Archive for category: News

Sensitivity is Your Superpower

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Odd as it sounds, we learn the most from our mistakes. That’s why I write metaphysical fiction. It goes into the dark side, and mistakes are made! Sometimes they’re glaring – horrifying. But, with an open mind, we learn as we go and hone our sensitivity. So then, everything we go through and learn from in our reading becomes a learning experience. Sensitivity – our superpower – grows!

Metaphysical fiction supercharges our senses. As my patients in psychotherapy learn over time, the human psyche helps us enter realms of mind that we wouldn’t otherwise venture into. In Goddess of Everything, there’s an opening into shocking views of motherhood and religion. One reviewer said, “We see the dark underbelly of both.” Dark underbelly seeing is incredible. If we let ourselves peer into darkness, our sensitivity to darkness and light is sharpened.

I can’t help but wonder how many times in a day we flee from facing darkness. We suffer from toxic positivity. Or, other times, we’re addicted to negativity. Both take us out of ourselves; we lose ourselves in saccharine sweet positivity or doldrums negativity. Reading metaphysical stories awakens our superpower sensitivity. It’s balanced and sees the light and the dark. It sensitizes us to darkness and paths to light. We have a fantastic opportunity to escape toxic positivity and negativity addiction by entering into the imagination, reading, and emerging changed up – maybe just a little, or maybe a whole lot. Either way, it’s good.

Crafting metaphysical thrillers, as Amazon says, is my literary gig. They’re loaded with trickster mischief and magic. They offer images, symbols, and stories we need to get through life. They’re literary/imaginative openings to hope, change, and growth. I know the snarky, curmudgeon, readerly sorts think books should be heavy, dense, and life-consuming. Others, story whales they’re called in the book world, want stuff to ingest and ingest and ingest, one book after another. Well . . . I’m not the writer to read for either curmudgeons or story whales. My gig is what one colleague (psychotherapist/author) described as a writer who keeps you “reading long into the night.”

So, consider a superpower sensitivity booster with a metaphysical story. Inspirational metaphysical horror (how’s that for a term?) is a relatively small niche for readers willing to open up to new worlds of mind. It’ll be a literary trip unlike you’ve ever taken. So, if these words speak to you, touch something in your mind and soul, then check out the world of metaphysical stories and prepare yourself for an unleashing of trickster mischief and magic!

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

 

Destruction, Chaos, Surprises!

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2020 birthed a new metaphysical thriller—Goddess of Everything!

Synopsis:

In the mystic land of Aztlan del Norte, a realm of supernatural happenings and unexpected turns of fate, psychiatric healer Gabriél de LaTierra encounters appalling evil within the Orphanage of the Holy Innocents. Children disappear for reasons kept secret by Mother Juana de la Cruz, Superior of the Nunnery and the Orphanage.

Love for Mother Juana, Gabriél’s widowed mother turned religious superior, clouds her devoted son’s mind. Consuela, Gabriél’s wife, confronts his wall of denial. Torn between love for mother and wife, Gabriél turns inward.

It is Consuela who propels Gabriél’s discovery of the nighttime blood sacrifice of children in the desert, a centuries-old ritual that imparts immortality to Mother and her nuns. Gabriél is further enraged by Mother Juana’s vengeful attack on Consuela and her kidnapping of their four-year-old son, Cuauhtémoc. But his actions will determine whether Consuela and Cuauhtémoc live or die, and the fate of Mother Juana de la Cruz.

Goddess of Everything is a blood-curdling tale of the affection of one mother for her son and her son’s struggle for truth, freedom, and love.

Metaphysical Fiction Births Everyday Surprises

Reading stories about the unseen world sharpens our psychic senses. Goddess of Everything . We’re transported into realities behind day-to-day life. Spiritual dynamics operate behind the scene, whisper in our ear, tug at our heart, affect us for better or worse. If we pay heed, take care, and proceed carefully then inevitable surprises turn bad stuff into the stuff that refines us like iron shaped by the blacksmith.

Motherlove can be good or goes south when it’s devouring. Take a literary whirl into the dark side of one mother’s love and a son’s surprise at discovering the true identity of the Goddess of Everything. The story will forever change the way you see mothers, love, and decisions.

Be safe, be well during this time of worldwide crisis and remember . . .

