Règle de Reine

"On a high throne, looking into a clouded sky, sits a queen with a raised sword in her left hand. This suggests, 'Let those approach who dare!'

Her crown and the base of her throne are decorated with the butterflies of the soul, and just under the arm of the throne we find a sylph, the elemental of the air. The queen's face is chastened through suffering.

Choose this card for a brown-haired, brown-eyed woman.

Divinatory Meaning: A subtle, keen, and quick-witted woman who may represent a widow or one who is unable to bear children. Perhaps she is mourning for those she loves who are far away from her.

Reversed: Unreliability. Narrow-mindedness. Gossip. Deceit. Malice. A woman of artifice and prudery."*

- - -

"The Queen of Swords indicates a woman who is blessed (or cursed) with sharp perception, and highly honed intuition. She is acutely analytical, with a razor-sharp ability to get to the heart of a situation, seeing exactly what is, rather than what others would wish her to see.

She is a private woman, unwilling to let people too close to her until she is satisfied she thoroughly understands their motivations. But once won as a friend, she is unfailingly loyal, honest and supportive.

She's usually very intelligent, with a dry sense of humour. Her penetrating insight will often reveal aspects of themselves to others that they had previously been unable to grasp - thus she is a capable therapist, teacher or leader.

The woman represented by this card will be experienced in the flow of life, understanding a great deal about both the great triumphs, and the deepest failings of the race. Her clarity and measured expression will be of great value at times of confusion and sadness.

Sometimes in a reading, this card will turn up to indicate a woman in a particular phase of her life, where she temporarily becomes a Sword as a result of what is happening to her. In that case the card is not quite so positively defined, for it can indicate a woman left alone, and perhaps embittered. She may be a widow, or a woman passing through the aftermath of divorce.

In this case we often see the more negative aspects of the Queen - coldness, judgmentalism, criticism. At these times there is a certain sourness about her, with cynicism and sharpness making themselves felt.

It should be said that these qualities are inherent to the woman who is a Queen of Swords by nature too - if the woman concerned has not evolved sufficiently you will often find that the card represents a person who is hard and cold toward others."**

- - -

My guards are rising.

I can feel them going up, even though I know I'm desperate for the opposite.

Old habits die hard, I guess.

I want to say, Come in, come in. You're welcome here.

But the barbed wire I surround the gates with are less beckoning than my whole-hearted appeal.

You're welcome inside, as long as you don't hurt my pride.

And I wonder why the signals are always crossed.

- - -

I know I am meant to be happy.

I just haven't found anyone yet to bring me that happiness.

* Gray, Eden. A Complete Guide to the Tarot. New York: Bantam, 1972. Print.
** (source)

0104-b: Identity Crisis/Great Expectations

Last night's  journal entry made it clear to me that I really did not know myself very well, despite what I firmly believed.

I still look to others to tell me who I am, to give me a definition of myself so I know what the expectations around my neck are.

I often measure myself up to other people who share my birthday, holding myself accountable for insurmountable achievements that or on par with those of Yves Saint Laurent, Frances Scott Key, Herman Mellville, William Clark, Dom DeLuise.

Doing this only makes me feel even more at a loss at discovering my true self.

I've yet to accomplish any great feats my birth date brothers have accomplished before me, leaving me feeling only more like a failure, like I'm not meeting the maximum capacity of the potential bestowed upon me right at birth.

Instead of becoming obsessed with this realization, I decided to catalogue what I do know about myself.

So while in bed, I took out a sheet of paper and began jotting things down.

The following is what resulted.

WHO THE FUCK AM I??
a map of Jun Belisario

Granted, I couldn't get every last piece of who I am fitted into the 8.5" x 11" borders, but the general ideas of my persona are there.

Hopefully with this better knowledge of myself, I can put these qualities to good use and do something great with them, because it's about time I make my own great achievements to which other people can measure themselves up.

0104-a: Snake Skin

I went to Starbucks today to see if I could make sense out of the uncertain chaos going on in my life.

After yet another failed attempt for human company, I tidied up my room a bit (moved a pile of clothes from one spot and moved it to another) to the old, familiar, comforting sounds of Death Cab for Cutie's  "Transatlanticism."

After accomplishing that task, I crumpled onto the floor, my back against my sliding closet doors, as I tried to make sense of what was going on with my life as the mellow, poignant tunes of Death Cab continued to play.

