October 20 has earned a place in my personal Dates to Remember calendar. Age has this effect: Over time, you start filling the calendar with dates that changed your life until it starts to look like a travel map, gradually changing from empty “places to go” to brightly colored “been there”s. If aging has any upsides, this process is easily one of my favorites. October 20, 2008 is when the smoke finally cleared and I knew I was going to make it.

Over the last year, as I went through the most intensely self-searching period of my life, I noticed a meme in various books and articles: Finding your personal philosophy, or defining your core beliefs and refining them to a statement or short list that can serve both as a richly evocative description of you and as a compass for your further development, helping you make choices based on those core ideals. I think of it as an internal integrity, something you seek to adhere to not for the sake of others who may be judging, but so that you can build self-respect through knowing you endeavor to live your own truth without compromise. I hope to begin to develop that statement/list here.

The turning point that began the span of the “18-month retrospective” is difficult to pin down to a precise moment or event. The life changing moment, my ex-roommate moving in, was 22 months ago, and the difficulties began to visibly intrude sometime last fall, so it’s a gray area. It wasn’t until she moved out and things exploded like a Howler from a Harry Potter movie (a slow-motion explosion that started, for me, in February with the final tatters drifting to the floor in May), that I began to see just how much knowing her had affected me. I have a long way to go, yet, in understanding everything, but knowing her has given me an astounding look at myself, my relationships, and my effect on other people. As painful as it was, neither of us ever intended to hurt the other, and in the end I can only be grateful for the wake-up call she inadvertently provided.

This is not the first time I’ve attempted to quantify the end results of that friendship, but it is the first time I’ve tried to whittle it down to key points, key epiphanies that will allow me to heal not only my own pain, but as much of the pain I’ve caused others as I will be permitted to do. It’s certainly the first time I’ve attempted to clarify several years’ worth of Meridjet-directed lessons into truly transformative assimilation and spirit-level change. While I would never be so arrogant as to suggest that past friends, enemies, and other people I’ve known only exist as tools in my evolution, you’ll forgive me if I’m limited to understanding only the effects that apply to me. How knowing me has affected anyone I know, for better or worse, is not for me to judge, and I certainly can’t presume to understand long-term effects I’m not privy to. So anything I refer to with regard to anyone else is only from the point of view of my necessarily-limited understanding, and is not meant to cause further harm. My concern with this post is only to understand the changes wrought within me, and the events of the past few days that seem connected.

I’ve mentioned before my longtime, even lifelong, need to find some perfect best friend who was as loyal and committed to me as I was to hir (a pronoun to avoid “him or her”). I remember the initial manifestation of this need when I was 16, when I was rebelling against authority and had fantasies of leaving home and backpacking across the U.S. with my then-best friend. When I was 23, I actually got rid of 99% of my possessions in an effort to live out that fantasy (with a different best friend). I had my car, we had a tent and clothes and a few odds and ends. It didn’t go so well, but it is a memory I treasure anyway. (Though I miss a lot of those possessions now; some were heirlooms.)

The need for a profound, ineffable bond never really left me after that, even after Meridjet came into my life. While the bond we share is profound and in many ways ineffable, I still craved a more tangible expression of that bond. Initially, upon meeting him, I had visions (or fantasies – there are elements of both) of an alchemical triad helping people find a way to connect with their true purpose. This was my version of the occult or New Age belief (which I have observed in countless practitioners) that one is an important element in the evolution of the Earth’s spirit. Whether you believe in the End Times/Rapture, the age of Horus, reincarnated or first-incarnated hotshots of various species, the shifting of the poles, the end of the Mayan and Aztec calendars, star children, Indigo children, Atlantis, the raising of human consciousness to new spiritual heights, Kryon and various channeled beings, or any of the dozens of other theories currently in play about something which everyone aware seems to feel is happening, most people involved in the esoteric arts at one time will believe that they have a crucial role in assuring the outcome of those events. The alchemical triad was mine, and it was somehow both vague and very specific. The triad consisted of me, Meridjet, and a third (my friend Xanquela, at first) who met with individuals, received a bit of energy (their inward yearning for something they couldn’t define), transmuted it alchemically by passing it through the triad, and then returned the energy to the individual with their purpose clarified. My youthful “best friend” had become “best friend/spiritual work partner.” The search continued.

The rest behind a cut. It gets long, so I’m going to use headers.

The Friend Parade

Linda

The next phase of that search began in 1999, which just happened to coincide with Meridjet’s return from the Abyss (another story) and my purchasing my first computer and putting my full attention on the internet. It was the same year I started daily ritual, the same year I publicly “outted” myself as having a spirit companion, the same year I met Donald Tyson, the same year I threw myself into developing my subtle senses. My best friend at the time when I transitioned from WebTV to computer was Linda. She was with me through the traumatic re-entry of Meridjet and my Kali initiation, through my successful quit of tobacco (after 25 years as a smoker), and she never wavered once no matter how heavy I got. In retrospect, I can say that it was very heavy, and I had no idea yet of how that felt for the person I leaned on. In time, life got in the way and we drifted. I was pulled into another friendship. Linda and I still talk a couple of times a year, and I credit her patience, because rejection at that time would have set a much different path for me.

