Category: writings (Page 2 of 2)

Meditations on the Path of Knowledge

I think we all have an ideal daily practice that we all fall short of. For a long time I had the attitude that I had to always try for that ideal. Recently I gave up on that ideal and opted for “do-able”. Doing this has been very freeing and I no longer feel like a bad witch when I can’t do something. I am a bit of a perfectionist, and as a scientists I am trained to be complete and precise in my work, and I had to give that up in my spiritual practice (not easy!).

Ideal: My ideal is morning and evening meditation, morning and evening yoga, daily journaling and divination, and/or reading and studying. (I’m lucky to get out of bed without hitting the snooze button 4 times by the way….)

I talked with SilverShadow a while ago and he suggested starting working more with ancestors. I wrote a little bit about my Mom yesterday. She keeps what I consider our family ancestor alter. She has a table covered in photos of loved ones (from both her family and my Fathers family), and a mini dias de las muertas alter (its so freaking cute). We also have an ancestor hall (a hallway with more photos). I have a few photos but I am definitely going to need to get more for my family and I would also like to get some for my Husbands family. Even with these limited photos I started a very quick and easy (but still meaningful) daily practice.

Do-able every day: I have ancestor incense that I bought locally, and two containers I feel comfortable lighting tea lights and not having to sit and watch them. I light my candles and incense and say thank you for all the blessings in my life.

Simple, and fast. Some days I can manage more from my list but at least I can do my one simple thing. It is very freeing to find that simple act that I can do.

I would be interested to hear what you all do every day or what your ideal practice looks like!

Meditations on the Path of Knowledge

I have trouble with the differences and exact definitions between pantheism and animism. My mother describers herself as a pantheist and when I was younger I looked it up to see what it was she meant.

pan·the·ism – /ˈpanTHēˌizəm/ – noun
1. a doctrine that identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of God

My mother was raised Christian but, her belief is more that God is in everything, and her church was nature. This is mostly how I was raised. We went to Church maybe twice a year, and almost never the same one. I am not sure what it was my Mom was looking for in a Church but she never found it.

I do not consider myself a pantheist, maybe because I don’t require the existence or non-existence of a specific “God” or “Gods”. I have always felt that there was something, that wasn’t explained in the physical sense that was all around and incorporated in everything. Like everything that has mass has gravity, everything has this essence. It is my personal belief that we do not have the tools to explain or understand whatever this is, but it doesn’t keep us from trying. I also in my belief allow for this thing to be “found” characterized and explained. I like to use the term “spirit” or “essence”.

My husband is an atheist and the first time we had a discussion about my views he started laughing and then quoted the following scene.

1. the attribution of a soul to plants, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena.
2. the belief in a supernatural power that organizes and animates the material universe.

Now I am always very careful to define my terms, and I don’t like using ones that have a precise and physical meaning. Force is an influence on an object. F = ma right? You grab a physics text book if you want to look up how to describe a force. The same goes for Energy, energy is a basic property of an object and again I go back to physics books. You will rarely find me using these terms for anything other than their physical description (obvious exception The Force). I also don’t like the term “soul” since it has a very specific cultural meaning for us of Western European ancestry. Because I am not good at making up my own terms, I use “spirit” and “essence” but mostly “spirit”.

I don’t discount entirely the existence of one or more deities. It could just be that I have not been made totally aware of them in my work. Most of my work deals with the spirit of place. Different physical locations feel very different to me.

Back to my topic, pantheism vs animism. I am never happy with the definitions I have found, and I am not an anthropologist. This is personally how I define the two. Pantheism is the belief that everything is or is part of A God or set of Gods. Animism is the belief in a spirit that runs through everything and doesn’t require a “God” but doesn’t discount it either. I remember when I first looked up pantheism thinking that it was close to what I believed but not exactly it. My Mom believes in GOD, I don’t, and there had to be something to describe that distinction. Like I said in the beginning I always struggle with the exact definitions of these two words. Maybe that is why I find just saying “I believe in something like “The Force” to really be the quickest way to get my point across.

So does that make me a Jedi? Of course there are Force Witches, but they are dark side…. maybe I am just Force sensitive.

P.S. When I play table top Star Wars I somehow always get Dark Side points… I get too excited about everything including critical hits. Also I never understood how just killing someone doesn’t get you Dark Side points…. even if they are a Sith, you still killed someone…

Meditations on the Path of Knowledge

I want to talk a little bit about the idea of light and dark. The world is all about two things in my mind, cycles and balance. There is light and there is dark. I think there are three attitudes towards darkness in a path that is pagan bent, the first being acceptance and use of the darkness, the second being acknowledgement but not use of the darkness, and the third is ignoring it. I have always been in the second group. To me I am impressed by those who roll up their sleeves and dive right in. I have had a rocky relationship with the darker aspects of life.

I lived in fear for a few years when I was younger (it’s a long story I don’t want to share, but believe me my safety was not something that was a given at that point in my life). This led me down a very dark mental path for many years. I struggled with things beyond my years while my friends talked about boys. I remember even as young as I was the feeling of not wanting to drag them down into my darkness. I put on a happy face and did battle myself. I have always been a very do-it-my-self person and part of that extended into not wanting to burden others with my problems. I have learned to lean on these same friends now, but it took me a while.

I have spent so long trying to free myself of this unstable relationship with the darker aspects of my mental well being that I very strongly stayed away from the darker aspects of my spiritual path. This is not to say that everything was always rainbows and sunshine and fluffy bunnies, but I have never really worked anything that could be even slightly considered negative.

