Given that this is obviously masterbatory, I’ll toss off behind the cut.

Takes from the reader’s forum:

[...]It had an element of psychological horror that I think approaches what Dean Koontz is able to do in his books, only this was like reading just the climax of a Dean Koontz novel–without all the endless preaching and the bashing over the head with the “moral.” So a thumbs up.

[...]This was a horror story which remained largely sexual throughout, but used the erotic aspects to build the nightmare. I also found the concept absolutely fascinating and original [...] A unique idea and well executed.

[...]strongly reminded me of “Cupid and Psyche,” and with a beautifully deft touch, as well. Really, really enjoyed that one.

Stress begets angst.
Angst acts as an obstacle in the path of correct action.
Suppress the angst by role-playing that it doesn’t exist.
Suppression of emotional response begets stress.
With the suppression of the angst, it is possible to dispassionately act on the initial stress.
The initial stress gone, the angst dissipates.

The stress born of the suppression remains, but no longer has cause with the initial stress gone, the angst born of it gone, and so the suppression no longer necessary.
This stress begets angst.
Suppress the angst… producing tertiary angst.
And fail to act on the secondary stress, as there is no longer a cause for it.
Keep the initial suppression angst.
Keep the secondary suppression angst.
Experience stress as a result.

Cycle until explosive decompression resets the internal pressures.

There may be some sort of a problem with this practice.  I believe that I’ll be working on a new syllogism.

Today is going well. I hummed. Left alone and continuing to thrive, there was a small field of “dah-doo-wah” around me. And then,

Does your girlfriend got the butt? Tell her to shake it, shake it –

– in my best lounge singer voice.

At work.

Er. I’ll just go back to humming for a bit, I think.

From Phylameana:

The bat totem can trigger change or transformation. Its visit can be a warning that change will soon occur and not to be afraid. Sometimes the bat is a symbol for facing ones fears. It can also indicate a time of an awakening because the bat, a nocturnal mammal, awakens in the dark. Its presence can illuminate dark shadows. It can also be a sign of opportunity.

…and from StarStuffs….

Initiation, death-rebirth, changes are taking place which are blessings, facing facts in ones life, fears are always beneficial, trust instincts. Bat tells us it the end one phase of life and the beginning of another. Bat can show how to navigate in the dark and unknown. Soon you will see the world with a new perspective, teaches sensitivity to vibrations around you, navigation, introspection and demonstrates ability of observation and power of meditation and solitude along with ability of working in groups when necessary. Bat shows how to make those important transitions.

…and Shamanic Journeying….

Bat’s wisdom includes shamanic death and rebirth, initiation, viewing past lives, pollination of new ideas, transition, understanding grief, the use of vibrational sound, camouflage, invisibility, ability to observe unseen, secrets. [...] Bats help us to release fear and patterns which no longer fits within our pattern of growth.

Bat flying into your life signifies that transformation of the ego self is about to occur, the end of a way of life and the start of another. This transition can be very frightening for many, even just to think about. But you will not grow spiritually until you let go these old parts of you that are NOT NEEDED. Facing the darkness before you will help you find the light in rebirth. The bat gives you the wisdom required to make the appropriate changes for the birthing of your new identity.

If this is your power animal, you would benefit from all types of yogic practices, especially those to do with awakening the kundalini. [...]

There was this one bit, in the workshop….

It’s difficult to say exactly what this was for, or what it did. All I can report is that it appears to have done something in [balancing me/adjusting my perspective/clearing old thought forms/cheering me up].

These days I’m all about What Works, rather than What I Can Reproduce And Explain Empirically. So.

This was the procedure.