Finally after a long moment of self-pity I decided, I don't need anyone to escort me through my life, and got up to head to the neighborhood Starbucks on my own.

Armed with cigarettes, my Gold card, one of my trusty journals, and two pens (hey, you never know), I grabbed my usual venti soy green tea latte at 140° and a table outside and got to writing to sort out the heavy cloud of thoughts I had floating in my head.

At a point where it felt like my life had fallen off the tracks, I originally wanted to write about what I was going to do to help myself get back in order.

But knowing the way life goes on (especially my own), I ended up writing about something else, touching on something much deeper that was going on in my psyche.

The following is the journal entry that transpired from this event.

0104 — 0550PM

I don't know what to do with my life.

A common theme, at least I'm sure it's something with which the pages of this journal is not unfamiliar.

I've been here before. This chaotic feeling of being all out at sea is not foreign to me whatsoever.

Regardless, I am still unnerved by this overpowering notion that the ground I've put myself on is still rocky, still unstable — ready to crumble from the immense weight of uncertainty I carry, ready to allow the earth to swallow me whole with no trace of me left for others to find.

Yes, I've been in this same situation before.

These raw feelings of being vulnerable and bare I still find uncomfortable, no matter how many times I've already come face-to-face with them.

It feels as if I'm shedding an old layer of skin to make room for a new one.

It is within this awkward, transitory process do I find myself naked and vulnerable. While having outgrown another layer of my life, I feel I am not ready to take on a new one.

I would very much like to hold on to that old layer of skin because it is there that I find secure protection.

I've earned that layer of skin I'm now trying to shed.

I've earned its experience, earned its knowledge and wisdom.

Earned everything that came with the life I lead while wearing it.

Everything I absorbed from life while living in that skin is what made it tough. The knowledge, the familiarity, the undoubted certainty -- everything that came with the passage of time -- made that skin my protector, my shell.

Those experiences helped to shape me, gave me an identity to show the world around me.

Told me who I was, where I stood.

My strengths. My flaws.

The overall quality of my existence so I knew how I measured up to those by whom I was surrounded.

Now that the powers that be have decided that it's time for me to shed that skin I had grown into, grown comfortable with after all this time, not only am I afraid of feeling raw and vulnerable once more, but also I wonder: who am I going to be once I lose that piece of me?

Despite my immense desire to understand the unknown (especially if it comes with the advantage of personal growth), I'm frightened by the possibility that after all these years of self-introspection and psychoanalyzation, I still don't understand myself at all.

I still look to outside sources to figure out who I am.

I guess in my desire to be a part of this world, I seek out ways to define myself in their terms.

A gay male.

A Leo.

A Rabbit.

A schizoid with minor psychopathic tendencies.

These are definitions made by other people that I assign to myself, believing in the knowledge of others as a means to understand myself instead of going straight to the source.

Because the truth of the matter is: I don't even know myself.

But then again, does anyone know their selves at such an intense and intimate level similar to what I am in pursuit of with myself?

It's very rare, if not impossible, to come in contact with an individual who knows everything about them self whole-heartedly.

For one, not many out there are willing to exchange their vision of the world around them for a closer look inside themselves.

They might already be too preoccupied with their outside world, too involved with the external to even consider the internal.

Or they may have already taken a peek at who they are inside, and either they were satisfied with the superficial snapshot of what they saw and moved on, or they saw something in themselves that frightened and discouraged them from the possibility of deeper exploration of their psyche.

Also, because of our resilient and pliable nature, it may very well be impossible for anyone to completely know their selves entirely.

As we move through life, we grow. We change. We are not always the same.

The beliefs, ideals, and understandings we hold on to one moment may not be the same ones to which we subscribe the next, or years after.

Because of the infinite possibilities bestowed upon us and the forward, linear fashion of our existence, our movement through life, we will never fully explore all the avenues within our grasp, therefore unable to fully understand the limits of our capacity, our actions, our thoughts, our essence — in short, the whole of our being.

Knowing this, however, has still yet to prevent me from attempting to wholly explore and understand myself with what I know and what I've been given.

I could have gone on and on, but unfortunately due to my body's design, my hand was already exhausted.

Also, I became distracted by the goings on of Facebook via my cell phone, so I decided there would be a good stopping point for that entry.

