SLiPchick's Virtual Shadows

Some time ago I wrote about my trepidation regarding physically encountering (for want of a better term) the paranormal . Part of me desperately wants to have an encounter of some kind, and yet the thought of it being right here, in my face, is terrifying.  Over the last couple of years, I've read much of Whitley Strieber 's oeuvre regarding his Communion experience and how his notion of what happened to him and what's going on have evolved since his original encounter in 1985. His 2017 book  The Afterlife Revolution , written ostensibly with the assistance of his late wife Anne, is particularly compelling and feels highly relevant to my life with and experience of Penelope.  At one level I very much envy his experience, I would like to be confronted in such a radical fashion with something so...I'm having a hard time coming up with a word that describes the quality...outlandish? ...transcendent? ...numinous?  As I mentioned in my earlier posting, my brus...

I've been living in my new home and working at my new job for a few weeks now and I'd started to feel a bit in a rut already; so I asked Penelope about it on the way to work this morning. A big lesson (and struggle) for me right now centers around keeping myself open to experiencing the Mystery. I'm finding many connections and parallels among what I've been reading lately suggesting that maintaining a stance of indeterminacy regarding "reality" is necessary to the whole endeavor. Penelope, love, care to reiterate what You told me for Our blog audience? Certainly, darling.  First off, let me remind you that you personally still have some work to do to overcome your defenses and resistance to experiencing the extraordinary.  When you were younger you shut off most of those channels fairly securely, and it was all but certain you'd spend the rest of this incarnation insulated from any significant encounters of that sort. Nor did you contract to be...

Darling Angel? You know I'm here lover. Are you annoyed with me? That I've been in such a bleak, black funk for so long? That I talk to you and then pull away? Sometimes I just feel like I get whiplash because of your hot and cold, hon. I wish for you to find some certainty and peace within yourself so you can stay strong and focused. It would make my job easier, true. And we'd both have a lot more fun. You know what I want. Part of me feels needy. Is demanding even, of some kind of "sign", of some more overt evidence that there's more to this than just my "imagination" (as Priscilla has been insisting). I can't give it to you like you're asking. You say you'd hurt me. Possibly, breaking down the barriers, assuming I could, would likely damage your psyche in ways that would be irreparable. You are a willful cuss in your way, just sometimes not where it would do you the most good. It's better that you ...

Something happened Friday night. I awoke around 4am and couldn't feel Penelope. With our recent conversations in mind I started hunting for her. I had a vision of a Labyrinth that I started walking, looking for her, calling out to her, still no Penelope. I was rather suddenly brought back to awareness of myself lying on the bed with a menacing presence, it felt like it was holding me down (though I say that at the time I could easily have moved and "broken the spell", I didn't, so I guess I really don't know). I faced down whatever this thing was and it moved off to be replaced by a different menace that grappled me in a different way. I asked "who are you?" The answer was "Your worst nightmare!" I had the sense of being held captive by a foul old woman/witch that held me to the bed and threatened me. Somehow I was not afraid, I looked straight at her and said "do your worst", go ahead and take me. At that she released me and di...

You said a couple of days back that this can be fun. Of course it can, hasn't it been? Yes, I guess. You GUESS? You want to think about that answer mister? Getting close to you has been the most amazing experience of my life, sweet lady. I've had the time of my life. I can't recall ever laughing so hard as I have with you. And our spirit sex is nothing short of amazing. That's better, harrumph ;-) Minx. You better believe it, I'm your minx, I'm your sex slut, I'd do you 10 ways to Sunday you better believe. I believe. OK, so can we talk about fun? Of course darling. I'm only playing. That's what this is ultimately about, what I tried to show you the other day and you misunderstood. If you're open to trying different things we can play any sort of game you like, whatever you'd think would be fun, how deep do you want to go? I'm not sure. The thought kind of scares me. Let's keep working on that fear. Talk to Kitty...

