Archive for category: reading

The Magic of Metaphysical Reading

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Metaphysical refers to what is natural but outside the ordinary realm of human perception. It’s about realities lying beyond empirical data usually picked up by our five senses. As a psychologist and writer of metaphysical thrillers, it’s magical to move into the realm of the unconscious mind. Images and feelings flow in creative, startling, and sometimes life-changing ways when I open my mind during therapy and writing.

As I opened my computer to write this brief essay this morning, I felt an inner prompting. I like short essays and slim volumes. They catch the inspired vibe without thinning out the spirit of the work. The inspiration I feel is a touch of magic from what William James, father of American psychology, called a great unseen realm that affects our daily lives. So, I’m touching the keys, writing, and letting word magic flow.

Word magic in essays or stories touches our imagination. The words, sentences, ideas and narratives are living things. They impart life. Before sleep, I read metaphysical fiction. It’s magic! It stimulates my soul, the reading encouraging my unconscious mind to roam freely. And, out pop unexpected characters and dramas, angels and demons, and catch-me-by-surprise psychic encounters. And, inevitably, there’s an embedded message.

Reading metaphysical fiction stimulates the mind, embedded imaginal messages downloaded from page to soul. You needn’t pick up a book on symbol or dream interpretation. The feeling of the story, whether in a dream or a piece of fiction, conveys all we need to know. Feelings are triggered, something in us shifts, and our minds are opened a little more. It is common for imaginations to shut down; rigidity, snarkiness, and emptiness are signs of a malnourished imagination. Images and symbols in dreams and stories are the soul medicine we need to reinvigorate and get us going again along our life path.

So, dipping into the magical realm of the unconscious mind when dreaming and reading can give us a life reboot. It’s why we feel better after a good night of sleeping and dreaming. And it’s why we can feel open and even excited about living in a world that lets us tap into the unconscious mind, the spiritual realm. And lastly—a little embedded thought—reading metaphysical stories is a waking dream that takes us deeper into the imagination, images and symbols that kindle magic and invigorate our soul.

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily!

 

Shadows Hiding

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Ever wonder about shadows? You know, over there in the corner, the dark nook in the room. From the corner of your eye, admit it, you thought you saw something. It was quick, not a glimmer, not a refraction of light. You know what it was, or at least you’ve wondered during mind-tired, end-of-the-day times when your defenses are down. There could be something there, something unknown, mysterious, and dark.

It’s just a shadow, you say. Or it’s your mind playing tricks. And then there are the times it’s so real it gives a chill, and you shake your head to be sure. And poof. . . there’s nothing there. You think. As a psychologist who works with the unconscious mind, I’ll tell you there is something there. It’s not a mental artifact. It’s not some loony-tunes concoction from too much booze, eye strain, or toxic stress build-up.

There’s even a clinical term for such shadows. They are autonomous spiritual energies. C.G. Jung called them psychoid realities. They have a life of their own and live in a world bigger than your conscious or personal unconscious mind. They live in the shadows. Feel the chill up your arms and the back of your neck as I tag them and tell you where they live? Freud could tell the presence of the uncanny by the chills up his spine.

So, where I’m going with this is that stories, and metaphysical horror specifically, tap into shadow realms. They shine a spotlight on the corners of the room where things are dim and hidden. It’s there that the shadowy energies reside. It’s there, in the basements and locked closets of your mind, that they also hang out. They’re anywhere, inner or outer, that holds deposits of charged emotion. It can be good, bad, loaded with high-octane creativity, or red-hot with buried trauma. The shadow realms are emotional hotspots.

Read stories to nourish your mind, read stories to let go of stress, read stories to exorcise demons, and heal your fractured soul. Yup . . .. soul food, stress release, exorcisms, and healing are specialties of metaphysical horror. In Goddess of Everything, there’s a horrifying psychoid reality—thank you, C.G. Jung—hiding in the darkened corridors of a convent. In Goddess of the Wild Thing, the creepy crawlies fly up the spine and back of the neck as an old witch conjures black magic mojo to keep a man’s soul from his one true love.

