08-04-2017, 12:00 AM
I am not sure how your mind came to link some of the things you write to that one sentence about all our relations 
. But it sure is interesting....
The author spoke how being a catalyst can be healing... the examples she gave are environmentalists and those who help the homeless (a bit strange example maybe in the sense that we in general focus on a less planetary scale of things here).
The noun catalyst basically means someone that causes change.
chemically: Catalysts are used by chemists to speed up chemical reactions that otherwise would be inconveniently slow.
You quote that sentence and go on to talk about kindness and opposition. This is quite a shift from what the author talked about. I agree that friction is good for fluidity. And warriors live together so that their rough edges get smoothed out.
I sometimes take the role of opposition or questioning in speech to see how the person thinks. It is often not appreciated
. People associate it with antagonism and aggression even though I do it out of curiosity, interest, and discovering stuff as well as mapping things out. Plus in the real life interaction people should be able to tell I am not in aggressive or antagonistic mode if they cared to examine the situation, but sadly people are rarely that aware to see that I smile and am calm and have a good mood etc. (On the web this is even harder to use and be understood, I tend not to do that much at all)
So, the difference between what you said about opposition, I assume, and what I say I do here is that I do not adopt any antagonistic emotional or belief markers. I just ask questions and give counter arguments to discover answers to them. So it might be that I am of the opinion A and I got asked before something that I had no answer to. Then a person comes who is of the opinion A, I might ask this to see what they say as an answer. However, the person assumes, incorrectly, that I am of the opposing opinion because I question them. This is of course not hard to avoid if I introduce my questions with an explanation of why I ask. Not everything is that easy though.
To your question of whether to honor tonal or spiritual selves.... If we go in the shamanic way then we honor both. We always take a wholesome approach. Shamanism is holistic.
Tearing down the 'tonal self'… I do not think that can serve the 'spiritual self'
It is not the aim that one gets destroyed so the other can be alone.
Plus I really do not see why there should be no spiritual in the tonal and such.
But one important thing is this: The talk in my own post was about being moved by Spirit. I do not decide to act as anything for anyone of my own rational judgment in these scenarios. I can see many a hole in people's awareness but I do not attempt to better them in some major way unless I am either in a formal setting of being their teacher and then I try to guide them to the knowledge that my teaching is related to (with maybe a bonus of the side cause that makes it more interesting for me but that still is only by exposure and allowing the person to think or feel into certain things) or if they are a good friend/person with whom I have agreements in place that we can 'teach' each other here and there. The other time is when this comes from outside of myself, as in the example I have in this thread.
I do not decide that this or that person should fall either. I am just trying to be more aware of what is happening and only one time could I actually see something is up before the person fell (the example at the stone rings). One other time - interestingly just a few hours after I wrote that post - another person I was with observed and commented on someone riding a bike just seconds before a fall of the observed (I noticed the same thing before this comment).
Often though I feel that my awareness condensed on the space where the fall happened. This took a couple of times for me to notice and I rarely pick up on it fast enough to actually think or observe it properly. But maybe I am getting better, cause the rings and bicycle example were instances where I also noticed with my more normal awareness.
I am not going to go into the field of Spirit and say that this or that person should not have fallen or that this or that person should - it is not my place. Same with what I expressed about providing a link to someone. But it can be that I hope and wish that it happens for someone close and I think Spirit hears that too and my plea might make a difference who kows
.
All one does is allows oneself to be utilized. I know too little to make these decisions.
So, the Spirit makes the decision about which selves it honors - to use your terminology. I do not decide that a person's spiritual self should be served or take precedence or the other way round. This makes it free of my own bs too, my own judgment and preferences. It is much more pure and more safe for the person too.
I do not understand where you made the leap to say that one is then hated by the one they love.
From what you say, the way you seem to express how it functions, it logically follows that if you do tear down the tonal-ego, as you say, then what stays cannot but love you. So why would you be hated? If that happens then it means there is an error in your judgment of what you assume or think and about how things work and function etc. If it happens that you are hated then there must be something you did not account for. Also, the 'spiritual self' of the person might not take kindly to your intrusions and destruction - I dunno, just an idea.
