Archive for category: visionary horror

The Right Now of Heaven and Hell

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We Live What We Create

The horror of everyday life lies in its simplicity. It’s loaded with choices. Horrifying! In the words of the Brooklyn poet Walt Whitman, in Song of Myself, “. . .. Nor any more heaven or hell than there is right now.” To retreat from or advance into states of mind and being in the world is a choice. It lies before each moment of every day. Heaven and hell.

 

The challenge to move past the hellish fear that can lock you up takes strong, translated, sensitive psychic muscles. Sometimes, you feel weak, the sense of yielding, collapsing into lethargy. There’s tiredness and a lack of desire to plug into life. We feel like hell, we say. And there’s no denying the reality of that state of mind and being in the world. We’ve created it, and we live it.

 

Gaze Heavenward

Girding yourself and mustering the sensitivity and strength to do what you need to do, to live up to your positive potential in each situation or relationship, is what Taoist philosophy calls gazing heavenward. And it is key to a generative state of mind and being in the world. But, as with all things in life, getting there can be hell. And that’s okay if we’re getting there and don’t stay in a rut-and-stuck mentality. That’s hell!

 

The old medicine woman in The Unholy states, “The young one must accept her calling on her own. Only then can she battle the forces of evil. Should she retreat into fear, she will die.” What strong words! And the words are true. There’s nothing quite like living in fear and letting it dominate your mind, thoughts, and actions. It holds you down so badly that you’ve unwittingly colluded with evil. It’s a dark force that erodes goodness and well-being and seeing the simplicity of choices.

 

In depth psychotherapy, I help individuals find their way out of a life of fear and move into accepting what life brings their way and dealing with it. “Deal with it,” we say. And dealing with it as forthrightly as possible makes you a more sensitive and stronger human. You have to side-step anxiety and fear and embrace your potential to advance into life—to deal with your fear, learn from the past, and move on with your life! Heavenward gazing beats the heck out of its hellish alternative.

 

Live a More Soulful Life

Readers have told me that reading The Unholy felt dark and scary, but then something happened, and decisions came into play. Decisions come into play in the story that is your life. Decisions form your life story and shape your soul. Choices that take you away from your sense of self and life are unholy. They leave you out of sorts, irritable, and sometimes downright mean. But sensitive and true choices usher you out of the hands of the demon god of irritability, pain, and death and into a more sensitive and soulful life.

 

A while back, I finished a Stephen King short story that dramatized the demon god of pain. I like that designation of the dark deity that feeds on pain. It’s an image that captures the pernicious energy attaching itself to an injured person vulnerable to self-pity. The more they feel sorry for themselves, the more the demon god can feed. And the more the demon god gorges, the worse the pain. It’s hell! The pain becomes chronic, and the person becomes more self-pitying, fueling a vicious cycle.

 

I’ve seen this phenomenon at work with people addicted to misery. They crave it. Given the choice—and there is always a choice—they choose what’s harmful. And then things spiral downward. Misery begets misery. Pain, juiced by self-pitying, worsens pain. With King and the demon god pain and in The Unholy, the pain is physical and psychic. An exorcism is required, and its form is dramatic and unique to each story.

 

Reading metaphysical horror helps you exorcise the fear, underlying anxiety, and pain that is unique to you and your life. It ushers in a more soulful life, unique for each person and intimately tied to choices. Deciding to read daily is a simple choice to live deeply and exorcise angst through stories. It’s a choice to look heavenward once you’ve gazed into the abyss and seen it’s not for you! We read, get into the flow of the dramatic tension of metaphysical thrillers, go through twists and turns, and release anxiety, fear, and the hell that has lived within and has been manifest without. Then, movement is made toward the living of a more soulful life.

 

Read daily and deeply

So, reading daily helps you move toward living a more soulful life by dealing with life’s fears, horrors, and demons! It helps you dig out of hellish attitudes and ways of being. It adds oomph to your attitude, clears your head, and boosts energy. Reading as exorcism! What a thought!

 

Reading horror helps you deal with things and unlock locked-up places of mind. It opens your mind to the heaven and hell of right now and moves your gaze heavenward. You get through a story and exorcise closeted fears and open the psychic atmosphere to new spirits and life-giving states of mind.

 

In essence, your life is a work of creative fiction. It’s you living your life story according to your choices. Whatever your decision, remember that heaven and hell are right now, and it’s you doing your life as you choose, including nourishing your ability to dig out of hellish states of mind and gaze heavenward by reading daily and deeply.

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!