0. Determine a focus, a situation that is unsatisfying and would do well with restructuring, or with a new resoltuion
1. Select three cards from a tarot deck
2. In order of selection, dub them “Beginning, Middle, End”
3. Write a story with a paragraph devoted to each card, relating allegorically to what was determined in step 0; you have 15 minutes. Start with “Once upon a time”, to encourage you to not recite history, but something removed from it a step or two.
4. Read the story aloud, preferably to someone else.
5. Remark (or let your audience remark) on the indirect cues, ie tone of voice, patterns of emphasis, facial expressions, change in diction or meter or whatever might indicate emotional emphasis
6. Rewrite the story; same three cards, same step 0, same order, but resulting in a victorious or positive story; you have 15 minutes.

This should not produce anything but two hastily-written stories. In fact, the outward signs are two hastily-written stories. I seem to have found something more in the exercise, though.

My step 0: “I haven’t been writing, or doing much of anything else for me. I love writing, I feel good when I do it or have done it. Now most obstacles are out of my way and … I am still not writing.”

I drew from an animal-oriented deck.
The Wheel, showing all animals
Eight of wands, showing ants trudging in a labyrinth
Nine of swords, showing a crow on a shattered stump, lightning behind him

First round:

One upon a time –

–there was a man who could be anything. The secrets of how to share the strength of all things was his when he could focus to employ it, to take part. He knew to soar, and how, what it was to play and frolic in the waves or dance through the plains. The myriad possibilities were overwhelming to him; with all good things open to him, how could he choose what was right and proper to do? And the maelstrom of potential success and fulfillment bewildered him.

There were those in his life that he had chosen to love, and they had their own abilities and problems, different from his. They could do for themselves, but they chose not to — for whatever reasons — and so were unhappy. The man (who could be anything) decided to help his loved ones, and do for them what they did not do for themselves. Their needs were not sated, but multiplied, so the man split himself endlessly in the form of millions of ants, to fetch and find and carry and dig and care for. Soon there was nothing of him that was not split among the millions of ants.

The world, in form of a mighty black bird, found ants nourishing and pecked away at the man. Little by little, his split power and self was eaten until there was only an ant left. He took shelter in a tree, but the storms and the bird tore at it until it was shattered and uprooted, and he was trapped.

…

Okay, my inner 16 year old was alive and well. I got that.

I was paired with a lovely woman about thirty years my senior. We traded thoughts (having written oddly similar stories) and then rewrote.

Take 2:

Once upon — you know.

There was a man who could see the world. He not only could see what was in it, but could see the patterns of how it moved, and understood the reasons and the ultimate good of it. Knowing these things split him endlessly at first, but understanding the patterns of all things, he was able to guide his attention into a new vision of order, a grand march of majestic grace and power.

There were malefic entities in the world, and these took the form of the tiniest of creatures; ants. The endless scattered ants of trivial pain and petty frustrations bit at him, ran at the edge of his awareness and distracted him. With his new understanding of the patterns of all things, hew as not moved to resentment or anger — that burden would be too great, and not needed — but recognized that the pettiness and trivia need not be so great. He spun his understanding, guiding the ants through a labyrinth of his intention, spinning off the malefic portion each carried and leaving the ants to be merely ants, a part of the whole.

The trivial pains and petty frustrations he gathered up and laid at the base of the rotted stump of the tree of good and evil, piercing it through nine times (once for each of the charms Oden learned on that tree, so long ago) to hold them in place; if they needed to be malefic, they could do it there. Seeing that he had freed not just himself, but the ants as well (and perhaps even the malefica, which wants its own poisoned kind for company) he took wing — for understanding can let one do that — and returned to the majestic grace of all things, to see how he could take part in the beauty of the interwoven patterns.

…

So here’s the odd bit:

I’ve been writing, now.

I wonder if I’ll ever be smart enough to understand how this stuff works.

Define the situation
Determine what actions are creating non-optimal results
Recognize the stimulus that provokes actions
Consider alternate actions that will either preempt the situation or change the reactions to the stimulus
If you’re really on your game, you think up indicators that will mark success

This is, necessarily, a drawn out process. One has to define the world, define oneself, reformulate based on hypothesis, and then change with no more motivation than a willingness to see something new happen — which usually (again, my experience) means gritting one’s teeth and carrying through the new actions without feeling motivated to do so.