Going back to what I originally planned on writing about: my life being a jumbled mess of sorts.

Now that I'm officially no longer in school, it's as if my life is one big open road with just me behind the wheel.

While other people take solace in that and often doggedly pursue to be in a situation like that with their own lives, it has the opposite effect on me.

In all honesty, it scares the shit out of me.

I'm a person who craves structure.

Being the schizoid that I am, knowing all the predetermined rules and boundaries of a situation helps to make me feel safe and secure (then my minor psychopathic tendencies kick in so I can manipulate known variables toward my favor).

That's just the nature of my individual life's philosophy that I've willingly accepted.

I'm used to having life being dictated for me (under my conscious decisions to pick and choose my actions, of course), used to having schedules and tasks and preset expectations that I can meet and/or exceed.

This creates something of a bubble for me, if you will. An environment where I know what is expected, and thus, in control.

Take that bubble away and give me the freedom to choose where to go next in life with some dire and pressing points to consider, and I will inevitably choke.

I don't know where this fear of making my own decisions for myself stems from, because I know it's apparent that I have a mind of my own and am deftly capable of picking and choosing things of my interest or benefit.

However, when it comes to the huge, life-changing decisions, that's the part I always have the most trouble with.

I've experienced this before, after graduating from high school. Instead of going back to college immediately that fall, I decided to continue working my part-time retail job and wasting time.

Sure, I had a general idea of going to massage school, but I sat on that for two-and-a-half years before I eventually got myself around to enrolling.

Now that massage school is over, I'm back to square one. Back to trying to figure out what new direction to take my life on next.

I have yet another general plan, one I've already shared with countless others.

I've already publicly made known what my intentions were after finishing massage school, so not following through with them will only make me feel like a fraud, fill me with humiliation over the fact that I am unable to follow through with what I've set out to do in the first place.

I have the resources ready to get the ball rolling in that direction, so why I am hesitating?

Going back to what I've written earlier today about feeling like a snake shedding its skin. That's exactly what it is, where I am in life at the moment.

I'm being forced to outgrow my old skin (the safety and structure of going to massage school) to make room for a new one.

The only problem is that I don't know exactly what this new skin is meant for.

All I know is that I'm at a point in my life where things are fresh, the opportunities abound, and I'm still standing in the hallway, wondering which door to pick.

It's as if a burden has been lifted from my shoulders after completing school, only to have another, weightier load placed on my back— the weight of the world.

The question is not what am I now supposed to do with it, but rather, how can I get my fickle ass to make a decision?

That remains to be an unsolved mystery.




(another topic begs a response [just who the fuck am I?], but that's for another journal entry...)

The Lion Takes Center Stage

As the Sun moves around the zodiac, it spends about one month in each sign. On July 22, it moved from the deeply feeling sign of Cancer the Crab and into the limelight-loving sign of Leo the Lion! Whatever your sign, you'll definitely feel the influence as Leo adds sizzle to the summer and kicks the mood up a couple notches ...

The Sun is in Leo until August 22, and you couldn't ask for a more exciting sign to see us through the hottest month of summer! That's because Leo's element is Fire, and like fellow Fire signs Aries and Sagittarius, Leo is all about living in the moment! This Fire sign's ability to go from the gut can make it seem impulsive, but actually, Leo is incredibly intuitive.

To Leo, all the world's a stage -- and Leo would always like to be in the spotlight! For this reason, the Lion can come across as image-conscious, but make no mistake: regal Leo is no narcissist. Like its symbol, Leo is proud and noble, has natural leadership skills and a deep loyalty to those it cares about.

Even for those of us who aren't Leos, the mood for the next month will still be much more social. Leo is the sign of celebration, encouraging us to plan summer festivities, poolside parties and spontaneous nights out. And as you get ready to hit the town, you might just find that the notoriously glam Leo influence has a lot to say about your wardrobe decisions: you may not have opted for shiny fabrics, metallics or "bling" in the past, but you'll suddenly find yourself drawn to more flamboyant fashion choices!

Leo is also a very theatrical sign, so keep the drama in check with friends, family and life in general. At the same time, enjoy the fast pace and high style of the next four weeks!

(source)

Jun Boy 101*

Wilhelm Reich believed that without suppressed feelings we would not have a character, as we know it. We would all be open, free and loving in our relationships and dealings with each other.

