Maebius Musing

In the spirit if my good friend Nettle’s Blog, who posts her monthly goals and then does a followup at the end to describe the actual results of the practice…Here goes my new monthly posting.

Goals for May:

Earth Path: At least once each week spend fifteen minutes or more in direct contact with the natural world. Read at least one books on the natural history of the area. Make one change in your lifestyle in order to take less from the Earth and give more back. Plant at least one tree.

Plan on (and have been) spending part of my lunch at work just sitting outside behind the office and semi-meditating. Not on anything in particular, just sitting with my eyes closed/open and watching the world go by. Nice brain-drain to reset after the morning rush. Continue Reading »

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You can’t teach someone how to be spiritual. You can’t personally introduce them to the Divine. You can teach techniques, practices, lore, ritual - but a book can teach that just as well. So what is there to teach? The best thing a spiritual mentor can be is a good example, and that example is shown through relationship. Books are only a start, for they provide facts and gidance, but a relationship, the giving and taking of ideas and thuoghts, allows a more honest and deeper understanding to ensue.
- Nettle
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A set of questions from a book “Spiritual Mentoring: A Pagan Guide.” by Judy Harrow - …thought it would be useful in describing where I am coming from, and help any readers who wanted to explore your own answers…
Here it defines “commitment” as a stage of conversion marking the decision to join a new faith community, or begin a spiritual practice.

What do you experience as Sacred in your life?
In short, Life is Sacred. While not consciously aware at all times, I see magic in the world around us, in the Mystery and Wonder of both unusual, and every-day things. Albert einstein quoted once “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.” I prefer to think I believe the latter. Anything that is truly beautiful, or Mysterious, is something that touches a bit of the Divine, and thus is Sacred. Even technology, being the product of human creativity. To Craft, to Create, to Make Manifest one’s thoughts in form, that is Sacred Magic.

What is your source of hope? of pride? of power?
Those are three very seperate questions. I have hope in the future, that human creativity and inginuety will continue through any adversity. We are survivors, and regardless of the wars and ecological disasters we are heaping upon ourselves, there is a solution in progress, somewhere, somehow. It’s the little steps like learning to grow my own food, and stuying herbalism, that will eventually carry us through the future.
My pride, is perhaps my ability to be creative and not afraid to try new things. This is also a source of power. To know, deep in my heart, that my actions have an effect. It may be a bad effect, or a good, but changes are wraught in the world due to my being in it. Channelling those efforts towards less destructive means is a lifelong process, but untimately is the reason for Being. We are all gods and goddesses in our own way, since creative acts are the Stuff of Spiritual Magic, thus, our power comes from within, and our connectino to every other aspect of divinity around us.

To what are you loyal? To what are you devoted?
A strange question. Untimately, I would have guessed something like “I am loyal to my friends, by family, (and my work insofar as I am stuck at it)…but I think this questions digs deeper. And I’m not sure I know the answers. I am devoted to learning, and experiencing Life as much as possible, while still maintaining a ‘home-base’ and supportive structure of friends and family. I could run off to become a hobo and see the world on a shoestring, but that’s unfair to my wife and kid, and not a viable long-term lifestyle. So I suppose I come back to being loyal to my family and friends, and devoted to the study of the world around me. Learning flexes the creative muscles, and if I ever get bored, the usual thing I do is make a computer game, or try making some crafty trinket. So remaining Creative is important to me.

For what are you thankful?
I am thankful for the opportunity to be myself, and to at least begin to try to comprehend the world around me. I am thankful to have a small number of close friends, some from when I was very young, and some more recent but still as deeply precious to me. Social interaction is important to me in life. I am also mindful of the opportunity I have to live my current lifestyle, in a rural area, where I can study herbalism right in my backyard, and secluded enough that evening bonfires and drumming don’t rouse the neighbors and embarass me.

Where do you find nurturance?
This is a tough question because the easy answer is family. But there is a deeper underlying answer in my mind, that I only started noticing last year. Nurturance means “caring and support” similar to a mother and child, but allso applies to regular tune-ups for your car. It’s the process of ongoing support that keep something “healthy”. And for that, I must turn to more esoteric and less easy-to-describe things. Certainly RP games are on this list, since although they can be considered “escapist” forms of entertainment, through them I often create characters that have aspects of my own personality or situation that I am trying to deal with. The act of playing the role tends to put me in more of an observer-stance, and I can see better how to work my own problems out in real-life. That’s why in the absense of gaming, I always wind up making up a game of my own, at least in my head. Along with the mental-health that creative use of RPG games brings, I would be lost stuck in the city-work-life without periodic walks in the woods and my own backyard. Without a quick stroll to check out the local weeds and flowers I’ve learned to identify, I tend to get irritated and generally crabby. Sure signs that while not immediatly noticed by my rational mind, spending time outside helps to balance out my stress and emotional states somehow.