The Unholy, my first award-winning metaphysical thriller, tears through the high desert of northern New Mexico (Aztlan in the story) with the evil antics of a possessed archbishop. Talk about a wolf in sheep’s clothing! This guy is a gospel-professing Dracula dressed in a man-of-the-cloth’s resplendent regalia. He’s a draconian wheeler-dealer of darkness. And, people flock his way, hang on his every word, kneel and kiss his bishop’s ring, and ever so slowly hand over their immortal souls. How’d he get away with it, you might ask? He did it by abiding in the shadows.

Come out, come out, wherever you are. That’s what we say to the shadows outside and inside our heads when we read metaphysical horror. Too scary, you say. Not scary enough, I counter. Better to face the shadows than be haunted by ghosts. Yeah. . . let’s get them out in the open for metaphysical playtime. Reading is playtime, settling time, healing time, and exorcism time.

So, hold not thyself back out of fear. Curl up into your favorite chair and dare to immerse yourself in the stories of The Unholy, Goddess of the Wild Thing, and Goddess of Everything. You’ll discover the surprises, shocks, and exorcisms you need to shake your mind loose of the shadows clogging your head with darkness and despair.

One last thing . . .. as you settle in and read, go deep into the words and characters. Let the story stream through your psychic veins. I’ll guarantee you’ll spot shadows hiding.

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

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

Start Now and What You Need Will Come

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“As long as you can start, you are all right. The juice will come,” wrote Ernest Hemingway. And, as in writing, so in life. Get started, and the juice will come. In Goddess of Everything, I wrote from the image. It presented itself to my mind then the fire spread to my belly! Readers have noted surprise, shock, triggering, and ultimately satisfaction from the read. Although there may be twists and turns, we lean into vital instincts, it typically leads to a satisfying ending point. So, when the impulse is there, I go with it, and the energy builds from there. From experience, it’s a fine thing to start things up and trust that the juice will come, making for a good follow-through and a good ending.

As a psychologist and writer, I’m always in the learning mode with the conscious and unconscious mind. It’s an attitude I nourish. It’s there first thing in the morning, a sense of wanting to see and follow through with what I see. It comes in intuitive images and instincts that rise to consciousness and give me the beginning of a scene or words to say to a patient. At the start of Goddess of Everything, we’re into a funeral, the pull into the realm of death and mystery unmistakable. It was rough for me to begin a novel with this eerie scene. But, the image from my unconscious that rose at the beginning of the book guided me to go there. So I did. Turns out, readers were immediately drawn in, and the story flew onward from there. So, as you can see, whether it’s a dream that comes to mind the night before writing, or an image in the morning, or a strong feeling as I open my laptop to write, it’s a starting point for me to jump into the page and take off. We begin with what comes to us, usually just a little bit, and then off we go into helpful insights that lead to living out our story.

As you’re coming to see, while writing, doing therapy, and living, I do my best to flow with feelings, images, and dreams. They are the starting points, a little something to trust and go with. Try an experiment today. Trust your strong feelings, the ones that stay with you about a person or situation. Trust the image that comes to mind or what you dreamt about what’s going on. You’ll find that your intuition gives you enough go with, and once you start, the rest will come.

Let’s do our best to nourish trusting strong feelings, spontaneous mental images, and dreams. We can start now to listen a little more sensitively to feelings, intuitions, and your initial impression of what your dream from the night before is telling you. Go with it, and you’ll find that the rest will come. It’s a big step to trust, so lean into it. And, as Hemingway said, the juice will come.

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

Can the Sacred be Abused?

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Can the sacred be abused? Of course! I deal with it all week long in therapy practice. Then on the weekend, I write stories that imaginatively pull together energies, experiences, and the way out of what’s bad. The numinous, the sacred, can go south.

You want to know how it happens? I’ll tell you. It happens when you stay in one place too long. Then meaning stops, energy stops, what’s good about everything stops. And when what’s good stops, the sacred has skidded to a screeching halt!

Yikes, you say. You’re right to say that because when good energy, sacred stuff, dries up, everything in life goes wrong. Bad things that didn’t need to happen, happen.

Is there any way out, you ask? Yup. I’ll whisper in your ear the answer. Listen close. Quiet, steady yourself, deep breath. Here it is: Regroup and listen to what your mind tells you right now. There’s something that says, “Move on and leave this behind.” And that’s the answer.

