#and fuck emotions and thoughts and the inner workings of paradigms and people i guess

[psalmsofpsychosis]

look i'm just saying, it's open season and if i see one more "the curtains are just blue" person in my vicinity i will make do for tonight's dinner

[vanvelding]

I'm going to say one of the nicest things I can about a show about Star Trek: Lower Decks

They played us like a string quartet.

(Spoilers for 4x09: "The Inner Fight")

Lower Decks was sold a Star Trek/Rick & Morty mashup from the start. The first scene is a drunken Mariner literally harming her sidekick, Boimler. It practically screamed, "Mariner & Boimler a hundred tours! Double-u, double-u, double-u dot Mariner and boimler dot com!"

But of course, it also had Star Trek references. One of the earliest is "Who would win in a fight? Khan or Roga Danar?" Why would anyone else in The Federation know or care who Roga Danar is? And there's no imagination on display for the oldest referential paradigm, "Who would win in a fight?" Lazy. Bullshit.

Of course before the end of season one, Lower Decks showed us it was more than that. Boimler was gaining the kind of experience he needed. The story hinted very strongly that Mariner had been in Starfleet a LONG time. She wasn't a omnicompotent mary sue; she was a Commander with her own philosophy/trauma that compelled her to remain an Ensign.

It was a good show and it stood on its own. The references were used well to create interesting stories ("Twovix"), as part of the setting ("Hear All, Trust Nothing"), or just as a gag here and there ("Kayshon, His Eyes Open" and, like a dozen others). The references to the setting become the background radiation, remarkable in how deep a cut they really are (Vendorians?). I've described it to many people as "Star Trek, but everyone has watched Star Trek."

What it wasn't, was related to its namesake. "Lower Decks" was a surprisingly heavy episode about the younger members of the Enterprise crew and their perspective on the missions of galactic import that the viewer usually enjoys an omnisicent view of.

Lower Decks mentions our main cast don't have that omniscient view, but Mariner is a stone-cold badass, Rutherford was part of a secret effort to develop artificial intelligence, Tendi is the Mistress of the Winter Constellations, and Boimler--actually Biomler is no more exceptional than any other Starfleet officer.

So when we get our main cast and the senior officers into a room and they mention Nick Locarno, our thought is, "LOL, another reference. This one from TNG. Not particularly deep. LOL, Boimler is a Beverly Crusher fanboy. I guess it makes sense, they have the character model from the episode with Tom Paris. Clearly, Robert Duncan McNeil is happy to do some voice work. We'll probably make a reference to how much he looks like Tom Paris.

"lol"

Look, if you figured it out then pat yourself on the back. Me? I filed away another reference. I didn't realize that Nick Locarno was connected to the episode of TNG that was this entire series' namesake. The characters even say, "Who?" which is one of the first times they don't get a Star Trek reference. Because Nick Locarno isn't a part of the Star Trek universe they view with an enthusiastic fandomness; it's part of their dramatic history, whether they know it or not.

"ha-ha, I guess Nick Locarno is too deep a cut for the show that called back to Morgan fucking Bateson."

But whatever, A-plot/B-plot. Gags about Starfleet habitually rolling up to seedy establishments in uniforms while looking for information, which is subverted by Captain Freeman being fucking genre savvy (also, wasn't she going to be promoted before getting arrested at the end of season two? I guess getting framed for a crime was deemed to be not very 'admiral-able'). Mariner ends up in a cave with a Klingon taking shelter from a crystal rain.

The pieces are there. Mariner was an ensign during The Dominion War. Two to three years before The Dominion War, Wesley Crusher left Starfleet, our Nick Locarno expy Tom Paris was recruited to Voyager, and Sito Jaxa was an ensign.

And Nick Locarno is in play.

We could have figured it out! We're in the narrative and emotional third act of this series (Tendi gave us the "We'll always be friends" speech last week)! Everyone regular just sat in a room trying to figure out how to help Mariner; we were one fruit salad analogy away from an intervention with Dr. Migleemoo!

Mariner escapes from Cardassian interrogation chambers for fun!

But Locarno is just another TNG reference, like Beverly Crusher. Background radiation. The season's story arc is something original to Lower Decks, which it's proven it's unafraid to do at this point. The series has no relation to "Lower Decks"

And then they fucking hit us with it; Beckett Mariner knew Sito Jaxa. They were friends. Then Jaxa died.

That's Mariner's trauma (that and The Dominion War).

And I didn't see it because I came to see Lower Decks as a series that stood on its own merits as a show while calling back to earlier Treks in a light, non-committal way. And I credit that solely to the writing of the show which leveraged both of those qualities to make an entertaining show that I like before, but now respect.

