Welcome, fellow fantasy lovers,
Mystics & Malcontents,
Artists, Weirdos & Witches!
would you enjoy notes from me - what I'm reading,
working on, thinking about & more?
Mystics & Malcontents,
Artists, Weirdos & Witches!
would you enjoy notes from me - what I'm reading,
working on, thinking about & more?
Curious? here's a recent letter to my subscribers:
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” - Carl Jung
Hi travelers,
Things I’m reading and thinking about this week:
-The Network State, by Dr. Balaji S. Srinivasan. If you, like me, are deeply disenchanted with the world order, this presents a fascinating way to create lasting change, and collectively elevate (progress?) humanity.
“Technology has enabled us to start new companies, new communities, and new currencies. But can we use it to start new cities, or even new countries?... A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.”
The book is free on his website - in its entirety. And also as concise, digestible summaries. ‘The Network State in One Sentence’, ‘The Network State in One Essay’, and so on. I strongly encourage you to check it out. Read with me!
- Journaling Work
The below is a bit of a yellow brick road. It really helped me recently. I hope it can help you, too.
I’m continuing to work with Byron Katie’s classic 4 questions. Her method is available for free here - I can’t recommend it enough.
This week, I had a breakthrough with it.
Most of our peers are pregnant or have small children, and of course people want to know our own plans around this. We’ve had three losses, as I’ve mentioned before; I have several auto-immune diseases, which I’ve been able to bring more or less into remission. Still, Western medicine doesn’t understand why these things happen, and so the root cause may still be in me.
For years I’ve blamed myself, subconsciously & consciously, for having these things. But recently, sadly, yet another woman in my family was diagnosed with it.
So now I’m trying to do the harder work of just being honest with myself, that this is not something that I caused. Something I can ‘fix’. And I’m trying to practice more gratitude for getting to be alive a while longer, when not so very long ago, I would have died when I was twenty.
All this to say, I know children are in our future, but not via the orthodox route, and therefore not anytime soon.
So these questions, when people push, invariably make me feel angry and sad.
But I’ve realized through Byron Katie’s work that I actually feel angry and sad at my body.
Moreover, I had no idea that ‘I’ felt this way. I’ve suppressed it that much - I have disallowed myself that much.
But once I realized it, I didn’t know what to do with it.
Baker, a huge fan of Eckhart Tolle, mentioned the ‘pain body’ to me, a concept I wasn’t at all familiar with. (I will have her on the podcast soon, and can’t wait for you all to have a little Baker magic in your life. She’s a radiant human - in large part because she has walked through fire, and continues to do so, in order to exist on the vibration she does. Baker, you are so wonderful and I love you; I can’t wait to help put your story out into the world!)
I looked it up, and found a wonderful exercise to heal your emotional pain body - witness, observe, let it be. And then perhaps… try painting or drawing what you see.
So I did!
Hi travelers,
Things I’m reading and thinking about this week:
-The Network State, by Dr. Balaji S. Srinivasan. If you, like me, are deeply disenchanted with the world order, this presents a fascinating way to create lasting change, and collectively elevate (progress?) humanity.
“Technology has enabled us to start new companies, new communities, and new currencies. But can we use it to start new cities, or even new countries?... A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.”
The book is free on his website - in its entirety. And also as concise, digestible summaries. ‘The Network State in One Sentence’, ‘The Network State in One Essay’, and so on. I strongly encourage you to check it out. Read with me!
- Journaling Work
The below is a bit of a yellow brick road. It really helped me recently. I hope it can help you, too.
I’m continuing to work with Byron Katie’s classic 4 questions. Her method is available for free here - I can’t recommend it enough.
This week, I had a breakthrough with it.
Most of our peers are pregnant or have small children, and of course people want to know our own plans around this. We’ve had three losses, as I’ve mentioned before; I have several auto-immune diseases, which I’ve been able to bring more or less into remission. Still, Western medicine doesn’t understand why these things happen, and so the root cause may still be in me.
For years I’ve blamed myself, subconsciously & consciously, for having these things. But recently, sadly, yet another woman in my family was diagnosed with it.
So now I’m trying to do the harder work of just being honest with myself, that this is not something that I caused. Something I can ‘fix’. And I’m trying to practice more gratitude for getting to be alive a while longer, when not so very long ago, I would have died when I was twenty.
All this to say, I know children are in our future, but not via the orthodox route, and therefore not anytime soon.
So these questions, when people push, invariably make me feel angry and sad.
But I’ve realized through Byron Katie’s work that I actually feel angry and sad at my body.
Moreover, I had no idea that ‘I’ felt this way. I’ve suppressed it that much - I have disallowed myself that much.
But once I realized it, I didn’t know what to do with it.
Baker, a huge fan of Eckhart Tolle, mentioned the ‘pain body’ to me, a concept I wasn’t at all familiar with. (I will have her on the podcast soon, and can’t wait for you all to have a little Baker magic in your life. She’s a radiant human - in large part because she has walked through fire, and continues to do so, in order to exist on the vibration she does. Baker, you are so wonderful and I love you; I can’t wait to help put your story out into the world!)
I looked it up, and found a wonderful exercise to heal your emotional pain body - witness, observe, let it be. And then perhaps… try painting or drawing what you see.
So I did!
(Hehe, this is your permission to keep things simple.)
Doodling it helped me really be with it. To see it better. And as I paused for a moment, just letting it be there, not pretending it doesn’t exist - not trying to change it - I felt the tiniest shift.
The tiniest bit more ease.
And newly, a deeper presence with my wonderful mama friends. My Steel Magnolias :)
Also so beautiful if you are interested in this work:
This exercise
And this poem
Blessings for your journey!!
love & stories,
Paula
EveningsKingdom.com
PS Forwarded this and want more free weekly content?
Please sign up here (it’s free forever!) and do let me know of any requests. Especially if you’re working through something specific. As Ram Dass once said, we are all just walking each other home :)
Thank you so much for reading, and - blessings for the road.
Doodling it helped me really be with it. To see it better. And as I paused for a moment, just letting it be there, not pretending it doesn’t exist - not trying to change it - I felt the tiniest shift.
The tiniest bit more ease.
And newly, a deeper presence with my wonderful mama friends. My Steel Magnolias :)
Also so beautiful if you are interested in this work:
This exercise
And this poem
Blessings for your journey!!
love & stories,
Paula
EveningsKingdom.com
PS Forwarded this and want more free weekly content?
Please sign up here (it’s free forever!) and do let me know of any requests. Especially if you’re working through something specific. As Ram Dass once said, we are all just walking each other home :)
Thank you so much for reading, and - blessings for the road.