As I said above, I find that it is the matter of Spirit to decide such things not a person. This is the general problem I have with so called 'stalkers' who just get in somebody's face cause they can or due to their own bent reasons.
------- Oh, now I see how you distinguish between 'tonal self' and 'ego' … before I thought you equate them (you start in the first paragraph by talking of tearing down someone's tonal and that you then may be hated because you honored a persons spirit and not their ego - so to me theas says tonal=ego. But later you sat killing the ego can easily kill the tonal self - so to me this says tonal=/= ego. And then I am like... confused). It is hard to talk when we do not know what is what when the other person uses these terms. Now maybe what I said above does not apply in the way I thought.
So do you want to kill the ego but not the tonal self? Cause before you said you want to destroy the tonal to aid the spiritual. I would ask for greater language precision. Please clarify.
If you speak of killing the ego then that should serve the whole of the person -both the spiritual and tonal self.
Also, ego is a kind of mind construct. Hard to actually see through. In shamanic terms, we rather speak of self-importance. Self-importance is a term that actually states what it is and one can easily see it in action. Interestng shift, right? ------
So, say you decide I should be less 'tonal' and more 'spiritual' (whatever that means for you and however you assign that is a different matter) then you start exerting pressure on me to be so. I am stressed and do not have the opportunity to devote my resources to the next step that I see in my evolution/growth, instead, I am diverted by your pressure to your agenda for myself. Do you think that helps me? I would say higher chances are that it hurts me more than it helps me.
I do not do these things to people. I try to support them in working on stuff, but not by hijacking their path. Cause who am I to divert other people's paths? (without their consent)
If a shaman does something when moved by Spirit in that moment they don’t feel love or hate as difficult. They are in a different state. Once one comes back to 'normal' and some of that appears from the person who was being affected or the ones around that witnessed it.... then it can be a pity of course, but the shaman knows they did what they did because Spirit moved them to and was mixed in there and that it was good (plus, it is usual for the shaman to ask for consent or are asked to be helped by the person). In this sense, I somehow think that spirit also cushions the shaman. I am rarely in this position since I do not do much shamanic work. The shaman must have it taken care of in some way. For me, the people spirit moves in these stranger ways are usually not in my immediate personal circle plus there are times when the people themselves cannot always focus on me as someone who had something to do with it - like with the falls - especially since I really didnt have anything much to do with it personally. A normal person cannot really say I fell because you are here. So they are not antagonistic to me.
Usually, at least for me, the work of spirit is so pure that there is nothing to complain about. And surely nothing to hate.
Btw I am not sure that the falls are the best thing as such. I'd rather a more gentle approach than having people fall. But it is not me who decides that. Maybe in the future I will be able to...
See... like with the pregnant woman falling... she went for a check up and that might have been important. Some people fall because they are in bad states and then they get up and their state got shifted by the fall. Some people are in a terrible hurry, like at the train station, and they are not paying attention, they may stumble but realize they need to be more aware and careful. This is also in the mountains. People hike and need to be aware etc.
As long as people do not get hurt and are possibly saved from being hurt then it is ok, I think. But all in all I do not know enough to see how exactly this fall or stumbling affects them so it is hard to have a decided opinion.
.
Pixie wrote:This is assuming the shaman knows what's best and that opinion varies by personal ethics and the life experience of the shaman. No one shaman can judge another on the best course of action--as each is a different arrangement of APs they've held.
There are a few things to be said here too.
The shaman encompasses different APs even while not having lived the life of those in the real world. Kinda like knowing what it is to be a mother even though one never had an offspring. A mother might falsely assume that someone who does not have kids would not know what it is like to be a mother.
No one shaman should be judging much. They should connect to Spirit and be moved by it to do things.
But I think they can have an opinion of other shamans in the sense of how they do their 'job'.
.
Pixie wrote: Ideally, no one dies during the process of transformation :/ thunderbeings complicate things by inviting death to visit. Killing the ego can very easily kill the tonal self; it's risky.
