Unbreakable

Unbreakable

When someone is cruel and unpleasant, a bully or an abuser it is they, of course, who have the problem. Yet to ignore their actions, to giver responsibly back to the victims and not the people who are mean, cruel, who bully or abuse gives them no hardship. In fact what it does is give them permission to treat the next person the same, or even worse.

As a woman I am told all the time "Oh just ignore it" or "don't take it personally". 

While both of these are good for my blood pressure to an extent people who are problematic, no that is not the right word....

Unkind, people who are unkind get away with it. 

Now everyone has bad days, grumpy days, days when the dog wakes you up at 4.30am for no reason and you might snap at someone.

That is excusable. 

There is literally a reason.

We have created an environment where assaults, threats and unkind behaviour happen so often we have to have Government posters telling victims that what has happened is not okay.

Did the weird guy on the tube/metro grope you today? Must just be Wednesday!

Is that old guy standing on a box in the middle of the city center scream abuse religious or drunk? Just ignore him he will go away.

Someone spewing hate or gross inappropriate stuff on your feed? Ignore. Mute. Walk away.

Of course we are responsible for how we act. We are also responsible for what we don't do.

More than that the people who behave appallingly are responsible. They are culpable for their actions. 

It can be challenging to take a stand, to defend the victim. to say, "Hey! That is not okay!"

There are now train carriages to be only for women, because women are so groped. While I understand the idea of a safe space sounds great, we really should make the people doing this behaviour accountable.

We need to change the situation around. Women don't need women only carriages, we need guys not to grope.

In looking for a poster I had seen advertising or warning about groping I found a comment from a guy that said this.

"I'd grope a hot woman.... and she'd like it."

When we say nothing, when we back away, when we internalise it or explain it away the perpetrators think they have your consent.

If someone is a bullying ass at work and everyone knows, but no-one say anything they say things like

"Well no-one complained."

Your silence is seen as consent.

If your silence is consent then do nothing. Say nothing. Breathe through it and let it go. If it isn't then speak out. In as safe a way as you can.

We are responsible for ourselves, but we also as humans have a duty of care to those around us.

Make the world better. 

Speak up for those who might not have a voice. 

Stand for what you believe in.

We create the world around us with our thoughts and actions. We are not islands. We are web, a tapestry of light and colours. Be kind, be brave.

Bright Blessings xxx

 

 

Belief and Fact

Your opinion is not a fact.

Just because it is your theory doesn't make it true.

There is a habit in some pagan magazines and books to state things that can't be proven as facts. Now I am all for theories and opinions, especially esoteric and occult ideas that are new.

The bug up my ass is the quasi-historical , and there is no way to put this nicely, bullshit people spout and get away with.

I recently re-read something that stated as fact that dancing was "invented" in the Paleolithic period as a religious expression.

It is an interesting theory, one that could have been expanded on and been the whole piece (it wasn't it was the starting place of a rather odd article). It is no more a factual statement about history than saying Neanderthals taught us the boogie-woogie, or the alien showed us how to two step.

We don't know. It is okay NOT to know. It is far better NOT to know and to theorize and debate. Once you set in stone (see what I did there?) a fact it is hard to change it. More than that people teach it to other people as fact.

This doesn't just go for pre-history. Pagan writers seem to delight in make-shit-up-istan. From ancient Egypt and Greece wild speculation put across as fact is both dangerous and makes us as a community look stupid.

From re-grouping or re-naming Goddesses, dismissing how ancient people practised entirely because it doesn't "fit" your opinion, making wild leaps to fill in things you don't know is not just irritating it is wrong.

You want to re-claim something? Good, fine, great. Just don't set yourself up as an expert on Egyptian magick or Hellenistic rituals because even really deep scholars have huge debates and theories and differing opinions on how things were done, when and why.

Ancient Egyptian beliefs were a complex mix of household Gods and Goddesses worship daily (much like modern Hinduism) and larger festivals and specific things were managed by temples. To understand the complex weave of places and sacredness that saturated their whole culture and arts, sciences and music is an enormous task. Priestesses were a permanent of life long fixture at temples (no marriages or kids), but the male priest would serve for three month blocks and return back to their jobs and families. 

Slowly over time some deities would merge together, disappear and re-appear, rise and fall in importance and popularity. This doesn't mean they "were the same Goddess". 

To the people worshipping them they were separate and distinct, regional and highly personal. We now have the perspective of vast time and vastly difference sense of space. It might be convenient to smush deities together that seem similar to us but with thousands of years and often hundreds of miles it would be a mistake. It is not factually accurate. It is lazy.

