Novelist and Linguist

For this evening's meditation (April 4th), I wanted to know what I could do to make sure my two careers were on track. I have no strong ambitions for my linguist career right now, other than to make sure I continue to give Yap everything they need in the fastest and best way I can. I have a vague sense that my career track with Yap isn't all that secure -- after all, as a linguist I've been laid off twice now -- so I'm trying to ramp up the novelist career in the background, so that it will be there when / if I need it.

So tonight I did two readings & meditations:

The Novelist.

Where does it need to go? How can it get there?...

I feel definitely called to work on Mere America, and yet the sales are quite stubbornly failing to go anywhere -- it's not unrolling effortlessly. What needs to happen?...

I know how it feels when things unroll effortlessly. It happened with Alison. I've got so much stuff going on in the sky now, all this energy -- and I feel like perhaps I'm blocking it or something.

Reading:
9 of Vajras <- Hermit -> The Father (Heirophant)

In this deck, the Hermit is 2 figures, the Old Man and the Monk. The Old Man looks & comments towards the 9 Vaj, and the Monk towards the Heirophant.

9 Vajras (swords) is traditionally a nasty card, the dark night of the soul, the despair that comes from loss of all hope. The Old Man leans that way. I'm not sure what part of myself that represents, unless it's the part that is afraid to quit my job, or afraid that I will never be a successful author. I'll meditate there. The 9 vajras in this deck is a snake eating the sun and moon, which may echo the 'eclipse' imagery I got back in Feb.

Meanwhile the Monk is looking towards the Father. The feeling I get here is that the Father energy is something I'm very comfortable with, that I have no problem bringing to bear on the problem. Witness for example the email I wrote to KL this evening, in which I gave her 'fatherly' advice about her writing services. The question then is exactly what the Monk is up to. ...It seems like I might get to visit the Hermit again in meditation. :-)

So that's what I did. I returned to his tower in the Forest of Branching Paths (which I'd first visited last summer, when I was working on that whole 'deserving success' issue), and he introduced me to the old man first. The old man was old because his energy was spent moving from task to task, never setting his burden down or allowing the gods to carry it for a while. It ran him to age and thus to dust. Definitely a warning. :-) The alternative: the monk (who was a young man, dressed in red, with black eyes dotted with stars), who has infinite strength because the gods do his heavy lifting. It's a matter, he said, of taking the time to rest, recharge, and allow the gods space to work.

He showed me a doorway that led to a room where sunlight was falling from high, high above. This room was at the bottom of a tall tower. All up the sides of the tower spiraled a wooden staircase, and I started climbing it. I climbed forever and ever... Flying wasn't going to work. At last I arrived at the last place I expected -- the top of the tower mentioned in this meditation, the Man of the Delta. Everything was pretty much the same there, but now I understood it to be a very 'high vibration' place, at the same level as some of the other landscapes I've been visiting recently (more on that another time). My sense was that I should visit this area more often, and work with the two men here (who I now understand to be reflexes of the "two" hermits in the tower below).

My big take-away is to allow the father energy, Apollo's energy, to work through me. With rest, exercise, and meditation, the energy will flow and everything will unfold the way it should.

MAN I feel so much better after doing that!!

The Linguist.

Then I did the meditation on Yap. I expected the readings to be related, so I did nothing to wash the older energies away, but went directly to the new reading.

Buddha of Double Vajras <- 1st Sermon -> 5 Jewels

The pictures give an impression of the discerning teacher between two options -- the Buddha of Double Vajras, which is a watery father figure that I often instantiate, and the 5 Jewels, which I take to be myself dragged down by stress and toxins (as usually happens after a research conference). Yap's greatest purpose is for me to help people with my watery goodness, which I take to be linguistics here, while not allowing it to drag me down. The 1st Sermon (in which we talk about release from attachment and the 8fold path) helps us out here. It's a matter of discipline, but more deeply, a matter of breathing life / spirit into the work.

In meditation on this I was pulled immediately to the Bear's temple, which I felt moved to relocate: I realized that the place it was planted was basically unhealthy, and had too much rot and disease in the forest around it. Not sure what can be done to fix that, but in any case I felt a better place for the temple was directly over the Bear's original cave, on the grassy sward! So now the bear has her own temple right over her home. An excellent place to go and feel the Bear's energy there. Again, rather than getting action steps, by connecting with the energy I felt that the direction would be shown when the time comes. I just need to connect more. I can instantiate the Bear (especially in its fertile / protective aspect) for Yap by maintaining my connection to Spirit, and acting as Yap's connection when necessary.

As a result of these, I was definitely inspired to work on regularizing my daily schedule and doing more exercise and consistent sleep and meditation.