The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

It's nearly 3 months now since Petunia died. It seems more like 3 years.
I knew I had lost my partner in crime. No one to share cuttings and seeds with anymore. No one to gossip with and bitch about the miserable nut job that is Vernon Dursley.

I expected to miss her greatly and to feel sad and miserable more often than not but what I never expected was to lose the old serpent brain. Lately it's all grey fog and mist where the glowing green cells used to be. Izzie has become so easily distracted and it is so hard to concentrate on anything lately. So the secret weapon for fighting Dementors - stuff like the online course "Introduction to Mathematical Thinking" - these sorts of things no longer seem to work

Been resorting to reading books on brain training and hypnosis in a desperate attempt to divert the Dementors and restore a smile on the serpent dial as I had noticed that nearly any profound change came about after being in a trance state. Being on a train or sitting by the beach listening to the waves are especially magical ways for getting into such magical states

I did come across some interesting insights in all this recent reading.

A woman called Janni Goss gave a lecture recently about the incredible power of laughter to increase not just the quality of life but the quantity too. A real proper belly laugh is excellent exercise, gets the lungs full of oxygen and produces a great fix of happy hormones.

Borrowed her book from the library where the talk was held and came across a very interesting concept
She talks of being in the state of hypervigilance where one feels constantly under threat and on edge, irritable, unable to relax etc etc and this is just your mind and body in constant stress mode
After a year of being in that state back in 2001 both before and after reading the Potter books, I call it Constant Vigilance
She refers to it as Red Brain - as in the danger sign beeping constantly

Then she compares that to the relaxed, calm and comfortable state where you can think clearly, things are effortless and life is wonderful. "An exhilarating sense of infinite opportunity"
I call it the Green Lights and the Germans call it "Die Grune Welle" - the wonderful run of luck you have when all the traffic lights turn green for you and when parking places just magically appear when you need them etc etc
So it is no surprise that she calls this the Green Brain and devotes a great deal of time to explaining how to enable such states.

I have seen other comparisons between these two states before knowing these very useful new names for them
The most perfect example illustrating the true nature of the vast difference between them is from Anthony De Mello

Imagine all of you are hypnotized to believe there is a tiger in this room.
In your fear you will try to escape it, to fight it,
to protect yourselves from it, to placate it.

But once the spell is broken there is nothing to be done.
And you are all radically changed:

So understanding breaks the spell,
the broken spell brings change,
change leads to inaction,
inaction is power:
You can do anything on earth,
for it is no longer you who do it.


I had been there and done that and the difference between the states of frantic fear and awakened joy are amazing. But the paper tiger returned with a vengeance and this time I cannot seem to shake it off.
It is possible for lightening to strike twice in the same place. After all, if you have done something before, it should be much easier to do it a second time

But for now I find myself still stuck in the Arena trying to find the chink in the armor with the link to the real world outside where there are no tigers and no more need for constant vigilance
Now and then there is a tantalizing glimpse but never quite sufficient to cross over from here to there.

For some inexplicable reason this serpent has been thinking about this story more often than usual

Two monks were strolling by a stream on their way home to the monastery. They were startled by the sound of a young woman in a bridal gown, sitting by the stream, crying softly. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she gazed across the water. She needed to cross to get to her wedding, but she was fearful that doing so might ruin her beautiful handmade gown.

In this particular sect, monks were prohibited from touching women. But one monk was filled with compassion for the bride. Ignoring the sanction, he hoisted the woman on his shoulders and carried her across the stream--assisting her journey and saving her gown. She smiled and bowed with gratitude as he noisily splashed his way back across the stream to rejoin his companion.

The second monk was livid. "How could you do that?" he scolded. "You know we are forbidden even to touch a woman, much less pick one up and carry her around!"

The offending monk listened in silence to a stern lecture that lasted all the way back to the monastery. His mind wandered as he felt the warm sunshine and listened to the singing birds. After returning to the monastery, he fell asleep for a few hours. He was jostled and awakened in the middle of the night by his fellow monk. "How could you carry that woman?" his agitated friend cried out. "Someone else could have helped her across the stream. You were a bad monk!"

"What woman?" the tired monk inquired groggily.

"Don't you even remember? That woman you carried across the stream," his colleague snapped.

"Oh, her," laughed the sleepy monk. "I only carried her across the stream. You carried her all the way back to the monastery."

source


And lots more strange and spooky tales