Slow and subtle is the preferred course as the transitions don't need to be bumpy. Just as there's a reason for fluid transitions, there are reasons for abrupt shifts too. If timeliness is a significant feature of a situation, then abrupt shifts may be necessary. Sometimes we can go lifetimes without any sense of urgency. Other times all we can do is sprint through the shifts in AP. The situation will often dictate the urgency of the shifts.
Isn't every element linked to death? - fire kills, water kills, lightning kills. Similar with many allies - bears, wolves, jaguars, lions, etc.
What you say of course makes sense, I'd just like it to be put into perspective better.
Yes, I agree on the urgency and that transitions don't need to be bumpy and such. But you seem to link thunderbeings to abruptness and danger of death and such. This is interesting because I somehow tend to think I am linked with the thunderbeings due to things I expressed in my posts above, however I am very much in the slow and subtle lane. Not in the shock and abrupt shift lane (in my own development as well as in the way I influence those around me in general). I would not be quick in attributing shock and death to thunderbeings. I do not see it mentioned in the article I posted either (apart from those who wanted to bond with it and died as a consequence).
I think that lighting is just one of the tricks up thunderbeings' sleeves. If you remember a thunderstorm… a lot more happens in it than just lightning. I specifically love the air before the storm and as it approaches. The smell, the feel that is in the air, the approaching energy... Seeing the lightning bolts from afar…. I also love the after space . We had a lightning storm just this night. I was watching the bolts through a window in town and then went home in a gentle after-rain. Today in the morning I really enjoyed the air and the feel of the earth.
I do not associate thunderbeings with death any more than I do water. But, for some reason, we tend to think lightning is more dangerous. Did you know that a lot more people die in water per year than they do due to lightning?
Curious about if my feeling is right about this I google:
"From 2005-2014, there were an average of 3,536 fatal unintentional drownings (non-boating related) annually in the United States — about ten deaths per day. An additional 332 people died each year from drowning in boating-related incidents."
"U.S. has averaged 47 reported lightning fatalities per year. Only about 10% of people who are struck by lightning are killed, leaving 90% with various degrees of disability. More recently, in the last 10 years (2007-2016), the U.S. has averaged 30 lightning fatalities."
Other fatalities linked to thunderstorms are due to:
floods from thunderstorms have accounted for about 70 deaths per year
lightning has caused an average of 55 fatalities per year
thunderstorm winds cause an average of 31 deaths per year
hail causes an average of one
To compare with fire I found:
"Roughly one in every 320 households per year had a reported home fire during this five-year period. These fires caused an estimated average of 2,570 civilian deaths"
And that is only household fires, there are other types of fires too.
=> thunderbeings are by far the less deadly than water or fire beings.
.
Pixie wrote:Thunderbeings, while intensely rich in power, are unpredictable. The path of least resistance doesn't play favorites and sometimes everyone gets laid out (including the thunderbeings). Maybe that's why thunderbeings are so frightening; they bring about a specific outcome without regard to comfort.
What do you mean that the thunderbeings get laid out?.
I'd say that each medicine can be gentle or disruptive, healing or poisonous.
Every element takes the path of least resistance - fire, water, etc. And is also unpredictable in certain degrees. Lightning is predictable in that it will rather strike metal than rubber. Fire is predictable in that it burns flammable stuff. Etc. And water can be unpredictable (as shown in the drowning number). Many people die every year because they do not think or realize that water can be unpredictable.
I do not think any element plays favorites any more or less than lightning
---------------
To the topic of love... I find what you say about how love can be helpful for survival lol can also be applied to other things. Not feeling certain emotions is lifesaving in certain situations. Facing predators with (sober) love instead of fear or aggression can make quite a difference.
One of the reasons why in my reply to Xlyer I talk of bettering the relationship with the ally/element/spirits/etc. and allowing oneself to be moved by them and then composing and such and sharing it with them afterward is to grow the love and link/connection.
