Meditative Monday - April 9th, 2012

Thought to ponder today: How does one shut off the rational mind to embrace the magical?

I struggle with this sometimes - shutting down your "rational" thinking to see and acknowledge the magical is not as easy as some make it out to be.  I'm sure I'm not the only one who oft times has sat there asking "Really?  How can you possibly believe that?"

And mixed in with this is my aura dilemma. You see, I can understand how rationally the body can give off an aura - we are energy beings really.  But the idea that our eyes (that can't even see beyond the 2 dimensional perspective - its our brains and the fact that we have 2 eyes that make it 3D) can possibly see the energy fields of a living thing.

G is for Getting over it - Using ritual to close the past.

One of the hardest things for me to do in my life is to get over things.  Not the little things – but those big things, and those things that sit in the back of your mind and haunt you.  Part of this is the little voice in my head that likes to constantly call out how wrong I am about things.  In order to grow thought we need to be able to put these things behind us, to be able to cast off the shadows of doubt and the shackles of history and move forward to embrace ourselves and our role within this life.

Now I know that a lot of people believe everything happens for a reason, and I am by no means discounting that belief.  I personally believe that we would not be the people we are today without what has happened in our past, but that doesn’t mean we have to carry the baggage around with us.  If you believe that we choose our life lessons for each lifetime that doesn’t mean that we have to dwell on them, in fact dwelling to me indicates that you haven’t learnt from them but rather that you are still trying to piece the correct lesson together out of it.

Throughout my life I have had some pretty nasty stuff happen to me.  I am a survivor of child sexual abuse and I have not always made the best decisions in my life.  But since I found my pagan path I have definitely been able to come to terms more with the things that have occurred and have been able to take my learning from them and let them go.  I am certain that other religions have various ways of dealing with it but for me the symbolism of ritual is an amazing way to “get over it.”

Here is where I should probably clarify.  I am not saying that one should simply create an awesome ritual and you will be done with the event.  What I am saying is that once you have taken the time to churn it over, analyze, rant, rave, cry and otherwise move through your experience ritual is a great way to close the book on the process.

Over the years I’ve developed a few different ways of dealing with this scenario. 

Firstly, some ideas to get it all out: 

•  Unconscious writing: - sit and just write it out – it can be single words, or entire essays the idea is to not think but to feel and let the feelings flow through you.
• Confront the person: - Now I don’t mean literally here (sometimes that isn’t even an option) but rather talk as if they were there or write it out just get what you wish you could say out of your head.
• Visit that you of the past: - Do a meditative journey and visit with your past self, talk to them about it and help them deal with the events.
• Energize: - use dance or some form of movement to physically work the feelings out of your system.

(This is by no means an exhaustive list, just a few I’ve used.  The key I would say to all though is the set up – make sure you’re ready for what will come out, create yourself a sacred/safe space to do this in, and if needs be have someone with you for it).

Secondly, some ways to ritualize the release:

• Written words: If on paper you can burn them, bury them, shred them, flush them (warning here, if you’re flushing I’d burn first and flush the ashes or write on toilet paper), etc  If you’ve written on an object you can dispose of it in an appropriate way. 
• Meditation: complete an activity within the journey such as a ritual jumping through the flames etc. Smudge and ground and center afterwards.
• Energize: scream it out, work up to a crescendo and let it all go somehow then do a gentle bring down, something to re-gather yourself and re-center.

F is for Facing your Fears

I have been blessed this past little while to have been able to journey down my shadow path with two very dear friends.  The support that I have been given by them in facing my fears has been incredible and it is only just the beginning of this journey.  I did not realize how much better the shadow working experience could be when done with others rather than faced alone, suddenly things seem less insurmountable and there are people who understand and who can offer an outside perspective.

My journey into the shadow is an important part of the spiritual path I'm taking right now, I feel that in order to truly tap into my own spiritual being I need to address the issues of my shadow.  Until I have faced some of my fears I cannot truly embrace the mysteries that my chosen path has waiting for me.  One of my biggest fears is letting go and that is an important element if I am to truly journey down the rabbit hole of mystery traditions.  Due to experiences in my past I have a serious need to be in control all the time - the idea of giving up my self completely to an experience or deity scares the crap out of me to be blunt.  The idea of allowing myself to let go enough to do certain journey work is also a big fear of mine and these are key ingredients that need to be addressed.

In the short time that I've been working with my shadow I have seen vast improvements - I can't recommend it enough, although only when you feel you are ready.  I have a long hard journey ahead of me but so far the rewards are proving worth it.  Fear exists to be conquered and through shadow work I'm conquering mine.

F is for Finding Time

Given how late this blog posting is I find the title rather appropriate.  I have obviously been struggling with finding time in my life for all things, but especially for this project and other spiritual activities.  Why is it that as soon as life gets busy my spiritual practices are the first things to get put on hold?  This is a failing of mine that I need to work on but obviously there are outside pressures that make it easier to put this on the back burner rather than work or school.  Lets face it nothing is going to come down and smite you for not practicing your meditations or chakra work etc - however, should you not show up at work or fail to hand in an assignment things have immediate consequences.  Of course that isn't to say that not partaking of activities to nourish the soul don't have consequences - lets face it, we become disconnected if we don't, but they are less 'in your face' so we tend to pass them off as not existing.