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

 

 

 

 

Weathering the Storm

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Practical Spirituality in Tough Times

Practical spirituality inspiring us through tough times is wholesome psychic nourishment in Moon Book’s Free Kindle Download, Weathering the Storm. We’ve all felt vulnerable during this Covid-19 crisis. I’ve been treating patients in depth psychotherapy whose dream life now teems with dark dimensions of fear and travail. Never in our lifetime have we faced a global pandemic. Dream symbolism in my own life and in the shared experiences of family and patients has spoken to the psychic underpinning of this worldwide disease. We are suffering through a world soul storm with the potential for cosmic transformation.

In the mythic and visionary story that undergirds Covid-19, we are propelled into making long-needed changes. Visionary stories, whether in a novel or lived out in daily life, are at their best when centered on crisis. Our society is in crisis, our soul shaken by crisis, our life altered and permanently transformed. Last night my dream addressed the danger of disregarding the reality of Covid-19. Government officials of a particular ilk and citizens of malinformed perspective were shrugging off social distancing, proper hygiene, and vaccination. Wide-eyed, crazed minded, dimwitted and soulless folk exhaled a malodorous breath on the naive and unsuspecting. Terrible suffering ensued.

Cautionary Dream World Messages

Family and patients have encountered similar cautionary messages from the dream world. They warn us about what is transpiring so as to prohibit its advance via our psychic and political activism. Visionary dreams speak to issues of the world soul. Spiritual sickness has been injected into collective minds and hearts in the form of racism, misogyny, and capitalism run amuck. A dark and destructive archetypal realm opened up with the entrance of leaders propagating a hate-filled, totalitarian ideology. Covid-19 is the symptom.

Living out a terrifying visionary story such as we are now in with Covid-19 requires going deep and staying deep. Depth means recognizing what we can do to be aware of and mitigate the advance of the disease. We know about the steps to take practically (socially distancing, etc.), but of equal import is honing our consciousness about the underlying psychic reality. Dark and destructive spirits abound. They surround us. They are in the very atmosphere exhaling a malodorous breath of helplessness, fear, and despair.

Hope through this Visionary Storm

There is hope in every visionary story. It is at the core of the crisis. But, the price must be paid for the change to be made. Our price in weathering the Covid-19 storm and effecting a world soul revolution comes in the casting off spiritual numbness. It means facing up to the travails of a world soul infected by a hidden psychic disease. We need to examine our own collusion with racism, misogyny, capitalism run amuck, and authoritarian attitudes. Bad spirits creep in one person at a time, and one person at a time we can face the darkness within so as to rout out global toxicity.

Weathering the Storm with its powerful essays, inspires us to proactively live through the visionary drama of Covid-19. Most powerfully, this means psychic awareness of the forces of good and evil. They are at work in this world dramatic thriller. Let’s take time each day for soul work, time for reading and reflection, time to face the darkness within and without, and thereby set in motion critical dynamics for the revolution of the world soul.

“Live Deeply…Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com

 

How to Get it Together!

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Good Reading Helps

I couldn’t resist writing a How-to Article. It pops out of a piece I read in a high-brow online magazine about how-to books considered an embarrassing facet of the writing and publishing world. Oh . . . get real. All good reading helps us, it takes us into new thoughts, it inspires new ideas, it’s a way for us to get our life together.

My specialty has turned from books in inspirational psychology (starting thirty-five years ago) to essays in depth psychology and visionary fiction. There are no two ways around it. They, the essays and novels, are purposefully embedded with insights, life wisdom, culled from forty years of clinical experience, research, and painful living through life’s humdingers.

How-to Reads Help

How-to . . . is a literary voice, sometimes a whisper or flash, that makes a difference. We feel different after the words, sentence, paragraph, story. It changes the way we see a problem, feel about ourselves, relate to others. It’s a how-to that happens spontaneously and mysteriously.

We’re drawn to read what we read because something in us is hungry. I prefer stories oriented to consciousness and archetypal themes. They play out numinous dramas, the way the human psyche uses dreams, images, vital feeling states, and synchronicity to get through to us. The psyche is always at work helping us get it together.

Check out Soulful and Helpful Reads

I’ve been criticized (a couple of times – still stings) for not being more nuanced in my storytelling. Critics have said I should have left things understated, implied, maybe at the most slightly suggested. When we’re in crisis, the unconscious mind does not dawdle with nuance, far-off whispers, or subtleties. It speaks, shouts, if necessary. And, that’s how I write—good and evil squaring off, the crazies set loose, and then we see who survives and thrives.

