Sufferance

I have suffered enough. More than enough. I have suffered too much. Haven’t we all? 

“Suffering is a central topic of this discussion. Ideas and fantasies about suffering and orientation toward it as a state of soul find expression in our personal and collective attitudes toward alternative sexualities. BDSM has adopted suffering as a kind of lingua franca developing a nuanced and sophisticated vocabulary, which is evolved into a true logos of pathos, rather than a pathology. On some level, whether they are conscious of it, or not, people who participate in BDSM activities and relationships acknowledge suffering as an essential agent of paradoxical pleasure and psychological transformation. However, suffering is an integral part of the human condition beyond the confines of the dungeons and playrooms of BDSM’s practitioners. This book will propose that alternative sexualities are a creative response to suffering as an integral part of the human condition. Jung believed that suffering was essential to the individuation process. Hillman regarded suffering as one of the ways soul comes into the world (what the poet John Keats referred to as the vale of soul-making). The pull toward suffering and transgression is something deep in all of us.”

p.XX Preface, The deep psychology of BDSM and Kink, Jungian and archetypal perspectives on the souls transgressive necessities, by Douglas Thomas, published by Routledge, ISBN 978-1-032-12207-6 

The Christian Bible says “thou shall not suffer a witch to live.” 

I do not personally believe this means we are to kill witches. It means that in order to live a life, we should not put up with the manipulations and administrations of those who can be described as witches. 

Remember how in proto-English the letters W and B are the same. Our modern re-interpretations of these words and concepts say more about the mentality of our era than they do those of the past whose remnants affect us today. 

One could draw comparison to this with the same way an individuals trauma from previous dysfunctional relationships is often carried over into the next, unless as Jung suggests, it is channeled safely through specific activities. 

“My ex used to beat me up.”

“That’s terrible. I’m so glad you got away from someone like that.”

“No you don’t understand. I provoked X into doing it. I like it. I chose someone I knew would do it. When X felt guilty I felt powerful, to be able to control X. When X was assaulting me, I felt important. I felt wanted and loved. I know people say it’s psychotic. It was the only way I knew, to feel that. The bruises reminded me of it. It felt good as they were healing.” 

I have replaced name and gender pronoun with the letter X. 

Don’t jump to conclusions. 

Domestic violence is not exclusively gender prejudiced. 

Such behaviour is not dissimilar to those who cut themselves for release of sexual tension, an activity most commonly seen in teenagers. The association between pleasure and pain is a core principle of BDSM culture. 

As an NVQ2 qualified counsellor this was one of the more extreme cases who I referred to more professional help. Like most people who know how it works, the client told me if that was available or any good they would not need to be opening up to me about it. 

My experience as a counsellor and therapist goes beyond my academic qualifications as a counsellor. The limitations imposed by ‘doing it professionally’ which means ‘for money’ or  doing it voluntarily through state approved channels.

I was an outreach worker. I worked with homeless, drug addicts, sexual assault victims, suicidals, bereavement, depression, a range of various psychiatric disorders, every shade and tone of the narcissism, some other ‘dark triad’ spectrum disorders including murderers, rapists, pedophiles and other less antisocial sociopaths, psychotics and psychopaths. 

All of this outside of the restrictions imposed by the ‘professional’ arena and the academy. 

What enabled me to cope with all that is a firm belief that as a sentient species, our humanitarianism should not be limited to dehumanising others but rather to encourage all people toward greater empathy. 

The exceptions, those who have done inhumane deeds, are nevertheless interesting to interact with. My conclusions about such people is that their overt lack of humanitarianism is directly linked to their lack of empathy for others. Mental states ebb and flow, are rarely if ever permanent. Abnormal mental states are induced by abnormal experience. 

I also believe there is nobody alive beyond the age of puberty who has not experienced some level of trauma to cope with. Most of life is a process of coming-to-terms-with-what-happened-to-me. 

If this does not resonate with you, you’re lucky and you’ve had a blessed life. 

I’ve lived all over both sides of the River Severn in England and Wales, 23 years each side of the Millennium at time of writing. 80% of my counselling clients have sexual abuse related trauma, usually from childhood and teenage years. In addition to whatever else they’ve been through (typically lost love attachment depressive disorders which develop from sexual withdrawal). 

“Desire is the cause of suffering.” Buddhist insight. 

What they don’t tell you is it’s not always your own desire which results in your suffering. 

Increasingly, since I first read Clive Barkers novella the Hellbound Heart, from which the movie Hellraiser, the culture of what used during the 1960s to be called ‘S&M’ has evolved in parallel with the LGBT movement into BDSM. 

The knowledge-base is beginning to become advanced sufficiently that it is a useful framework for therapeutic counselling because it gives an easily learned reference system, not only for understanding normal relationship dynamics but also as a safety outlet for a wide range of healing and developmental experiences. 