As you point out some emotions cannot be there in the same boat with love and most of those are not very nice emotions to carry around in one's boat. You mention hate and anger. I would mention envy, jealousy, venom/ire (that is actually an emotion in my language but the dictionary is not cooperating heh, guess it’s a type of anger). Spite, malice, rancor… etc.
I would be careful with using the word 'love' though cause well there are unhealthy forms of love and sadly they are still called love. I would rather advise to foster emotions such as gratitude, humbleness, gratefulness, awe, amazement, curiosity, wonder… etc. Emotions that help open up one's heart. Once those are around the love that is has a much higher chance to be the healthy kind. (a note needs to be put here saying that this open heart is not to be defenseless)
Some say love binds and in a sense that is true. So one needs to be careful and look to find the right setting of love.
Only a certain type of love is a great tool for battling the ego/self-importance.
Love opens our hearts and with an open heart can we be receptive to Spirit. I assume your term 'power' is synonymous with my use of the term 'Spirit' (because what I call 'power' is not really very dependent on love.)
If one is closed one cannot make connections with beings around… cannot interact with Spirit easily.
Some would say love also causes a certain type of blindness…
Every AP does, does it not?
What is the difference between being angry and being annoyed? Are you not angry when you are annoyed? You use the terms as if they were not linked:
Pixie wrote:I can be annoyed, authenticly me, many shades of fucked up, and those don't limit my awareness. It seems only hate and anger are limiting
.
Pixie wrote:
losing the ego doesn't mean the loss of self. It means the expression of self.
Indeed, losing 'ego' means losing 'self-importance' not the self. Ego is linked to the mind and that is linked to being self-important. The mind though does not have to be self-important and one does not have to eliminate the mind as such. 'Just' balance it.
Self-expression is not linked to ego/self-importance as such. It can be an expression of ego/self-importance if ego/self-importance is part of the self, that is all.
So, yea, I have noticed similar things with regard to love. I have also seen how disarming love can be as a weapon in battle. But I have also seen that some people do not listen to their hearts and one should not delude themselves that love can solve all.
It is fascinating though how love/an open heart and warm affection can affect a seemingly rational, cold or militant nature.
. But it sure is interesting....The author spoke how being a catalyst can be healing... the examples she gave are environmentalists and those who help the homeless (a bit strange example maybe in the sense that we in general focus on a less planetary scale of things here).
The noun catalyst basically means someone that causes change.
chemically: Catalysts are used by chemists to speed up chemical reactions that otherwise would be inconveniently slow.
You quote that sentence and go on to talk about kindness and opposition. This is quite a shift from what the author talked about. I agree that friction is good for fluidity. And warriors live together so that their rough edges get smoothed out.
I sometimes take the role of opposition or questioning in speech to see how the person thinks. It is often not appreciated
. People associate it with antagonism and aggression even though I do it out of curiosity, interest, and discovering stuff as well as mapping things out. Plus in the real life interaction people should be able to tell I am not in aggressive or antagonistic mode if they cared to examine the situation, but sadly people are rarely that aware to see that I smile and am calm and have a good mood etc. (On the web this is even harder to use and be understood, I tend not to do that much at all)So, the difference between what you said about opposition, I assume, and what I say I do here is that I do not adopt any antagonistic emotional or belief markers. I just ask questions and give counter arguments to discover answers to them. So it might be that I am of the opinion A and I got asked before something that I had no answer to. Then a person comes who is of the opinion A, I might ask this to see what they say as an answer. However, the person assumes, incorrectly, that I am of the opposing opinion because I question them. This is of course not hard to avoid if I introduce my questions with an explanation of why I ask. Not everything is that easy though
.To your question of whether to honor tonal or spiritual selves.... If we go in the shamanic way then we honor both. We always take a wholesome approach. Shamanism is holistic.
Tearing down the 'tonal self'… I do not think that can serve the 'spiritual self'
It is not the aim that one gets destroyed so the other can be alone.
Plus I really do not see why there should be no spiritual in the tonal and such.