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

 

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

Dreams, Spirits, and the Unconscious Mind

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Dreams and Beckoning Spirits

Each night we long to sleep, enter the restful realm where images swirl and spirits beckon. The images we see during dreams are spiritual. Perhaps we’ve always thought they were simple symbolic remnants from the day. They are not. Images are loaded with psychic energies depth psychologists call numinous.

The more attuned we become to the world of dreaming, its realities, and meaning, the more it will speak to us. The spirit world knows we are ready. Often crisis brings the ego to its knees, drops the scales off the eyes of dulled sightedness. Crisis propels us to turn within and listen to deep feeling states then to dreams. Once we have been humbled, suffered, the ego hangs its head, and the mind opens to dreams and spirits.

Life-Changing Energies

The unconscious mind is the repository of life-changing energies, spirits that positively touch our hearts or seek to possess us. There are those who delve into this inner world for power. Low-level spirits are associated with power grabs. As a visionary thrillers writer, I sensitize the reader to dark spirits, power grabs, and decisions.

Life is a matter of dreams, crisis, and conjured spirits. Choices determine outcomes. Ego centered decisions conjure low-level spirits in dreams as seducers, rushes of wild and purposeless energy, or a black and hopeless abyss. These are the lures of destructive spirits.

Mysterious Spirits

Visionary thrillers are an imaginative adventure. We are visionaries, dreams gifts, visions while sleeping. As humans, we are a mix of where we have come from and what we’ve done about it. It’s the doing about it, that visions of the night, dreams address. Life is a visionary thrill ride, and dreams point the way.

The unconscious world of spirits teeming with nighttime visions help you live out your story and make decisions that conjure spirits light and dark, scary, and mysterious.

So, let’s together explore the world of dreams, spirits, and the unconscious mind. As a depth psychologist of forty years, I’ll share insights and hard-won truths. Stories I have written and psychotherapy and life experiences will be woven into the articles. If you haven’t already, sign up today for my newsletter, and let’s begin this journey into mind, dreams, and spirits.

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

 

 

 

 

Dreams, Visionary Horror, and Covid-19

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Dreams and Covid-19

My literary research jettisons out of personal life experience, clinical psychotherapy, and dreams. Patients have suffered cruelties at the hand of the dark side of life. They hid their suffering, or they’d be shamed. Today, amid the Covid-19 crisis, people are shaming people. Patients report nightmares of rampant disregard for social distancing, mask-wearing, and avoiding nonessential activities. Low-minded individuals let down their guard and consciousness about human welfare and safety. Nightmares kick in in terms of actual infections soaring and the unconscious mind reeling against the darkness in human nature. People are scared. Dreams confirm their right to be scared— people want to disregard what is good and safe so they can do as they please. It’s scary.

Visionary Horror and Covid-19

Reading visionary horror resets the mind. My novels focus on the horror of the dark side of religion, but power is power. Whether in the realm of religion, politics, business, or family power is at work. It can be good or bad. The one that wins depends on the one fed. That’s the horrifying reality brought close up and personal in the reading of visionary horror.

There are scary things in life. Read, live, and get real about scary things. That includes Covid-19. Dreams and nightmares got your back. Be open and they’ll speak to you, confirm there is dark spiritual dimension behind bad things in life. The Covid-19 crisis, the crisis of religion gone bad, and the megalomaniac politicians’ crises are scary things in life. They spring from bad seeds of hatred, sown, and nurtured.

I’ve been criticized for writing visionary horror to teach psychological truths. Folks have said I should just write stories without having an agenda, a moral in mind. Hogwash! We all have agendas, and mine is to help us all see clearly and live as healthily and safely as possible. Visionary horror takes daily happenings, dream scenarios, and cold-sweat nightmares and charges them up into hyperreality. Then horror births visionary potential for consciousness and transformation.

Unseen Dimensions During Covid-19

William James, the father of American Psychology, wrote that an invisible dimension affects everything in life, daily happenings, decisions, and determines one’s destiny and fate. In everyday life, the supernatural is subtle. As for the Covid-19 crisis, bad politics, and the dark side of religion, they fundamentally spring from spiritual contagion. Our world, politics, economics, and religion are out of balance. Hateful attitudes have been loaded at toxic levels into our heads and psychic bloodstreams. If we close our eyes and pretend it’s not real, then we’re complicit.

Images and metaphors in visionary horror are powerful conveyances of truths. Truth loaded into visionary horror affects us whether we realize it or not. Images stream into our psychic bloodlines and make their way into our attitudes, perspectives, and emotions. Getting onboard a visionary thriller is a potent dose of psychological medicine to blow out mental pathways of denial. Bad things happen to innocent people. The right literary medicine lets us see clearly, so we stand a better chance of being good and decent human beings.

“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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