Just amazing stuff.

[bluemoonpunch]

Do you ever experience full-on audial messages right before you fall asleep? Or wake up in the middle of the night to hear voices speaking truth and secrets you never remember the next day? What would it be considered? Open channeling? Dreaming?

I’d say that’s potentially clairaudience. I have that a lot, especially as I’m waking up from dreams or in a deep meditation. In readings and such I’ll get auditory messages on occasion but my “hearing” is slightly fucked and things come through weirdly distorted so I don’t get it as clearly as I could unless it’s like from a very “high up” kind of source thing, I guess.

Here are some videos about it, if you’re interested. Video 1. Video 2.

Anonymous: Do you have any meditation videos or anything really to recommend for contacting/connecting to your guides?

I usually recommend this one as I used to use it a lot myself, but this one, and this one  are really good as well.

Anonymous: How do we get a monthly reading?

You just go to the Monthly Readings section on the BMP website, here, and scroll down to where all of the signs are listed. Then just click on your Sun, Moon, or Rising sign and it should just open right up to a PDF of the reading.

Anonymous: Idk if you can help me with this but I’ll try. When I was a child I used to wake up late at night and look around me and I would see a bunch of hexagons. I would try to blink it away but I couldn’t. Think of it as looking through a thin stencil of never ending hexagons. I could look down to my bed or closet and see the bed and closet but also the hexagons. Idk where I’m going with this but I always wondered why that happened. Any thoughts?

I don’t know why but that sounds really familiar. I don’t think I ever experienced something like that specifically, but I might have heard other people talk about it on YouTube or something. The closet thing that I know I used to do when I was little was that I would wake up and I would be VERY awake right away, but everything would be blue, like there was blue light in the room, and everything would just be flashing. Like I would get up and move around, seeing everything in a weird way, and then I would either shut my eyes, hide my face in the wall, or I would just run downstairs and eventually it would kind of just fade away. 

I never gave much thought to what it was though now that I think about it. There is stuff about people seeing other dimensions overlapping with this one in meditative or dream states, similar to what people see when they are experiencing sleep paralysis, but I’m not too sure about it. 

@liannie93: how do you know if you have introverted or extroverted energy? Also if you are in alignment with your higher self does that mean your soul is on high vibration?

I don’t know how to tell for yourself if you have introverted or extroverted energy as it - from how I see it - is based on certain aspects of your core either being directed externally or internally. I’m not even sure where my energy sits between the two. If I were to conjure up an idea on it right now, I’d say look at the qualities of your Sun Sign specifically, as that is the “wall” or the “lining” of your core which everything is projected through, and see if those qualities are directed towards other people, or if they are directed towards yourself.

For instance, I’m a Pisces. Pisces are uwu soft, very intuitive, caretakers, paradigm shifters, and connected to spirituality in one way or another. Just with that alone I definitely see those things as being put towards other people rather than being put towards myself, so I’d say my energy is most of the time is extroverted.

Of course, people can shift between the two as they move through certain phases of soul progression. 

The only reason I know of “introverted” or “extroverted” energy is that I was shown that in relation to how Namjoon and Kook mirror each other in that sense and how Kook follows Namjoon’s lead in terms of his phases of soul progression. They’re both Virgos, and that energy is centered around judgment. Namjoon, currently, has extroverted energy, so his judgment is towards the world, which is why he’s so into putting things out there that make you question yourself and society and how things are done now. He doesn’t like how people work now. Kook’s judgment is turned towards himself, so he’s constantly in a state of trying to improve himself in all areas. That’s why he’s so good at everything - not because he’s naturally gifted and just oh so lucky, but because he HAS TO be the best, he has to learn it fast, he has to perfect it.

Namjoon had introverted energy before and I’m sure it’s obvious to most people when that was actually a thing for him. It’s interesting because, in one of the past readings, I think it was Kook and Namjoon’s relationship reading, I saw that they are basically switching places. Like Namjoon is going back into the introverted energy or is being guided back to it, and because Kook naturally follows him, he’ll basically be taking Namjoon’s place as the extroverted Virgo. I don’t remember all of what I said about that in the reading, but it was pretty interesting. It’s here if you want to read it.

Anonymous: Hi BMP! Could you please give advice on how to raise one’s vibrations or achieve a higher frequency?

