Witch Lesson #3: Journaling your beliefs
Hopefully by now you're all starting to feel more "witchy" again if you've been doing the "lessons" or just thinking about them and how things effect your life. In this lesson I want you to dig a little deeper and look inside yourself.
This morning as I was reading the paper and eating my breakfast, the sun was shining brightly in my kitchen window. Instead of getting up and closing the curtains I sat in the sun and absorbed the rays. I sat there for a few minutes until I had had my fill and then thanked the sun and closed the curtains. Many years ago I probably would have just gotten up and closed the curtains and not thought about appreciating its rays. It made me stop and think how far I've come on this journey. I still have my very first Book of Shadows and I like to back and read it and smile. I was so confused then and had no idea what I was supposed to believe.
I want you to look at your path and think about how its evolved and what it means to you on a basic level.
Pixie came up with these questions as a way to track your beliefs and what you see as important. It's nice to have something like this in a journal to go back and read and see just how far you've come.
1. What is your definition of spirituality?
2. What spiritual path are you on?
3. How does it affect your life and those around you?
4. Do you practice what you believe?
5. What are your goals for growing in your spirituality?
6. When do you find that your spirituality helps you?
7. When do you find that it hinders you?
8. Who introduces you to this path?
9. Where do you feel most comfortable?
10. Is there anything that you would like to change about your path?
These are good questions to answer for yourself. Keeping a copy of these in your journal is a good way to go back to see where you have been and where you are heading.
This morning as I was reading the paper and eating my breakfast, the sun was shining brightly in my kitchen window. Instead of getting up and closing the curtains I sat in the sun and absorbed the rays. I sat there for a few minutes until I had had my fill and then thanked the sun and closed the curtains. Many years ago I probably would have just gotten up and closed the curtains and not thought about appreciating its rays. It made me stop and think how far I've come on this journey. I still have my very first Book of Shadows and I like to back and read it and smile. I was so confused then and had no idea what I was supposed to believe.
I want you to look at your path and think about how its evolved and what it means to you on a basic level.
Pixie came up with these questions as a way to track your beliefs and what you see as important. It's nice to have something like this in a journal to go back and read and see just how far you've come.
1. What is your definition of spirituality?
2. What spiritual path are you on?
3. How does it affect your life and those around you?
4. Do you practice what you believe?
5. What are your goals for growing in your spirituality?
6. When do you find that your spirituality helps you?
7. When do you find that it hinders you?
8. Who introduces you to this path?
9. Where do you feel most comfortable?
10. Is there anything that you would like to change about your path?
These are good questions to answer for yourself. Keeping a copy of these in your journal is a good way to go back to see where you have been and where you are heading.
posted by Pixie at 3:39 PM
1 Comments:
Thank you Anna and Pixie!
**I still have my very first Book of Shadows and I like to back and read it and smile. I was so confused then and had no idea what I was supposed to believe.**
I never had one. I had a little book for herblore; another for automatic writing; and another for Arthurian legend, and that's as far as it went. Otherwise, it was all in my head. For about six months, 'The Witches' Way' by Janet and Stewart Farrar WAS my Book of Shadows, then I started getting ideas. I checked in their book and it encouraged such things, so I ran with the ideas. The inside of my head has been my Book of Shadows eversince, which is a bit daft, when I think on.
**I want you to look at your path and think about how its evolved and what it means to you on a basic level.**
But I have a good memory. :-D I'm going to think about how my path specifically played out and drop that into the blog comments. I'm now using the comments section of the blog (http://witchlessons.blogspot.com/) as another mini Book of Shadows, so I can trace back that way.
**Pixie came up with these questions as a way to track your beliefs and what you see as important. It's nice to have something like this in a journal to go back and read and see just how far you've come.**
I'll also add these responses too.
**1. What is your definition of spirituality?**
Matters of the spirit; but I learned from a weekly discussion that Roxanne introduced ages ago that I have a very specific definition of the spirit. The spirit is the thing which experiences the everyday and acts almost as a filter for the experiences which reach the soul. The soul I see as an immortal entity, with one foot in this world and another plugged into the bigger picture, though my consciousness is so distracted by my spirit that it tends to concentrate mostly on the matters of the former. The spirit never leaves this world and can be broken to the point of no return within a lifetime; but it is resilient and can be broken quite severely without ever reaching that point. What touches the spirit to a profound degree then impacts, finally, upon the soul; these things are my spirituality.
