(no subject)
I realize I haven't written in FAR TOO LONG.
Things are really good these days. I just finished the second chapter of Evolutionary Witchcraft. It was very eye opening. I'm absolutly falling in love with the Feri tradition. This scares me a little. I had given up on finding a tradition that fits, and yet there is one. All I had to do was find the right situation and go exactly the direction I was pointed when I left the coven. That was a bit of a blow to my pride somehow. I didn't want to have to say, wow you're right, there is a place for me over here, I just don't belong here. I don't know why, but I know that I didn't want it to be that simple. Probobly just because it was a really painful process and I didn't want to accept it at first. Now I'm not saying that I actually have found a place in this tradition. Currently I have a book, not a trad, and that is a very different thing, but from the way things look here I could actually fit nicely.
There are so many exercises I've come accross that are things I had already been working with. The blue fire energy was almost exactly as I had always visualized energy. I had thought this was strange of me, but when I was going over stuff with Burt and read the blue flame description to him it was the same reaction he had. Maybe Thorn just has a way of putting stuff that I'm more likely to get, but it feels like there's more to it than that. There was also an attentiveness exercise that was a more polished version of my "sphere of awareness" exercise that I came up with when I was having trouble with the idea of shielding. It's also wierd feeling like it's OK to operate on a full level of energy. My eyes totally bugged out when I read "do this until you tingle and feel like you're about to burst, and then do one more." I'm used to hearing how much I need to calm myself, and now it's a matter of being full and functional and that works really well for me.
The triple soul work was eerie. Basically there's three parts to the soul: the etheric body, which is the animal/child soul; the auric body, which is the attentive, discerning part; and the god head, which is our connection to the divine. The description of the etheric body (Thorn calls "Sticky One") is:
the energy body that most closely follows your physical body. Energy "sticks" to is, is drawn in and stored like a battery. Sticky One carries our animal and child nature, our instinct, and the immediacy of our connection to sex, food, sleep, and exercise. Sticky one being instinctual and preverbal, loves the physicality of symbols, rituals, music, color, dancing, and playing with the water hose in the heat. Sticky one is our battery, storing life force until the physical, emotional, or psycic bodies, or our God Soul need it.
This basically describes the way I've always viewed myself. I've said on many occasions that I am a battery. That I have an irritatingly storng life force, so strong that I survived 5-8 years of suicide attempts because I wasn't able to overpower the part of me that kept me from following through (and these were pretty regular attempts). I've always had a good grasp on symobolisms. I'm always full of energy that I don't always know what to do with. My needs for sex, food, and sleep are always equilly strong and difficult to ignore.
So it was a shock to find all of this strength so neatly compacted into one level of the soul. How strong that level must be to be made of all of those elements. And then I realized that the goal was to balance three levels, and this likely wasn't a good sign, because what are the chances all three are as strong. How much had I been operating on only this level and how ignored were the others?
The auric body, called Shining Body by Thorn, is described as:
you energetic aura, an egg shape around you. This is your seat of communication and intellect, of giving and receiving information rationally, energetically, and physically. This energy shield is the first line of communication we have with the world. I ask urban dwellers who insist they have to psychic facility, "You ride the bus, don't you? Don't you know how to 'read' the other passengers? Don't you know how to take up just the right amount of space and know when you are impinging too much upon someone else, or they you?" Shining Body listens and senses, adjusts itself, communicates out to others, adjust itself again. The more aware you become, the better you can communicate, and the more information you will have to work with.
In the past I have described awareness as a personal holy grail. As that thing that you are always working towards, but you never actually get to it, because you know with it you're life will be perfect. I don't know how to read people on a bus. It's something I'm always worrying about, because I know that left to my own devises I will naturally get to close. To say that I don't communicate with the world on a psycic level is, of course, inaccurate, but there are things that people take for granted that I struggle with here.
So yea not too balanced. I'm working on that one. The next chapter's air so that's easy to work with this too.
As far as the godhead, which Thorn calls Sacrid Dove, that's pretty much in the middle. Sticky one communicates well with it so it's been getting alot of nurturning over the years, although I'm not always the best about remembering to pay attention and listen.
So yea. That all really blew my world view.
The other thing that blew my world view was the meditation. Thorn suggests you take time to do ten minutes of quiet sitting a day to communicate with your godhead. I decided to do this and put it off and procrastinated alot. I knew it wasn't going to be pretty. I hadn't actually tried anything like this since my initiation, but I wasn't believing that I suddently going to be able to handle stillness and solitude without freaking out. Much to my surprise that is exactly what happened. I sat and a breathed. It was dull and it was had not to itch or ache or wonder about the time. It was dull, but fully doable. I've done it most days since.
In fact it's time I should do it today, before I check if I fixed my brake lights and goto work. I plan to make myself update more. Ideally nightly. We'll see if that happens.
