Reflection over time

 When powerful things happen in our lives, we may have trouble processing them immediately.  We often turn to journaling or other inner work to sort out how we fall and how to respond.  It can be especially challenging when something is ongoing, or so big that we can't take it all in at once.

I feel like we are at a place in time where there is just too much going on.  Some things are lingering, while other things are popping up and just adding to the whole situation.  We have both internal and external factors we have to consider.  And even if we sit down and spend some time to work through what's going on, in a short while more things will add in and it feels like we just can't get a grasp again.

Inner work isn't always a one and one.  Sometimes, we need to come back to something and work on it over and over.  This isn't a bad thing!  Just because you have worked on something in the past doesn't mean it will stop effecting you.  Revisiting your reflections gives you a little space, some distance between you and the issue you are reflecting on.  And sometimes you have to let those thoughts and reactions sit, in order to really understand what's going on.

I often find that, when something is really big, I have to get my emotions out of the way before I can even think about actually thinking about the issue itself.  If I journal things out in the moment, I'll get those emotions out on the page.  Putting them on the page makes me feel like I have expressed myself, which allows me to let go of them....at least a little bit.  But it doesn't mean that I have actually peeked at the things behind those emotions.

 

When I go back, I can read what I wrote and actually start thinking about what it means and why I wrote it.  I start to peel back the layers, and see what's underneath.  But this is often a process, a cycle of reflecting to old reflections, letting them sit, and then coming back and doing it all over again.

 

But like the wheel of the year, the cycle of reflection is not a circle, it's a spiral.  You keep coming back around, but each time you are building on what you did before, so you are at a new beginning.  You have those previous cycles to look back on, to draw insight and meaning from.

 

And here's where it gets really interesting.  A lot of times, we can't see certain things until we recognize the patterns that are going on.  We have to see things come up time and time again so we can start to link them together and notice what the common threads are.  An incident on it's own may not mean anything, but when we notice we have the same reaction to three or four different circumstances, we can start to see what is the same...and what is different.  Perhaps we were able to handle the situation better once time than the others.  When we go back and look at all the cycles, we can see what was different about that one time.   

With ongoing situations, we also start to see the effects of longevity.  Something that might be exciting when it happens once, starts to become repetitive after a month, and something we come to dread after six months.  And we may catch ourselves thinking back and wondering when things changed.  Even if we didn't delve into how things were effecting us along the way, it is never to late to look back and start unraveling how our relationship with events has changed.

Now, more than ever, I think it's important to regularly take time to stop and reflect on how different areas of our lives are doing.  It is really easy for things to slide into dark places, often without us really being aware of how they have shifted.  But if we stop, check in, and really take the time to evaluate how our life is, we can correct issues before they become too big and need to be broken down.

This is one thing that I have learned from working with goal-oriented planners.  They often have pages for reflection at the end of the month or quarter.  The nice thing about these pages is that they have specific questions for you to answer, so it's not just a blank page staring at you.  Of course, there are many different reflection prompts you can find online (or you can create your own!) that help you tune into different aspects of your life and see how you are doing.

Finding the right frequency for regular reflection is another thing to consider.  I've found that weekly is almost too frequent for me.  Monthly feels like a good amount of time, as quarterly is a bit long.  In the coming year, as I am going back to a personal bullet journal inspired system, I may go with Sabbat reflections, or I may tie them into the moon cycle (or I may do both, using the moon cycle for my daily life and the Sabbat cycle for the big spiritual growth reflections).

But no matter how often works for you, or what style of check-in you do, cyclical reflections can help us gain the needed perspective to start to see the patterns and catch problems before they become huge issues.  We can learn our own warning signs, and start to find ways to self-correct before we are drowning.  And we can better understand our place in the world around us, no matter what is going on.

Fate or Fix?

When it comes to magic and ethics, there is a big debate on what we have a right to do, as witches and Pagans.  Do we have the right to use magic that will effect people without their permission?  Do we have a right to try to effect the world in general, things like climate or weather?  Are things that are happening happening for a reason?

I definitely feel that modern practitioners have more worries about these kind of things than our ancestors would have.  Which is sort of amusing to me, as we are less likely to think that certain events (like a big storm, or an animal stampede) are directly caused by the gods and more likely to look for scientific or natural explanations.  Even when we work with nature deities, we don't tend to think in terms of "Gaia made the snowstorm happen, it must be her will!"  And yet, our ancestors definitely worked magic to fight back against the things that they felt the gods were inflicting on them.