There are a lot of ways to raise your vibration. In terms of surface-level stuff, clean eating and exercise is good as it gets all those good chemicals in the brain going and just helps to keep things in balance physically. Meditation, yoga, walking around outside are things that can help as well. On a deeper level, shadow work, working through the shadow self to release any negative or heavy energies, emotions, and mindsets - this involves bringing the conscious mind into the subconscious mind in order to observe yourself objectively. Working to clear, balance, and align your chakras in the body (the main 7) and then working with the “out of body” chakras. Visualization exercises can help with that too, focusing on the light body and literally just charging yourself up with higher frequencies. Doing that can trigger inner processes (such as dealing with the shadow self) to pop up as you’ll need to purge certain things in order to make room for that new energy, frequency, or vibration. 

Anonymous: Recently I’ve been having this weird back and neck pain that I know is for sure is related to spiritual matters (I checked) but I don’t know why it’s there. The best way I can describe it is that it feels like my soul is being squeezed in my body and is trying to push out through my neck. Do you have any idea of where this could be coming from?

Both my Grandma and I get that whenever there are bigger energy waves going through, and I get that whenever there are certain downloads or activations coming in. Even over the past few days with the Eclipse I’ve been waking up with tension headaches and I’ve been having lower-back problems as well. It’s usually the back of my head, my neck, and my lower back, all through the spine basically, which is where - as I was shown it - is where these energies actually integrate. They enter through the Crown chakra, and kind of “drip down” into the other chakras which are based in the spine, but project into the physical body. So, it’s like - AS I WAS SHOWN IT - the chakra centers are all in the spine, but they project into where we typically think of them being or where we feel them like the heart chakra is in the spine between the shoulder blades, but we feel it in the chest.

So, there’s all this stimulation coming in and integrating and it’s causing what feels like really bad tension headaches and muscle tightness as, quite literally, we are having certain energies of higher frequencies pushed into us through those ports. In a similar way, this is the reason I can get really bad migraines from doing readings where I channel more than I read as I’m basically opening up those ports and taking in as much information and energy of someone else that I can and it just builds up this pressure in my head that doesn’t go away for a stupidly long time, lol.

[theupwardmind-blog]

Note: As of this posting, I’m doing swell, which is just a testament to how quickly a mood can change. Still, I’m going to post it in its entirety because when I wrote it, I really needed to.

…

Guess what? The last few days have been, by and large, not great.

I work my ass off to not feel like total garbage: Daily meditation, a pretty rad diet, a lot of running, sobriety, journaling, baths… and of course I’ve done my rounds in therapy and with medication. In spite of these efforts, the thought that has dominated my mind lately has been along the lines of: “I’m going to blow my brains out.” (Please know that I wouldn’t be putting this on my blog if it was really a concern.)

I keep wanting to drink (I haven’t) and sometimes I get devastatingly lonely. I know I have created my current circumstances—and we all have, whether we like it or not—but of course I don’t know why. I recently texted a loved one that my “5-year plan” involves getting back into binge drinking and shooting myself in the head off of a cliff. I was kidding, but there really are times when I feel, sincerely, that I am Not Okay, like at all, and I don’t think there is anything that will help. At night I ask the universe to just make me normal and good, but I never wake up normal and good. I wake up the same me who falls short in every regard, who doesn’t love correctly, who isn’t open enough, patient enough, consistent enough, un-thinky enough, kind enough, calm enough, or safe enough. I do not always act like who I am, and I haven’t yet figured out how to fix that permanently.

Why am I posting this even though I try to be all about light and the possibility of well-being? First, it’s real. We are supposed to share our experiences with one another, and I know that the feelings I have are shared by millions of others. The second we fall into the trap of believing our isolation, depression, grief, and self-loathing are any different than those felt by the rest of humanity, we become doubly lost.

Positivity and spirituality are sometimes treated as synonyms, and that’s just not genuine. The path embraces all feelings and states of mind, and it is generally understood that (for a while anyway) waking up hurts. And, even when it’s really horrible, I know that all of my feelings and thoughts are teaching me something. For whatever reason, I haven’t gotten the lesson. If I’d gotten it, this shit would cease. Maybe the lesson is simply in impermanence itself: Never, ever expect to feel All Good, because you will never, ever be static.

Mainly I’m posting this because hiding brings its own kind of pain. When we do this, we deny our true selves to the people who want to love us. It feels worse to hide, even though it definitely feels super uncool to write about my feelings, too. I also know I’m running the risk of sounding dramatic, and at some point—maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, probably right after I hit “Publish”—I’ll regret posting it. Soon, I’ll file away this time period away into that which I psychologically label “a tantrum.”

The point is: I’m better than I’ve ever been, and still, I am This.

…

In spite of the intensity of these emotions, I remain unwilling to consider myself ill. I will not accept the bipolar story and I will not label myself “disordered.” This narrative doesn’t serve me, and if anything it damns me to believing I am fixed being. Part of that fixed narrative comes with the notion that I’ll never be fully healed, and I don’t buy that. The only reason I’m even here and in an overall healthier place than I’ve ever been in is because I’ve refused to buy it.