Why this reluctance to explore half of the universe? I think it has to do with not feeling like I have my own darkness under control. I have a wildly explosive temper, and when I am angry I am very deeply and violently angry. I develop strong hatred towards people as well. I know these are not healthy. I know I do not have these emotions under control. I don’t like them. I don’t do workings when my emotions are high. There is a reason I haven’t done much this past year. There is a situation that came up in March that I am still very, extremely angry about. I have considered actions to take magically but when I write them down and come back to them, even when they seem reasonable at the time, I can tell they are over the top. To balance out this darkness I have what I call a creamy center. I am the person who can’t watch uncomfortable comedy like The Office because I feel so bad for the characters. It’s not funny it is painful. Because of this dynamic I often regret and feel horrible about things I do when I am angry. As gleefully as I come up with evil plans, a few minutes later I can be horrified.

Until I learn to control the darkness in me I don’t trust myself working with the darkness. I consider myself an acknowledger of the darkness, while not feeling ready to work with it. Maybe soon I will and I will start down a road of discovery. Sending positivity into the world is something I feel comfortable that I can’t over do and hurt someone. Working anything darker is something I am afraid I will over do, because I know myself.

I recognize flaws in myself, but this I consider a strength, knowing when you are not yet ready for something. I don’t like the way negativity takes over in me sometimes, but I am proud that I have enough control to not do something I will regret later. As I continue to struggle and learn and improve on control of my darker aspects, I feel myself coming closer to exploring the darkness I’m just not there yet.

So I’ll stay in the light, spreading positivity and being contagiously enthusiastic about everything I love!

“Meditations on the Path of Knowledge”

I guess I set the bar a little high for myself. When I said I was zombified from work yesterday…. that was nothing. I spent my day arguing with a computer that won. I don’t have a huge topic for tonight so I am going to introduce you to a concept that I will hopefully be able to expand upon tomorrow. I was going to write about fear in general tonight, but that would be a longer post than I am capable. But I said WRITE EVERYDAY and code doesn’t count so here I go.

This is the feeling that it was a fluke that you got accepted to/or hired at someplace, and the fear that someone is going to find out that you don’t belong. This runs rampant in science, and is something I suffer from. Although it is technically not a “disorder or syndrome” it has became popularly known as such. Partially I think my issue with it comes from the “jack of all trades, master of none” saying. I have always identified with that. I have always liked to try many different things. For a time I was a musician, and then I was interested in anthropology, found out I am horrible at economics, and have only ever been “OK” at math. I have never felt that I excelled at anything. Although now that I think about it, I was convinced I wasn’t good enough to make it on the classical music scene and quit out of fear.

“Meditations on the Path of Knowledge”

My topic for today is dreams. You will have to excuse the zombie like writing since I feel like my head is full of mud and not brains. That is what happens when I try to reason with computers all day. I have strange dreams sometimes. I have dreams that hint at truth, and I have dreams that are like movies.

Sleep is one of those important things, that when you think about it evolutionary make little to no sense. When we sleep we are vulnerable, so why did we evolve to need sleep? This is a question tackled by Radio Lab and I think they did an excellent job. There was a study published in Science last month that might have answered some of this question. It appears that our brain cleans itself. This is all very interesting (and I encourage you to explore more on this topic) but that is not my topic for today.

Dreams. There is a long tradition of prophetic dreams. I am no stranger to this phenomenon. A few weeks ago I had a dream that an ex-coworker (who moved to Europe) stopped by the lab. It was short and comical (I told him to go back outside and knock like a normal person). I told one of my current coworkers this dream while we were hiking. He went home that night to an email from this co-worker saying he would be in town in November. Coincidences like this, and strong Deja Vu experiences have always seemed to happen.

It seems to me that there are at least to ways one can approach the “what are dreams” like this question. The first is with magical thinking, and the second is more rational that your subconscious picks up on cues that your conscious brain doesn’t. I lean on the second approach, but there is always a sliver of magical thinking. There have been cases where I had a dream about a conversation with someone, only to have that conversation YEARS later. I have recognized people out of dreams from years before as well. It could be my brain playing tricks on me, or it could be something more. While it is pleasing to think that I can see through time, and that I am having prophetic dreams, I’m not sure that jumping to that conclusion doesn’t take something away.

Once you give something an explanation and put it in a “box” you stop trying to figure out the problem. Where is the fun in that!? I personal like the thinking that time doesn’t have to be linear and that I might be experiencing a bit on non-linearity of time in my sleep, but I also like waking up in awe of how smart my subconscious is. What environmental triggers made me think about my ex-coworker, and conclude that he was due to come back for a visit? I have no idea. But my brain might have picked up on some pattern that my conscious self hasn’t seen.

My subconscious also likes movies. I refer to my sleep state as “Sleep Kat” and she is very different from me. She is a total bitch, and will hang on to her dreams with both hands. I posted on social media recently that I had a very vivid dream that was very linear like watching a movie. I wrote down this dream and 6 pages later I have an outline for a much longer story. I think I will write that one up in January in full. This is far from the first time I have had this happen, and a collection of stories from “Sleep Kat” might be a fun project.

Why I picked dreams today is due to a dream I had last night. I tend to have very vivid dreams. There are times that I wake up unsure if that was a dream or not… This morning right before my alarm went off I dreamed that a colleague of mine posted a photo of a beautiful dark red candle with a heart carved on the snow into it with a caption that insinuated that she was also pagan. It was so vivid that I checked my facebook three times this morning to see.

It made me realize that while I know they are dreams I put a lot of stock in what my dreams tell me. I don’t take it at face value, but I question if it really happened or not. I guess I don’t have much in the way of concluding remarks besides saying that dreams have a funny way of sticking to you and making you question reality. And I love it!

P.S. My brain feels much better now! I knew this writing thing was a good idea! 🙂