You let go of what you need to let go of, stop going to that place that always gives you bad vibes, let go of the bad times with negative people, and take on pass on the go-to negative attitudes in your head. Then . . . voila! The sacred and good energy of your life returns.

I write stories about people hitting a psychic brick wall. The sacred has been defiled. Time has come to square off and get real. Decisions need to be made. It happens in the metaphysical thrillers I write, and it happens in your life and mine.

Read a good story or two or three. They’ll help you figure your way out of what’s dried up sacred and good energy and how to go about finding your way back into a stable mind and a perfectly decent life!

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily!

Horror, Transformation, and Your Worst Nightmare

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Nightmares scare the hell out of us. Blues chase the blues away. Fright ushers us into realms we’d never enter if it weren’t for life pressures and the intensity of the moment. Reading metaphysical horror does this all for us in one grand fell swoop. It takes us into nightmares, lands us in the blues, and pressures us with irresistible intensity.

Doing psychotherapy has its own path into transformation, so does everyday life leaned into fully and deeply, as will metaphysical horror if given a chance. My novel, The Unholy, is a fright for readers to pick up. More than one commented that they took to a dark corner of a hidden-away closet, turned on their kindle, and read and read till they finished. They had to do it. They had to get to the take-you-by-surprise ending—just like nightmares.

Then comes Goddess of the Wild Thing as it hits the noir streets of downtown Aztlan del Sur (Albuquerque, New Mexico) running. It’s a supernatural thrill ride into the black magic world of love gone bad, its allure, and the dark side of all things supernatural and mystic. Oh, there’s a light side. And, it’s there in Goddess of the Wild Thing, but, as with all good things, it takes its sweet, sweet time about coming to the fore with the oracular mystery that love is a wild thing!

When I spun out Goddess of the Everything: A Blood-Curdling Tale of the Affection of One Mother for Her Son and Her Son’s Struggle for Truth, Freedom, and Love, readers say it is a “wild, crazy, edge-of-your-seat ride!” I remember how the story haunted my nightmares. Significant life stories are what your nightmares are about. They’re signaling something that needs your urgent attention. This story, the writing, and publishing of it needed mine. So, when nightmares jettison forward into your world of sleep and dreaming, take heed. Listen, learn, and you’ll be changed – transformed. (Hint: Goddess of Everything will touch off nightmares, it’s a trigger, some have said, so don’t go there if you can’t. But if you can, read on and delve deep into your dreams and nightmares and then forever change and transform you.

Okay, let’s wrap up this nightmare diddy. The good thing with nightmares is that they end. I’ll come clean; sometimes they don’t. When patients in therapy report repeated nightmares, I tell them, “Well, there’s something we’re not getting. So, let’s listen a little more, learn a little deeper, and see how the dreams go.” We always see what we need to see if we stay with it. Just like reading a story, we see and learn what we need to see and learn if we stay with it. So, read on, live on, dream on. And know that metaphysical horror and nasty nightmares always birth good change, transformation if we stay with it.

Happy dreams and fantastic nightmares to you, one and all!

~ Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

Creative Pulsations of Special Moments

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Challenging Pulsations in the Moment

This morning I came across William Blake’s words about the creative pulsations of special moments. When I write, there’s a pulse, an energy that moves from my core to fingertips to the page. Words happen, scenes roll out, and characters guide my heart and hands to tell their journey. In my recently released, Goddess of Everything, the supernaturally charged thriller charged out of my unconscious mind. Dreams and nightmares inspired the creation of characters and scenes.