I used to think it was religion alone which formed my spirituality. I think I learned during a Radiohead concert that it's not. I can't remember how I got to that thought, I just remember feeling that moment of absolute bliss and it feeling religious; that's when I realized that you can have a spirituality which isn't channelled through a religion. The complication here is that I can't see any separation between my worldview and my Paganism, so in a way all of my life is a religious experience and so to is my spirituality by default.
I also used to think that it's only those things which make me gasp through the sheer beauty, intensity or the sense that there is something so much bigger that I'll never grasp it fully, which made up spirituality. Now I've amended my definition somewhat. My spirituality is everything.
**2. What spiritual path are you on?**
Nominally Alexandrian Wicca, though I've spotted some residual Methodism in there of late. That's the pat reply anyway. Otherwise, I'm on my path. That might sound like a cop out, even from where I'm sitting typing it, but things have changed so much in me over the past couple of years that I'm finally arrived in this place, not knowing where everything is or who I am precisely. It's going to be fun/interesting/weird finding out. My religious path is definitely Alexandrian Wicca; but my spiritual path is, so far, a weird, wondrous, sometimes terrifying, un-named... thing.
**3. How does it affect your life and those around you?**
It affects it by me wanting to suck the marrow out of the bone of life. I don't want to let an opportunity for experience or knowledge or just the fact of Being There pass me by. I'm the sort of person who'll be at a friend's house at 11pm and she'll say, 'I really wish I was at a beach right now' and I'll get my car-keys (despite the nearest beach being 3 hours drive away). I'm never comfortable being comfortable. I just want to push each and every limit until I work out where the limits are; which is why I so often end up overwhelmed, whinging, cracking up etc etc. It's the Emily Bronte option - after she died, someone said to Charlotte that the tragedy of Emily is that she never lived (referring to the fact that, except for a brief and hated trip to Belgium, Emily stayed in Haworth all of her life). Charlotte replied, 'Oh! Emily lived; Emily died of life!' She didn't mean that Emily breathed, ate and slept; she meant that Emily lived, as opposed to survived. That's what I try to do too.
In truth, I don't know about the latter. If I'd been asked this question as late as last summer, I might have secretly had doubts, but I could have answered with confidence nontheless. I've very recently come through a very paranoid time and, while I'm far enough away from that to no longer be paranoid that I'm fucking everyone up single-handedly, I'm not far enough away to assess how much Hell I actually DO put the people around me though, when I lose it like that. My guess is that all people are different and some will view it as worth the madness for the genius (the Syd Barrett option); others will view it as a friend or relative, whatever state I roll up in and won't even call it madness or genius; and some will see it as... well, New Model Army summed up that option: http://www.newmodelarmy.org/Lyrics/Turnaway.htm... it's sometimes the sensible option.
**4. Do you practice what you believe?**
Always.
**5. What are your goals for growing in your spirituality?**
Right now, my only goal is to continue the reccy to see where I've reached so far. Though, once I've done that, if my goals are ANYTHING like the previous goals, it's to live each day like it's the last (not morbidly nor depressingly, but treating it as precious), dance like there's no-one watching and hurtle along daring Fate to catch me... then whinging when it does.
**6. When do you find that your spirituality helps you?**
When there's absolutely no way that I (or anyone else around) can influence or control a very dodgy situation, so I have to mentally fall backwards and trust that deity is going to catch me. This happens very often.
**7. When do you find that it hinders you?**
When the responsibility is too great. Example, when Warriormail Mike and I had that conversation about the afterlife and he went away thinking on my take on it, then died. I think that it was Pixie who got the full whack of my being hindered over that one. Pixie, it was you who I burst into tears over going, 'I just don't want to have been the last person to have betrayed him!' and other such. wasn't it? I know half the Grove ended up with similar at that time. Actually, the short answer is, when it turns out that I'm a priestess and not a Goddess, despite what I'm attempting to do.
**8. Who introduces you to this path?**
Janet and Stewart Farrar, though they don't/didn't know about it. It was through a book of their's I had from the library. The first person face-to-face was a wench named Sally. 14 years on, I'm only just sussing that she was probably a wise wench.
**9. Where do you feel most comfortable?**
Spiritually, it's on top of the Black Mountains, in Blaenau-Gwent.
**10. Is there anything that you would like to change about your path?**
Yes, I would like there to be a fourth degree in the Wiccan system. Then I would like for those whom I really respect spiritually to get initiated to it, while I'd refuse point-blank. That way there would always be someone I could defer to, which would help me a LOT psychologically.
Otherwise, it is as it should be.
yours
Mab
xxxxx
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