But one important thing is this: The talk in my own post was about being moved by Spirit. I do not decide to act as anything for anyone of my own rational judgment in these scenarios. I can see many a hole in people's awareness but I do not attempt to better them in some major way unless I am either in a formal setting of being their teacher and then I try to guide them to the knowledge that my teaching is related to (with maybe a bonus of the side cause that makes it more interesting for me but that still is only by exposure and allowing the person to think or feel into certain things) or if they are a good friend/person with whom I have agreements in place that we can 'teach' each other here and there. The other time is when this comes from outside of myself, as in the example I have in this thread.
I do not decide that this or that person should fall either. I am just trying to be more aware of what is happening and only one time could I actually see something is up before the person fell (the example at the stone rings). One other time - interestingly just a few hours after I wrote that post - another person I was with observed and commented on someone riding a bike just seconds before a fall of the observed (I noticed the same thing before this comment).
Often though I feel that my awareness condensed on the space where the fall happened. This took a couple of times for me to notice and I rarely pick up on it fast enough to actually think or observe it properly. But maybe I am getting better, cause the rings and bicycle example were instances where I also noticed with my more normal awareness.
I am not going to go into the field of Spirit and say that this or that person should not have fallen or that this or that person should - it is not my place. Same with what I expressed about providing a link to someone. But it can be that I hope and wish that it happens for someone close and I think Spirit hears that too and my plea might make a difference who kows
.All one does is allows oneself to be utilized. I know too little to make these decisions.
So, the Spirit makes the decision about which selves it honors - to use your terminology. I do not decide that a person's spiritual self should be served or take precedence or the other way round. This makes it free of my own bs too, my own judgment and preferences. It is much more pure and more safe for the person too.
I do not understand where you made the leap to say that one is then hated by the one they love.
From what you say, the way you seem to express how it functions, it logically follows that if you do tear down the tonal-ego, as you say, then what stays cannot but love you. So why would you be hated? If that happens then it means there is an error in your judgment of what you assume or think and about how things work and function etc. If it happens that you are hated then there must be something you did not account for. Also, the 'spiritual self' of the person might not take kindly to your intrusions and destruction - I dunno, just an idea.
As I said above, I find that it is the matter of Spirit to decide such things not a person. This is the general problem I have with so called 'stalkers' who just get in somebody's face cause they can or due to their own bent reasons.
------- Oh, now I see how you distinguish between 'tonal self' and 'ego' … before I thought you equate them (you start in the first paragraph by talking of tearing down someone's tonal and that you then may be hated because you honored a persons spirit and not their ego - so to me theas says tonal=ego. But later you sat killing the ego can easily kill the tonal self - so to me this says tonal=/= ego. And then I am like... confused
). It is hard to talk when we do not know what is what when the other person uses these terms. Now maybe what I said above does not apply in the way I thought. So do you want to kill the ego but not the tonal self? Cause before you said you want to destroy the tonal to aid the spiritual. I would ask for greater language precision. Please clarify
.If you speak of killing the ego then that should serve the whole of the person -both the spiritual and tonal self.
Also, ego is a kind of mind construct. Hard to actually see through. In shamanic terms, we rather speak of self-importance. Self-importance is a term that actually states what it is and one can easily see it in action. Interestng shift, right? ------
So, say you decide I should be less 'tonal' and more 'spiritual' (whatever that means for you and however you assign that is a different matter) then you start exerting pressure on me to be so. I am stressed and do not have the opportunity to devote my resources to the next step that I see in my evolution/growth, instead, I am diverted by your pressure to your agenda for myself. Do you think that helps me? I would say higher chances are that it hurts me more than it helps me.