Regular and rituals might be made to appease the gods and keep things flowing normally, but when things got out of wack, that meant it was time to work more, not work less.  I feel like we've lost a bit of this, caught up in our thoughts on whether or not we 'should' be influencing things.

 

Now, my personal opinion is pretty much always, "Yes, we should work towards what we want."  And this includes when our work directly pushes back against other people (and their free will).  Because I believe we all have the right to work for what we want and believe in.  And I fully support the right of people who believe in the exact opposite to work for what they believe in.

 

In fact, that is part of what I think the problem is.  The less than ethical people in the world will use everything in their power to make sure that what they want to happen...happens.  That includes very shady if not down right wrong actions.  They will lie, cheat, steal, bribe, and yes, even kill to get their way.  If we decide that pushing back is somehow infringing on their freedoms and rights, then we are giving away our power.

 

Now, I am not suggesting we start going out and doing the same kinds of things they are...because of course if you fight evil with evil...well then everyone's evil.  We all have to decide what we are and are not willing to do for what we believe in.

But there are many ways to approach a problem, and with a bit of creativity you can use beneficial means to handle less than savory people.  The wonderful thing is that there is a wide variety of practitioners out there, and so we can all do what we feel comfortable with and that creates a very big push against the things in this world that we find unbearable.  Whether that means a curse, a binding or a blessing, it is all work being done to correct a bad situation.

And I know that the question that is often asked is, "What gives ME the right to pass judgement on other people?"  But that is something we do, all day long, every day.  If someone cuts me off on the road, I judge them.  If I see someone stealing at the grocery store, I judge them.  If I see someone punching another person, I judge them.  In all of those situations, I might also take action against them.  Whether it is just honking my horn or actually wading into a fist fight, I have decided that I want the other person to know that I don't agree with what they are doing.

I don't think we can continue to sit idly by.  I think we are waking up to the notion that the evils of the world are going to continue unless we start fighting back.  I think that we have come to the slow, creeping realization that we have watched things get bad for a while, that we have 'minded our own business' and now the people in power have amassed SO much power it is going to be a fight to get things back to acceptable.

And we are seeing examples in the physical world of this very exact thing.  People have been keeping their eyes down and ignoring the small signs and slights for ages.  They have been repeating the mantra of "it's not happening to me, I need to mind my own business," and they have been turning a deaf ear to the cries of the victims.  But they are starting to find those cries deafening, and realizing that it is their business and it does effect them.  And even if it doesn't effect them directly, it hurts the people around them, and that hurts them indirectly.

I don't believe in fate or that we should simply accept what is thrown our way.  I believe we are given tools and our free will so that we can fight for what is important to us.  So that we can fight for what we believe in.  And I think that we need to wake up and realize that we can't wait for the fight to reach us...we need to look for all the small ways that our enemies are getting those little toe holds and roots sunk into the ground.  Because if we wait, they will have built this foundation that we will then have to breach.  We need to stop letting the little things slide, because that is how avalanches start, and it is much easier to stop a small pebble from rolling down a hill than it is to survive a ton of falling rocks.

Adjusting balance

 Balance is one of those concepts that many people strive for, like peace and happiness.  But it's not a clearly defined thing, and can be a struggle to achieve.  We may have this romantic image of a 'balanced' life, as a tightrope walker poised in stillness on their rope, or a plate divided into equal sections.  But balance is a fluid thing, and it is ever-changing.  If you watch someone walking a rope, they aren't ever really still, the robe is constantly shifting, and they are making tiny corrections to stay balanced.  And if we try to give all things equal time or attention, we don't end up balanced, because different activities have different needs.

I've actually found myself using the world balanced less, in favor of 'harmony'.  I think both seek to capture a similar state of being, where all the parts of your life are working together, and each individual one is as optimized as possible.  But where balance implies that sense of equality and stillness, harmony speaks to me more of entwining and music, of a shifting dance that becomes something beautiful, but only if each piece is giving the correct focus at the right time.

With the Autumn Equinox just around the corner, many people are thinking about balance.  In particular, we talk about this time of equal day and night, and of the tipping point between the light half of the year and the dark half.  But really, the light and dark aren't out of balance the rest of the year, they are just weighted differently.  In the summer, we embrace the long days, but we often crave that darkness and coolness that comes with dusk, just as we reach towards the light during the darker parts of the year.

If we think about the areas of our life, we often talk about finding a balance....between home and work, between solitary time and time with others, between work and play.  There are so many things to keep balanced, it can be quite the juggling act to keep up.