Of course I don’t deny the existence of mental disorders, but rather consider all life experiences as variations in consciousness. This way of thinking makes the difference between the chance at deep healing and perpetual, cyclical illness. One promotes a false “normal/abnormal, neurotypical/neurodiverse” dichotomy; the other promotes a much more realistic spectrum. Training oneself in higher consciousness (by way of self-care, meditation, journaling, etc.) can lead to the cessation of suffering, or at the very least, the dampening of it.

Because really, that’s what it’s all about: Suffering. Whether you call it depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or a personality disorder, the main concern of the human experience is suffering. The harsher felt aspects of life that are pervasive and repetitive—the ones that get called “disorders” in our culture—persist because we are, on the whole, in a very low place. Greed rules the day. “Every man for himself” is the prevailing ethos. “Us and them” is a mentality that very few people ever escape. When our overall level as a people reaches something higher, we will see mental illness fall away. I’ve said this before and I’m going to keep saying it.

I doubt that this will happen in my lifetime, since our system still seems hell-bent on letting individuals know that they’re the ones with “problems.” In our haste to diagnose—to codify, to limit, to “explain”—we tend to just not bring up the ugly truth of the situation, which is that the world is burning to the ground and our paradigm is truly fucked up. Sick societies create sick individuals, and vice versa. Healthy people depend on a healthy planet, and our planet is really not healthy.

When healing occurs, it does so on an individual and collective level at the same time: We heal ourselves and—brick by brick, mind by mind—build healthier societies that make wellness a possibility for future generations. Until we do this work, we can only expect to see rising rates of suicide, depression, addiction, and everything else we claim to be against. I for one am getting a bit tired of the short-lived outpour of concern that follows celebrity suicides. I am also tired of the idea that a person simply not killing themselves is a great victory: If all we’re doing is constantly pulling each other back from the brink, we’re still failing miserably.

…

Not a single professional I’ve worked with has really broached the fact that I suffer because A. Suffering is inherent in human existence (and so I have no reason to expect not to suffer), and B. Our culture basically breeds people to suffer for the machine. It was always about “my condition,” “my problems,” “my depression,” “my story of why I hurt.” We all have stories about why we hurt, and to some extent, these stories need to be explored. Some stories are more harrowing than others, but even the most well-off, well-loved people suffer.

Finally, meditation and yoga are being regarded as helpful treatment modalities for mental illnesses. I want to address that here: The science behind psychiatric medication is based on the theory that your brain makes the wrong chemicals and these other chemicals will kinda fix it. The science behind yoga is based on the theory that you are a universal being and ultimately, you are pure consciousness. Get in touch with the part of you that is pure consciousness—through systematic postures and meditation—and suffering begins to transform. This is true for all forms of suffering, be they given medical labels or are simply the “normal” malaise of routine adult life.

These theories/sciences are not mutually exclusive. I will always advocate doing all the things to help yourself. However, through my (largely unintentional and also explosive) exploration of inner space, I’ve found that the latter theory is a whole lot more complete.

…

There is tremendous power in stepping into the realization that it’s not you. You are not an addict or a depressed person or anything else because something is wrong with you. Instead, we have tendencies to harm ourselves because…

Our overall culture is unconscious of the way it thinks and acts.

We do not understand and/or accept the depths of the ways we all affect one another. Even people who fancy themselves hella woke tend to carry some amount of hatred and derision in their hearts. This doesn’t work, and it still hurts everyone.

We literally carry legacies of pain in bodily memory.

Fear is the default mode of living.

We have forgotten the truth of what we are.

It’s not that you’re a defective model, and you do have the power to rise above all of these things.

When it comes to mental health and overall wellness, that’s what it’s all about: The cessation of suffering through the exploration of higher consciousness. Not endless treatment, not an illness-oriented model, and certainly not a narrative that you will always be one thing or another.

…

Let’s end this on a high note, shall we?

Before I sat down to write this post, I went for a run. Even when I’m in the depths of it, meditating and running tend to lift my spirits. Near the end, I found this rosebush in someone’s yard, and it was too beautiful not to take pictures:

Being a good millennial, I put these on the Instagram where a friend commented, “Peace roses.” Again, being a good millennial, I Googled it. Lo and behold, this is what’s called the Peace Rose. And although I regard the entirety of my life experience as equally meaningful and meaningless, I’ll gladly take signs like this in times of need.

If you’re reading this, the message is meant for you as well.

– Lish

When It Gets Bad Note: As of this posting, I’m doing swell, which is just a testament to how quickly a mood can change.