“One pill makes you larger,
and one pill makes you small.
And the ones that mother gives you
don’t do anything at all.”
We transform so much throughout our lives, both unintentionally through experience, and intentionally so as to use the experience to become something more than when we began.
We seek our face in mirrors, in reflections, in the eyes of others, wondering what we’ll find, if it’s real or imagined, potential or weary.
Is this a mask or my new face?
Is this me or something less?
Am I small or am I more?
We are meant to bend and shift and change.
To metamorphosize and tear apart and come undone and birth new being over and over and over again.
But how do we know what’s real?
What is us and what is just another mask?
Be unafraid.
Run wild into the truth of who you are, no matter what you find.
Follow every white rabbit.
Try this, try that.
Wear the dress, the cloak, the shoes, the sky.
The paint, the stars, the essence, the magick.
Try it all.
See what wants to stay.
Let go of what doesn’t feel good.
Not what doesn’t “fit” – new skins don’t always feel right, but your Soul will tell you if it feels good.
The right will come in time.
One Pill Makes You Larger
The expanse.
Terrifying.
Electrifying.
Intimidating.
Consuming.
We can tell ourselves that we are more, and we are, but how often do we really feel it?
How often do we reach for stillness, settle into quiet, to stretch our fingers toward the glinting edges of our own limits, reaching, reaching, fingertips fluttering…only to never touch?
Only to find…more.
And more.
And more.
And then the awareness comes.
We sit at the edge of vastness, of knowing, of all colour and sound and sensation.
The glittering dance of billions of possibilities, undulating around us like constellations.
Like galaxies.
Crescendo, courage, dance, ecstasy, orgasm, adrenaline, power…
These are our catalysts of greatness.
The pills that make us larger.
Close your eyes and breathe deeply.
Are you warm in the womb of the world?
Or is there a sharpness, a coldness, of the openness, painting the taste of stars across your tongue?
The edge of the expanse can be chilling.
It can feel like a vast, dark sea of nothing.
Or it can feel like a vast galaxy of everything.
Both can overwhelm.
Come closer.
Come to the earth.
Feel your roots push down from your hands, from your feet, churning through dirt and clay and stone, reaching deeply into the sacred hold of Mother Earth.
Feel the silver thread that connects all things with Spirit shimmer from the tips of your roots, to the tips of the roots of the giant trees of the Horned God’s great forest.
His Church of Silent Ages.
Of Frozen Time.
Hear the chorus of birds and wind and howling.
Feel the rain, pattering your skin in kisses from the distant ocean.
Smile.
And know that you are more.
One Pill Makes You Small
Sometimes the sky feels overpowering in its openness.
Sometimes the ground seems so very far away.
And so we choose to become small.
To go within.
To curl around the precious seeds within us, hold them safely within the darkness of our body, watered with the gentle oceans that sway beneath our skin, moving with our breath as the rest of our being falls into stillness.
Sometimes we whisper a plea for quiet.
Sometimes we seek a place to hide, to become invisible; not to cower, but to survive.
No one knows what it is we have had to run from, what monsters have surprised us from the darkness, suddenly attacking from above, below, or beside us.
Holding our hands.
Drawing us in.
We curl up and become small, waiting for the danger to pass.
And we remain, long after the monsters have become myth, after the stories have turned to dust, just in case.
Just to be safe.
Just to survive.
There are times to shrink, to settle, to dissolve and vanish and be nothing but breath.
And there are times when we are pushed down, drowned, suffocated and crushed, because it’s where we are wanted.
To remain small.
To remain nothing.
And the monsters win, without ever raising another claw.
Without ever baring another fang.
But listen again to the earth.
Far from the howls.
Behind the birdsong.
Beneath the windy trees.
In the quiet that can only exist in the deepest, darkest parts of the woods.
Listen.
Listen to the breath of the forest.
Listen to the silence of the eyes that blink curiously.
Listen within the dirt, and roots, and stone.
For the heartbeat.
When you find it, when you hear it, and the pattern of its beats becomes clear, listen again.
For the echo.
Within you.
A pill that makes us small.
And take as many beats as you need.
Until it feels safe, to grow again.
The Ones That Mother Gives You Don’t Do Anything at All
Whether we find ourselves reflected in the eye of a dormouse, or towering ten feet tall, the power to be more or less, lies within us alone.
You see, in the vastness of the unknown, the wild expanse, or the whispering shadows within our own walls, it can be easy to lose our compass amongst the falling books and singing flowers and distracting stars.
We seek outside of ourselves for help, for guidance, for direction.
Where do I go?
Where am I going?
Where should I be?
Where have I come from?
Is this the right way?
This story doesn’t have a yellow brick road.
There are no painted signs that tell you where to go; only to keep going.
Only we may decide which direction to take.
For our journey is ours alone, and not for any other to embark upon for us.
We can ask for advice, guidance, a nudge here and there.
But ultimately it is our feet upon the path.
We can take what we learn and make a choice.
And another choice.
And another.
For that is where our power always is, always hides, always playfully awaits our discovery:
Our choice.
When someone tells us we are beautiful, magical, powerful…it is not they who activates the starlight within us.
It is not them who causes us to grow.
We choose to grow in response to what they’ve given us.
We choose to allow it in, to allow it to lift us up.
We do that.
When someone tells us we are wretched, useless, unwanted, unloved…it is not they who shrink us, who bury us, who make us less than we are.
These are but words.
It is us who chooses to shrink.
To hide.
To become less.
In the wake of their destruction, when all they use are words, it is up to us to open our eyes, to see that the swords do not touch us, that the ropes do not bind us, that we were not blindfolded and gagged after all.
It is up to us to see what is truly there, and what has interloped on our imagination.
Taking advantage of the incredible power of our mind’s eye.
Some will do this to our faces.
Some will release their will into the world, and we shall be among those who are pulled in by it.
But none of these serve us.
It is not the praise nor the put-down that causes us to grow or to shrink.
That power is ours, and remains so, even in the grimmest of battles.
In short, we must release the pressure we so desperately strangle ourselves with.
There is no right way or wrong way.
There is no left or right.
There is no up or down.
There is only movement, dance, spiral, expansion, contraction, evolution, and phenomenon.
And only we may ride the waves of our existence.
With wings, a broomstick, a surfboard, a bicycle, a starship, a swan…
The choice is ours.
But if we stay in one place, if we never allow ourselves to move, then no expansion, contraction, evolution, or phenomenon will occur.
But if we don’t know which way to go, how do we know when to move?
Follow the rabbit.
Your curiosity, your wonder, that spark in the corner of your eye, the shadow that seems just a little more magical…
Curiouser and curiouser.
Follow it.
Follow them.
Follow them all.
Allow yourself to surrender to adventure, and release any need to know where the path may lead.
Because if you know where you’re going, it’s hardly an adventure at all.
Even if we know the destination, it is upon the path and beside it, further in the trees, that true adventure awaits.
Go Ask Alice
No one else holds our answers.
Not white knights.
Not red queens.
They can simply hand us keys, and it is up to us to find the locks they fit within us.
Or cast them aside entirely.
The choice is ours.
The path is ours.
The journey, the expansion, the evolution…is ours.
Let it be magick.
“If you don’t know where you’re going,
any road will take you there.”
To white rabbits.