And that is a wonderful image to consider, because juggling is all about adjusting and adapting...and keeping all the balls under control.  I was going to say moving, but there are lots of fancy juggling tricks where, at one point or another, one of the the things being juggled is taken out of the rotation for a bit.  The sword is held in the teeth for a few rounds, and then swept back into the mix.  Or one apple is thrown a lot higher, so all the rest get cycled through before that one comes back.  And talented jugglers can manage to juggle objects that are dissimilar, instead of three beanbags, they juggle an apple, a sword and a beanbag....and that means they have to adjust to the shape and weight of each individual object.  

But what really makes this analogy shine is the fact that even when doing simple juggling, it's not just a matter of tossing some balls in the air and catching them.  Each time you touch a ball, you have to feel how it is doing, and make sure you send it on the right path.  Each time around is different from every other time, and it's all about the adjustments.

We want to be able to just make out a plan and 'balance' everything.  We want that platter with a nice little section for every part of our life, each thing staying to it's own partition, and the perfect space for them all.  We want to be able to lay everything out and then be done, to 'be' balanced.

But life isn't simple and tidy, and it is constantly throwing us curve balls.  So many people are facing this issue of balance right now, because the life that they had created, the one that was working, has been shoved all out of wack.  They don't have clear lines between work and home, they may be having to spend more time helping their kids figure out their own balance (between school and play), they may be struggling to find that alone time they need to counter all the enforced together time.

The lovely thing about looking for harmony is you can accept that some notes are stronger than others....but all notes need a break or breather.  When you look at your life, don't just look at where different parts of your day need to be focused on, but actively search out those down times.  The pauses often make the music, and the rest time in your day makes everything else flow.

Sometimes it's as simple as setting (and sticking to...) start and stop times.  It is really easy for work to bleed over onto every waking moment if you let it....or for play to never end.  But if you make a point to only work until dinner time, or to play from breakfast to lunch, that helps you create those limits and allow for other things to have their time.

Also, having those boundaries set up means that when something comes along to challenge them, you are more capable at handling it, because you have experience navigating those waters.  If you don't work after dinner, but you have a non-negotiable online meeting at 10pm, then you can make and adjustment.  Perhaps that day, to compensate for the after dinner work time, you take the afternoon off.  Or if your child is having a particularly rough day, struggling with a subject in school time, you may encourage them to take an early break.  Perhaps you can have a snack and play a short game together.  This breaks the negative thought cycle, gets their mind refreshed and lets emotions settle.  Even if they spend a bit longer later on finishing up the lesson, it's less stressful than trying to push through and keep to the schedule.

Having flexibility is integral to finding your personal balance, the harmony of your life that lets all things have their own time and place.  It gives you the strength to build healthy boundaries, stick to them when necessary but also to shift them as required.  And that is a much stronger 'balance' than trying to shove everything into an 'equal' partition and pushing for that unachievable stillness.

The philosphy of faith

 

I was reading this really great (and long!) article on Why we all need Philosophy, and it got me thinking (as Philosophy is want to do).  A lot of people tend to separate philosophy and faith, and I think that creates some really dangerous ground.  Yes, faith is often defined as 'believing in things unseen' and the idea is that in order to have faith you have to trust that what you believe is true...without proof.  But blind faith is something that can lead you into very self-destructive and hateful places.  I have always felt faith and questions go hand in hand, you question the things you believe in, and through asking and thinking about the questions, you understand your beliefs better.  ((Side note:  the guy who wrote the article does a weekly newsletter, with three things to think about....if you don't mind some cursing, I highly recommend it!))

 

As I mentioned, the article is long, but one of the key points that stuck out for me was boiling Philosophy down to three major questions.  What is true about existence?  How can we know that it is true?  And what actions should we take as a result of this knowledge?  To me, these are really at the heart of faith and religion as well.  So I thought I'd take a look at how these questions can help focus and refine your spiritual path. 

Starting with 'what is true about existence' we kind of look at the idea of truth and knowledge.  We are not only questioning the world around us, but how all of this came to be.  Most religions and cultures have creation stories, tales that explain how the world came into being.  Often, these are quite fantastical, things that we, as modern people, don't take at face value.  But I also think that there is a tendency to just dismiss them as 'stories our ancestors told because they didn't understand any better,' and we don't question them at all.  Even worse, quite a lot of people have never looked into the modern explanations for how the universe came to be, so they aren't replacing the ancient stories with modern ones, they are just kind of turning a blind eye to our origins.

