S/He Dragon

As a young girl, starting at age 9, I experienced my own “behind the walls” bouts with depression. I never lashed out at others. I took the dark times out on myself hitting bathroom walls with fists, choking down sobs so I couldn’t be heard, and feeling so miserable that I thought I wanted to die. How could a young girl be so dramatic and dark emotionally? As a teenager I was very moody and remember having arguments with my high school sweetheart and running away. In the middle of a city I jumped out of the car and ran. I had no experience communicating feelings within my family and thus no experience communicating feelings with him. In fact, I never learned to communicate my feelings to myself! How could I when I didn’t know inner emotion and logic existed? My fight response was in the bathroom and my flight response was with my boyfriend. This pattern lacked boundaries as I had no way to determine when feelings ended and logic began and when logic ended and feelings began. These threads of my psyche entangled in a choking web that would reveal itself later in life through co-dependent relationships and compulsive eating patterns. Mood swings and depression eased up when I “saw the Light” at age 25 and learned I was more than my feelings, thoughts and actions. As a spiritual Being of Light expressing through matter in human form, I could observe myself from a place of non-attachment. From this observation point I watched positive and negative emotions dance in dynamic tension. This energy-in-motion (e-motion) created an upward spiral of evol/change, different than the downward spiral of evil/stagnation. What makes the difference? In my experience the answer is simple: Light! Letting emotional energy move moment by moment, day by day, is critical to self-awareness and healing. I know this spiral dance. It moves circularly like the medicine wheel and begins in the East.

artistic brushstroke pulling, pushing e-motion like a wheel cultivating, turning the soil of my being a massage of the soul moving me toward wholeness toward Light

The wheel of life begins its cycle in the East of sunrise with emotional stirring underground. This awakening phase initiates a process of ascension, growth and unfoldment. From East I move South knowing emotion as bright, happy and sunny. I express this weather pattern knowing sooner or later it will shift. How do I know? Because someone told me or I read it in a book? No. The only way to know anything is to experience it—again and again. This is how I know South shifts, moving me West, where more alchemical change takes place. Here brightness decreases and temperatures drop, in synch with setting sun. From West, emotion moves North turning cold, dark and void. Years ago I would stay frozen in North for days in what felt like a cave of gravity, dripping heaviness on mind and body. There were days that I could not get out of bed or leave the house. It was uncomfortable, yet I reminded myself it would soon be sunny again. That didn’t diminish the intensity, however. My ongoing mantra was, “The higher I fly, the lower I dive.” Now, many years later, I do not experience North’s dark depression the same way. Now the circular wheel moves more smoothly, weather patterns more integrated with Light. It is a relief when Northern alchemical pressure lifts and I move again into East of sunrise, with expanded horizon in view. Here, I am new, transmuted by alchemical elements and the four directions, East, South, West and North, on a never ending upward spiral.