I went into the Dream, the Otherworlds last night, and I could feel how aligning helps, and more so today when I went on my walk. More pertinently, having considered WoW and gaming, I spoke with K about how gaming distracts from magic and the Otherworlds. K notes that gaming engages the imagination and the magical side of us into what’s essentially an ungrounded, internal Otherworlds experience. For example, we go into our own inner worlds and explore those reaches, but the experience is ungrounded from where we are, our bodies, our lives. It’s compartmentalized as a wholly “mental” exercise, and the energies and investment and will/intention to ends are wholly abstract and confined to the internal, abstract reality/experience that we acknowledge is wholly fictional.
Now, the fictional exists somewhere in the Otherworlds, for everything exists somewhere—but gaming and similar exercises don’t treat or frame them as existents, potentialities, or causal ends beyond the scope of the game. The energy and elthil investment can be just as intense as magic, but when the purpose is just within the game, or to pass the time, that investment is—wholly fictionalized Myth, what to us is myth, is at least a posited reality, a real or not wholly fictional thing. Or, even, as something from the past, in a mythic present, that can manifest in our lives in the proper circumstances. Gaming rarely has that sense of potentiality and [??]. Gaming can force us to confront ourselves or even give us opportunities to act/imagine ourselves as empowered or magical—gaming can serve soul work/Path roles. Gaming can even be turned to pragmatic, magical ends, which is what the fundies always fear. But too often, it’s a magical dead-end that occupies our attention, distracts, and more.
Gaming also tends to reinforce our reified, cultural, and metaphysical paradigms. Commodifying self, soul; energy, action—
So gaming—even more video gaming—is a way to direct elthil and experience to violent, greedy, and what are probably rather demonic ends. It’s a trap for those who aren’t otherwise—well—corporate, militaristic fuckheads. It also divides the self, pulling our heads and spirits into Otherworlds, leaving pieces of ourselves apart. Soul loss via D&D.
Now, I’m overstating in part, but I also see how gaming has helped me, and I can feel and reflect on how it hurt me. And I can feel how it requires realigning for me when I’m dealing with gaming and then trying to connect to the Otherworlds as non-fictive, as my actual experience again. Note, that what I say about gaming applies to any mentally or emotionally intensive experience. Work and relationships, imagining and investing yourself in them, imagining possibilities like I do. And those “day-dreams” count, especially if we never act on them.
I’ve noted the interaction of magic, gaming, and art for me in the past, how one would often keep me from the others. It’s for that engagement of elthil, imaginative faculties, and intentionality—and the ways we’ve demonized and abstracted creativity.
I rited tonight—at first I had to recover myself along the way, unwinding, relaxing, and uncoiling from the banal frets and busy mindedness that I accumulate over the week. In part, I make myself the center of a web, and everything presses down on me, or I allow myself to do so when I can spread that load beyond myself. Allow the earth and roots to support me, allow myself to flow like water and wind and fire and earth—the monadic notion of self is none of these.
As I proceeded, I moved closer to FitE, C-L L-C. We—glimpse each other across the “divide.” HS was less traumatic, in part because I am along the path even if I don’t feel like it sometimes. I got through the Guardians and into aligning and stretching and then med’n. I am present HERE and THERE.
I think the seizures are one-part tension release spasms and one-part trying to cram two bodies and minds of sensation, movement, and kinesthesia into one body (here and there for her). I have felt as if I see here, the room, but I also see the glade, Elethis in a different (but still right) direction. I see the mountainside and her, and I wonder just how close we are. Just a finger’s bredth apart. I am here, present, and present there.
The Morrigan presses a hand against my back, between my wings, as if to remind me of the touch in the Otherworlds, and she caresses my head, too. I feel, seizure-iffic but I try to bridge and relax into the other, try to immerse myself in her.
Holding the blade provides some measure of stolidity and better bridging, and I think trying to move, act, and think in tandem, in union—this is something to try.