I do not do these things to people. I try to support them in working on stuff, but not by hijacking their path. Cause who am I to divert other people's paths? (without their consent)
If a shaman does something when moved by Spirit in that moment they don’t feel love or hate as difficult. They are in a different state. Once one comes back to 'normal' and some of that appears from the person who was being affected or the ones around that witnessed it.... then it can be a pity of course, but the shaman knows they did what they did because Spirit moved them to and was mixed in there and that it was good (plus, it is usual for the shaman to ask for consent or are asked to be helped by the person). In this sense, I somehow think that spirit also cushions the shaman. I am rarely in this position since I do not do much shamanic work. The shaman must have it taken care of in some way. For me, the people spirit moves in these stranger ways are usually not in my immediate personal circle plus there are times when the people themselves cannot always focus on me as someone who had something to do with it - like with the falls - especially since I really didnt have anything much to do with it personally. A normal person cannot really say I fell because you are here
. So they are not antagonistic to me. Usually, at least for me, the work of spirit is so pure that there is nothing to complain about. And surely nothing to hate.
Btw I am not sure that the falls are the best thing as such. I'd rather a more gentle approach than having people fall. But it is not me who decides that. Maybe in the future I will be able to...
See... like with the pregnant woman falling... she went for a check up and that might have been important. Some people fall because they are in bad states and then they get up and their state got shifted by the fall. Some people are in a terrible hurry, like at the train station, and they are not paying attention, they may stumble but realize they need to be more aware and careful. This is also in the mountains. People hike and need to be aware etc.
As long as people do not get hurt and are possibly saved from being hurt then it is ok, I think. But all in all I do not know enough to see how exactly this fall or stumbling affects them so it is hard to have a decided opinion
..
Pixie wrote:This is assuming the shaman knows what's best and that opinion varies by personal ethics and the life experience of the shaman. No one shaman can judge another on the best course of action--as each is a different arrangement of APs they've held.
There are a few things to be said here too
. The shaman encompasses different APs even while not having lived the life of those in the real world. Kinda like knowing what it is to be a mother even though one never had an offspring. A mother might falsely assume that someone who does not have kids would not know what it is like to be a mother.
No one shaman should be judging much. They should connect to Spirit and be moved by it to do things.
But I think they can have an opinion of other shamans in the sense of how they do their 'job'.
.
Pixie wrote: Ideally, no one dies during the process of transformation :/ thunderbeings complicate things by inviting death to visit. Killing the ego can very easily kill the tonal self; it's risky.
Slow and subtle is the preferred course as the transitions don't need to be bumpy. Just as there's a reason for fluid transitions, there are reasons for abrupt shifts too. If timeliness is a significant feature of a situation, then abrupt shifts may be necessary. Sometimes we can go lifetimes without any sense of urgency. Other times all we can do is sprint through the shifts in AP. The situation will often dictate the urgency of the shifts.
Isn't every element linked to death? - fire kills, water kills, lightning kills. Similar with many allies - bears, wolves, jaguars, lions, etc.
What you say of course makes sense, I'd just like it to be put into perspective better.
Yes, I agree on the urgency and that transitions don't need to be bumpy and such. But you seem to link thunderbeings to abruptness and danger of death and such. This is interesting because I somehow tend to think I am linked with the thunderbeings due to things I expressed in my posts above, however I am very much in the slow and subtle lane. Not in the shock and abrupt shift lane (in my own development as well as in the way I influence those around me in general). I would not be quick in attributing shock and death to thunderbeings. I do not see it mentioned in the article I posted either (apart from those who wanted to bond with it and died as a consequence).
I think that lighting is just one of the tricks up thunderbeings' sleeves
. If you remember a thunderstorm… a lot more happens in it than just lightning. I specifically love the air before the storm and as it approaches. The smell, the feel that is in the air, the approaching energy... Seeing the lightning bolts from afar…. I also love the after space . We had a lightning storm just this night. I was watching the bolts through a window in town and then went home in a gentle after-rain. Today in the morning I really enjoyed the air and the feel of the earth. I do not associate thunderbeings with death any more than I do water. But, for some reason, we tend to think lightning is more dangerous. Did you know that a lot more people die in water per year than they do due to lightning?
Curious about if my feeling is right about this I google:
"From 2005-2014, there were an average of 3,536 fatal unintentional drownings (non-boating related) annually in the United States — about ten deaths per day. An additional 332 people died each year from drowning in boating-related incidents."
