In riting last night, the Guardians spoke about my plan to […]. I think they were all in favor, or convinced me that what was holding me back from tying myself to the Otherworlds more was choice and action. Always hedging for fear of what might happen becomes cowardice, Sh.F. said, and I felt that I had too often taken the cowardly path. And you cannot, do not want to do so, when it comes to the Otherworlds. If you do, then you will sit at the edge and do nothing substantive—or you invite the phantasms that haunt the fearful and uncourageous (or falsely courageous)—such as the nightmare hag of Dana I saw in the Otherworlds early into my investigation.
Part of it became fear of becoming […], fear of social problems and in commitment to changing myself in whatever ways. I think I got used to yearning for things, pining for things. For magic. (Ms wants something. J wants something. Neither of them wants to find it yet.)
FitE seemed more easily touched and held, more at home with me. I want to do more and more persistent Bridging, but I think there was a difference between last night and many other nights with her.
As I med’d and rested, and now again, I became aware of—paths, conceptual, spatial and otherwise—leading off into the Otherworlds. Mazes leading out. The knotwork on my walls reminded me as I touched it, and as I traced the lines and ran a hand over them, I could feel—glimpse—the mazes of meaning stretching out into the Otherworlds. On one hand, it’s like seeing the Derridean trace,[1] but it’s also like seeing paths leading out into the Worlds.
In a way, I feel it’s a sense for the nearness of the Otherworlds. Their omnipresence. Also, it’s a sense of accessing them. N’s presence the other night brought her mom’s ghost (though I wonder if that’s the best term—I ask MW, and he says much what I noted. The spirit who arrived, drawn by N, was bright, luminescent, colorful, and even growing younger. She was not some dim shade. But N has enough sense, with S, to sense elthil and energy—so N’s mom would not surprise me, per se.) And that, her ghost suggests things about the Otherworlds—but these paths, I’ve noted previously my sense of a passage or the like towards Elethis. Now I feel these “paths” and labyrinths, and I wonder what precisely they are—and what to do with them.
But my notes about last night also put me in mind of commitment and action. Committing to courses (courses) of committed social action, whether political, interpersonal, or otherwise. I glimpse—always glimpsing, but I’ve had my visions—how that could change me. I’ve wanted meaning and significance in my life, but I’ve always resisted certain kinds of it. […]
I’ve noted how I whisper my desires into the world, but cunning and subtlety still have their place, just to avoid calling negative attention. But there are wishes to shout, or times & ways to shout them.
Using these paths that I see requires some movement, some action on my part—exploration and excursion.
[1] Or to paraphrase how it was explained to me once, the trace is that link between one word and others that helps us intuit meaning and significance–or between one symbol or image and the host of associations that come with it, as well as that sense of connection between one word, one image, one symbol, and something else.