Kiyan’s first sounding part 1

Kiyan’s first sounding contained a number of things that `pinged’ with me. For example, this sentence:
Changes in the world around you have forced your PRACTICAL alignment from one of belief to knowledge -- and you do not like this.
One of the difficulties I have is figuring `how it works’ – when it comes to trying to fit in and work with the system, I’m like Ozzie Osborne with a remote control. I call for help from one of my kids, who grew up in this different world and know the secret is knowing which button does what.
When I was a kid I believed absolutely in the world I knew – the changing of the seasons, living close to the patterns of nature, using your instinct to find your way. None of this works now. In fact, I have come to distrust my instinct and `signs’ so strongly that I avoid them if possible. Simply because they are old technology, old `magick’ if you will, and don’t work well in the world I find myself in now.
Now I have to read the manual, and Kiyan is right – I do NOT like it.

I am having a little trouble with the terms as I read on – Kiyan speaks of the Conceptual Plane and the Practical Plane. The former I am interpreting as the `idea’ of a thing (or as the dictionary says `idea of the attributes common to a class of things’ – not making it much clearer); the latter I see as the `hands on’ doing aspect, and suggests I shift some beliefs from the conceptual to the practical, an alchemical process. This I take to mean I attempt to transmute some of the leaden ideas lying around my psyche into creative gold (although I am well aware alchemy is more than that, this analogy seems to fit here.)
One of those leaden ideas, I think, is that it is all about ME – yet, as I work on my Frida Kahlo retablo, I realise that she did actually achieve this alchemy, turning it into the gold of her paintings. ``I paint self portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.'
Thus I am reminded that, whether I avoid it or not, synchronicity and signs still make themselves felt, like an insistent shoe brush salesman who pops up at your window after you’ve chased him off the doorstep.

Kiyan went on to make a critical point about my craving for a `cleared path’ while still desiring a high degree of `free spirit’. This relates directly to how I was raised, and brings my father into the picture. I have inherited a lot of his traits, and freedom was his religion. Like him, I chafe if restricted to a routine, yet, like my mother, I fall easily into a routine and enjoy comforts. She missed the comforts of the settled life when she joined the travelling life – things settled people take for granted, like bathrooms and toilets. Like my parents arguing over freedom versus convenience, there are two people at war in me – one who wants to say `sod it’ and seek total freedom, and one who constantly reminds me how much I enjoy having a hot shower.
Social obligations and routine chafe the free spirit, but she goes remarkably silent on the subject of giving up her comforts.
As Kiyan says: One representation of this Casting is that of the 'fireside cat'. You are in a comfort zone embracing your sensual, artistic side, and fear losing this comfort if your 'get up and stretch' in the practical world. While you should be able to observe situations without judgment and make good decisions, you force yourself into indecision and then have to rely on others -- often with unhappy results.
One of those uncomfortable observations that I have to reluctantly admit is true – and I must ask myself, at this point, if I am the author of my own story or if I am letting other people write the chapters because I have lost the plot – or perhaps because I am dimly trying to follow a plot familiar to me, but unapplicable in my current circumstances?

Lots of food for thought here, lots to digest.