So, shy not away from picking up the supernatural thriller you secretly want to read but have put off. Check into a work of soulful nonfiction and let the words seep in and nourish. It’s all about what books our innermost self is drawn to. It will speak the words we need to hear, it will feed our depths, it will help us get it together!

 

“Live Deeply…Read Daily”

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When Life Gives You Lemons, Call the Alchemist

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Alchemical Books

We are all alchemists. In depth psychology and visionary books, alchemy is at work. Alchemist Awakening speaks to the amnesia within, sleepwalking through life until we psychically wake up. Everyday Enchantments lifts the veil from our eyes so we can see the magic in daily life. Daily alchemical magic transforms base, raw emotion into meaningful experiences. Love trauma in Goddess of the Wild Thing rips the mind apart and makes room for alchemy. The Unholy shocks us with religious horror then transports us into a realm of dreams and natural magic. Literally, everything that happens in life can transform us to the core.

Depth Therapy – Visionary Thrillers

When I do psychotherapy, write visionary thrillers, and live everyday life, I call on the alchemist within. This is a psychological dynamic that energizes experiences so daily happenings help and heal even as they can upfront hurt and sometimes shock.

We tend to this vitalizing force in the human psyche by raising our awareness. It’s a quiet and gentle knowing. Therapy assists patients in discovering this realm, reading ushers the attentive into imaginary states of mind, awareness then transforms dangerous and horrid experiences into meaning. That’s the luscious juice in the lemons life dishes out, the alchemical gold in the base metal of human suffering.

Alchemy and Unconscious Mind

When visionary writers write, they live out their characters and stories. Depth therapists have to descend into the unconscious mind and learn its ways before helping others make the inward descent and heal. Therapy is an alchemical awakening, and reading visionary fiction also wakens the alchemist within.

Awakening is a must lest we perish in a black hole of despair. We’ve all gone down the tube at one time or another. We’ve needed help. More times than I can count, I’ve opened a book randomly (to include novels) and found a paragraph that speaks to me. It’s uncanny, moving, and more than a wee bit mysterious. It’s the alchemist within spontaneously guiding us to awakening, however small or revolutionary.

Alchemy and Enlightenment

During the middle of my day in psychotherapy practice, I have lunch and read. Frequently, I turn to alchemical texts, let my eyes land where the text falls open. One noontime, the writing spoke to the therapist’s need to sit silently, act as a quiet container of practically unendurable pain until the patient sees for herself the meaning behind the crisis. Wisdom lies in not speaking what the patient cannot yet see or understand. They must, with the caring presence of a depth psychotherapist, feel all that must be explored and then and only then will the clouds part and enlightenment, perchance, dawn.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, the first session of the afternoon ushered the patient and me into a realm of nearly unendurable trauma. Listening without rushing into words allowed her to go through a dark emotional tunnel and, fortunately, by session’s end gain insight. It was soulful enlightenment regarding heart-rending pain birthing tearful insights and a release of pent-up emotions. I breathed a sigh of relief, grateful for the noontime reading that prepared me for the rough time ahead. It awakened the relational alchemist inherent in depth therapy and visionary/alchemical books

Reading Awakens Inner Alchemist

Visionary reading awakens the inner alchemist as we enter a dark emotional and spiritual tunnel through the challenges of the protagonist and the horrors of the antagonist. It’s a story like our story, the narrative that is our life replete with hopes and dreams gone south and turned sour. The inner alchemist awakens within our imagination as we delve into the feelings and the ensuing meaning of life experiences and visionary books.

“Live Deeply…Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com

Step Into a Visionary World

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Reading visionary fiction ushers us into an imaginative outside of everyday space and time. The human psyche nourishes itself via reflection of archetypal images and symbols. Realms of mystery occur in dreaming time and reading. In many ways, reading and reflecting on visionary fiction is a waking dream.

As a depth psychologist of forty years, I’ve tended hundreds of dreams with patients. We’ve explored and worked through intense emotional and spiritual crisis, physical and sexual trauma, and daily life stress. Inevitably the images and symbols discovered in dreams helped them to heal.

Images and symbols in visionary fiction reflect the archetypal workings of the unconscious mind. Archetypes are the age-old transcultural symbols which, for centuries, healers and seekers have sought understanding and transformation. Quietude, meditation, and reading encourage their appearance from the depths of the soul.