Mana

My next best friend was purely online. She was a young girl from Lebanon, keenly intelligent and well traveled yet possessing a great deal of innocence in things both worldly and spiritual. She was my first Work partner since I’d moved away from Seattle (where I’d worked with Xanquela and Meridjet), and my first online Work partner. I leaned very heavily on her as well, and she was not equipped to handle it. I still had no idea what effect I was having – in fact, it would be years before I understood that. I grew increasingly demanding with her, and I could tell she was finding it difficult – I expected her to be there for me and reacted badly when she tried to have a real life outside of our friendship. She broke off the friendship just before she was due to come visit me in the U.S. I was devastated, completely crushed. I felt betrayed. Looking back, I am completely embarrassed and disgusted to admit that I behaved so badly.

Don, 2001-2003

During this time period, I wasn’t super close to anyone but I had many people I called my friends. I didn’t have a Work partner, though, and Meridjet was away for an extended period. I began to grow close to Don starting in early 2003, and he is another friend I can still call “true friend” today, a friend who survived my stumbles (and I theirs) and held on to the bond in spite of distance or conflict. In late 2003, I met Shelia.

Shelia

Shelia, last I heard, hates my guts and blames me for a lot of things that have happened to her. Some were definitely my fault, but others were not. Meridjet is directly responsible for bringing Shelia into my circle of trust. When she joined my spirit companion yahoogroup in the fall of 2003, it was at the same time as someone I’d known for a while already: Andrea. I was drawn to Andrea and seeking a new Work partner, and one day I started to tap her on IM with the intent of getting to know her better so I could see if we clicked. Meridjet stopped me and led me over to Shelia instead, so I tapped her and we started to talk.

Shelia’s spirit companion (SC) was a being she’d only interacted with in dreams (aside from rare conscious events she’d grown to disbelieve). She was very self-critical, constantly comparing herself and her experiences to others and their experiences. We started to talk a lot, and Meridjet got thoroughly involved, chatting nearly as often as I did. He began to work directly with her SC (D.) and to help Shelia learn to perceive D. while awake. She made amazing progress over the winter, and within six months of the day we’d met, she had come so far.

In fact, things had gone so well that I was in Blind Faith mode, trusting everything the spirits told us, and whenever there was conflict, my faith in the strength of the partnership and its “higher calling” would lead me to do whatever was necessary to get past the problem at hand and get on with it. My ability to experience emotional anguish without taking it very personally can be a big help in some ways, but in other ways it interferes with empathy, causing me to take the pain of others less seriously than I should. The partnership with Meridjet, me, Shelia, and D. entered a surreal, John Dee-esque phase (a comparison that only hit me just a second ago), and the spirits began to insist that we were to swap partners for sex. I am a monogamist by nature, because sex for me is emotionally driven and I have never found it easy to bond deeply with more than one partner at a time.

Unbeknownst to me, Shelia had a fantasy of her own. Whereas I had the need for the perfect friend, Work partner, and triad member (and thought I’d found it), Shelia had a deep desire for what she called a “trio.” To me, the word “trio” immediately got translated to “triad” and I thought we were on the same wavelength. During the negotiations, or pressure from the spirits, to find a way to manifest this partner-swapping idea, I fought it on the grounds that I was mortified to put myself into that vulnerable of a position with someone I didn’t care about (D.). I was scared. But I put my fear aside and tried to stay with it, because it was something Meridjet was asking me to do. I saw it as a sacrifice of my body, for him. Shelia, based on how she explained it to me later (and this may have changed since then), fought it because she deeply wanted this “trio” thing to happen but felt that it was unfair for her to use Meridjet to those ends. She told me she never had any intention of following through, but I was so focused on my belief that everyone would do what was necessary for the good of the all (I could so stomp and wave a flag here) that I never picked up on the underlying message. I never got that she was trying to avert emotional disaster. I also never got her fear of abandonment (a fear I’ve learned that I share).

One weekend, over Valentine’s Day 2004, suddenly the talk went to the next level. It started out with Meridjet going to her house and interacting with her while projecting his darkest energy. She likes that kind of energy, and she said he felt a lot like D. He spent hours there, and at one point he kissed her. She felt it as cold. (She’s the only one who’s ever perceived Meridjet as cold rather than warmth.) At the end of the night, he came home. I didn’t get to spend any time with him, and I was bummed. Shelia said later that she saw Meridjet’s visit to her as a gift to me, a gift of validation of his reality because she was able to perceive him. I saw it as him putting all his attention on her and spending no time with me. This is an important detail in the overall outcome of the holiday weekend.

