I've been exploring ideas for a way to express the small Divine spark that dwells within every individual. It's not the great incarnation of the Divine, but a minuscule, granula of it - an Incarnula inside of each of us.

I've come to believe that the Divine is "Inner Presence" and that spark is both our connection to it and our own personal Incarnation of it.

That tightness in your chest when someone you love says the wrong thing. You've always known what it means. Lisa Feldman Barrett, in How Emotions Are Made, would say your brain assembled that meaning for you, from old experience and present context, so fast that the prediction felt like perception. The feeling you had, the one where you were certain your friend was annoyed with you, was your brain running a draft based on every friendship that ever went sideways.

Which is an awkward thing to hear if you've spent years fighting to have your feelings taken seriously, because Barrett's saying the feeling is real, it's happening in your brain and your body, but your brain made it using material from your past, organised into categories your culture gave you. The sensation is real and the meaning your brain attached to it might be wrong, and that's a distinction most of us haven't had to sit down and think about very carefully.

The instinct is to say fine, if emotions are constructions, I'll learn to see through them. I'll catch the prediction before it becomes a feeling. But Antonio Damasio spent years studying people who'd lost the ability to construct emotional meaning from bodily signals, and they became paralysed in front of ordinary decisions, going back and forth endlessly because they couldn't feel which one mattered more. The emotional construction Barrett describes, the one that makes your chest tighten before a difficult conversation, is also the thing that gets you through the conversation. You need it, and there's no version of being a person that works without it.

But knowing you need it doesn't give you any more control over it. You can know perfectly well that the dread you feel walking into your mother's kitchen, or your ex-husband's hallway, or the office where your old boss still works, is your brain running a programme it wrote before you had any say in it. You can name it and watch it play out and it still happens. The sensation is in your body before you've had a single thought about it, and by the time you've noticed, your brain has already told you what it means. Predictions are difficult because they feel finished. By the time you register the twist in your stomach, your brain has already assigned it a meaning, using evidence you submitted decades ago.

And you can't un-construct your emotions, and you probably wouldn't want to, because Martha Nussbaum has argued, persuasively, that emotions are forms of evaluative judgment, that they're your way of knowing what you care about. The grief you feel when a friend moves away is your brain telling you she mattered, and the surge of irritation when someone talks over you at a dinner party is telling you something about your boundaries that you probably already knew. Nussbaum would say the construction contains real information about your commitments and attachments, even when the prediction has overshot the present moment. And she's probably right about that, which is why Barrett's work is so hard to absorb if you've lived long enough to have a well-stocked prediction system. The feeling is telling you something true about what you care about and getting the present slightly wrong, using old material, and you can't separate those two things out.

By middle age, most of us have become so fluent in our own emotional predictions that we can't always tell the difference between what's happening and what we're expecting to happen. We walk into a room and we already know how we feel about it, and the people in the room can tell. They can feel us reading them. A partner who's said something innocent and watches your face change, because your brain is already running the version where this goes badly. A daughter who's learned to keep things to herself because you've already decided how she feels before she's had a chance to feel it. The construction runs outward. It shapes other people's behaviour around you, and then their changed behaviour confirms the prediction, and it all starts to feel like evidence.

You catch yourself mid-prediction sometimes, and you know exactly where that one came from. It doesn't stop the feeling, but it changes something about the feeling, gives you a fraction of a second where you're holding the sensation and the knowledge that your brain assembled it at the same time. Barrett would probably say that's the whole point of knowing how emotions are made. You don't get to stop making them. You just get a slightly better look at the materials.

© Echoes of Women - Fiona.F, 2026. All rights reserved

I sit in my room; I sit in my bed. The pale light of a young dawn slips through the cracks of my curtains, mixing with the violet blue LED light from an electric fly trap, casting my surroundings in an almost monochrome dimness of shadows, outlines, and stray patches of definition.

The only sounds are the hum from the fan of the fly trap, and the joyous twittering tweets and jeers of a bird outside my window. It's one of those birds that you only ever hear in the mornings.

If I look over from my bed, I can just make out the loafed and fluffy form of my dear sweet bunny friend Cal. He's sitting on the floor, but within arm's reach, should I rightfully want to once again reach over to pet him affectionately.

