The Endless Journey

Dealing with the intensive, harrowing experience of emotional healing, one rant at a time.

[inkskinned]

i have to believe somewhere, someone is trying a taco for the first time. someone is taking their first shower. someone is coming home to a new puppy.

i have to believe that this winter, someone new to snow will pull out a 5 dollar plastic sled and throw themselves down a hill, just to try it.

i think i'm probably lucky to be familiar with sunrises. i live in an area where the lightning bugs dance in their cocktail hours. i take chickadees for granted.

today i saw a tree that had changed to fall colors, and my first reaction was to grimace. i love autumn, but i hate the cold. i don't want it to be winter yet.

but how lucky, to live in a place where the leaves do change color - so bright and vibrant that people make treks from around the world just to look at what i grew-up-with. my mom's friend was a teacher in florida. she used to ask us to mail her an assortment of leaves, just to show her children - to prove to them yes, they really do turn yellow and orange and red.

last year i finally tried pumpkin spice for the first time. someone this year will find a new favorite knitting pattern. someone's favorite band will drop a new album. artists will make things we haven't yet imagined. there will be chalk drawings and magnet poetry and karaoke and recipes and laughing.

it is easy to forget. this was all new to me, once. and when it was - well, it was just all so easy to love.

[soulodyssey]

https://youtu.be/9vJRopau0g0

TedX- The Super Mario Effect

It's very interesting how we seek out and appreciate challenge for ourselves in so many aspects except for life itself. We love hard games, we love learning new things, we love the accomplishment of defeating a difficult level or craft.

But when we look to the rest of our life, we become disheartened by challenges. It becomes frustrating for us when our tasks are not as linear as we would've hoped them to be. That can range from small chores to grand life schemes that we want to work smoothly, but never do. Our lack of passion for the project completely destroys our tenacity, and we begin to dread the outside world.

We set faux challenges for ourselves despite having numerous ones sitting outside, patiently waiting for our next move. Why is that often our natural reaction to stress?

Reframing your mindset is, in many ways, the most important change you can make towards your life. Consciously intervening on your own thoughts, rather than letting them slide into our natural negative dips of stress and retraction. Rationalize the process with the pride of the end goal.

[soulodyssey]

Don't EVER let the media "grindset" guilt you into thinking that you have to be constantly self improving in order to be successful. The state of balance that is the key to all healthy lifestyles REQUIRES you to rest and not give a shit for a little bit at a time. If you are constantly working and working and working in all manners of ways, you are going to implode. Good rest is essential to healthy living, and you have to protect it.

[soulodyssey]

Giving a kid nothing but free reign on a phone just so you don't have to deal with them is a plague on this upcoming generation, and I will rant more on this later when Im not tired

[will-o-the-witch]

I'm not sure if this is a spicy take or not, but we all realize "intent is all that matters" is just the Law of Attraction with a hat on, right?

Like "you just need to believe hard enough" is not a healthy thing to be teaching people? Especially when paired with the implication "your actual actions/choices mean little?"

Not to mention "intent is all that matters" does SO MUCH to disregard cultural practices. People wouldn't fight and die to protect these traditions from being stamped out if intent was all that mattered.

Doesn't mean we all should be doing the same thing, or that intent doesn't matter at all, but "intent is all/the only thing that really matters" is about as helpful as trying to be an actor without ever honing your craft or going to an audition.

[soulodyssey]

Your conscious mind has a direct influence on your subconscious mind!!!!! You will feel what you think!!! You have the most powerful influence over your day to day state of mind, and that's your own mind!!!! It's all you babey!!!!

[soulodyssey]

It's incredibly important to establish healthy rituals with yourself. I believe wholeheartedly that it is essential to fostering a healthy relationship with your body and mind.

It is incredibly easy to fall into bad habits that bring us instant pleasure, no matter how temporary and destructive they might be. Especially with increasingly high amounts of stress and anxiety in our day to day life, justifying these habits is almost second nature.

And then we (I) sit there and wonder just why oh why we feel sick, and fatigued, and depressed. We lose our ability to communicate with our bodies because we spend so much time ignoring the signs that they need change.

[httpcottagewitch]

spiritual check point ✔️

[soulodyssey]

I have to stop using only mistakes and bad experiences to drive myself towards betterment and so do you.

I've gotten into a habit of not striving towards my self improvement goals until I mess something up and feel bad enough with myself to fix it. Maybe I just become complacent with myself and that becomes a false sense of improvement. But waiting, whether conscious or not, does nothing but hurt me in the end. Ugh. The question is how do you take the time to focus on what you need to fix when they're not directly in your daily sight? Do I set an alarm to just sit and think? Maybe, probably.

[urlovelover]

[soulodyssey]

It's almost 2022.

I did a month to month reading for this coming year, and almost every card I pulled dealt with transformation. I am going into this year with full confidence in my ability to move forward with my life, and become a new and more developed person. Half of that confidence is a fake it till you make it attitude, but I think that mindset is a large part of manifestation. I think in general there is a wide spread discomfort with life in a lot of people that I know, but it feels like a discomfort that is pushing for rebirth and good change.