Yesterday, a person told me how important novels are for them. They said, “I really get into the characters. When magic and mystery are there (that’s the type of novels I read), then I’m pulled in right off. I look forward to opening the e-book every day. By the end, I feel like I’ve lost a friend. Then it strikes me that I’ve made a friend, a story that I’ve learned from and that’s changed me a little bit – just a little bit. But that little bit makes a big difference.”

Readers are sometimes shocked that elements of urban fantasy and even horror find their way into visionary reading. Well, life brims over with unseen, phantasmagoric dimensions. We’re usually not aware of these realities. Reading, entering a world of wakeful dreams, sensitizes us to the otherworld. It operates behind the scenes of daily life.

Raising consciousness via visionary fiction happens as images and symbols waken in the psyche. They live within, they sleep within, and they waken within us with awareness and attention. Stories bring awareness and attention to numinous energies. Suddenly, what’s taken place in the narrative occurs in your life. Or, perhaps, it’s already taken place. Awareness gives us pause, stirs reflection and meditation. We wonder. We stay open. We step into soulful stories, a visionary world, and images and symbols quicken a sense of mystery that lies behind the scene of daily life.

“Live Deeply…Read Daily”

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Visionary States and Crisis

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Visionary states are often prompted by a crisis. Today may bring challenges, unexpected events. If so, they’re part of the story our day and weave into the overall story of our life. Sink deep, reflect, wait for the vision-the meaning beneath the problem. And, remember, all stories have a beginning, middle, and end. A good attitude goes a long way to making it through stress. It will pass. Meaning lasts.

Happiness comes and goes, meaning lasts. There’s always meaning if we wait, listen, and understand our problems. They could be relational issues, personal doubts, or unexpected roadblocks that leave you fumbling in the dark. As a psychotherapist and writer of forty years, I’ve seen and written about crises and how dreams and visions come to our aid. They speak a symbolic language.

One person told me, “An old friend I haven’t seen in years came to me in my dreams. They looked at me and wanted to get close. I held back and don’t know why. It’s troubling.” We explored the dream symbolism (as do the characters in my metaphysical novels), and I asked, “What was this person like?” He answered, “They were a backstabber. They’d draw me close then hurt me, hurt me bad.” We explored how this applied to them and their life.

“Ahhhh….so, the dream is having me face up to the backstabber in me. It’s the way I set myself up only to go down the same old dead end that leads to pain. I do it over and over.” I confirmed that the dream person symbolized their inner dark side, a saboteur. They understood that dreams (visions while sleeping) speak a symbolic language, providing light in dark places so we shift our thoughts and make better decisions.

One afternoon in meditation, I had a vision. Before meditating, I talked to a publisher who wanted to bring my novels under their imprint. Mental space opened during meditation and I saw the publisher working in a poorly lit and grungy space. I was repulsed, turned and walked away. The visionary guidance was clear. My attitude changed and I moved forward in a better direction.

So, every night dream and every day meditate and you might experience meaningful, life-changing visions that hone your attitudes. Read thrilling visionary/metaphysical stories that propel you into archetypal worlds replete with powerful energies and guiding lights. Your life will be changed by dreams, visions, and visionary fiction. It’s a trip into the unconscious mind that razzles and dazzles conscious attitudes for the better and for transformation.

“Live Deeply…Read Daily!”

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A Good Read for A Good Life

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“Books are not made to be believed but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book we shouldn’t ask what it says but what it means.” ~ Umberto Eco The Name of the Rose

I love Eco’s insight into books. There is meaning in them. Meaning defines a literary story from a tale told for entertainment solely. The meaning at first doesn’t take, perhaps. Other times, we see and feel it immediately.

Kate, my wife, and I are watching the new Le Miserables (Victor Hugo) series on PBS. It’s riveting. From the beginning, we’re pulled into a world of pain, conflict, and one’s search for resolution and meaning. There’s a visceral flow of energy with each scene.

Energy, a visionary and imaginative charge, brings stories to life. They touch us where it counts. They speak to us of real things happening in real lives. They speak to us of our life.

Our life – now we get down to it. Secretly or openly we want and deeply desire answers. At least, we’ll settle for opening our minds to new thoughts. Visionary inspiration births thoughts that surprise us. Hermes, the archetypal trickster life energy with us, quickens us to what to read that’s good, meaningful.