"U.S. has averaged 47 reported lightning fatalities per year. Only about 10% of people who are struck by lightning are killed, leaving 90% with various degrees of disability. More recently, in the last 10 years (2007-2016), the U.S. has averaged 30 lightning fatalities."
Other fatalities linked to thunderstorms are due to:
floods from thunderstorms have accounted for about 70 deaths per year
lightning has caused an average of 55 fatalities per year
thunderstorm winds cause an average of 31 deaths per year
hail causes an average of one
To compare with fire I found:
"Roughly one in every 320 households per year had a reported home fire during this five-year period. These fires caused an estimated average of 2,570 civilian deaths"
And that is only household fires, there are other types of fires too.
=> thunderbeings are by far the less deadly than water or fire beings
..
Pixie wrote:Thunderbeings, while intensely rich in power, are unpredictable. The path of least resistance doesn't play favorites and sometimes everyone gets laid out (including the thunderbeings). Maybe that's why thunderbeings are so frightening; they bring about a specific outcome without regard to comfort.
What do you mean that the thunderbeings get laid out?
.I'd say that each medicine can be gentle or disruptive, healing or poisonous.
Every element takes the path of least resistance - fire, water, etc. And is also unpredictable in certain degrees. Lightning is predictable in that it will rather strike metal than rubber. Fire is predictable in that it burns flammable stuff. Etc. And water can be unpredictable (as shown in the drowning number). Many people die every year because they do not think or realize that water can be unpredictable.
I do not think any element plays favorites any more or less than lightning
---------------
To the topic of love... I find what you say about how love can be helpful for survival lol can also be applied to other things. Not feeling certain emotions is lifesaving in certain situations. Facing predators with (sober) love instead of fear or aggression can make quite a difference.
One of the reasons why in my reply to Xlyer I talk of bettering the relationship with the ally/element/spirits/etc. and allowing oneself to be moved by them and then composing and such and sharing it with them afterward is to grow the love and link/connection.
As you point out some emotions cannot be there in the same boat with love and most of those are not very nice emotions to carry around in one's boat. You mention hate and anger. I would mention envy, jealousy, venom/ire (that is actually an emotion in my language but the dictionary is not cooperating heh, guess it’s a type of anger). Spite, malice, rancor… etc.
I would be careful with using the word 'love' though cause well there are unhealthy forms of love and sadly they are still called love. I would rather advise to foster emotions such as gratitude, humbleness, gratefulness, awe, amazement, curiosity, wonder… etc. Emotions that help open up one's heart. Once those are around the love that is has a much higher chance to be the healthy kind
. (a note needs to be put here saying that this open heart is not to be defenseless)Some say love binds and in a sense that is true. So one needs to be careful and look to find the right setting of love.
Only a certain type of love is a great tool for battling the ego/self-importance
. Love opens our hearts and with an open heart can we be receptive to Spirit. I assume your term 'power' is synonymous with my use of the term 'Spirit' (because what I call 'power' is not really very dependent on love.)
If one is closed one cannot make connections with beings around… cannot interact with Spirit easily.
Some would say love also causes a certain type of blindness…
Every AP does, does it not?
What is the difference between being angry and being annoyed? Are you not angry when you are annoyed? You use the terms as if they were not linked:
Pixie wrote:I can be annoyed, authenticly me, many shades of fucked up, and those don't limit my awareness. It seems only hate and anger are limiting
.
Pixie wrote:
losing the ego doesn't mean the loss of self. It means the expression of self.
Indeed, losing 'ego' means losing 'self-importance' not the self. Ego is linked to the mind and that is linked to being self-important. The mind though does not have to be self-important and one does not have to eliminate the mind as such. 'Just' balance it.
Self-expression is not linked to ego/self-importance as such. It can be an expression of ego/self-importance if ego/self-importance is part of the self, that is all.
So, yea, I have noticed similar things with regard to love. I have also seen how disarming love can be as a weapon in battle. But I have also seen that some people do not listen to their hearts and one should not delude themselves that love can solve all.
It is fascinating though how love/an open heart and warm affection can affect a seemingly rational, cold or militant nature.