I hope you all have similar feelings towards your new year, and if not, I highly encourage you all to take time to cleanse your space, meditate, and write out both your reflections of yourself from the past year, and also your goals for future development. Good luck to all!

[soulodyssey]

Moon in Gemini, from a Gemini

Lately has been odd. I feel like I'm at the beginning of a shift in my mental and spiritual attentions. Ive been very emotional, easily irritable, exhausted, and dissociating much more often than usual. But I've also been more vocal about my emotions than ever, and Ive begun working towards little goals with more ferocity.

I think my body and soul might be rejecting my current state of being. I've become used to a life that I don't necessarily want and every part of me is screaming to move up and beyond who I am.

And of course a large part of that is the pandemic. Just like everyone else I am so tired of wondering if I'm ever gonna be able to go out into the world with a spontaneous heart like I want to. I feel stuck because there's only so many days of home->work->home that I can stand before I go insane. And every day is just bad news upon bad news, the desire to escape from the world becomes stronger every second.

[soulodyssey]

We spend so much time fighting off our most basic primal emotions.

Emotions like anger, sadness, fear. We brush dirt over them so often that we can't see the roots choking the life out of everything we are trying to save. We evolved to need these for our survival and our progression as a species, and yet. Day to day life forces us to ignore them for the sake of others, for the sake of moving on with our productivity. We do not allow ourselves to surrender to the necessity of these emotions.

And that is where the long term damage occurs.

Practicing emotional healing is like practicing a skill, you have to participate in order to grow your expertise. The more we push our negative emotions aside and do not give them proper room to give their message, the more frustrated and closeminded we become. If you allow yourself to surrender to the ebb and flow of your emotions, and view them from an outside, unbiased perspective, you can piece together the grand picture. And you can react accordingly.

Sometimes this requires taking a full step back, especially when another party is concerned. Arguments and fights lead no where when we lead with our ego. Be angry, be hurt, be fearful, but work to understand why. Even if this means literally pulling out of the argument temporarily to sort out your emotions in a healthy way.

I have a very bad problem with becoming hurt, irritated, and flustered very quickly, and failing to see the reasoning in the opposing argument. This leads me to shut down and react in ways that I later come to regret, either snapping or completely avoiding the emotions I want to express. Obviously this only leads to escalation, if not in this fight, then in future ones. All of these emotions become so clustered and loud that I cannot decipher one from the other, and I have no route to discuss or understand how I am feeling.

Its a very long journey, but i am working to step back and breathe after letting my anger and sadness run its necessary course. It becomes a necessary balance of letting your emotions breathe, and learning to step back and observe them.

[soulodyssey]

Embracing the Divine feminine and the Divine masculine are an integral part of evolving your sense of self and your maturity. There is absolutely no way around it. It is very important to be proud of your femininity / masculinity, but you also Have to recognize the balance between the two.

Feminine energy is nurturing, sympathetic, adaptable, intuitive. It is ruled by the moon. When undeveloped, it is insecurity, manipulation, submission.

Masculine energy is protective, grounded, analytical, certain. It is ruled by the sun. When undeveloped it is aggression, arrogance, emotionless.

To succeed in our goals, no matter if they deal with relationships, self, work, or anything else, we need to balance our perceptions of the situation with the ideals of each energy. You cannot go into an emotional situation with only logic, you cannot go into a logical situation with only emotion. This is what disrupts our communication with the people around us, and causes internal contention.

Recognize the imbalances in your thought and your reactions. Do not give in to the stereotypes of undeveloped energies. Do not give into the reactions of people with undeveloped energies.

Your recognition of your own faults, and the consistent pursuit of balance, is a NECESSARY step in a path towards spiritual and emotional maturity.

[jessgaspar]

sunny village on the snow moon.

posters and more available - shops in my bio :)

[soulodyssey]

nothing motivates you like the realization that you are the ONLY one who will change you and its not fucking worth waiting for anymore

[soulodyssey]

its interesting to think that life in all shapes is so much more intricate than we can even begin to fathom. we barely scratch the surface of any knowledge, and yet we think ourselves the highest intelligence species. highest ego, maybe.

when you take psychedelics, all you achieve is an alternative perspective on everything around you. it breaks down any sense of ego that you use to define you. you notice what you rarely ever notice, you process only what occurs in your subconscious thought. your sense of self becomes completely altered and you have to dig even deeper to gain a true understanding of who the fuck you even are. and why. why is the biggest question, and your answer can only ever be self defined.

but this is only one alternate strain of thought and perception. unlocking a deeper understanding of the world around you requires a lens to be stripped from your sight that you don't even know exists. and only then can you realize how many possibilities exist that you can't even fathom. its one thing to know that the universe is a deeply intricate space, its another to truly understand that fact. and that is a strain of thought that truly drives people insane. but only if you let it. because the most powerful tool we have to change reality is our own head. then you think to yourself maybe i should clean my room tomorrow, because life is short, the universe is huge, and i dont deserve a life of sedentary repetition.