And, natch, it doesn’t work terribly efficiently, people being ineffective at concision. A lack of accurate or complete concept at any step will cause trickle-down faults.

I imagine hypnotherapy varies widely from provider to provider, and possibly from application to application. But. What was done with me was asking me to set a scene from my actual past. This was analyzed briefly for relevance and proximity to my issue-origins. When the scene was revealed as not actually terribly close to the origin, we went further back, finding related scenes closer in, and so forth. Eventually a scene came to light in which formulation of behavior was still taking place, and then a fictitious scene was improvised wherein I was asked to step in as my adult self and redirect my younger self.

I’m fairly good at visualization and role-playing, so this was an actual experience for me. The result was that I actually experienced a rewriting of what actually happened, and, without necessarily thinking much about it, carried forward an altered experience of events that I shuffled into my existing life, which provided slightly altered reactions to current events, and when new actions were called for, slightly different motivations were present to let me make changes with greater ease.

What, I wondered, was the difference between the two methods? Both found the situation, the stimuli, the reactions, the new actions.

One was explicit. One was subtextual and inclusive by implied relation, based on a gestalt.

I think I get it.

Talking things out, thinking them out, is only as useful as the thinking. Acting something out includes many factors that are not necessarily consciously considered, and so factors that are not known, not acknowledged, or poorly understood while acknowledged as significant are all worked into the solution. Everything, every action in the scene became symbolic. The symbols bore the meaning they did because I assigned the symbols and took their meaning they had without my having to formulate it in words, thereby granting each symbol and symbolic act greater bandwidth and greater impact because of that.

Magic.

Good stuff. I approve.

I write the words
Tracing paths of golden pollen on the page

I write in beauty
Beauty in the sentence before me
Beauty in the sentence behind me
Beauty on the next page
Beauty on the page before

And in beauty will I edit
And in beauty will I edit
And in beauty will I edit
And in beauty will I edit

The writing magic raises me in its pen
And I am come to the page, blessed

Sa’ah naaghéi, Bik’eh hózhó

Apparently, what I’ve done is go to the foundation of many of my behaviors, lifted the edifice, and pulled out the chunk of gravel that was caught under the sill. When you put the building back, it’s the same building, but just that tiny bit more level, more stable, and when you stand on the dining room table and dump out a crate of ping pong balls, they will bounce in slightly different patterns than they used to. And the plumbing is less prone to leaking.

Erm. Perhaps not the most facile metaphor, but one gets the idea.

I had session 2 last night. I noticed just as many — or more — things about the basis of my behaviors, and was more involved in the forward motion (since I understood the process better), but there was nothing … well, nothing world-shaking or traumatic. I think I may have found an awareness of the one or two bits in my head that relate to me going all stupid periodically, and what I have left is the settling of everything that used to rest on those, and the trickle-down effects that will continue to manifest as I, ah, *waves hands about, looking for a word*, re-collate myself.

This sort of business is difficult to relate, I’m finding.

In any case. Beneficial. Useful. Clarifying. Empowering (however much I hate the overcommon usage of that word).

In conclusion (to paraphrase Libby, that darlingest of rock-stars), I have eaten my inner child, I am Iron Man, and my head is a light bulb — all of which, on reflection, makes me wonder if it is the surreal aspect of this approach that makes it so much easier to move forward.

So.

I’m wondering how much of my current amiable aimlessness has to do with the fact that, until recently, the majority of my behaviors were determined by pathological means. Take away the pathology and I can no longer recognize a motivation — that is, I can’t recognize a motivation that doesn’t show up with several unseemly friends, lightly slapping a billy club against its leg while it asks me to come play.

This would seem to be a training issue, if so. I can do that. I’m a fair wonder at learning new patterns.