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Angustia: no way out!

  Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae describes anxiety as a narrowing (from Latin angustia - narrowness): "Anxiety is that which so takes possession of the mind as to leave no opening for escape" It is sorrow so intense it "binds the soul" and "shuts out all hope" The soul becomes trapped, unable to find a way out. This image is precise: anxiety feels like being in a space that keeps getting smaller, the walls pressing in. Aquinas's proposed remedies all point towards "dilatatio" (expansion) : -Grace as "enlargement and strengthening" of the soul. A distraction that provokes a "dilatatio" (expansion) and therefore:  -Joy and love causing the heart to widen -Hope opening what anxiety has closed -Contemplation of truth delighting more than pain saddens This is grace - not as theological abstraction, but as lived experience of sudden release. My frustration:  Around my 20s when I was trying to deepen Catholicism, I bega...

Wings

What an awkward day!
Strong inexplicable pressure inside, everything pulsing, whatever I approached didn't work, growing frustration and uneasiness... 

At some time in the afternoon I gave up. I took out a rune for me: Dagaz: the passage from one state to another... But incredibly, tooking it out, I saw the rune was broken! Couldn't understand how possibly the stone would break in the bag I keep them!

Finally I decided to lie down. What a strange thing happened. I felt myself suspended in some dark cosmic environment. It was so calm and totally still, motionless. I realised then my entire undefined being was in total intense fibrillation. As if composed by millions of energy sparks in constant movement, so that it looked like a Kaleidoscope of lights, glittering, changing colours and brightness.

I understood that I just needed to accept, welcome, this twinkling being who was me. I didn't need to move or do anything, as the universe around would naturally adjust to me...

At some time I felt my shimmering shape becoming taller and thinner. I realised the body looked like a rod with something attached that gave me the idea of a flag, somehow fluttering wildly while strongly glowing. I perceived the "flag" being attached to the upper part of my back.

Eventually I realised the flag was in reality wings, still stuck together, but trying to liberate themselves and become two distinct wings.

Me, within that shimmering being, in total surprise and awe. Realising I had wings! I felt them strongly attached to my back, between the shoulders... 

When I got up, the feeling of the wings continued, and still now that I am writing, they are still here! 

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