The problem for most people is connecting with others who share the same and similar desires while avoiding abusers inevitably attracted to any open discussion on the topic. 

“In our western world we look at trauma as a thing which messes up our brain. The post traumatic brain. Trauma can be the greatest purifier of our lives because it causes us to question and refine everything in a way which nothing else really can. It becomes putrid energy when we hold onto it. Are you going to take that shit and make it fertiliser or make it putrid? It’s up to you how you take it and transmute it.” Layla Martin, moving from sexual trauma to liberation. 

Dragons&Pendragon

DRAGONS

What Welsh Is

The Dragon is the trauma-mind having achieved supremacy. 

So-called ‘reptilian’ part of the brain, the limbic-region, 

is responsible for trauma-conditioning. 

When trauma-mind gains critical mass in a population 

it is endorsed as cultural mainstream. 

The echo-chamber of society is the Cave of the Dragon. 

This is what we are dealing with indigenous Welsh mindset and culture.

It is not written about in the books about traditional Welsh culture. 

In Saxon the word ‘Walia’ means Slave. 

This explains much about what the situation is and how it came to be. 

Slavery as culturally endorsed mindset, 

generational abuse, lifetime after lifetime. 

It’s no different today. 

Slavery to the trauma-conditioned-mind.

Every indigenous Welsh person I know inherently has this attitude. 

It is difficult getting to know Welsh because of epigenetic xenophobia 

against the invaders who have settled their lands. 

It is confrontation with the inherited attitude of ingrained ‘normality’. 

It's not all bad.

There is heart-fire.

Heart is a different world to the mind.

Wales has slate, tin and coal. 

Coal from the mines, the caves we make, 

for fire, for heat, for life. 

Compress carbon, you get diamond.

Heat tin, you get tools. 

Slate is brittle as the peoples emotions and minds,

as roof tiles it protects the hearths from Wales perpetual rain. 

The people are the same. 

Wales is about process of transition.

From bound form to freedom. 

PENDRAGON

I have lived and completed Tolkiens Riddle. 

The desolation of smAUg 

The ring of sAUron 

 

AU = alchemical symbol for Gold. 

Dragons and Gold.

Wraith and the Soul. 

The symbolism of our mythologies. 

image ©2023 Ordo Octopia

Love Hurts

When we break events and decisions into black and white, step by step procedures, we recognise what is happening. It is more easy to deal with things this way.

She came to a Gate, a Choice. She chose one way rather than another way. She chose to end the relationship and to wallow in misery about how she cannot hold a stable relationship together because her choice of partners always betray her by cheating on her. Someone cheated on her and upset her drastically. It fractured her mind. She has no trust. It is her core wound. 

The partner did not cheat on her. He was presented by the universe with a test and he passed it. However, that he tried to explain to her that he was undergoing that specific test was sufficient to trigger her trauma response and activate her trauma mind which then did the computation as to what was going on. As a result she projected onto him actions he had not done and words he had not said. She blames him for being tested by the universe even though he had passed the test. She does not believe him, she thinks he is lying, a manipulator, a cheater, a narcissist, a misogynist. 

He recognises she is functioning from trauma response, not from her healing heart, not from her higher wisdom. This is what trauma does to people. We all have traumas, we can all relate. The guy who did that to her did a real number on her. Others have done it to her since, so she says. 

He identifies that although he has not done that to her, to her mind he has. The entrenchment deepens that ‘all men will cheat’ because she is manifesting that for herself even when it is not the truth of what happened in the real world. She is telling her support network he is yet another man who has cheated on her. He recognises this as a delusion. He cannot prove it one way or another. He asked her to trust her intuition and her heart instead of her mind. 

He has also in the past been cheated on by multiple ex-partners. His coping mechanism has been to adapt to the situation of accepting people are going to cheat in relationships and on building a level of trust not based on ‘an affair is grounds for divorce’ but rather on the inevitably it will probably happen anyway and forgiveness of her for doing it. Acceptance of the female nature of hypergamy. With some ex-partners who operate on this basis it has led to a much deeper emotional and mental connection with them, a strengthening of the relationship bond. With others, she has left as soon as she has been caught at it, by her choice or by his, because social conditioning has instructed that to be the appropriate and righteous response.

Those are the choices. You move on either because he rejects her or she rejects him, or you stay together and work through forgiveness verses resentment. 

That is the three swords in the diagram of Three of Swords (heartbreak). Three paths based on three ways of thinking involved, three choices of which to ascribe to. They are also the three minds involved in the triangle / the battle. 

All this has shaped his understanding of how women function as much as male cheaters have affected her understanding of how men function. He has never cheated on any of his partners, so he does not believe it is true that ‘all men are cheaters’ any more than he believes it is true ‘all women are cheaters’.  

