I've said before that I'm not much of a record keeper. I don't typically spend hours and hours recording every magical or spiritual thing I do. However, I am a decent journaler, and I have been trying to record more of my (non-daily) divination spreads.
But I think there is a lot of value in coming back to things we have done before, whether it is an old practice, a memory, a journal entry or a book we have read before. It doesn't matter how well I think I know a thing, when I go back to it, I always walk away with new insights.
I think part of that is that I am not the same person today that I was when I experienced the thing in the past. I have grown and changed, and so my personal perspective is different. I'm quite literally looking at it with new eyes, and making new connections because different things may be important to me today. I may have gone through experiences and learned things that make different parts of a thing more meaningful.
I also think that we see what we are meant to see, in this moment. So I may not be ready to understand everything the first time through, and only by coming back to something can I uncover those other layers.
This is particularly true for me with books. I can read a book a dozen times (and I have some books that I have definitely read dozens of times) and each time I read it, I will have different insights and takeaways. I also find that often information has to settle a bit for me to really start to internalize it. So at first read I may get just the basic bones of an idea, but on the next time through I can start to flesh it out, and really work it into my understanding of the world.
With personal journals, I think there is a different mechanic at work. When I am writing, I am not always thinking about what things mean. I am trying to express what is inside, and trying to get all those hard thoughts into words. But when I go back and read what I have written, I can think about it and consider what the words I wrote mean. Especially if a decent amount of time has passed, I can get greater insight into my own mind and experiences and see things that I couldn't at the time, because I was caught up with my focus somewhere else.
This is one thing that I think is especially true when it comes to divination readings. Sometimes we need that perspective, we need to look at things in hindsight in order to make sense of them. When we are in the middle of something, we just can't see the whole picture, even with some help from our tools. Interpreting a reading in the moment gives very important information, and can be a great help in deciding what to do, but looking back on that same reading after the event in question has come to pass, helps us see the greater patterns that will help us when facing similar situations down the road.
When working with memories, I think we encounter another really interesting phenomenon. We tend to remember memories as they felt 'in the moment' that they happened. So we remember them from the perspective of our younger self. Certain memories may haunt us because we didn't have the tools with which to understand and deal with the situation when it happened, and without deliberately looking back and working through the memory, we continue to be trapped by that emotional response that was set when the event happened.
One way to start breaking through that wall is to write down the memory, exactly as you remember it, with all the thoughts and feelings that you can remember feeling at the time. Really try to capture the moment as it happened, without any judgement or editing. Then, let it sit for a while. Try not to think about it until you feel ready to go back in and work with the memory. When you are ready, read what you have written, but not as if it were your memory, but the experience of someone else.
Write down your reaction to the event, from your current perspective. Try to be more factual at first, writing down why you think things unfolded the way they did. If you have learned more about the situation since it happened, write that down too. Then think about how you might talk to the person this happened to if they were your closest friend. Think about how you would talk to them if they were a child...and then if they were an adult. Write down your thoughts and advice.
This is a process you can keep working on, reading what you have written and writing new reactions and responses, until you start to find your own peace with the situation and memory. You may find yourself writing about how that experience has molded your behavior or personality. It may be things you like (even if the actual event wasn't so pleasant) or it may be things you want to change (and are going to work through their roots so you can start to modify them). Each time you go back to that memory, you will work in it a little bit more and uncover new things.
When it comes to old practices, I love going back to things I used to do and working with them again. Sometimes it is a short term thing. I'll remember that I used to cast circle a certain way, when I was learning, so I'll go back to the method I used and play with it, using my current level of knowledge to explore the old practice. I may find that it is too simple for me, or that perhaps my path has taken me along a different way of experiencing the world and the old practice just doesn't fit with my beliefs any more. It is still fun and informative to go back and work with it for a little while.
Other times, I'll go back to something that was sort of basic and work through it from a more experienced perspective. My practice of grounding has changed and evolved so many times over the years, but going back to the basic sitting meditation, reaching into the ground and connecting with the earth while reaching upward and also connecting with the sky. It was something that I have struggled with at times, because of the way it is often described. And yet, whenever I go back and work with that particular method of grounding, I am able to see different aspects of that practice, as well as things I can work with in my own grounding practice.
There are things that we just can't figure out, unless we go back to things. We may have to read a book many times before we understand one of the points in it. We may find ourselves in a lovely spiral with a practice, where we keep doing it, and it starts to feel so familiar that we don't have to think about it and then all of a sudden we have a breakthrough and it's like a whole new experience even though outwardly it is the same. We may wrestle with a memory, trying to escape it's grasp, knowing that we will need to spend a lot of time working with it until we can start to untangle it's effects in our life. Never be afraid to go back and work through something again...you never know what you will uncover!
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