Moving further into this process of fixing myself, my emotions and my confidence, I have been listening to alot of music. I know I have featured tool before, but this song seems really applicable as of late.
The concept of 46 and 2 had been developed by Carl Jung and further expanded by Drunvalo Melchizedek. It is about human evolution, and you can read all about it if you google it. I don’t think Maynard from Tool was specifically speaking to the concept in a literal sense, but more of a metaphorical sense.
As I listen to this song more and more, I see how the change, or evolution, of an individual can be seen in the lyrics and I specifically focused on that when I wrote this. Here is how I interpret this song.
My shadow’s Shedding skin and
I’ve been picking
Scabs again.
I see the shadow as part of you, but not your physical being. It is a warped transformation of yourself given by the lighting around you, and you can only see your shadow with a certain light cast around you. That shadow is that morphed version of yourself you see yourself and what you changed into. The scabs are the old wounds I reopened.
I’m down
Digging through
My old muscles
Looking for a clue.
This represents when you are down (sad or upset) and you start going through your old habits and mistakes trying to find why you ended up where you are emotionally. Looking for that “thing” that may have set everything off inside of you.
I’ve been crawling on my belly
Clearing out what could’ve been.
I’ve been wallowing in my own confused
And insecure delusions
This is pretty obvious to me. Crawling on my belly, meaning I can’t get any lower. This is the bottom and I am writhing around trying to find the way up. Wallowing in my own confused, insecure delusions was very much what I was going through over the last year. Focused on all of my mistakes and letting it consume me versus trying to make it better, and stand taller.
For a piece to cross me over
Or a word to guide me in.
I wanna feel the changes coming down.
I wanna know what I’ve been hiding in
When you are looking to climb out of the depths of your self made hell and you know you are there, you are seeking ANYTHING that will trigger you out of it. To force and guide to you being normal. You want, and need, to feel the change back to happiness and see where you had been hiding in.
My shadow.
Change is coming through my shadow.
My shadow’s shedding skin
I’ve been picking
My scabs again.
That shadow represents that part of you, but it isn’t your person. To me this is how I looked at myself. a shadow. It looked like me, but I knew it wasn’t me. It was this thing what was becoming me and changing more and more into what I didn’t like. Picking the scabs is re-opening the old wounds.
I’ve been crawling on my belly
Clearing out what could’ve been.
I’ve been wallowing in my own chaotic
And insecure delusions.
See earlier comments for these lyrics.
I wanna feel the change consume me,
Feel the outside turning in.
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and
Cleansing I’ve endured within
You want and need to feel that change inside you to the person you want to be. You want to feel that husk you were shake off and change. You want it to, in my case, again flush the pain away and be back to who you were.
My shadow
Change is coming.
Now is my time.
Listen to my muscle memory.
Contemplate what I’ve been clinging to.
Forty-six and two ahead of me.
That moment when you decide you need to actually fix yourself. For everyone the reason is different, for me it was realizing the damage I had done, accepting that I hurt the person I loved more than anything and deciding that I need to fix myself because I don’t like who I am. You listen to the “muscle memory”, that knee jerk reaction, to see what it did when you get down and revert to old habits, bad habits. See what you were “clinging” too and then, see the evolution ahead of you.
I choose to live and to
Grow, take and give and to
Move, learn and love and to
Cry, kill and die and to
Be paranoid and to
Lie, hate and fear and to
Do what it takes to move through.I choose to live and to
Lie, kill and give and to
Die, learn and love and to
Do what it takes to step through.
Ok, first I don’t look at this as all the things I need to do to feel alive again. But I do think that was Maynard (the song writer) was speaking about when he wrote this. To feel alive again. To make mistakes, but also deal with those mistakes. To choose doing something, and maybe making a mistake or doing something wrong, and be able to face them and move on. To step through that shadow and be yourself again.
*Note – the kill, die, lie and such I don’t condone, nor do I want to do before anyone reading freaks out.
See my shadow changing,
Stretching up and over me.
Soften this old armor.
Hoping I can clear the way
By stepping through my shadow,
Coming out the other side.
Step into the shadow.
Forty six and two are just ahead of me
Seeing your shadow change, that part of you that morphed into something you didn’t like change closer to who you are. The shadow tried to consume you, soften you back to the place you didn’t want to be and challenge your “armor” your strength. The, you step through, you slip that shadow and keep getting stronger and dodge the your old ways and stay who you want to be. Embrace that change, and hold onto the better path. that is the evolution, even if it is back to who you were and want to be. To win the fight against yourself, and grow and strengthen my “old armor”, that is old, but I know it is still strong.
S.L.
Mind of Sir 