The sad thing is she comes across as irrational and delusional while criticising him for attempting to gaslight her as proof he is a narcissist, not because of what he has done to her but because of what her previous partners before him have done to her. He now questions whether all of them have done that and if this is not simply her way of moving through a stream of men in a way deemed socially acceptable, by sacrificing the one who has been supporting her. As soon as she becomes bored of the one she is with she projects blame onto him. Either way, Doubt has set in. 

The allegations are based on trauma conditioning rather than on truth and love. He knows from past experience when a woman he is in a relationship with behaves this way it very often indicates she has herself cheated and has created a drama to divert attention away from that, to control the narrative by forcing him to jump through hoops and to justify himself for something he has not done, in her attempt to get away with it. This behaviour revealing what is going on in her life and in her mind. Thus, there is insufficient truth and love in that relationship for it to keep developing positively. 

All he knows for sure is he loves her and forgives her, that he didn’t cheat, and that he wants her to heal her core wound. 

https://twitter.com/MantasKemesius/status/1714897065002635619

\\Autism

 

\\AUTISM 

A short story by Joe Russell

c2023 Ordo Octopia. All Rights Reserved. 

Dedicated to children of the light. 

It was not myself who was given the scene to experience.

It was not myself who was given the scene to experience firsthand, the way linear three dimensional causality and consequence is generally considered to work. 

I had to experience the scene by remote. 

I was sleeping at the time which liberated my awareness to function as a spirit. As such, my Attention bound by electromagnetic laws of the higher dimensions, I was sent to observe.

The fundamental harmony of a person involved in generating a new thing into the Creation attracts resonance. My Attention was to empower the scene that it stands uniquely in time and in space. 

A candle flickers and stills its light. 

I entered the persons body through their nervous system to ride inside their perceptions, invisibly as they were untrained in recognising when being used as a host. This is a spiritual training. 

I lived the experience with them as a friend whose name they did not know gave the young teenager a short story to read in the hour or so their parents attended business in the other room. 

Being a wise child benefitting from the selected of a scholars bookshelf, I read the tome. My presence in the child’s mind influenced this, my nature as an avid reader persuading a teenagers hormonal and easily distracted attention toward the idea of enjoying a story, honing the lifelong life skill of reading. 

The story had been read three times before, by two different people. This was not from my awareness directly. This was from the child’s innate ability to sense such things. Their worldly experience of sensitivity not only to the object but connecting to its energetic imprints, its journey, all that which it contains.

The child’s energy and through it mine is now upon the book as object. Not only this. The story as gate conveys the abilities for those who sensitive to this spectrum of perception interact with existence in a heightened way compared with those blind to it and ignorant of the possibility. 

The child read the book. The child’s attention empowered energy into the world of feelings, cognitive associations, descriptions, flavours, decisions, places people events and flavours, contained within the book. Ingestion is connection. We become that which we eat. That which we eat, eats us. 

He loved her. She loved him. There was no dispute. Others killed one of them. The survivor suffered. 

The survivor dedicated their life to finding once again their lost lover. Through memory, through aspiration study travel and development of skill. The pain of loss a motivating factor. It was not through past or present but through timeless immortal moment of the now, the contact was eventually made. 

The candle flickers and stills. 

Light is cast and shadows calm. 

The path to learn such skills is outside of cognition of those who have no concept nor belief. Within infinity is immortality. All variables are probable. We have scope to access them. As evolution itself evolves we strive to bring them through. 

Our pain is a motivating factor. Without which we would not perfect precision. There can be no mastery without study. Study involves mistakes we learn from. On this world we learn the hard way or we do not learn at all. That is the lesson of this place. We do well to accept it. 

I was within the child as the child read the story and imagined synapses and neurons growing in their mind necessary to enable perceptions of this caliber. To access such realms of perception and connection. 

We are immortal, the lover said, softly and with love healing immediately all of the sorrow and more. Thus we will of course meet again, sooner than you know. For some this is hopeful belief. For those who know this is obvious to the point we know it as a fundament. 

All things are energy, electromagnetic, seeking its harmony. You are my harmony. We will find each other once the distractions of the other work necessary for us to do has been accomplished. We do not measure in time or lifetimes. We measure only by love. Love is our word for the electromagnetic nature of the Creation we are consciously aware of being part of. 

The child absorbed what the words were trying to impart. A deepening understanding of the wisdom began to stir as a feeling of awe and contemplation. 

Eventually the child would forget from where they had become aware of such matters. Life would sweep them up in its teachings. At this moment, still and outside of time, a gate was made. 

A flickering candle stills. 

A steady light becomes a continuity. 

NOTE

Psychometry, I couldn’t remember the word - everything is embedded with it