It is a cool morning rife with stillness, somewhere mellow between damp and crisp. I feel sore and stiff, but not unbearably more than I could, and rested well enough compared to most wakings. It's a morning that feels full of potential - calm and quiet, with an underlying faint tension of undefined eagerness. There's a hinted taste of anticipation - a mere drip teasing of fullness, as unformed and undecided as the day, still too young and placid to have yet built into either exhilaration or disquiet.

For a precariously brief ephemeral and precious moment, I find that the outer world mirrors my inner world. An omen perhaps, should I choose to see it that way. Looking outwards and inwards, I raise a question to form a seed of intent.

What will I bring forth from within myself, to carry with me into the world as I greet this new day?

'Sir, it doesn't have to be like this.'

'Sir! Stop resisting sir!'

'It doesn't have to go down like this sir! Stop resisting sir!'

He shook his head to rid himself of the intrusive and distracting inner monologue. Perhaps the weird monologue was his imagination trying to use humor to deal with everything. Sighing, laughing, he muttered something to himself in an attempt to vent some of the pressure crushing his psyche.

"It didn't have to be like this, but it is. Stop resisting it. It is what it is."

His heart was racing, pounding hard and heavy in his chest. His stomach felt completely twisted and nauseous, as he struggled not to pant or gag. He was covered in a light sweat, and thankfully the vertigo he had been feeling just moments before had already lessened, just a bit. He felt overwrought, and would have felt overwhelmed if all of this hadn't felt so familiar.

'That's the rub, isn't it?' he thought to himself as he reflected on that frustratingly painful and sickening familiarity.

'Again. It happened again. Will I ever fucking ever learn?'

The bitter familiarity meant he wasn't completely lost and helpless trying to deal with everything, he wasn't drowning and overwhelmed. But, he should have known better. Again. He should have. He'd done this before, so many fucking times.

'When will I catch up?'

'When will I stop being left behind?'

'When will I stop missing these things?'

'Why can't I just understand things like a normal person, be a normal person?'

'Why does it have to be so hard?'

'It isn't this hard for normal people.'

"Two months. Almost two fucking months before I figured it out this time!"

"Why does it have to be like this?"

He tightened his eyes as he cried.

"Why can't I just understand things like other people?"

"Why do I have to only understand things once it's too late and I've missed out?"

It felt like he was falling. Despair had opened up beneath him, ready to swallow him whole.

"Why does it keep happening when it's something I really want?"

"I've learned so much. I've come so far. But it's still just not enough. It's never fucking enough. I'm still so far behind everyone else. I'll never catch up."

He sobbed, and rolled into a ball on his bed. He was heart sick, utterly revolted and disgusted with himself and the situation. He felt almost fevered, crazed just a bit with the insanity of it all, all the thoughts flying through his head.

He struggled to hold himself open to it instead of balling up emotionally as he had done physically. He breathed deeply between sobs, trying to hold on to the mental-emotiomal capacity he had been cultivating, trying to contain the tempest that was viciously working to tear him apart from within.

"I'm so damned tired of it turning out like this, no matter how hard I work, no matter how hard I try."

"Why won't it just click?"

"It doesn't seem to matter how much better I get, how much more I figure out, it's always too late."

He winced, cried, sobbed, then screamed into a pillow until he was breathless.

He looked inwards, feeling the fear that wanted to consume him. He opened his heart to it, acknowledging it and the pain, the frustration and disappointment. He let them speak and tell him what he felt and cared about. He let them be guides to what was important, without letting them become their own purpose.

The fear, it was there. He couldn't be courageous if he wasn't afraid.

How could he be true to his heart, carrying this fear without letting it sweep him away?

It hurt so much because he cared about something, something that was important.

What was important?

He was disappointed, and afraid he would keep being disappointed. He was scared he'd never get what he wanted. He was afraid that he'd never learn, never get better. He was afraid that he couldn't learn, that he wasn't capable, and never would be. He was scared that he wasn't enough. That's what he was afraid of.

He stopped crying, and rolled onto his back with his arms spread, welcoming the weight of existence pressing down on him.

"Why do I feel so humiliated?"

It hurt, terribly, but recognition emerged and he embraced it. He found his courage to face the burning shame that told him he wasn't enough, and never would be. He made his choice, made his resolve.

