Turn in your books to page three-hundred and ninety-four...

Dang Potions Class (Year One)

I want to write a lot about it, however time will not allow this....which is kind of neat - almost being forced to go on the ride without being able to process it much; oh, and 'it' being school.

Between work and the overtime being required there, school and the homework mostly, I loved reading about the two feet of parchment Snape would require from his fifth years; I can't imagine what O.W.L.'s were like to take.

Further, as we all are, I'm fighting a Dark Lord as well. So put that in your Felix Felicis and drink it.

"Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" - Matt 6:21

How, I don't know, but there is a world that is soon going to end. It has carried me for some time. It brought me out of the world I was having trouble accepting into a world where magic and love and danger and triumph walk with a gigantic gate - blowing away hearts and minds with the wind of their stride. The work grew into me as I grew with it. It's Western Literature at some of its finest. I can feel the characters and settings and conversations, throbbing on my eyes and in my chest like recalling an old memory. It's that vivid; that engrossing. As usual, ironically, I was told over and over to read them, "No." - something about me just doesn't lend myself easily to recommendations - though as I have matured, I find certain people's suggestions taken more comfortably.

As a new semester has me in new and full time classes, I am placed amongst an English class which has been a pretty good time - though I often feel the need for a time turner. The English is academic, but I finally understand wanting to be able to write. Until now this feeling eluded me, I had no idea how one could not write; when the emotions and ideas take hold of me and tear me apart, sometimes in joy, sometimes in agony - ink pours where blood should; and words and paragraphs and stories and allegory and aphorisms and poetry form like puddles of a wasted self, suddenly renewed, suddenly emboldened.

Recognizing the artistry in this lengthy body of work juxtaposed against my own, and with my general place in maturation, I wish to know how to form the ink I spill into art. To not just write because I'm dying or living, or to write as dying and living, but to die and live, and translate the experience so utterly staggeringly. I feel a daunting presence, lost for some time, of deep desire; I feel the will raising it's head, breathing more consciously that it previously has.

Ready to end this long road, knowing I'm coming to a place in the last book where soon I won't be able to stop till the tears have fallen and my spirituality renewed and, and what else I don't know...but I'm nervous - in any event, with this in mind, I find myself reminiscing over my time here, in the world Muggles aren't readily aware of- I think of a range of individuals; in no order they rise like members of an old life - from Professor Sprout to Dean Thomas, to Harry, to Fleur, to Bill, to Ginny when she couldn't speak around Harry, to Sirius, Dobby (sigh), Lupin, Filch, James & Lily, Albus...etc. etc. etc. I see them as a memory, so vivid I can remember their voices and how they grew in height and their hair and the questions I had/have about their personal lives - I can almost smell them walking by, or hear the fire in the Gryffindor common room, hear the crack of disapparition and then understand what follows that crack - the rubber tubing, the suffocation, the release during apparition. I hear parseltongue, I hear the song of the Pheonix beautifying my sadness, the cold wind to Hogsmead, the thick dust in the Shrieking Shack, etc. etc. etc. etc....all good books are like this. Certain memories even ignite the fear I felt at the time - like a literal PTSD.

"The Ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming."

Year's One through Four are very different than Year's Five through Seven. Year Seven almost stands by itself, else is part of Year Six. The ending of Year Four is when everything switches. Year seven is close to done, tears have been shed and nerves have been rattled. It's not melodramatic, it's good writing. This is the slightest bow to a series that I can't express enough about - beyond the writing - for what it did for me, for the time in my life it was with me; such a time of evolution. But God has a funny way of being a part of our lives, in all things, and giving things to us which He knows suit our tastes - teaching us as we go; like medicine in peanut butter to a dog - but obviously more refined. I really hope people are able to give themselves this gift. To allow themselves to sink into the series and let the world become part of their memory; I am glad I was supported to traverse it (eventually I began chasing it) - I'm glad for it awakens an incredible part of our spirits and so our overall beings - and it's an incredibly important part. It lights a fire I won't tell you about, but it's an ancient magic one can only learn about themselves before giving to others.

Back to the son of Enoch

"You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'”
- George Bernard Shaw

"...always sinking within it." -M. Ondaatje

"He leaned forward to rest on the skin of her frail neck. He fell in love with her downcast eye."

- -M. Ondaatje

Act III: Scene V

Jul: O, think'st thou we shall ever meet again?

Rom: I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve

For sweet discourses in our time to come.

Book review and partial exegesis: 'The Untethered Soul'

The systems of energy in the physical world (like the atom bomb for instance) can be utilized to better understand the stunning phenomena at work within a person, and concordantly their psychological and physiological constitutions.

“Just like energy waves, the energy that comes into you must keep moving. But that doesn’t mean it can’t get blocked within you. There is a way that energy can both keep moving and stay in one place – and that is to circle around itself. We see this in atoms and in planetary orbits. Everything is energy, and energy will just expand outward if it’s not contained. For there to be manifest creation, energy must get in the dynamic of cycling around itself to create a stable unit. That’s why energy manifesting as an atom forms the basic building block of this entire physical universe.” – Michael A. Singer, 'The Untethered Soul'

With this understanding – imagine pain, and hurt, and jealously, and joy, and anger, and fear, and any other emotion we can think of as actual physical waves of energy. Sometimes, when these waves irritate and monopolize our consciousness we may begin, as most all do, to task the mind with protecting, or clinging to the experience - till the intensity of their energy is “manageable” for us. This could range from distracting ourselves for some time, to trying to build a world that holds in the joy we feel – whatever – it’s some natural (but unhealthy) neurosis in us humans.

Any reaction, clinging or protecting, does not allow these energy waves to pass through us; thus, as they do in the physical world, these wave patterns begin to circle around themselves and create little ‘pockets of energy’ stored in our minds and heart; and should one keep that much energy harnessed – the result is explosions - at an atomic level of emotionality. Peace becomes harder to feel and becomes more something you work to create a culture for (which is a lack of peace in and of itself). Based on the lack of true peace - true happiness and contentment and finally - enlightenment, become harder realities to attain.

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The book goes on to describe life lived out of an ever expanding, and infinite source of energy while giving easy guidance along the way with some interesting experiments in vigorous self-examination. It has some pretty terrible writing frankly, thus, it is an easy, but slightly annoying read; but not so overtly grotesque that it’s entirely undesirable.

To wrap up, 'The Untethered Soul' is very wholly worth the slight irritation it may or may not cause you reading it for the higher understanding and solutions it provides – besides, style here is a matter of taste, so you might actually enjoy it. The horse running free on a white serene beach as part of the turquoise cover however...? Well, then there is that.

I will be buying three for Christmas gifts.