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”

pauldeblassieiii.com

Soulful Living – Peaceful Holiday

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A Soulful Holiday

Yuletide calls us to a sensitive, deliberate turning within to soul. It has been associated with divinities of the hunt, psychologically referring to the search for inner nourishment. In depth psychotherapy and visionary writing, natural shifts of energy are heeded. They align us with life, the nature of things for us that can be quite different than for others. In fact, as we age and grow we become increasingly defined. Our uniqueness is, hopefully, appreciated by us and those we love.

Troubles during the holiday come when folks are pressured to get together. It’s good for us to share time with those we enjoy, those of kindred soul. And, if it is not so with others, then let that be. We do not have to get along with everyone or everyone with us – be they kith or kin. Differences can be respected. A holiday can be enjoyed.

 

Live More Quietly and Deeply

Dreams of patients and protagonists in my novels urge balance. When the season grows dark and cold, dreams address the need to listen more deeply and live more quietly. As friends and family do the same, harmony prevails. If not, there is discord. Family fights, friends falling out, anxiety and dysfunction set in when personal and relational limits have been violated.

In The Unholy, the church demands everybody believe and live according to rigid dogmas. In Goddess of the Wild Thing, discord and bona fide evil hit the scene when people demand loyalty. In the end, each story unfolds as people make decisions that seem small but have big consequences. Little decisions during the holidays make the difference between soulful living and high-pressured craziness. Winter bids us relinquish a year worth of rigid buildups, dysfunctional ways of living and relating. The dark and cold draws us within, to the warmth of a quieter and deeper life.

 

Quietude Births Consciousness

The visionary story that is our life is an evolution of decisions made and lives affected. We stand the chance of making soulful choices that bring peace of mind as we take time for quietude and turning within. Let this Yuletide be one of quietly enjoying yourself and those of kindred soul. Let the holidays usher us into realms of the imagination and intimacy through reflective living, relating, and reading. Let the dark womb of a soulful interiority be our realm this season so that soon a new light of consciousness may be born.

“Live Deeply…Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com

 

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

Madness, Reading, and the Soul

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Dreams last night popped with shocking images, some horrifying. They set me right and got me back on track. There’s nothing like a bit of shock and horror to shake up the soul. Oddly enough (or maybe not), I feel better. The week of doing depth therapy with traumatized patients, clearing the way through dark forests and troubling times, is settling ~ mind clearing. I think I’ll write, do hot yoga, great meals, and lots of love all weekend.

Soulful times generate soulful living. Reading is integral to my daily life, takes me into soul. There’s a place inside that can be nourished, satisfied, only through reading. I have to enter in visionary worlds that sometimes are horrifying, land me in a realm of madness as the protagonist encounters light and dark energies in daily life. It’s a time of conflict and pain, no resolution except by going through what needs to be gone through.

Reading visionary fiction is a lot like dreaming. In dreams, we can’t help, force or cajole, what’s going on or about to happen. I know there are people who try and control their dreams. The psyche does not take well to being controlled. There’s always kickback when we attempt to manipulate, conjure, what we want to happen. Old religions did this via prayer, thinking they knew what was best and wanted to force the hand of their god to comply. Healthily, sanely, we live in accord with life, letting events and dreams play themselves out as we consciously decide to find our way through tight spots.

Life is tough. Reading helps. Settling into an old chair, taking up a book we’re into and letting our mind go with the flow of the words and paragraphs and scenes – the story of a life and the mysteries and magic that take them by surprise – does something to us. It nurtures and strengthens our imagination. Stories make a difference in the quality of our life.

Madness is a private thing. It’s a matter of quality living. When we’re in touch with our private madness, we discover an imaginal world similar to the stories we’ve read. Feeling out of control, wanting to slow it up and shut it down, wishing things away only to make things worse is part and parcel of private madness. It’s our way of learning if we listen and give it a chance to speak.

So, give yourself some soul time. See if there might be a visionary novel that’s whispering your name. You’ll find that your unconscious mind guides you to just the right literary medicine. Trust your instincts, browse through your favorite online or brick-and-mortar book retailer, and pick up a copy of a story that just might touch your private madness and forever touch your soul.