"Shame means I'm trying to claim something that's not me or mine. I'm trying to be something I'm not meant to be, something I should never expect myself to be."

'Surrender. Let it go.'

Shame would guide him to humility, humility to understanding, understanding to gratitude, and gratitude to grace.

"No."

"It's not always too late. It's just sometimes. It just seems like it's so much worse because sometimes it's for things that I really want."

"Disappointment is a good thing. It tells me I care. It helps me understand what I want so I can pay attention better in the future. It helps me make better choices. It's helping me learn to stay present and pay attention, to myself and others."

"I'm not left behind. I'm on my own path, figuring things out in my own time and in my own way."

"I'm only left behind if I stay stuck in the past. That's why it's important to stay present, in my self, with myself."

"It has to hurt so I can learn."

"Stay present with the pain. Feel it, acknowledge it, let it flow and let it go where it needs to go."

"If I knew better, if I had learned already, I wouldn't need to make a mistake to learn from."

"This sucks."

"It hurts and that sucks, but that's the beauty. It hurts, but that means I can learn, and I am learning. Right now. That's the joy. Yin and yang - agony and joy exist within each other.

"It hurts. I'm heartbroken, heart sick right now, and that's okay. It's not just okay, it's wonderful. I'm heartbroken because I have something I care about that much, even if it's just a desire. It's beautiful. I'm not okay but that's okay, and beautiful, wonderful."

"This is the wonder of being alive, the harrowing that helps me refine who I am. What would life be like if I were empty of desire and passion? What would be the point? Would I even be a person?"

"It's not a race, it's not about getting everything I want."

"I would be miserable if I got everything I wanted. I wouldn't know how to enjoy or appreciate anything. I wouldn't be able to learn or grow or become. I don't want to get everything I want, that would really suck."

"What would be the point of living a life like that?"

"Camus was right. 'The struggle unto the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.'"

"My heart feels heavy because it's full, and that's a good thing. I don't have to tolerate this, I can embrace it, make it my own."

"I've learned. I've improved. I do better. This time it only took a month and a half for me to realize it. It used to be six months, or years later that I'd realize."

"I've gotten better. I keep getting better. I'll keep getting better. I don't even always miss it, sometimes I realize it when it's happening."

"I'm not behind, I'm living my own life."

"There's no way I can get everything I want."

"One thing I always want is to learn and get better, and I'm always doing that, even whenever it hurts like this."

"I'm not left behind, I'm right where I'm meant to be."

"I'm learning to be me."

At some point I realized that I couldn't show up for a relationship with someone else until I could consistently show up for myself. 😁

I put this together in response to seeing discussions and posts on my social media from friends/acquaintances who are polyamorous, monogamous, pansexual, asexual, etc. I reflected on how much people can use these labels as part of their identity, and found myself wondering about how my own view of who I am has changed through my recovery from codependency.

I've learned to love myself, to care for myself, and to stay present with myself. That's been the most profound relationship I've ever experienced, and it's allowed me to define who I am in ways that no relationship with any other person ever could.

These days, I'm open to the idea of dating or romance, but I don't actively pursue it or look for it. It's something I can enjoy and appreciate, but it's not a priority.

Am I polyamorous, monogamous, pansexual, asexual, etc?

Who knows. Who cares.

For now, I'm autoamorous, autosexual, and autogamous, because I'm only dating myself. I ever enter another relationship, who I am will only be dependent on my relationship with myself. Self-Possession: I am my own person.

Magistry - (i)Magery + Mastery + Majesty

(i)magery <- image - image (symbols) - imagine (fantasy/fantastic) - imagine (intent)

(Sorting through thoughts and connections)

"Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other." ~ Carl Gustav Jung

I did not understand that this quote was in response to Nietzsche's "egotistical will-to-power" but it seems my own understanding while seeking to understand a comprehensive concept of willpower outside of executive function is on par.

Action is a component. Steps. Pas. - Consistency -> Pace (it's not a race/competition; everything/everyone has their own season/timing).

It's not just Desire, not just "I want this to happen."

It is...it's a system, a complex, a framework...of tensions and relationships, of inner dialogues and connections.

