Maebius Musing

First, sorry for this being quite a bit late for official New Moonage. Been a busy month, both at work and at home. Sit down, grab a drink, because this is going to be Epic wall O’ text time… I’ll wait…..

We watched a movie “What the Bleep!?: Down the Rabbit Hole” with friends of ours, and got into a rather enlightening discussion about reality, my concenpt of magic, and such.   The movie and big debate happened at Watkins Glen (briefly mentioned here) with the frineds we are going to Starwood with, and we plan on re-addressing it further there.

Essentially, the movie tries to explain reality in relation to Quantum mechanics, and add a sort-of meta-scientific aspect to the metaphysical/spiritual world.  It seemed (to me) to go out of it’s way to avoid the word GOD, but implied that we are all capable of a vague divinity because we create our world, and are all interconnected.  Not in the sense of our souls or spirits as most neopagan or spiritual religions describe, but by the mere fact that our atoms and molecules are governed by quantum mechanics, where time and space break down.  Of cours,e it is MUCH more complicated, but that’s the summary I took away from it, funneled down to a single short paragraph.

We also discussed the book/movie “The Secret“, which follows similar teachings about creating your world, and altering reality to conform to Will.  …Sounds awefully like Crowley’s definition of Magick, doesn’t it?

The Secret tends to focus more on the “self-help” aspect of conforming reality to your will, and is almost a better “scientific magickal primer” in the fact that it tries to show a method and “ritual” way of viewing the world so that beneficial things happen to you.   Concentrating on the Law of Attraction, whereby one surrounds himself with good people and good places, and good thoughts, so that good things happen, is rather similar to a basic description of spellcasting from a wiccan perspective.  Remove the spiritual cues and concept, and you’ve got The Secret.

The movie “What the Bleep” tends to focus more on a holistic quantum worldview, and is meant (again, to my perception), to shift how the average atheistic person sees the world, and enable reconciliation of scientific paradigms to the social/ethical questions of “why be good to each other”.
While on the surface, and described in such brief and general terms, both of these movies I can agree with, to a point.   However, I feel that they specifically seem to avoid the concept of an Otherworld.   Granted, quantum states and such (almost by definition) point towards alternative dimensions, but this is not what I mean.  Quantum dimensions are still described as scientific “mundane” levels of reality that are too small to see, yet have an affect on reality.  They exist in my personal paradigm, but are still just mathematically relevant structures that comprise the current view of the fabric of reality.

What I think is missing from both of these ideas, is that they avoid questions of Faith, Spirituality, and the like.   It’s wonderful to teach a way to improve your life, by stressing personal accountability, yet it still seems a bit selfish.   God may not be a man in a white robe and flowing beard, nor may she be a naked dancer leaping around ancient bonfires, but in both these visions of divinity, there is the concept of Other.  God/dess exists to the spiritually aware as ’something outside’ your own soul, though often part and parcel of it as well.  The Divine embraces, and is embraced by, reality.  It may only be a vague animism, or a full fledged Creator.  Yet, to me, is an important aspect to consider.

In the discussions regarding these two movies, my friend posed the hypothetical situation of waking up for work, and Knowing there will be no traffic to delay him.  He phrased this idea in terms of The Secret.  Asking the universe there be no traffic,  sending out his energy to prevent traffic from happening, and then driving to work Believing he will not run into traffic, and then Receiving the drive without the hassle of other cars on the road.  Essentially, he cast the spell to prevent traffic, and there was none.

I countered why he didn’t jsut do that every day, and thus never encounter too many other cars, since his 45 minute commute would greatly benefit from such a ritual.  He said us humans arent quite perfect yet at “Truly Believing” in such a power, and thus it only works every so often, and sometimes he can’t “raise the energy” properly and convince his brain that “It works”.   The more we practice, the less traffic he will get into.  It’s only a matter of Will.
My take on the situation of waking up Knowing my drive will be quick and care-free is less active and more reactive.  I may go to sleep sending energy out to prevent traffic, but those rare days when I wake up with an honest Knowing, and finding the roads all but empty, are a more complex inter-play of my own energies, and the current State of Reality.   In my worldview, I am tapping more into the subtle energies and ripples of Here/Now so that I leave my house at precicely the right time to avoid traffic.   I have, in some sense, actively nudged probabilities in my favor, but there is still a reactice/receiving aspect of this “magick” so that my life benefits from my wishes, with minimal disruption of the flows around me.

Another metaphor for our different views is a fish in a stream.  Does the fish swim wherever it wants, and leap waterfalls because it’s strong tail allows it, or because the fluid currents allow it to pass through them?
Do we make reality in our own image, or do we make our image into reality?
It’s quite a deep and interesting topic, and one we plan on exploring further during a late-night bonfire and drinks.  I think both answers are correct, and diversity is a wonderful thing.  I can’t change someone’s worldview with my own, just as they can not change mine.  However, compromises and discussion often opens unseen doors to perception which expand our own insights.  I’m sure quite a few spoons will be bent as we exchange concepts and thoughts….We’ll see how much each of us bends as well.