Live Deeply…Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com

Knocked Out Of Your Orbit

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To get out of a rut, we may have to go to the unfamiliar. Getting knocked out of our day-to-day orbit can be life changing, a true visionary experience. Visionary times help us gain a new perspective, to shapeshift emotionally and spiritually, and change things up. It’s scary to change things up; but, if we’re willing to start fresh, good stuff can happen.

Josh Gressel Ph.D., in Psychology Today (9.2.18) states, “Of course there is a balance to walk here and each of us has to figure out how much discomfort and strangeness they can handle. I do not intend to go trekking in the Himalayas without a guide or go anywhere without a basic plan. But whether it’s starting to learn a new instrument, starting a new job, or taking a new class, it’s healthy for all of us to be forced into “beginner’s mind.”

It’s frightening when we think we’ve got it made. People seeking depth psychotherapy often complain that just before things got bad, they thought everything was all right. They thought they had it made. Then things went upside down wrong. Life knocked them out of their orbit.

Once we look at things in therapy, we see they were in a rut. They’d been there longer than they thought. Sometimes, we don’t know where we are until after the fact. Certain things, like reading and good stories, help us keep our head in the game of life. They stir emotions and keep us real.

And, one thing is for sure, to get out of the rut we’re in (and sometimes don’t realize we’re in one) we need to be open to feeling. When I wrote Goddess of the Wild Thing, I kept it close to everything I’ve experienced personally and with patients I’ve worked with in psychotherapy. When we close down emotionally, we close down the vital force that is life. It’s a thrill to feel, to stay real, and to pop out of emotional and spiritual ruts.

And in visionary fiction, dramatic thrillers about spirituality and love, it’s all about keeping it real and discovering things fresh. There’s typically a crisis in getting to where we need to be. Old patterns keep us stuck in old misery. Openness to insight (things suddenly clicking in our head and heart) and courage (leaning into what we feel is best for us) makes the story that is our life unfold in a natural and consciousness-raising way.

Check out Goddess of the Wild Thing – it’ll help you keep it real, pop out of your rut, and discover things fresh. Happy reading.

#visionary #reading #goddesswildthing #fiction

You Can’t Change Anyone But Yourself

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Thinking we can change someone is never a good idea. Even as a psychotherapist, it’s not my approach. I help people to further their understanding of self and other, then we wait and yield to the effects of therapeutic human understanding. We never know how it’s going to turn out; we only know that truth facing is medicine for the soul.

So, it’s the same when I write books. Stories can be medicine for the soul. Esoteric fiction moves us into powerful psychic realities, dynamics that shift the way we see ourselves and others. Stories are their own form of truth facing – medicine for the soul.

I remember that while writing The Unholy, my depth psychotherapy practice was overrun by patients seeking healing from religious trauma. They had suffered physical, emotional and often sexual trauma within a religious context. It was within church-going homes, respected religious institutions, and mediations ashrams that trauma abounded. As they healed, they desperately wanted to make the perpetrators change; but so often the families and organizations refused to see the problem. Thus, there was no hope for changing those in denial; but my patients, through their own journey into self-understanding, healed and changed.

My writing shifted during this time away from inspirational psychology and into visionary fiction. Here I told stories of emotional and spiritual upheaval. Trauma laced its way through action-packed dramas of religion gone bad and one person’s determined struggle to battle dark forces within and without. Within the narrative, as in our daily life, things vacillated between hope and despair. The imagination takes us into realms of visions, dreams, and everyday magic in a way that inspirational psychology approaches but, for me, did not bring home.

Stories take us headlong into what we’re grappling with in our own lives. Unconsciously, we’re always drawn to read the story that will speak most to us at a given time. The writing of Goddess of the Wild Thing bolted out of me as patients moved into issues of what it means to find love. It doesn’t go the same way for everybody. You can’t pin it down. Love is a wild goddess. The image of the wild goddess came to me in a dream one night. It was to be the title for this particular book that depicts an age-old struggle about love—whether bad love is better than no love— and the discovery that love is a wild thing.