Now, I find quantum physics quite fascinating, so I have looked into a lot of the scientific theories, possibly more than the average person, and I don't think everyone needs to do this (especially if it's not interesting to you), but spending a little bit of time examining your personal thoughts on how we came to be, and also considering any ancient myths that might apply to your path (for example, I work with a lot of Norse deities, but also some Egyptian ones and I am Chinese by blood, so all of their creation myths have direct connections to me) is something that really helps create a grounding for your belief structure.

Why is such a thing even important?  Honestly, in my day to day live, my understanding of the birth of the universe has very little bearing.  But, when it comes to my connection with the divine and how that weaves into my personal being, I think knowing where we come from is important.  If we spend some time thinking about how things started, that will inform how we feel about the way in which divinity interacts with the physical world in our daily life.

And this leads into a more direct expression of this question.  We look at the world around us, and we take a few things at face value.  We expect the sun to rise in the morning, we expect gravity to hold us to the earth, and we expect to wake up every morning to the same world we went to sleep in.  But those deeper questions about existence, the ones that delve into spirit and the afterlife, those are a bit harder to tackle.

This also brings us back to the idea that it is the questions that are important, not the answers.  Some of these questions, even about the truth of existence, will never have fully solid answers.  My personal philosophy, that I've held since high school, is that we can't 'prove' anything exists, but we can expect things to be a certain way.  I have my catalog of experiences to compare things to, and my expectation is that things will continue on in a similar fashion.

Which brings us to the second question:  how can we know that something is true.  My favorite explanation of the scientific method is that it can't prove anything, it can only disprove things.  We can't know something is real, we can only know that "until now, every time it has worked this way."  And that may sound like proof, but it really isn't.  

So understanding the truth of a thing doesn't come down to absolute proof, what it comes down to is examining as much evidence as possible, and thinking about what that means.  It also means that we need to check back in with this information from time to time, and see if our conclusions still hold true.

This is where I think so many people fail to adapt.  They come up with an idea, and at the time they accept the idea, it may be true (or at least it may seem true based on the information they had).  But then, in the future, as they learn more information, their idea no longer holds up.  And this creates a panic in people.  There is this fear of judgment, like the fact that we believed something that turned out to be wrong somehow makes us a bad person.  And so instead of adjusting their idea to include all the current information, they turn their back and cling harder to an outdated idea, refusing to admit that it no longer works.

This is something that I really try to avoid at all costs.  I'm okay with having been wrong.  One of my guiding principles is that I may not be the same person tomorrow that I am today, and I'm okay with that.  Change is my friend, and I am constantly looking for new information, new ideas that will fundamentally change how I view the world.  To me, this is a super exciting process, and it's one reason why I love reading and talking with people about how they think and how they experience things.  I may only be one person, but the more perspectives I can be exposed to, the broader my own vision becomes.

And finally, we come to the question of what we should DO with this knowledge we have acquired.  This is where we delve firmly into the realm of religion.  Almost every religion has some sort of guidelines for morality (even the very open Pagan faiths that expect you to come up with your own code of conduct).  We all have a sense of right and wrong, and this is based on our understanding of what is real and true in the world.

Consider for a moment, if we lived in a world where resources were truly unlimited.  If you saw something you wanted, you could just make a copy of it and it would be real in every way.  Stealing would no longer be an issue, because firstly there would be no reason to steal, and secondly even if you did, the person you stole from could just recreate what you had taken.  Stealing wouldn't be a moral issue.  Of course, we don't live in this type of world, and so when we take something that means someone else doesn't have it.  We have created all kinds of ethical guidelines for when taking stuff is okay and when it's not.

This is where I feel that we need to spend the most amount of time really thinking about the values we have been raised with.  Just because I have been taught something since I was little doesn't make it right.  As an adult, I have a duty to myself and to the rest of the world to question what I personally feel is right and wrong, and what I am okay with and what is not okay in my book.

I very much feel this is something that comes up in the Pagan world, especially with the oft quoted prohibitions of 'harm none' and the threefold 'law' that some people expect everyone to live by.  These are 'rules' that many Pagans and witches learned as they were learning the basics of their craft, and they are memorized but not often actually considered.  Spending time to think about what they mean, how they get applied, and if you even believe in them are things that I think everyone who learned these rules should do.  And if you don't subscribe to these rules, take time to think about why you don't (or examine other ethical rules and strictures you have been exposed to).

All in all, I think that philosophy and exploring these three key questions has a very big part in our spiritual practices (and indeed in life in general).  If we don't question, we go through life blind, we allow other people to guide our experiences and our actions, and we don't really understand the world around us.  Ask questions, and see where those answers lead you!