Suppressed feelings, on the other hand, inhibit the free flow of feeling energies in our body and this causes us in our social interactions to react subconsciously to our suppressed feelings rather than to the immediate situation at hand. The various forms of inhibition of the free and natural flow and expression of feelings in different individuals are their ‘character.’

Depending on the nature of our suppressed feelings, Wilhelm Reich and his followers in bio-energetic and other forms of psychodynamic bodywork commonly distinguish between five character structures: schizoid, oral, psychopathic, masochistic and rigid. Commonly we represent mixtures of two or more of these types but with one character type usually dominant.

THE SCHIZOID CHARACTER

In the schizoid individual the main emotional trauma occurred around the time of birth. This may have been a distressing birth process or hostility from one or both parents towards the baby, commonly the baby was unwanted and it felt abandoned by the mother, either physically or emotionally.

The baby deals with this by withdrawing into itself, closing itself off from the world. This same technique is then used in later life whenever the individual feels threatened. The basic subconscious fear or anxiety is the feeling of being unwanted, having no right to exist, a psychological split between the desire to live in the physical world and a wish to withdraw into the spirit world.

In communications with others this type tends to intellectualize and use impersonal language. The body structure is with elongated limbs and digits and weak joints, the body appears uncoordinated with right-left imbalances and often cold hands and feet. The energy structure is 'ungrounded' or 'airy-fairy' with frozen core energies. Schizoids tend to be rather spiritual and creative but in need of grounding and becoming an integrated whole.

Class dismissed.


* Last, Walter. "Character Structure: The Schizoid Character,"  The World of Feelings and Emotions. (source)

Room For Squares

I put people in boxes.

My incessant need to be hyperorganized carries into the social aspect of my life more than necessary, categorizing every single individual with whom I come into contact and saving each person as a file placed into a specifically-designated location on my social roster based on personal history, interactions, behaviors, and a heavily-weighted list of pros and cons in regards to my own personal growth.

The problem with this is that I am always caught off guard and never know how to best react when the boxes in which I place these people suddenly cease to reflect the ideals I had initially hung around their neck.

While I own the fact that I myself am volatile and inconsistent, it’s a harder pill to swallow when believing others are, as well.

I crave stability, consistency— mostly, I reckon, because I lack a lot of it in regards to the foundation of my own life, so I go looking for it through my relationships and daily interactions with other people.

There are persons in my roster who definitely fill the quota of the boxes in which I place them and seldom if ever exceed the expectations I have of them that come with having been placed in a specific box.

These are the people I tend to take for granted, not appreciating what their grounding impact possesses in my life until I am no longer on the receiving end of it, or when I begin to realize the other boxes have become too small or just wrong for those for whom I created it.

It’s not my nature to initially believe that everyone out there is a dynamic human being, each individual capable of change and transcendence.

I subconsciously prefer to seek out those who carry out their existence as means to portray the “background,” perhaps to give me a setting to prove my own character dynamics, or perhaps to feed into my Reichian character structure of the schizoid*.

I constantly seek to feel safe, and what better to provide me with a pacifying feeling than a calm and grounded person to off-set my volatile and inconsistent ways?

It is within this setting do I feel most safest, most myself.

This is perhaps the reason why although I enjoy the company and adventures of loud, outgoing people, I am never one-hundred percent content when I am with them and am, in fact, rather threatened and left feeling weak and vulnerable.

This feeling of vulnerability and overall notion of being at a loss affects me the most when the people I had categorized as calm and collected (or other variations of stability and groundedness) prove spontaneously to be other than what I had previously considered them to be.

Such an unexpected realization can have a profoundly traumatizing effect on my psyche. While it can be boiled down to something superficial as a freak-out (What happened? Who is this person?), its repercussions travel deeper than what my surface portrays.

You are not who I thought you were. Our relationship is a scam. I've lost my trust in you. I no longer feel safe with you.

Sadly this is an experience I keep going through repeatedly, sometimes with the same person, but I keep at it.

This process helps to reevaluate my relationship with someone, sometimes allowing to remove them from the box I originally placed them and moving them to a bigger box with more room to grow, more room for trust.

Other times upon reevaluation, the box is simply discarded altogether without second thought, along with the person it contained.

But it’s the most hardest when I have to force myself to move those from a box closest to my heart to another one much farther.



* see next post