The next night, Meridjet brought D. over here, where I spent some time relaying what I was seeing, hearing, and feeling back to Shelia. At the beginning of this night, I still saw the whole “swap” thing as purely idea, and didn’t really believe that it would ever happen. It was like a game – at first. Toward the end of the night, by which point Meridjet had taken over my side of the chat, he went from planning something with no definite date attached to planning something preparing to take place that night. I was suddenly much more nervous than before. Meridjet and Shelia talked it over, and she said she’d spoken about the situation with D. earlier. She and Meridjet agreed that D. was to spend the night here with me as part one of the swap. Meridjet would enter dreamtime with her and D. for part two on another night. There was no doubt expressed, and there was no dissent. We closed the chat with a group hug.

The next morning, as previously agreed, I sent Shelia a detailed email report of the night’s events as I had perceived them. I didn’t leave anything out. Perhaps I was naive to believe she would be objective, but that was only after I was naive and stupid enough to believe in the strength of some cosmic traid (read: WORK partnership) over my common sense. My sense of destiny had interfered, and with dramatic results. Aside from the details of the incident itself, I expressed my emotional response. I told Shelia that I felt closer to D. To me, this was positive, as the ability to open emotionally to someone I was intimate with showed that I had overcome my fear and anxiety. To her, it was a huge trigger, and things got very ugly very quickly. And the clincher was this: In my description of the night, I had relayed things Meridjet had said to me to help relax me during the encounter. Meridjet was not a participant, but we have a psychic and empathic link and he was able to comfort me within my own head. He “felt” like he was behind me, not physically but in a supportive sort of way, providing me with an emotionally secure cocoon.

Shelia translated the description of him being “behind” me as a completely different event. She thought I’d had sex with both of them at the same time. She kept going on and on about the “trio,” and I kept misunderstanding what she meant. The emails she sent me were very ugly. We parted ways and didn’t speak for six months. I wouldn’t understand what had happened til October or November.

Part 2 will be up in a bit.

5 Responses to “18-Month Retrospective is at Core of Personal Philosophy, part 1”

1. Soli says:

   23 October 2008 at 10:33 am

   I just want to say that I am often impressed with what you are willing to share with people. Self-examination isn’t easy, but even less so when it comes to the less than ideal periods.

   Reply
2. Ren says:

   23 October 2008 at 4:15 pm

   I’m impressed that you took the time to analyze this and think it through logically. I know that doing so is often draining. I, too, am touched that you shared this with others.

   Reply
3. sheta says:

   23 October 2008 at 4:53 pm

   @Soli and Ren: Thank you. It has taken years to understand much of what has happened, and I don’t think I’ve yet recognized everything I need to learn. But while many of these experiences are difficult and admitting my mistakes harder still, ultimately the process provides a feeling of inner strength. Once the draining part is over and the pain not so raw, there is a wealth of appreciation and gratitude for the gifts that such trials bring.

   Reply
4. aydira says:

   25 October 2008 at 7:49 pm

   Very interesting. I’m waiting for part two.

   I used to go into “Blind Faith Mode” only I was following some idea that I had based on my own observations. Like I would decide that I was Meant to Be with someone because I had a strong feeling for him. I thought it was “God” telling me to do it. I was really confused and I would get angry when Jared or the I-Ching or anything would tell me otherwise. I never listened to him back then though even though he turned out to be right about everything.

   That was years ago and I’m really glad that I’ve grown up some since then. And I don’t believe in “God” anymore, at least not in some entity who personally decides everything that happens to me regardless of my own actions haha. I was so ungrounded.

   Reply
5. sheta says:

   26 October 2008 at 5:55 am

   @Kimmi: I’ve done the same thing re: seeing things as meant to be, though it hasn’t been limited to romance. I think most things that happen with any impact in our lives have at least one reason (for each person affected) for happening, and so could be viewed as “meant to be” if you’re a fatalist. I like Meridjet’s analogy of life as a river.

   He says that life is a river with a bunch of boats on it. Some areas are easy, some are difficult, but they all go the same direction - forward - and to the same destination - individual evolution. Each boat is a person or operated by a person (whichever), and it’s up to that person how fast they travel the river, particularly at the calm and easy sections. If you want to tie off at a pier for 80 years, you probably can do that at least until a storm blows in and breaks your tether. The analogy can play out in a lot of detail, but the essence is that, ultimately, it’s what you do with the experiences that counts, not what experiences you have or why they may be happening. And taking the “storms” personally, as some kind of divine judgment or punishment, is just a way to avoid learning to prepare for the next storm.

   Reply