. Knowing it is part of you, you can assert some control over it. You can negotiate with it.

Encountering The Adversary for the first time during pathwork can be disconcerting. That encounter often happens unexpectedly and, sometimes, violently. If any encounter with The Adversary in the metaphysical realm goes poorly, things in the real world can also take a nasty turn. Because it is such a vital sub-section of ourselves–and because it so hates being hidden and suppressed in the background–it can sometimes “bleed through” into our own behavior, often without us realizing.

We become sullen, angry, quick to lash out. We lie, cheat and steal–sometimes going out of our way to hurt those around us. If that’s not what we normally do, it very well could be The Adversary’s influence coming through.

This is why we need to be cognizant of our actions, why we need to understand our patters. With that knowledge, we can spot changes in them. If those changes are taking a toll on our ability to function in the “real world”, then action must be taken.

What kind of action? It depends. For some, a deeper dedication to their spiritual path–more encounters and interaction with The Adversary as a separate entity–can help. For others, more “mundane” paths of analysis like therapists can help sort out the different threads that make us up.

The simple fact is, we all have a dark side… and even the most vile human out there has at least some small spark of light. The Adversary is always a twisted reflection of the person, the other part of the whole. Yin to Yang, Light to Darkness, when it comes down to it, The Adversary completes us. Balances us.

When we take control of that balance–when we accept the fact that there is no mythical purity within us–we have the power in the relationship with the Adversary. By accepting our faults and fears, we gain control over them. We become, consciously, a more whole person.

And The Adversary… becomes an ally.

Originally published at A Dark New World. Please leave any comments there.

Hey there people!

All of you have had at least one session with me now... some of you have had more.

Originally published at Toob Talk. You can comment here or there.

Just a quick reminder that Dr. Horrible’s Sing A Long Blog “opens” in a handful of hours.

Am I still excited? Yes I am.

Of course, I won’t be watching it until I’m home from work Tuesday night, so I’m expecting to be scooped on everything.

But I’m still going to enjoy it. No matter what! (Unless, by some terrible catastrophe it sucks, in which case I will happily rip Joss a new one.)

Originally published at Toob Talk. You can comment here or there.

…and, wow am I glad I didn’t see that in the theater!

Seriously. They could have had two good movies and, instead, they crammed it all into one kinda crappy one. Pretty, though. In fact, as long as you don’t care about semi-sensible plot, proper character development or actual working story arcs, it’s the perfect movie–a collection of clips and sound bites that vaguely hang together, mostly because they have the same characters in them.

The Sandman story could have been great… if it had had space to actually grow and, maybe, brood a little. Him and Parker could have been great dramatic point and counterpoint. Different men, different choices and all that. And the fights could have escalated wonderfully as Sandman learned more about his newly acquired powers and the Webhead slowly became more attached to his black suit.

The Green Goblin II story could have been fantastic… if Harry had a chance to grow more sinister at a more measured pace after his bump on the head. Parker’s life could have been real hell as people and things he loved were taken from him one by one. All the while his emotional turmoil feeding the black symbiotic suit and making it stronger… until it culminated in the awesome knock-down, drag-out between the Web slinger and the new Goblin. A real study in rise and fall of character that would have given all the actors (even Kirsten Dunst) a workout.

The Eddie Brock/Venom story would have been perfect for a fourth film. It was just kind of sandwiched in between everything else. What a waste of that character and Gwen Stacey. ‘Nuff said there.

So, yeah. That was almost a total waste of 2+ hours.

Since no one stepped up the metaphorical and/or actual plate, I had my tasty "honey touched" pepper steak all to myself. It appears that I will continue to have it all to myself for most of the coming week.

You missed some tasty stuff. (Though there are some changes to the recipe I feel compelled to make--it didn't have quite the kick I wanted it to.)

If I were really determined, I figure out a way to make it look a little prettier, presentation-wise, too.

The night out at Spellbound after the chow was lots of fun, too. Not as dead as it was the last time I was there (of course, I had fun then, too).

There will be another Dinner By Kier night on either 9 or 16 August. I may be convinced to take requests for a non-meat based dish if there's anyone really interested in my totally novice cooking abilities but not interested in meat. Left to my own devices and menu making, however, meat will always be a main component. (Though I may switch it up with some poultry or seafood.)

Hope everyone else had a good night, wherever you were. :)