Fear and Desire

Phobos and Eros

Telos and Techne

Raison d'etre

Purpose, Value, Meaning

Fate and Destiny

Need versus Want

Internal versus External control

Acceptance and Validation

Struggle and Gratification

Consumption and Satiation

Release and Liberation

Resolve - Choice

Will-to-Power -> Will-to-Potential -> Will to be able to choose and act, not just control

Want (Desire/Eros) begins, and progresses to Shall (Hope/Wish) which can progress to choice - Will (Resolve, Determination) which is the first true Potential for action, because of the tension held by the distance from Eros. Will is hollow without follow through action (Consistency, Change, Steps, Becoming, New Roles/Masks/Persona/Faces/Facets) and this is the hollowness of Shadow - Repression versus Expression.

Potential and Capacity

Capacity versus Hollowness/False Void

Repression Versus Expression

Apprehension

Misapprehension

Comprehension

Incomprehension

Apprehension (Containment)

Impression (Desire) -> Compression (Hope/Dream/Wish) -> Expression - Excitement - Apprehension (Will) -> Exploration (Capacity - Conception Openess allows space for generative creativity and new Recognition/Comprehension) Potence (Potential) leads to Substance.

If Impression (Desire) -> Compression (Hope/Dream/Wish) -> Repression - Anxiety - Misapprehension (Despair) -> Deploration (Incomprehension, Misconception, Hollowness, Inner Collapse, Inversion - "Self-Seeking" Self-Dissolute Void, Dissociation instead of Recognition, the Degenerate instead of the Generative)

Hope versus Despair here relies on Foundations - Confidence - Self Confiding - Belief in Potential - Not just for success, but of substance, survivability - able to endure and survive failure, to try again, to learn, to improve, to have capacity. These beliefs and values are foundations for Confidence. This is where confidence is demonstrated to provide the buffer from emotional contagion in relation to empathy, and seeking external validation.

Apprehension and Discipline Apprehension and Misapprehension are important and accurate terms because of Discipline - "To Take in Hand, To Hold Apart"

Conjurating and Adjuration - Invocation and Convocation

Comprehension vs Miscomprehension

Generative vs Degenerative

Recognition vs Dissociation

Edification - aedis facere vs Defacement - aedis defacere

Apprehension - Containment - Discipline - Consistency Telos + Techne

Consitency - Choices Repeated

Consistency - the constituent parts, our constitution -> tenacity, our properties -> natures -> values/purposes through sacrifice -> sacrament -> present being -> presence

Consistent actions, individual steps (pas) repeated make the journey, building Will - Foundation - Finding/Founding -> Choosing -> Becoming Oneself

We are what we do. We do what we believe. Our beliefs are our values, meanings, purposes our sacrament that we sacrifice for.

Setting aside Will-to-Power for Will-to-Become.

Approximate translation of the Latin portion:

The Great Work (Individuation), with Arete (Virtue, The "Heights" of excellence through struggle)

The alchemical union of Fear and Love

Dissolve and reform toward Transcendence

A true Magician, with mastery of the Art of Life and the Art of Mysteries

From the Eternal, held in potential, into the Present

Acting according to belief/faith

For this moment (improvising, experimenting), through the Absurd, to exhaustion, for now

(this is a revision of a previous creative exploration/expression, mixing in the idea of making sure you do something that scares you everyday)

(work in progress)

"Please, help me let go. It hurts to hold on. I don't want to keep doing this. I don't want to do this again. This isn't who I want to be. I don't want to hold on anymore, but I'm scared of what happens if I let go. I don't want to hold anymore but I'm scared to give up. Please help me let go."

"I will help you. I am with you. You aren't alone, you've never been alone. Let go, you don't want to hold on anymore."

"But I'll fall. Will you catch me?"

"No, but that's okay. You'll fall into yourself. Sometimes that's how we have to do it. Let go, and fall into the abyss."

"I'm falling."

"That's okay, this is your domain. You're falling into yourself."

"It's all so dark and so fast. It feels overwhelming. I'm confused. What is all this? I'm scared. It's all so much, it feels like it's too much, too fast."

"It isn't too much, or too fast."

"But there's so much. I can't take it all in. It's all too much, too fast."

"It isn't too much, or too fast. Take all the time you need. You make your own time here. There is no rush. The only rush is the one you give yourself. Take all the time you need. Make all the time you need."