Things are really good these days. I just finished the second chapter of Evolutionary Witchcraft. It was very eye opening. I'm absolutly falling in love with the Feri tradition. This scares me a little. I had given up on finding a tradition that fits, and yet there is one. All I had to do was find the right situation and go exactly the direction I was pointed when I left the coven. That was a bit of a blow to my pride somehow. I didn't want to have to say, wow you're right, there is a place for me over here, I just don't belong here. I don't know why, but I know that I didn't want it to be that simple. Probobly just because it was a really painful process and I didn't want to accept it at first. Now I'm not saying that I actually have found a place in this tradition. Currently I have a book, not a trad, and that is a very different thing, but from the way things look here I could actually fit nicely.
There are so many exercises I've come accross that are things I had already been working with. The blue fire energy was almost exactly as I had always visualized energy. I had thought this was strange of me, but when I was going over stuff with Burt and read the blue flame description to him it was the same reaction he had. Maybe Thorn just has a way of putting stuff that I'm more likely to get, but it feels like there's more to it than that. There was also an attentiveness exercise that was a more polished version of my "sphere of awareness" exercise that I came up with when I was having trouble with the idea of shielding. It's also wierd feeling like it's OK to operate on a full level of energy. My eyes totally bugged out when I read "do this until you tingle and feel like you're about to burst, and then do one more." I'm used to hearing how much I need to calm myself, and now it's a matter of being full and functional and that works really well for me.
The triple soul work was eerie. Basically there's three parts to the soul: the etheric body, which is the animal/child soul; the auric body, which is the attentive, discerning part; and the god head, which is our connection to the divine. The description of the etheric body (Thorn calls "Sticky One") is:
the energy body that most closely follows your physical body. Energy "sticks" to is, is drawn in and stored like a battery. Sticky One carries our animal and child nature, our instinct, and the immediacy of our connection to sex, food, sleep, and exercise. Sticky one being instinctual and preverbal, loves the physicality of symbols, rituals, music, color, dancing, and playing with the water hose in the heat. Sticky one is our battery, storing life force until the physical, emotional, or psycic bodies, or our God Soul need it.
This basically describes the way I've always viewed myself. I've said on many occasions that I am a battery. That I have an irritatingly storng life force, so strong that I survived 5-8 years of suicide attempts because I wasn't able to overpower the part of me that kept me from following through (and these were pretty regular attempts). I've always had a good grasp on symobolisms. I'm always full of energy that I don't always know what to do with. My needs for sex, food, and sleep are always equilly strong and difficult to ignore.
So it was a shock to find all of this strength so neatly compacted into one level of the soul. How strong that level must be to be made of all of those elements. And then I realized that the goal was to balance three levels, and this likely wasn't a good sign, because what are the chances all three are as strong. How much had I been operating on only this level and how ignored were the others?
The auric body, called Shining Body by Thorn, is described as:
you energetic aura, an egg shape around you. This is your seat of communication and intellect, of giving and receiving information rationally, energetically, and physically. This energy shield is the first line of communication we have with the world. I ask urban dwellers who insist they have to psychic facility, "You ride the bus, don't you? Don't you know how to 'read' the other passengers? Don't you know how to take up just the right amount of space and know when you are impinging too much upon someone else, or they you?" Shining Body listens and senses, adjusts itself, communicates out to others, adjust itself again. The more aware you become, the better you can communicate, and the more information you will have to work with.
In the past I have described awareness as a personal holy grail. As that thing that you are always working towards, but you never actually get to it, because you know with it you're life will be perfect. I don't know how to read people on a bus. It's something I'm always worrying about, because I know that left to my own devises I will naturally get to close. To say that I don't communicate with the world on a psycic level is, of course, inaccurate, but there are things that people take for granted that I struggle with here.
So yea not too balanced. I'm working on that one. The next chapter's air so that's easy to work with this too.
As far as the godhead, which Thorn calls Sacrid Dove, that's pretty much in the middle. Sticky one communicates well with it so it's been getting alot of nurturning over the years, although I'm not always the best about remembering to pay attention and listen.
So yea. That all really blew my world view.
The other thing that blew my world view was the meditation. Thorn suggests you take time to do ten minutes of quiet sitting a day to communicate with your godhead. I decided to do this and put it off and procrastinated alot. I knew it wasn't going to be pretty. I hadn't actually tried anything like this since my initiation, but I wasn't believing that I suddently going to be able to handle stillness and solitude without freaking out. Much to my surprise that is exactly what happened. I sat and a breathed. It was dull and it was had not to itch or ache or wonder about the time. It was dull, but fully doable. I've done it most days since.
In fact it's time I should do it today, before I check if I fixed my brake lights and goto work. I plan to make myself update more. Ideally nightly. We'll see if that happens.