I'm back from Canada!
Things definitely didn't go as planned on that trip, but I managed to salvage what I could, as well as take some very important lessons back home with me.
I made an unexpected business contact who I will be working with here in the states, and through his generosity, I should be able to get a work permit to work within Canada, and make more regular trips up there! It's a beautiful, beautiful country. It didn't want to let me in, but once I earned it, and was willing to take risks, put up with unexpected delays, and confront my fears, it started to feel like home.
Canada was all about learning to roll with the punches, confront myself and what I was afraid of, and trying to put the pieces together that I lost, or ripped from myself at some point in my past. It was about nostalgia and learning to move forward. My friend Victor was a wonderful host, taught me how to walk on ice without falling on my face while I was in Edmonton (my first night there I had a nasty fall, though thankfully he was there to help walk/carry me back to the apartment)
The big thing he helped me gain though, was being able to look at myself critically, and understand when I was going into a mental/emotional tailspin, and how to prevent it from happening. As we get older, we get caught up in the hustle and bustle of life. Some of this seems to be an American thing, but when we want things we want them NOW, and we will scramble and struggle, and grasp for a solution until we're exhausted and blue in the face.
Even as a mage, as someone who should know how to trust the universe, and manipulate the forces at play to better ourselves and bring our goals closer... it had been years since I had not treated life as a struggle, not acted like a caged animal when in a poor situation. I exhaust myself with marketing, with prospecting, when instead of fixating on something and hitting the refresh button obsessively, I should have been planning less exhaustive (and more sensible) strategies, doing things at auspicious times, taking breaks and stepping back, and not overtaxing myself when I know something isn't working or won't work. I'm a mage dammit, and I haven't been acting like it. I've allowed others to make me feel uncomfortable in my own home, I've allowed their insecurities to fuel mine, and I've handed away the reigns for control in my life. No one took them from me, I just ceased to realize that I am responsible for how I react to things in my life.
Those two weeks in Edmonton were full of harsh realizations, but Victor helped me to realize what was going on, what I'd been doing, and how to fix it. He may have to drag me kicking and screaming until I actually find some kind of inner serenity (and he said he would if he had to) but hopefully I'll sort out how to actually relax a little and do things intelligently, going with the flow instead of always being a ball of rushed stress, and hopefully I'll be able to do that without too much kicking and screaming :) I like to think I'm off to a good start at least. The Canadian "no worries" philosophy that I was surrounded by, will definitely help reinforce that too.
Somewhere along the way, I lost a part of myself growing up. I think we all do to some extent, and only some of us get it back. We take on ideas, personas, all in the search for who we are, for some kind of identity, and we sometimes even discard the bits and pieces that were good for us, that defined us, because we were scared. I'm going back to the beginning. I'm going back to when I started my spiritual development, back to my roots with Anubis. He has a lot more to teach me, and while Sekhmet definitely has a lot to teach me as well, I don't think I'll be able to appreciate and understand her lessons properly without a solid foundation that I can understand and raise myself from.
Maybe I just went a little crazy on that 20 hour bus ride back from Canada. That's possible too, but I wrote stuff down, I analyzed myself like crazy, because I had nothing better to do, and I put together and analyzed all the things that have happened to me in the past few weeks. I understand where the hole in myself is, I understand where my problems are, and I've started setting goals. I'm fairly certain at this point, that the fact that all of the wifi spots on my way home mysteriously didn't work, was a plot by the powers that be to get me to write again. I've been doing daily journals, even bi-daily journals. I'm finding that when I try to shirk my meditations, or other workings in favor of internet, or in favor of something else, its getting taken away from me, like a parent taking something away from a disobedient child. Mysteriously, these things are given back to me, or other rewards are given when I do what I'm "supposed" to be doing. So it seems that I've acquired some kind of spiritual babysitter. I'm not going to complain though! It's both annoying and incredibly useful.
While I feel like shaking my fist at the heavens sometimes, it's actually quite brilliant, and adds confirmation that I'm probably not just some mad lunatic who just thinks she sometimes gets visits from Egyptian gods :) Though why the spirits are taking such an interest in me to actually go to these lengths, I'm unclear on. Maybe it's because I'm finally ready to listen, and they know it. I certainly won't claim to know, but I will enjoy the adventure.
