Archive for category: metaphysical horror

Empathy and What’s Enough, What’s Too Much?

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Empathy ~ what’s enough? What’s too much? Ahh, what questions? Having healthy empathy gives us a sense of people and situations. So, empathy helps. But too much empathy hurts. It hurts us because we stay with bad people and dire situations. We feel sorry for them, and we think things will magically change. We feel too much. We become a psychic gusher of painful feelings carried for others and down-on-ourself attitudes “because things never change.” It’s too much feeling, too much empathy.
I love stories. Stories teach me so much. Thrillers always hit the psychic hot spot for me. They’re fast-paced, and if the story is horror-based (all good stories are), it really cuts to the bone. I’m unsettled and shocked, but my psychic senses are opened. As a psychologist, I help people open up. The human mind is nourished by openness to sensitivity and empathic feeling. The problems come with too little or too much emotion, empathy. Too little is denial. Too much renders us dysfunctional and codependent. Our life story becomes miserable depending on too little or too much empathy. Reading stories takes us into what people have gone through, learned from, or suffered and died from due to one sort or another of codependence.

In The Unholy, Claire’s life depends on being true to her feelings. It’s a truth-or-die situation. Goddess of the Wild Thing propels us into a world of suffering and possible redemption. What hangs in the balance is one woman coming to terms with what’s genuine love and what’s fake—no good! She must deal front-and-center with the fact that there are those who are no good and others . . .. Then in Goddess of Everything, there’s the whole thing of mother love gone bad. Face it when it happens or suffer and suffer and then suffer more, unless . . .. Truth to feelings, to self, to what others are about and not about. It’s empathy at its most fast-paced and finely tuned.

We feel the stories we read. They’re our stories. They’re about life’s ups and downs and feeling too much and feeling too little. They’re about boundaries and no boundaries and destruction threatening. Page-turning thrillers get us into a headspace of seeing what’s not enough and what’s too much, what’ll help and what’ll kill. It’s fantastic to read psychological thrillers! We can go through thrills on the page, empathize, get a little more real (boundaries), and better deal with life’s inevitable thrills.

Live Deeply . . . Ready Daily!

Holidays: Demons, Angels, and the Dance

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Holiday Angels and Demons

Holidays are WONDERFUL . . . HAPPY . . . DELIGHTFUL TIMES! You might ask what the heck is going on with this horror writer. As I’m sure you’ve caught on, I’m being facetious about the holiday wonderful, happy, delightful times business. Holidays are a mixed bag—good and bad rushing at us like speeding locomotives.

Angels and demons abound when people gather and eat, drink, and make merry. How the dance goes depends on the people and the angels and demons. It helps if we can be in touch with the light and dark sides of things. When fine times are popping, there are also nasty places to step into.

Holiday Metaphysical Thrills and Chills

So, ready or not, holidays hit, and it takes serious maneuvering to manage emotional and spiritual currents. In the metaphysical thrillers I write, good times and merriment often harbor crazy darkness—demons up to thinly disguised shenanigans. But, as my wife, Kate, said this week, vis a vi Tolkien, all that is gold does not glitter, and all that wanders is not lost.

Essentially, we’re all wanderers trying to find our way. And, during the holidays, when the good and bad, angels and demons are at a high pitch, the pressure is on to be merry, cheery, and bright. I say it’s best to dance! Keep an eye out for the light and the dark, the angels and demons. Then twirl. It’s life, the stuff of honest living.

Paranormal Party Time

In paranormal stories, there’s the twirl of threat, meanness, sicky-sweet niceness, and life-or-death, back-up-against-the-wall drama. This comes close to party time with “friends and loved ones during the holidays.” We, humans, are a complex mix of angels and demons, a dance that’s gone on long before recorded history.

Here’s a metaphysical practice out of my novels that will heighten your psychic sensitivity during the holidays. Take a minute to close your eyes and focus on your aura, an energetic light emanating from the circumference of your body. Concentrate and let it grow stronger and brighter. Let it sharpen your appreciation of the good and awareness of the bad. It’s all there. It’s all part of the dance.

Let’s Do The Holiday Dance

For the holidays, let’s keep it real. Let’s do the dance with both the angels and the demons. They each require their own kind of negotiating. As a writer, therapist, and sojourner, I think life is a magical thrill ride. Every day ushers in thrills, chills, scariness, and hope. Sounds like the holidays! So, speaking of the holidays, let’s do the dance and, with it, consider dipping into a metaphysical book that speaks to the evolving reality of demons, angels, and the dance.

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

Return to Your Own Center

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We learn from healers, teachers, wise women, and men. Then we return to self to see, hear, feel, and live out the wisdom in our own way. Supernatural tales usher us into dark realms where wisdom must be sought and found. Life depends on it! Then wisdom must be lived out uniquely, from your own center.

When reading novels, our deep imagination takes hold. It moves us beyond our conscious mind. As a psychologist/writer, I sense the emotional currents and psychic images in the stories I write. As in Goddess of the Wild Thing, the characters come in vivid images, dreams, and intuitive flashes. They pop forward to the front of my imagination and whisper: This is me, write about me, I’ll guide you.

In metaphysical stories, the characters have a message. The message is for you and me. It’s one of the dark paths and light in the distance. We have to go to the course, and the way can be fraught with troubles. But there’s a payoff — not guaranteed, but definitely there for the soul who stays the course and does not give up.

Those who make it often turn to a teacher, a spiritual guide. Without a person who listens, understands, and can pass on the light, we often can’t find our way, our light. Things are too bleak and too dark to get along without help. The story of Goddess of the Wild Thing starts with the light going out on love. There’s no love, been no love, and the hope for love is shaky. This dramatic tale of one women’s spiritual journey to discover love is, at times, despairing. No hope in sight.

A healer, visionary, and guide, arrives on the scene to offer light. But then, darkness senses potential and wants to destroy it. Something terrible happens! Eve has to go deep within and call upon all she has learned from her spiritual guide. The healer then comes in quiet whispers, visions, and dreams. Eve has learned and knows she has to move on and put the light the teacher imparts and has imparted into action. She must now go her own way and face the horror ahead.

Only by returning to centerpoint — the soulplace her spiritual guide opened with her — does she stand a chance to deal with wickedness that seeks to destroy love. It’s a story like yours and mine. We’re caught unawares by dark forces. Centerpoint . . . it’s there. Go into it. Listen to your intuition, spontaneous images that impart wisdom, and dreams that speak to what cannot be seen with everyday eyes.

We learn from our teachers, guides, wisdom stories of deep forces and human potential for life and love. Then, we must act, go our way, follow our own path, and live out our own story with all its horrors, triumphs, and potential for life and love.

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

 

Paul DeBlassie III, Ph.D.

Paul DeBlassie III, Ph.D., is a psychologist and award-winning writer living in his native New Mexico, crafting visionary thrillers energized with trickster mischief and natural magic.

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