Questions from featherwolf!
If your life was a story and from this point on it would be written however would be the most perfect, what would happen and how would it end?
I'd rather not know the details of the story, but it would involve great love, passion, courage, and beauty. There would always be new things to look forward to and I would continue discovering myself spiritually. I would spend time with children and help them reach their fullest and truest potential. I would work to build bridges between people of different religions and cultures. I would be surrounded by like-minded friends with similar goals, and we would glamourbomb, and bring joy and magic to the lives of others. I would hopefully write a novel or two which expresses how I feel about life and the beauty I see in the world. There would be much fun and great travels but also a place to call home. It would end side by side with that person I loved and journeyed with so long.
If you were on a desert Island, what three things would you bring?
Oh, I don't know! If survival isn't a problem, I'd probably bring a hammock, a musical instrument, and a library. Is that fair? :P
If you had to do it over again, would you still major in Philosophy?
I don't regret majoring in philosophy. It is useful to have a general grasp of Western intellectual history, and it taught me to think, be more critical, and come up with better and more creative arguments. One of the most important things I learned about philosophy though is its limits. Many philosophers try to divorce reason from feeling and experience which doesn't work well for me. Philosophy should be about trying to understand each other and making the most of our own lives, and only at the times when it accomplished that did I feel it was worthwhile.
If I had to do it over again, though, maybe I'd have chosen something more practical, like costume design or metalsmithing! I might have chosen a double language major. Maybe I'd have studied massage or healing arts somewhere, or perhaps environmental sciences and ecology.
When did you start seriously thinking about the spirit?
The way I viewed the world as a child (and still view it) can be summed up by a quotation by Theodore Roszak: "Nothing we ever imagined is beyond our powers, only beyond our present self-knowledge."
I've always felt there was more to life than meets the eye. I've always been naturally curious and felt awe about things. So naturally I started wondering things like, "What is consciousness?" and "Why is there something rather than nothing?" These questions intrigued me. I've always been very interested in dreams, and had my first lucid dream (about Tigger and Winnie the Pooh) when I was five. I discovered astral projection when I was maybe 13 or so. That really made me wonder about the dreamworld and other realms, and even the nature of reality. I started reading books about dreams which led me to books about shamanism and even quantum mechanics (especially The Dreaming Universe by Fred Alan Wolfe).
And part of it is just that I used to play these RPG's. They would put me into a different state of consciousness. The first one was a really old Atari game called Galahad. Then there was Crystalis which, if I remember correctly, was the ultimate sword which combined the powers of the swords of earth, air, fire, and water. Then there was Phantasy Star, and I would actually shiver and need a blanket while fighting the monsters, because it got so intense and involved for me. When I played those games, and fantasised about them, it often felt so real to me, moreso even than so-called "reality." It helped me develop the unique worldview I have that fantasy can be more true than the solid things around us, just deeper. Thus I never question the reality of my experiences; they are all real; what they mean, their significance, is another thing.
I've also learned how, as an actor, you can become the character you're playing. Not just play it but really become it and feel it. There's something mythic to me about the art of theatre. So, I learned not to spend too much time distinguishing between fantasy and reality, because what is imagined is experienced just as surely as what objectively happens. In many cultures, dreams are considered every bit as real (if not more real) than waking life. I think I have more in common with those cultures than this one in many ways. When I imagine myself as a knight on a quest, I am a knight on a quest, and while this culture may think me dillusional for not distinguishing, many cultures would not. Anyway, I discovered C.G. Jung and Joseph Campbell and fantasy and mythology became spiritual for me.
I love nature, and experiencing the beauty of the forests and hills and the faery mist over cold waters evoked something deep within me that I couldn't express. I think those things I can't express are where my spirituality comes from. So, nature became a major part of my spirituality, and seeing nature as living breathing spirit seemed natural to me.
I started learning about indigenous spiritualities and paganism and saw that many cultures understood the world similar to the way I do, as process and magic and spirit, rather than the way this culture tends to, as objects to be manipulated. I came to believe that spirit -- angels, devas, faeries, elementals -- were all around us and that we can communicate with them and engage actively with the world beyond our senses.
Not too long ago I began working with Machaelle Small Wright's MAP conings, working with devas and evolved spirits for healing, and the results have been phenomenal. I had believed in devas and spirits, but hadn't experienced them, so these first experiences were really magical for me.
The following quotation from Margot Adler's Drawing Down the Moon is the best description, written by someone else, of my own spirituality:
"Animism is used to imply a reality in which all things are imbued with vitality. The ancient world view did not conceive of a separation between 'animate' and 'inanimate.' All things from rocks and trees to dreams were considered to partake of the life force. At some level Neo-Paganism is an attempt to reanimate the world of nature; or, perhaps more accurately, Neo-Pagan religions allow their participants to reenter the primeval world view, to participate in nature in a way that is not possible for most Westerners after childhood. The Pagan revival seems to be a survival response to the common urban and suburban experience of our culture as 'impersonal,' 'neutral,' or 'dead.'"