I know I hunger for meaningful books. When I finish one, there’s a sigh and a letting go. It’s been good, very good. Like a nourishing meal. Then, there’s usually another book waiting (usually around six or seven on my kindle and the same number on my stack of unread hard copies). One of them stands out. It’s there I go, meaning calls. I need, crave, good books because I seek to nurture a life nurturing and meaningful.

This Spring, consider taking up the habit of good reads. Have them lined up and ready to go. There’s always a few minutes, maybe more, each day to have a good read for a good life.

“Live Deeply…Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com

 

When Mother Love Goes Bad

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   Artist Kiki Smith got to the heart of the creative process (WSJ 3.2.19) “I often don’t like what I’m doing,” she says, “but I try to follow it through. It takes you where it wants to go. In hindsight, it always has something that has to do with your life. You hopefully learn something from it.”
   Learning from works of art—painting, music, sculpture, books—takes an open heart and mind. In writing, I too try and follow through even though I’m hesitant and sometimes frightened. I have a new book, Goddess of Everything, near readiness for shipping off to my editors. I am scared.
   Goddess of Everything is a supernatural thriller about mother love gone bad and the need to break free. No one thinks mother love can go bad. Maybe the book is too much, I fear. What if folks are offended, put off by the notion? I know there are stories like Mommie Dearest, and others dramatizing wicked mothers or stepmothers. But, what if the consequences of not breaking free of mother love gone bad take supernatural twists and turns into dark and destructive places?
   The fact is, we want mothers to be good, we run and run and run from the truth when the truth is bad.
Everything is on the line with mother love gone bad. Everything means life, sense of self, relationships. If a mother can be bad, especially if that badness is hidden by good manners and charm, then there’s a definite problem. There is psychological turmoil, self-doubt, and we start run, run, running from truth. We run until our world becomes topsy turvy crazy and weird happenings pop out of nowhere to convince us of what must be faced.
    Goddess of Everything is hot, bubbling, about ready for edits and for us all to pause, read, and hopefully (in the words of Kiki Smith) learn something from it—a message sizzling right off the supernatural hotline!
“Live Deeply…Read Daily”
pauldeblassieiii.com

Vilifying Gayness ~ Religion, Horror, and Reality

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Gay and Predatory ~ I Think Not

NYT’s today (2.17.19) reviews Sodoma, a troubling sensationalizing of sexuality gone awry, all too tragically at times in an abusive manner. I’m a sure critic of organized religion and its inherent potential to abuse power; but, this book appears as vilifying gay priests, the wonder and pluralism of sexuality. Not all gay priests are pedophiles any more than all straight men are misogynistic. The religious and humanitarian issue at hand is power and abuse. Let’s not confuse pluralistic human nature with the thwarted and damaged men and women who propagate rapacious acts under a religious guise: “All else aside, the book speaks to the enormous and seemingly growing tension between a church that frequently vilifies and marginalizes gay men and a priesthood dense with them. “This fact hangs in the air as a giant, unsustainable paradox,” wrote Andrew Sullivan, who is Catholic and gay, in an excellent cover story for New York magazine last month. It explains why so many gay men entered the priesthood, especially decades ago: They didn’t feel safe or comfortable in a society that ostracized them. Their sense of being outsiders gave them a more spiritual bent and greater desire to help others in need.”

Dark Religion ~ Abuse and the Mind

In The Unholy, I searingly explore the dark side of religion. The dramatic tale delves into religion gone bad, horrifying mind manipulation and sexual abuse taking the reader by storm. Various reviewers criticized it as too severe. I disagree. As in Goddess of the Wild Thing I pop out reality, take it from the subtle to vivid dimensions. This speaks to the unconscious mind, confirms realities repressed by the conscious mind. We deny or forget what traumatizes us. Visionary thrillers help us to face the reality behind the illusion, usher us into what’s been locked up tight and put away in the basement of the unconscious.

Reality ~ Healing What’s True and Hurting

For all of us, we’re no more or less than human. Our life story, if read well and lived well, gradually forms us into a truer human. We’re more sensitive, even if that requires ongoing questioning of self and realigning self when we get off our path. Reading develops a human sensibility for a truer take on reality in matters of sexuality, healing, and spirituality. Let’s take time to read, ponder, and wonder every day. I know there are challenges to our time commitments and other voices telling us to do this or that. We can satisfy those other necessary tugs without forsaking the quietude and reading that nurtures our evolution into a truer perspective on sexuality, spirituality and what it means to be human.

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily  

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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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