Selective reading

  

 

 A big part of many of our paths is reading.  We read books or websites to learn new information, we read to expand our worlds, and we read for pure enjoyment.  But the amount of information at our fingertips has grown exponentially in recent years, and there is just so much available to read, and not enough time to get to it.

I grew up a reader, I devour books.  It's not a big deal for me to sit down and read for a few hours.  I have very broad tastes and I enjoy reading non-fiction books as well as fiction.  I am fascinated by how other people think and do things, so I will happily read books on subjects I never intend to explore personally.

And sometimes this becomes a problem.  I have this idea in my head that if I own a book, I should read it, from cover to cover.  I also feel like I should not just read it, but I should read it slowly, so that I can think about every sentence as I read it.

Now obviously, this kind of reading has it's time and place.  I am sure it is a habit I picked up when I was reading books for school, when I was going to be graded on my retention and ability to parrot back pretty much any fact in the book, and prove that I understood what I had read as well.

The funny thing is I don't typically read novels like this.  I can consume a novel, just breezing through it.  And I don't know every little detail when I am done.  I love to reread favorite books, and it is a very common occurrence for me to discover new details each read through, things that I just didn't catch the first time around.

The problem occurs when a book just doesn't click the way I had hoped it would.  And I actually run into this with both fiction and non-fiction.  I'll have been really excited about reading a book, but then I start reading it, and it's a slog fest.  I find myself not wanting to pick up the book at all (which often either leads to me not reading anything, or setting the book aside on a shelf and forgetting about it).  Sometimes I can force myself to read, but it makes for a kind of miserable experience.

There is always a part of my brain that tells me I might need to know the information in the book.  Or that it might get better (this is normally the case with fiction books, I hold out eternal hope because I loved the idea of the book and I want the story to be good...even when it's not).

Here's the thing that we have to remember though:  at the end of the day, we only have so much time.  And we can spend that time reading bad books, or we can selectively read and use our time to read books that are actually clicking with us.

One tip I've come across many, many times, is to skim or skip parts of a book that don't seem to apply.  This could be either stuff that just isn't interesting to you, or things you have read a million times before.  This is a skill I struggle with, but I'm really working on getting better at.  It's a common speed reading technique, where you quickly skim the content of a book and only slow down and properly read the bits that really call out to you.  

The really interesting thing is that our brains really do pick up information from very scant exposure to it.  We can't always recall that information on our own, but when we are prompted or think of something related, then it springs to mind.  We may not even remember where we read about it.

I don't consider myself to have the greatest memory.  When I read things, I'll often retain the general ideas, but not the specifics.  For me, having notes or marking my book is a great help.  It lets me find the information when I need it, without having to hammer it into my brain.  I personally am okay with writing in books I own, but I also love removable book tabs.  

I can't really recommend taking personal notes enough.  If there is specific information you want to recall, write it down!  When I check out books from the library, I often take extensive notes, because I know I will be returning the book, and if I have taken notes from it, then I can refer to those when my memory starts to get a little fuzzy.  This is especially great for any kind of exercises or correspondences that the book might have covered.  Making a photocopy or scan of relevant pages is another great way to hone in on the information you want.

I think that learning to set books aside is also a really handy skill.  Sometimes books just aren't what we think they are going to be.  The author voice may really grate on us, or the summary might be completely misleading.  As we struggle to read the book, we just find ourselves frustrated at what we are reading.

It can be really hard to stop in the middle and not finish reading a book (especially if you are an avid reader).  I find it especially hard when I'm reading Pagan stuff, because I feel like I am doing a disservice to the very people I want to write more books.  It doesn't help that I can normally find one or two great thought provoking bits in about every book.

The thing I keep trying to remind myself is that if I need to mine a 300 page book for two sentences, how much more benefit would I have gotten by reading a better book, and gaining 100 moments of insight in the same number of pages.  Spending time scouring a bad book trying to find those few bits of gold is frustrating and ultimately not the best thing we can be doing with our time.

So, if you are like me, and you love to read and are interested in a lot of different subjects, you may find it useful to be more selective with your reading.  If you aren't a big reader, you might consider that you just haven't found the right books yet...if you aren't feeling a book, put it down and try a different one.  There are more books out there than we can read in our lifetime, even if we did nothing but read, so spending our time reading books that aren't bringing us the right kind of value is something we should practice avoiding.  It is worth your time to learn how to read selectively, so that when you do sit down to read, you are getting the most out of it.