On Amazon this morning, I read this: 5.0 out of 5 stars Goddess of Everything review: “Definitely not for the faint-hearted but an AMAZING read. Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2021, ~ “What an unexpected surprise this book was. Dr. DeBlassie has one of the most interesting ways of telling a story that I’ve seen in a long time. It’s almost like sitting around a campfire listening to urban legends. This dark thriller with some supernatural aspects was yet again an excellent example of this man’s talents. He took the normal good vs. evil to a whole new level with exceptional world-building and character development. Definitely not for the faint-hearted but an AMAZING read.”
Amazement grabbed me throughout the creative pulsations of moment after moment driving this story forward to publication. The book’s subtitle reads A Blood-Curdling Tale of One Mother’s Affection for Her Son and Her Son’s Struggle for Truth, Freedom, and Love. Shock, the creative pulse of challenging mother love, runs through this novel like adrenaline infusions. You don’t go up against what everyone wants to believe, says convention. People want to believe what people want to believe.
Risk It!
Goddess of Everything gets to the heart of love. When mother love is challenged, everything is turned topsy turvy. Creative pulsations are birthed from challenging norms. What mainstream accepts and says must be, then has to be accepted, or we risk disapproval and rejection. Risk it, I say! Risk living the creative pulsations of special moments when out-of-the-ordinary ways of seeing things and being come knocking at the door of your mind. Answer the door, listen, follow, and grow.
To risk growth is to be alive. There’s no living without risking. In Goddess of Everything, Gabriél is torn between love for mother and wife, Consuela. Devotion to a widowed mother turned religious Mother Superior clouds his mind. Consuela ushers in reality. She helps Gabriél discover nighttime blood sacrifices of children in the desert, a centuries-old ritual that imparts immortality to Mother and her nuns. He’s run from risking truth facing throughout his adulthood. Risk it, see what you need to see. Risk the read and grow!
Special Moment
The moment of reckoning comes in the story. Spirits, light and dark, teem through the nighttime desert as Gabriél faces off with wickedness hidden behind what was supposed to be good. At the very least, this is a special moment. They come. Maybe, like for Gabriél, they’re hard. We don’t want them. We want to go on not being challenged to see, to stretch, to grow. It’s easier that way. But it’s not. Special moments are risky and come for special reasons—risk and grow reasons.
Risk reading one of the most thrilling novels of your life. Open Goddess of Everything, plunge into a supernatural world of mother love turned upside down and inside out. It’ll cause you to rethink what love’s all about. It’ll cause you to rethink your life, relationships, where you’re at, where you’re going. Getting on with the creative pulsations of special moments, no matter the cost, equals risk equals growth.
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

 

 

 

 

Soul, Reading, and the Visionary World

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Soul and Inspiration

Inspiration happens from deep within the visionary world. While reading, sensing spontaneous intuitive flashes, and dreaming with vivid imagery, we experience the world of the spiritual imagination. CG Jung called the soul a vessel filled with grace or spirit, energy dramatized in literary images, intuitive flashes, and nightly visions known as dreams. Dramatic images encountered during reading and spirit-filled dreams while sleeping are inspirations from the visionary world’s wellspring known as soul.

We are soulful beings. When reading, we knock on the door of soul and quietly enter, words and story leading us to nourishment for the day. Daily reading nourishes the mind and heart as much as food does the body. I find that my soul, composed of both my intellectual mind and emotional heart, grows hungry to read. I can read myself full and satiate my literary appetite by taking an hour a day to open my books and savor words, story, and meaning.

Visions while Reading

As we settle into the beat and rhythm of reading, we enter a visionary state. It’s a trance state that ushers us into another world. That world is as real as the one in which we spend our waking hours. Regardless of the story, memories and unexpected images well up and sometimes bring us to tears or passionately convict us. Well-crafted stories open our minds and hearts to new perspectives on old problems or relax us into a sleep populated by spirits in various guises.

Spirits are archetypal, ancient energies that incarnate in the visionary/dream world. In soulful stories, ones birthed from a free flow of images from the unconscious mind, there is a world of spirits at work. They inhabit the images of the protagonist, antagonist, and supporting characters. Reading suspends the ego mind so creative energies can make their way up from the shadowlands of the unconscious and touch our consciousness. Life is better for the time taken to tend the soul with heartfelt words and mysterious narratives.

Spirits Inspire and Transform

When reading and entering the spirit world of imagination, there is potential to feel changed. Sometimes it’s movement into relaxation. Other readings mean shock and necessary unsettledness about how we have seen the world. Soul growth unsettles entrenched states of mind that now need to be examined in a new light.

Inspiration means to be filled with spirit. I remember learning this understanding in my undergraduate days studying ancient Greek. Spirits of the visionary world, what shamans and mystics call the spirit realm, are at work during storytelling and reading. Savoring a story each day is a powerful opportunity to drink from the wellspring of literary life. The soul, a vessel filled with spirit, hungers to read and discover nourishment, inspiration, and transformation out of what has once been and is now gone by, and movement into what lies ahead.

“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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