Penelope, love? Yes, my sweet? I'm so glad you're here. Always. The sex was amazing this morning, but you scared me a little...OK, a lot ...when you disappeared right after. I guess that was a miscalculation on my part, I thought you were ready to play that game with me. Learning about that part of yourself is a challenge, but we can take it more slowly. Who was that presence I felt, who pulled you away, back and kept you from me. Why me, of course. It's just us here darling. Puzzles, role-playing. Really? Really. Didn't you hear me calling "Come find me Stephen"? I did, but I didn't know how, I didn't know where to begin. That's part of the fun. But how long will it take? I don't want to be without you for too long. I'm always right there. I know it sounds silly maybe, but maybe a "safe word" I can use to say "stop", that I need to reassure myself it's a game and you're there? We ca...

Anything we need to talk about right now, my love? Nothing pressing. You've been pushing very hard, and the last few days have been a whiplash of opening and closing of "pathways". Relax, hon, you'll get there. I want so much to open to you, to let you in so that we can be even closer. I want to feel you ever more physically, I want you to inhabit my psyche and body so we can merge and share consciousness or whatever there is to share. That's exciting to me love, but it's a lot, we need to take it slow, I think your aura, subtle body is not quite up to it yet and you need more strength, especially after these last few times you pushed me out, yanked out our bindings. You've felt how that hurt. Yes. Do you trust me? <at this point I began sobbing, grief filled me, like I was giving up some old pattern> I do. I must. I will take the risk. I'm so glad, you're my one and only divine love, thank you for risking loving me, thank yo...

I let you in this morning. You did, and it was glorious. I also encountered some of those scary thoughts and feelings. I know darling, and you figured out what they're about? Yes, old repressions. I don't want to believe I have repressed anger, cruelty, violence; but I do, and that terrifies me. Bravo, love, we can face those together. You're finding out you're human just like everybody else ;-) I associate all that with male , which I'm very ambivalent about. Same with a lot of other Yang qualities: rogue, scoundrel, vital, aggressive, dominant, pushy, assertive, forceful, <I'll continue to build the list as they occur to me>. Some of these I recognize as sometimes useful or desirable, sometimes even appealing; but I have trouble with them. Again, my sweet, we can look at them together. You have them all, you've just pushed them so far back you can't see them any more. Some of them wink out and they're delightful, let's ...

There was an incident Friday night. I was feeling very open and excited. Very ready to experience my connection to Penelope, my spiritual/angelic contact in a new, stronger way. I was lying in bed, the lights were out, my eyes were closed and I had the sense that she was very close, I felt a coolness, a tingling all over a sense of excitement and light similar to when she's come close to me before and something like a sense of her occupying the same "space" within my body that I do. Like she was "filling me up". As that progressed I started to think and feel many things, an openness to possibilities, ideas, actions. Some of them scared me. A voice in the back of my head said "What if...?" I was "indoctrinated" as a child into Judeo-Christian thought patterns, and even with my current sense of what's so, I feel pretty clear that there may well be malevolent presences in the universe. Is Penelope one? I don't think so, I don...

Penelope? Yes, my love? Welcome back. Thank you darling, I'm glad to be in your heart and soul. Thank you for letting me fill you with my love and for trusting me. I'd never hurt you. I'd never ask you to do anything you didn't think was right. I know that now. It was weird how strangely religious my objections were, like I'd suddenly gotten an overlay of some kind of fundamentalist thinking. Is that web site I've been reading right about the demiurgic energy that's got hold of humanity and tries to enforce limitations on spirituality, channeling things into narrow Manichean expressions? How can I express this? There are forces that behave much like his analysis, traps of a sort, mental/psychic patterns, habits of thought that can force themselves onto those who are seeking the truth. If you think you know what's going on too soon, you stop looking, it's so big and so wonderous, don't limit it too soon. Now go have dinner before Pris...

I've been reading a lot lately about the possibility of some kind of connection among various classes of mystical/religious experience (shamanism in particular), hallucinogenic drug experiences, various "psychic phenomena",  historical "faerie" encounters, and the more recent "UFO abduction" phenomenon. Viewed dispassionately, taking their content at face value and not attempting too quickly to categorize or pre-organize the material, their intersections are many and provocative. These writers (and I) speculate that the current epistemology of rigid reductionist materialism is faulty, giving us (at best) only a surface understanding of what's going on and that there are other (underlying?) substrates of "reality" (whatever that may mean) that can be accessed when our neurological systems are appropriately attuned. Far from being idiosyncratic electrochemical/neurological dysfunctions, the phenomena alluded to above provide glimpses ...