So this is my dilemma, making myself make time for myself and my spiritual path.  I work full time, I am going to school part time to do my Masters degree, I have a house to maintain, I play soccer and I have my coven group and that pretty much fills my week (I'm so glad I don't have children to add into that equation) - I'm usually so exhausted that any down time I have I spend not wanting to engage my brain or napping, its a nasty little cycle.

So I'm trying to learn to make time within my busy schedule.  I found an awesome chakra CD that has music that I can feel stimulating each chakra so I listen to that at work while I'm working (trying to multi-task).  I may end up putting this project off to a once every two weeks thing - I have every other Friday off so I can get two posts done then and just deal with it that way, its not how it is supposed to go but I also don't want to give up on this.  Need to get back into the habit of doing my daily oracle draw and hopefully the Monday night shadow work I've been doing will pick up again.

But if anyone has other suggestions on how to sneak it all into a busy schedule I'm open for ideas.  I've thought about dropping something but I just can't.  I need to work (bills, mortgage etc), I am so close to finishing school I'm not giving that up (four classes away), Soccer is sometimes the only exercise I get in a week (although giving that up may be out of my control if we can't pull a team together) and I will not have a stranger come in and clean my house (I just don't trust them no matter how vetted they are) and of course my coven is very important to me also.

So there are the ramblings of a distracted woman...but they are off the chest now :)

Daily Draw - March 22nd, 2012

From the Book:
"In order to grow, we must experience transitions and changes.  To be fully alive we must die again and again, all in this lifetime."  "You are about to celebrate life's great shifts in more meaningful ways - no more just a follower - you become an initiator, because you have listened to the wise words of the oldest creature on the planet - the one who caries Gaia on her back."

Daily Draw - March 13th 2012

From the Book:
"You have hidden away from change long enough, afraid of hurt - but you have been hurt anyway... Now, hope return along with her, welcome back your courage."

"Darkness has been a resting place, a place of solace, but it is, the butterfly indicates, time to cut through the fear of being seen, and move into the light and go out, be public, and even be social for a time."

Personal Message:
Hmm, recurring themes and messages tend to come through on a Tuesday after spending Monday night working on Shadow work.  Today's message is a repetition of last nights work and messages.  I find the confirmation comforting.

E = Embrace the Imperfect

I was really struggling with what to right this week, actually struggling with the project over all as life swamps me with other things that demand my attention.  Today this idea came to me, the idea that we need to embrace the imperfect in not only ourselves but in our practice also.

I know when I first started this path I picked up my witches bible (In this case Cunningham's Guide for the Solitary Practitioner) and voraciously read through it.  And like most I've spoken to who first start this path I ended the book with this desperate feeling that I needed to buy all these props in order to practice the right way.  This was the first lesson I learned in embracing the Imperfect.  I was 15 when I started this journey, I was living at home and going to high school  - where was I supposed to get my hands on an athame, boline, cauldron, wand, chalice, etc etc.  It just wasn't possible.  Especially when you are trying to keep your path somewhat hidden from parents who wouldn't really understand.  So I was saving to purchase what I could and in the mean time anxiously waiting to start this journey and it eventually came to me that the whole scenario was a little ridiculous.  If deity was so caught up with having all the trappings then I was on the wrong path, so I decided to improvise, and while I will admit that I have purchased some items since then that were specifically ritualized (athame, wand, cauldron) to this day much of what I use I find at the store cheap and modify to my purposes.  My Chalice is a wine glass from the dollar tree store that I then used glass paint pens on.  Several of my shrines are terracota pot plant plates that I've painted to reflect the deity/purpose that are great for holding little crystals, incense etc.

The second part of Embracing the Imperfect that I learned shortly after starting to actually practice was that it didn't matter if my words weren't perfect, if I flubbed something, if I forgot a line or didn't follow a script, what mattered was that my intent was there and my heart was in it.  I recall in the early days the nervous panic that would set in when you go to perform a ritual/spell, worrying about what would happen if you got something wrong - no wonder little worked in the beginning, my energy was all over the place.  One day I had a moment of clarity as it occurred to me that deity had to have a sense of humor.  All one had to do was look at the world around us to see evidence of that.  So what if I flubbed occasionally, together we'd laugh it off and move forward.  If I felt free enough to talk to deity each day about nothing in particular at all surely the relationship could see itself through the odd tongue twister or forgotten words.

Too often we get caught up in trying to be perfect.  What is the perfect way to do this, what is the perfect color, what is the perfect scent, do I know my lines perfectly and it actually detracts from what we are trying to achieve.  Not only that but when we are so concerned with making sure we are perfectly inline with someone else's ideas (because lets face it that is all those 101 programs etc out there about this path are) than we fail to listen to our own intuition and the messages that might be trying to get through to us.