Which Deity/Spirit guides or empowers you?
I still hold to the concept of a Greater Spirit, call it God, Goddess, or Creator. There is an over-arching Wonder that permeates all of creation, but our limited brains have trouble grasping infinity, so the numerous Divine archetypes serve to help bring such a concept down to our level of understanding. If I’d have to give my personal Deity a name, it would be Smith. That’s both a bad pun on the common-ness of that name in English, and yet also a vague description of the process of creation. Smithing implies giving form and function to pure thought and energy. That is the core of magic and Spiritual Truth for me. Life’s cycles of summer and winter, and rain and seeds-growing-into-trees is all the same thing. The never-ending process of creation and change. Ideas become manifest, and then make way for new ideas. Life is change, and change does not always mean more/better. It includes the breaking of raw materials as well, in the process of making something new. Thus, any one name of God/Goddess is almost limiting in my view. Each has a place and a purpose, for what better way to focus on a specific task than to summon an aspect of the Divine which fits the mold already. Just as you’d use a hammer instead of a chocolate rose to place nails into wood, so would I perhaps offer thanks to the aspect of “Thor”, and not “Aphrodite” while doing workings in a thunderstorm to energize a magical staff. Another semi-generic name to put towards my all-encompassing Divinity, would be to say “The Maker”, while trying to avoid the obvious borrowing of that term from certain popular movies/books which use it also.

How would that Deity describe you?
I have no clue how to answer this one, and have thought about it for a good week or so. I know how I’d -hope- it could be answered, but the nature of my Deity is such that it boils down into how would others describe me. And for that, I am not an authority, since I have no real power over how others think. I can only be myself, and try to rest assured that ‘myself’ is a decent guy to hang around with.

Whom or what do you trust?
I trust my instincts a lot. Backed by what I’ve learned about the world in terms of scientific facts, and combined with personal experience. And I trust in the general goodness of the Universe. No matter what sorts of decimation and horrors get thrust upon us, there is still a larger picture where things are going to be OK. This really hit-home when I had a fire and lost a lot of my most cherished personal possessions. I was not devstated, I was not even really angry or upset. I simply took stock of the situation, looked for the best course of action, and moved on, curious what new life would emerge from the ashes of the one I was leaving behind. Sure I miss things in the past, but know, really -Know- that things always work out in the end. Maybe not for me as an individual, but in the larger web of life I belong to.
The best way to sum this up is to simply say: I Abide.

Whom or what do you fear?
I fear my own inadequite-ness, and the risk that being ‘me’ will drive others I care about away. I tend to see myself as a conflict between important social relationships, and yet struggling to walk my own path regardless of the public perception it generates. And so I fear holding myself back from my fuller potential, or that the Path I am taking is headed the wrong way and leads nowhere. It ‘feels right’ but is hard to align my emotional beliefs with the scientific rationality that also forms a big part of my personality. I trust my instincts, but still have to work through a number of “what-ifs” after I begin acting on those instincts. This probably contradicts some of the previous answers I gave above, especially regarding the goodness of the Universe and such. However, it applies to this question, and shows that even in a powerfully optimistic outlook most times, I’m just as human as the rest of the fine folks reading htis, and have doubts and fears which remain.

What are your most inspiring goals, your most Sacred hopes?
My goals, to get centered in myself firmly enough to openly walk whatever Path I wind up following. If it is the current one, then perhaps to open my land to weedy workshops on natural healing, and drumcircle bonfires. To share my own experiences with those who want to share them, without feeling ashamed or embarassed about such “mushy” topics.
It used to be to make a popular website, so that hundreds of strangers would at least know my online-name, but that goal is slowly being replaced by something more practical. To write a book or hold workshops so hundreds of strangers will know my online name, and get something out of knowing it besides random entertainment.

With whom do you share these things?
I share my goals, mainly with my closest friends and my wife, though not really to the depth that I probably could (strangely enough, less with wife, more with friends). Generally, my own dreams and visions for the future are something of a private matter, and not discussed much. This could perhaps be a fault, but I generally send such goals and energies into some of my rituals, then let them go with the thought that someday, when the time is right, they will filter back into my life as needed. I don’t force the issue, trusting optimistically as mentioned, in Fate.

What are your sources of human guidance or support? Whom do you trust?
For matters of spiritual questions, I always know I can count on my friend Robin. Likewise, Tom is a good resource for technical computer problems, and the buzz on any new movies or anime out there, as is the third Compadre of mine, Ryan. These people, and including my wife Tammy, I would trust with my life. Most of my other friends and family I don’t have such the connection to, for discussing deep personal matters, ethical confusions, or otherwise heart-to-heart chats. Though I trust also trust Ryan with my life, to the same extent as the others, I have a bit more difficulty expressing more personal thoughts with him, due to the nature of his Paradigm, and thus his relationship is delegated less towards “guidance” as this question specifically asked.

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For those gentle readers who would seek their own Paths, I’d recommend at least thinking about these questions sometime. If you do, feel free to share your thuoghts.

Brightest Blessings
-Nate

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