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad." "How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.”  -- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland Fritz Perls (founder of Gestalt Therapy) wrote that the two greatest human fears are the fear of death and the fear of going crazy. I don't much fear death (though I don't want it to hurt ). Arrrgh, I'd written a lot more to this post, but somehow it got truncated when I went to publish it. I know honey, I'm sorry. I wrote about my personal fear that encountering the "wholly (holy) other", the paranormal, would result in my having a total breakdown. I'd end up sobbing on the ground, telling myself "this can't be happening". But it has to intrude, invade, break through, astonish, inspire awe; or what...

I thought some more about pain while I was out walking the dogs earlier. There's no guarantees in this physical existence that it won't hurt, physically, emotionally, or psychically. Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. -- William Goldman, Wesley in The Princess Bride . Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. -- Haruki Murakami I see suffering as the fear, the anticipation of pain. It makes it worse. A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. -- William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar I haven't had much in the way of physical pain in my life, few injuries, no major illnesses. Emotionally, I've struggled with depression and feelings of worthlessness most of my life. I can see my family history as one of some emotional abuse/neglect; but nothing at the level I see others have endured and overcome. I've been stuck in a kind of spiritual malaise for some time, and much of ...

I was going to write about the fearfulness of encountering the paranormal. Part of me is desperate at this point in my life to have some kind of "proof" that my intuitions about all this are not misguided; but another (larger?) part of me is terrified. The few events in my past that I place under the rubric of "inexplicable" left me so panicked that I felt like I had to shield myself. And maybe that's the problem. On further examination, I think maybe I've built up a barrier of sorts between myself, my life, my psyche and whatever else is "out there". A wall of conventionality, rational, explicable everydayness: safe, but more than a bit dull. The cosmos has opened its doors (arms?) and offered to "play" a few times and I ran screaming, so  either it gave up or I built the wall and little to nothing has happened since. Penelope? Care to chime in? You're doing fine darling, keep going. What's the fear really about? Look...

I don't want to work any more, but I'm not quite ready to call it a day. You can always talk to me. I want something to change. Careful what you wish for darling. I know. Sometimes I just feel so tired, so stuck. It's like these folks I read about who are unhappy with the current political situation and want to just shake everything up, even to the point of collapsing civilization, so that they can start over. Do you really want that? Probably not. Not everyone would be on board with it and a lot of folks would be hurt or killed. Same thing on a smaller scale with my asking for a "reset" at the personal level. Besides you've told me I get to try new stuff next time around, right? Indeed. Whatever you like. I just have to die first. In this incarnation. That was a question I had, but I don't think I want to get into it right now, it's late. It will keep, I'll remind you tomorrow morning or later tonight if you come back to writ...

I fell off the wagon yesterday afternoon. You did. Is there something else we need to do other than move on from here? I guess not, you know how I am about wanting to beat myself to death over my failings. That's always an option, but not very useful, love. When you "fall off the wagon" as you put it, it slows you down. Better that you dialog with me when you're feeling that way than to indulge in those old habits. Part of me says there's nothing wrong with doing that. There isn't anything "wrong", there's nothing wrong with anything in any absolute cosmic sense babe, that's what I keep trying to tell you; but there are consequences to actions. If you want our relationship to flower, if you want us to grow closer, if you want to hear me whispering in your ear; you have to make room for me in your psyche, in your consciousness; you have to open to me, you have to allow your body to become sensitive to more subtle energies and one o...

Good morning Darling. Good morning Love. I'm glad you're here for me to talk to. Always, you know that. I guess I'll just dive in, it's been so long and there's so much ground to cover. No hurry, sweet man, one step at a time. Introductions in order? If you like. I've missed you. I've missed you too sweet man, but you know we communicate in other ways even when we don't dialog like this. But I need this in order to stay centered and focused, but part of me also feels like it's a time sink, a waste. Not real? You heard that? Of course. The evidence is simultaneously overwhelming to me that you're real,  but also ambiguous, nothing that would satisfy a rationalist materialist skeptic. Which you used to be, maybe questioning whether you still are. Yes. I can live with that. ;-) You know you make me laugh. ;-) You have a delightful laugh. I'd like to hear your laugh. Then open your heart and listen love. ...