So when it comes to changing someone, don’t do it. It’s the message of lives nearly lost and then regained. We can lose ourselves by giving more and more to someone who does not see or want to see that there is a problem. Whether in religion, love, or day-to-day work and relationships it’s the getting on with things as they are that matters. Of course, that doesn’t imply sticking with what’s bad or dysfunctional. There are mean and malignant people. They are the ones who, in small ways or big strikes, undermine our sense of worth and integrity. Actually, they seem to get a kick out of it. Oh, they might say they’re sorry, but they’ll come around and do it again. There’s a payoff for them in the form of power and control. We need to shake loose of them and move on.

In story writing, it’s utterly fascinating to experience the characters speaking to me, the writer, of their plight. Maybe (they wonder) they made up the bad thing that happened. Maybe they blew it out of proportion. Maybe, maybe, maybe. So many maybes signal upside down thinking and one unhappy soul setting themselves up for another you-know-what.

So, when we read we can go through things on the page that helps us with everyday things. That way we’re less likely to set ourselves up for another you-know-what situation. We can avoid unnecessary life pain and trauma through an understanding of self and others. Reading opens up soul paths for change because, after all, you can’t change anyone but yourself.

#visionaryfiction #depthpsychology #soulmedicine #change

Homesick for Soul

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This morning inspiration struck so I pulled up my personal Facebook page and posted, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and I’m back home on Friday to jam out with writing and enjoying Kate, and family, and yoga and music and film and art after a full week of rolling through intense dreams with patients doing trauma therapy and healing soul pain, my own dreams last night replete with subterranean messengers cautioning against following psychological gurus, yoga enlightened ones, and all manner of leaders since it’s all about listening to our own beat and rhythm and “don’t follow no leaders and watch your parking meters.’ “ This got to the heart of my soul’s yearning to return to the quietude of my study to read and write then move into the weekend with enjoyment.

The soul calls us home. When we feel tired, worn, and at odds with self or others, it may be that we’re homesick for soul. So much calls and begs and demands our attention. There is this and that to drag or siphon away time and energy. It’s always there – those maleficent sirens that look and sound alluring from afar. But, if we take the bait and follow every impulse to meet this need or that, then we’re left down and out and homesick for soul.

Reading visionary fiction draws me down and deep. I sense soul-stirring enlivenment when I read stories of people feeling their pain and conflict. They grope, as I often do, often blindly to find their way. Poignant themes of oppressive society and religion, yearning for true love in the midst of bad love, and breaking free from conventional restraint run hot and wild. Consciousness and personal evolution, making our way through life muck and gunk into cleared spaces of hope and life, is the soul’s path.

It’s sad when it takes a long time to return back inside, to that place within we call soul. It’s home, and there’s homesickness when we lose touch. During this week of professional psychotherapy practice, I’ve done my best to help folks regain touch with soul. Many have found themselves wandering for quite some time in the midst of godforsaken deserts. This translates into lives of emptiness and going about the tasks of daily life with no enjoyment or passion. It’s sad when we lose touch with soul. And, it’s good to know there’s a way back to cleared spaces of hope and life.

Reading helps us to get to cleared mental space of hope and life. Just settle back and into your chair or lay easefully on your bed and pick up a book that calls to you. Folks today tout mindfulness meditation as though it were something new. It’s been around for a long, long time. People have done it when they enjoy their relationships, the fine exchange of ideas and love. We happen into it when our work fills us with contentment. And then, there’s reading. We’re into the book, want to open it and read. There is natural mindfulness that comes when we settle back and into our favorite read.

Different types of reads speak to me at various times during the day. As I listen and respond, there’s a movement into soul. I feel like I find and nourish my deepest self. At times, it’s with new or old readings in depth psychology; first of the morning, it’s with my favorites news periodicals, catching me up on world events. Later in the day, I sink into stories, visionary fiction my favorite. Visionary fiction is a different kind of read because it calls out to us from a place of inner quietude, often unacknowledged psychic homesickness. Heartfelt visionary fiction tends to our homesickness for the mystic and offers rays of light for the soul.