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This year, we are returning to the Great Festival that started my love of drumming, and fully cemented, solidified, and otherwise convinced me that this Path of mine was ‘Me’.  Yep, Starwood.  That bastion of revelry and fun, which can be described, as the website so reads: A place where Scientists sit with Shamans and Druids dance with Deadheads. Where African drums jam with bluegrass fiddles, and political activism meets Earth spirituality - where theatre and life meld - where days are spent in exploration of inner and outer space, and nights blaze with laser lights and bonfire flames.

I found this image form the last time we went, in 2002, thus proving my existance there at the opening spiral dance ‘ceremony’.  That guy in the white shirt and black shorts?  Yep, me.  That cute chick in the green shirt and flowery purplish skirt?  Yep, the wife.   (this is pre-sprogling times of course) The guy in the robes and blue scarf?  no clue, but friendly! 

This year we are going with some friends of ours, who generally attend the S.C.A. event known as Pennsic.  While this wonderful festival is over ten times the size of Starwood, and has all sorts of cool costumes, workshops, and such, I am totally looking forward to the more laid back and spiritual festival event this year.   It may not be the most serious spiritual gathering, and have more of a party flair, but I’m really really looking forward to “coming Ohm”.
All night drumming bonfire circles, fireworks one night, and the freedom to go skyclad if one so chooses, is simply indescribable for those who have not attended.  (Heck, even this usually conservative person felt no real hesitation to joining the spontaneous “dance naked in the rain shower” that happened last time.)

There are 18 days left as of this posting, which means our next weeks will be full of meal planning,  double-triple-quadruple checking the packing lists, and otherwise getting things in gear to spend and entire week living out of our tent with a bunch of strange folks, many hours from our land.

Otherwise, there’s no real deeper meaning to this poist, other than to say…I can’t wait!

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Related as a followup to this post right here.

I had planned to go a full 2 weeks with only checking online for work-related emails, and friend-related messages.  No other blogsurfing, no online gaming, nothing beyond quick scans and email replies to my close real-life contacts (who mostly also read this blog).

I broke my intarweb exile a two days early, mostly because I actually stopped looking at all my blogs and felt a pretty solid down-shift from the stress of “gotta check my email, gotta check my blogfeed, gotta check something else.  ZOMG I’m bored, lets surf the web for random shit“.

Honestly, I’ve read about “those people” and realized I’d started to become one.   Before leaving work, refresh feed reader after JUST refreshing it 2 minutes ago, froth at mouth, rinse, repeat….  Life is NOT that important to stay glued to my monitor, and I’m glad I did it.

I took a solid week and a half off from world of Warcraft and actually miss it, or, certain parts of it.   I found I missed the social aspect, chatting with some hilarious officers in my guild, being particularly punny with my Troll Nookni, and making bags free for the new alts we have in the guild.    That’s a huge reason I only recently hit max level on only one character after 3 years. I don’t play to kill things and quest. I play to network and RP after work.
What I did NOT miss was some other officers bailing because “Their Healer” was offline for over week and thus they wanted a better chance at seeing bosses die in instances.   Not a slam against them really, but I wish them well in their new home.  Dudes, just say you were looking around for progression, don’t just “Screw this I’m outa here!” in the middle of the week, M’Kay?  I won’t miss them much if they were truly relying on my character to make their gameplay fun.  That’s a good lesson from disconnecting….Perspective!

I also enjoyed a bit more time at home, just doing stuff with the family.   We went camping at Watkin’s Glen (beautiful!!), we gardened a bit, and I helped the sprog play LEGO Indiana Jones on PS2, or random imagination-games in his room.  I didn’t feel really rushed to bedtime, like I sometimes was.  I’ll admit, some nights if work was stressful, I jsut wanted to come home, put kid to bed and play online, not just WoW but random blogg-feeding.  It surprised me the selfishness that implied, and I’m glad for the escape from that escapism this week.

So, for now, I’m limiteing my online time to work for blog-reading, and two hours at night for home-computer.  If It’s Warcraft, that’s cool.  If I want to fiddle with other stuff like this cool online hand-drum lesson site?  Thats’ cool too.

The main lesson I took away from this experiement is I was overstretching my attention.  Started to feel crushed by “I didn’t read XYZ yet tonight?!?!”

and more importantly…..32 days until Starwood!

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It’s not often I find myself navel-gazing too closely when doing meditations. (see mirror-phobia)

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I found this little quiz through a new blog I’m reading, and thought I’d post the results.

As always, I encourage readers to view these statistics with a rather large bowl of salt (ie: a bunch of grains!) since many questions are phrased in a somewhat both/and way yet still require an Either/Or answer, so I had to pick one. A better more accurate representation of my thoughts would require essay-type questions and a real-life moderator picking through my results….even then it might be slanted due to moderator bias. *grin*

Here you go.

My Pagan Practice

Pagan Faith Practices Survey created by Otherworld Apothecary

I was actually somewhat surprised that the “New Age” correspondences scored slightly lower than my “Ceremonial” practices. I tend to think of myself as fairly distanced from Ceremonial types, which may have been due to some bad experiences in the past while still forming my proto-pagan spirituality. (Today, I could meet those types on much better footing.)

Still, the quiz was fun and gave me a chance to pause and reflect on a few things. I also got to look up and research my own musings on this topic.
(see here, or here.)

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