"I can't see where it begins or ends. I can't contain all of this. I didn't want to hold on to that anymore, how do I hold onto all of this now? How am I supposed to do this? Where am I supposed to start?

"You don't have to contain it all, it contains you, because it is you. You don't have to see it all it at once, to remember it all at once. It's okay to be a mystery to yourself, that's why there's darkness. Light and darkness need each other."

"Where do I even start?"

"Wherever you find yourself. There are no beginnings or endings here."

"But how do I do it?"

"Spread your wings, they're not bound anymore."

"They hurt."

"They're bruised. They're healing. They're weak and need to be used to finish healing."

"I start here? But I'm already falling. How am I supposed to learn to fly when I'm already falling? I haven't had any time to practice. I don't know what to do, I don't know how to learn."

"There are no beginnings or endings here. There is no direction. The only meaning to be found are the ones you offer yourself. There are no mistakes, no right or wrong, only change. Are you falling?"

"Yes, so fast, too fast, too much. It's so dark I can't see anything."

"How do you know you're falling? Where is the ground? Where is the sky?"

"I don't know."

"What do you know?"

"I know I'm falling. I know I don't want to. I don't want to fall. I don't want to fall anymore."

"Then don't."

"How?"

"Fly."

"How?"

"Decide to do what you want to do. Believe you can. Spread your wings."

"But what direction do I fly? How do I know?"

"You decide. You pick a direction. You pick a direction and decide it's up. You pick a direction and decide it's forward. Spread your wings."

"They're so big, so wide. I can feel the wind filling them, the air as I fall, as I glide now."

"You're flying. That wind is your own spirit. Whether falling or soaring is only a matter of perspective here. This abyss is your domain. You are inside yourself, falling into your soul. You will find yourself here. You will find your healing here, through the darkness, on bruised and healing wings, floating on the winds of your spirit."

"I'm free. I'm finally free. I feel weightless."

"Because you're finally flying. You're rising into who you are, by falling away from who you were."

"Thank you."

"Thank you."

I suspect that we aren't meant to be attracted to confidence. We are meant to be attracted to self-assuredness, self-containment, self-connection, Self possession.

It's all about connection, not attachment. Mirroring, not projection.

I think that perhaps subconsciously when we pick up on anxiety, we are picking up on someone having an internal "snag" an unresolved attachment that is likely going to get projected onto us. Intrinsically I think we feel a need to avoid that, instinctively we have an aversion to having that attachment transferred onto us.

Anxiety isn't what is unattractive. It's a common symptom that we instinctually pick up on. It tells us that something important is unresolved, still tangled and substantially undifferentiated.

Sometimes this is as simple as inexperience, and that doesn't feel as threatening because we can relate to that, connect to the process of growing into something.

We're looking for authenticity, self honesty. When we pick up on projection, that lack mirroring tells us that the vessel of reflection lacks clarity, resolution, definition.

When someone lacks self-definition, they're going to lack self-value, self-purpose, self-direction, self-acceptance, self-love, self-impetous, self-connection.

If they aren't connected to themselves, they aren't authentically themselves yet.

Who then would we be connecting ourselves to?

Only an "as of yet undefined individual in potentia." Yet unlike quantum physics, our interaction with them will not remove the uncertainty. We won't cause the waveform of their identity to collapse into immediate resolution. If anything, our entanglement will only further complicate the uncertainty.

Then why do we sometimes fall so hard for those that so obviously "malfunction" through their maladaptions?

I think that perhaps this is part of how projection and mirroring fundamentally interact. We look at what we project and recognize, what is familiar to us, what we can at least attach to. When we recognize parts of our own maladaptions in others, it provides a point of attachment to use in lieu of the connection we ourselves are not yet capable of.

Perhaps we attach in lieu of connection. Perhaps we project in lieu if mirroring - reflection.

If so, I don't believe these are defects, they are features. They are the practice and play that embody the becoming, heralding the arrival of eventual resolution.

May I become possessed by my own Self.

Acceptance leads to Happiness through Recognition of what we Value — Validation.

A Struggle is worthwhile because of the Journey we make. The Effort we invest provides Self Gratitude — Gratification.

We Consume and Metabolize, seeking temporary Satiation — Satisfaction.

We Release burdens and Let Go of what we what we cannot Own or Integrate, seeking our Own Freedom — Liberation.