Archive for category: Writing

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

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

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

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

Live Deeply . . . Ready Daily!

Holidays: Demons, Angels, and the Dance

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Holiday Angels and Demons

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

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

Holiday Metaphysical Thrills and Chills

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

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

Paranormal Party Time

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

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

Let’s Do The Holiday Dance

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

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

Return to Your Own Center

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

 

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

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

 

 

 

 

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

The God of Fire

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God is Charged

The word God stirs people, sometimes sets off explosive or loving feelings. It gets a reaction, either good, bad, or indifferent. In depth psychotherapy and writing, I help folks explore shock, trauma, and healing both emotionally and spiritually. Simply saying “God” is meaningful to different people in different ways, and that is to be respected.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American transcendentalist philosopher wrote in The Over-Soul, “How dear, how soothing to man, arises the idea of God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments! When we have broken our god of tradition and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his presence.”

A Fire in the Heart

My novel, The Unholy, generated quite a reaction among traditional religious people. Some posted angry reviews that I dared explore the dark side of religion. They were upset, some enraged. I meant no ill will. Metaphysical thrillers make us ponder and question religious matters, human feelings, and the meaning of life. Dramatic storytelling pops out the good and the bad. It sets a fire in the heart for matters authentic and sacred.

Goddess of the Wild Thing didn’t provoke the same outcry among hard-core religionists. The story is about complicated love, the dark side of religion not as upfront and center. However, this story is laced with religious trauma injuring the capacity to love. Traditional religion, the dark side of spirituality, has profoundly impacted relationships and life. The challenge for one woman is to find a way through her spiritual dilemma so that the potential for love can emerge.

My soon-to-be-released thriller, The Goddess of Everything, taps into compromised love – a heart divided. The power of the dark side of religion serves as a backdrop for conflict and hoped-for resolution. Husband and wife are nearly torn apart by the toxicity of a religious mother’s love gone bad.

The antidote, in all my stories, for religious wounding is fire in the heart. It is truth to self and to those who are themselves true. It is the experience of life, not perfect or without problems, but real and true and passionate. This is fire in the heart, this is God.

Visionary Fiction and the God of Fire 

In visionary fiction, novels of crisis and consciousness, fire sets each page ablaze. We’re challenged to let go of what no longer works for us, including dead ideas about religion and God. God, as Emerson addresses, is accessed only by shedding lifeless traditions and rhetoric. God isn’t in the dogma, tradition, or rhetoric. God is, in Emerson’s words, ” . . . the infinite enlargement of the heart with a power of growth  to a new infinity on every side.” Step into infinity on every side, discover the God of Fire, as the imaginary realm of visionary fiction draws you in and nourishes your soul.

“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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