What Words Mean
Waking Up In Dark Places
I’m going to share something I’ve only told one or two people until now.
When I left my abuser I moved into a new apartment. My first night there I experienced what most would call sleep paralysis. I’ve had sleep paralysis before. This was different. If you know you know.
A dark energy hovered over me and held me down. It wasn’t lingering or ambient. It was present, full of rage and vitriol, looking for somewhere to put it. I was that somewhere. It held me down and screamed without making a sound. I heard it all the same. Every part of me went into fight or flight. I knew I was in unfamiliar territory and I was terrified.
Then I remembered something. Consciousness is interconnected. The light is consciousness. In an instant my body relaxed. I envisioned every sage and saint who came before me, every holy text in every language, flowing through the universal veins of interconnection. It was vast and alive. The warmth and strength of it was less like dominance and more like a lioness standing in front of her cub. There was no winning. There was no fight. The light turned on and the darkness dissolved. It was as simple as that.
I woke up, left that room, slept in the living room, and moved the furniture the next day.
The door remained closed for the rest of my time there.
I share this because one of the primary weapons inside any abuse climate is language, specifically the absence of it. No words for what you’re experiencing. No framework for what you’re witnessing. That absence is not accidental. It creates disconnection, and disconnection keeps us from looking.
Language helps us describe our experience. But wisdom is meaning that transcends language. It connects hearts, minds, and core truths across time and culture.
This is the space where I aim to collect both. I’ve created words where I found none and expanded on meaning where meaning was superficial at best.
Hope you find this helpful.
"The total number of minds in the universe is one."
God / Universe
The self-actualized being (consciousness); the creator
Humans
Beings (consciousness) self-actualizing; a creator
The Threshold
The line of basic human decency that we each have the free will to cross or not cross. This is also the crossing from childhood (externalizing responsibility) to adulthood (internalizing responsibility, autonomous and interconnected awareness).
The Four Foot Drop
The transition from one reality into a new reality – the experiential arc of awakening.
The name was created from three frameworks (psychology, Kabbalah, Hermeticism) that are essentially the same concepts in experience but from different angles of perspective.
Psychology: The Four Stages of Competence describe the movement from complete unawareness to awareness to understanding to mastery.
Kabbalah: The Four Worlds of Kabbalah (Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, Assiah) map the descent of the Divine into physical reality – and by extension, the path back.
Hermeticism: Names the same principle in two lines:
As above, so below shows us how worlds (realities) are created.
As within, so without shows us how specific types of worlds (realities) are created (e.g. heaven and hell).
The Four Foot Drop is the lived experience of that ascent. It moves through four stages:
False Light
Not Knowing, Blindness
Heh / Assiah (Action) Physical manifestation, the world we inhabit
Holy Darkness
Knowing, Seeing, Feeling
Vav / Yetzirah (Formation) Emotional/angelic realm, the connecting principle
First Light
Choosing, Practicing, Integrating
Heh / Beriah (Creation) First differentiation, discernment, archetypal mind
Living Light
Yod / Atziluth (Emanation) Pure divine essence, undifferentiated
Kingdom
The world each of us is charged to govern – me, myself, and I. This includes the internal phantom community: the ego, the evil inclination, and the voices that raised us that now live on inside our minds.
Above The Line Of Human Decency
Autonomous Awareness
Understanding where we end and others begin – mentally, emotionally, and physically.
Interconnected Awareness
Understanding we’re all interconnected. We cannot pick up one end of the stick without picking up the other. We cannot be indifferent to harm or inflict harm without that harm eventually circling back in some way.
We’re all one like the heart and one like the body; autonomously interconnected.
The Witness
The more authentic version of us. The internal aspect that bears witness to all activity happening inside and outside our kingdom. Also the witness, disruptor, and dismantler of abuse – internally and externally.
Internalized Responsibility
When we stop externalizing onto an authority figure or nearest adult, and we realize we’re the authority figure and adult in our own world. Part of that is internalizing personal responsibility for our own behavior and the impact that behavior has on those around us.
Below The Line Of Human Decency
Abuse
All abuse begins with the denial or disregard of autonomy – mentally, emotionally, or physically.
Abuse is inflicted through the absence of autonomous awareness and perpetuated through a lack of interconnected awareness; both are expressions of underdeveloped consciousness – a lack in personal and spiritual growth.
The Evil Inclination
Not evil in the cartoon sense, but more like the gravitational pull toward self-serving behavior at the expense of others. In Kabbalistic tradition, the yetzer hara is not a flaw to be destroyed but a force to be understood and governed. Ungoverned, it’s the engine of harm. Brought into awareness, it becomes one of the most honest mirrors we have.
In the beginning of my Kabbalistic journey I was taught that the evil inclination was simply the desire to receive for the self alone. That’s a surface level understanding.
The evil inclination expresses itself as indifference to harm, participation in harm, or enjoyment of harm. We all carry it. Without it there would be no free will. There would be no genuine capacity to choose otherwise. There would be no opportunity to self-actualize through it and self-govern our own kingdoms with humility. If we want to understand the most vicious and psychopathic behavior in the world, we start here, with this aspect of self we are charged to govern, however small that recognition may be. We cannot govern what we refuse to bear witness to. We cannot understand what we refuse to look at.
The Ego
The self-concept we’ve built to survive. The ego manages image, defends territory, and narrates our experience in whatever way keeps us feeling safe or superior. Below the line, the ego is the mechanism that makes harm feel justified.
The healthier aspect of self is the witness. The witness is less concerned with external perception and more concerned with self-governance and impact (e.g. Jesus, Marcus Aurelius, Harriet Tubman).
The Phantom Community
The internalized voices of everyone who had authority over us before we had the capacity to evaluate whether that authority was earned. They live in the kingdom long after the people themselves are gone. They vote on our decisions, narrate our failures, and set the terms for what we believe we deserve. Most people govern their kingdom by committee without ever calling the meeting. Most people believe the phantom community, the ego, and the evil inclination are one voice; them. Their witness, the more authentic self, has yet to awaken.
Externalized Responsibility
The practice of locating the source of our experience entirely outside ourselves. Not the same as naming real harm. That’s accurate perception. Externalized responsibility looks for the closest adult or authority figure to govern us, make decisions for us, discern right from wrong for us. It blindly follows the leader, the title, the book, the “parent.” It has yet to cross the threshold into the discernment and responsibility of adulthood.