If we were trying to pin down all that had happened in terms of magick, rituals and beliefs in just the last hundred years of this century it would be near impossible. Trying to do so in the deep past is even more difficult because the further from that place we become the more difficult it is to understand not what they thought, but why.

Yes, history is masculised, and full of opinions that don't make sense when we strip them of much Patriarchal thinking. Yes some of the "normal" historical narrative don't seem to have all the answers. Yes, imagine, remember, theorize. 

Just don't write thing in national pagan publications as FACTS when they are not.

Bright Blessings xxx

If you want to understand history a bit better do watch and read things by Proff Mary Beard, Bethany Hughes and Dr Amanda Foreman

Never Stop Learning

Never Stop Learning

As a home educator, and as a witch and spiritual person learning and growing is very core and important to me.

Today I learn two new things. Chameleons give birth to live and tiny young. When I shared this with my beautiful daughter she informed me that anaconda also gave birth to live young. 

As a teacher I feel as though to stop growing is to begin to die. I am not bothered by death in particular, all part of the same circle really but I do have so much more I wish to know and experience.

The more I learn the more questions I have and the questions are often more satisfying than answers.

I am gifted by a sense of the profound wonder at the world and universe. From reading a poem I had never read before to see a tree twist and writhe as though dancing, to watching a chameleon give birth.

This makes me different than most people I meet. Most who have had their curiosity and wonder cut into little square pieces by school, parent or even by the world of work.

Sometimes this part is eked out in hobbies.

Spiritually when we lose our sense of wonder and thirst for knowing part of is dying. Yet as with all death it need only be winter and if we allow the light of knowledge into our whole beings spring will always follow. 

This thirst for knowledge tempers my faith and enriches it. My faith is not blind. It is based on years and years of research and enlightened spiritual experiences.

I ask over and over again to my students (and myself) what did that teach me?

What have I learned?

What new thing do I know today that I did not know yesterday?

Today I learned that world was more interesting and beautiful than I knew (chameleons give birth).

I learned that you have to throw away stock after 24 hours in restaurants and kitchens now (chatting with an ex-chef).

These questions are beautiful and important. I keep growing reaching down into myself and out into the stars.

  I try to inspire others to find their wonder, their inner quest for the world.

Bright Blessings xxx

Motivation

Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation

Extrinsic Motivation

This is where any action is based on an external reward or punishment. From cleaning your room to doing a sport to win an award, this external view point is based around pain and pleasure; punishment is based on pain and shame, and pleasure is based on praise or a reward.

The world of laws and religion is very good at this kind of motivation. Schools and even other education providers can use this heavily.

Intrinsic Motivation

This is personally motivated act. It often comes from a place of curiosity, joy or fascination. It is a deeper level of pleasure than a prize or gift. It is the satisfaction of the act it's self. From love of playing a game, or solving a puzzle or the enjoyment of finding out something new.

While both kinds of motivation have a place, intrinsic motivation is often sidelined, repressed or damaged by extrinsic motivation. This is a problem as it is the current model of motivation in most cultures.

Again when we look at how most people numb difficult or painful feeling (like pain and shame) it would explain why that might remove or damage the intrinsic motivation. Yet it would be surprising that praise and bribery has the same effect.

Authentic Self

This maybe why some people seem to have no motivation. (Although some near the autistic end of the spectrum struggle with this). It is that your innate authentic curiosity and joy in the world has been threatened, shamed and punished out of you.

Reclaiming the authentic self and cultivating personal joy and pleasure is a rebellious act but a necessary one.

How can we cultivate the authentic self if we have no idea what makes us happy? What our passions are? 

When is come to how I live my life it is the authentic self, this passion for life, the intrinsic I seek to reclaim in myself and others and to preserve in my daughter.

More callings and less jobs. More dancing however "bad". More art and music. We have a responsibility to ourselves be cultivate happiness. In so doing we silently give permission for others to do the same. This idea that we need extrinsic boundaries and rules to be good people is based on the idea that if we could do anything we would do terrible things. I would argue that people who are going to do terrible things will do so, regardless of the rules. That the bureaucracy of being a human in this modern age has to change.

This has an impact from school and work places, from community groups and spiritual collectives. Especially when we internalise these extrinsic models of punishment and praise. It robs of something beautiful (and I would argue sacred) out the self.

It is the "should". I know I "should" do X because I would be punished or not praised if I don't. It is the parents "should's" consciously or unconsciously handed down. Yes sometimes it is a useful crutch in doing things that are needed but used too often it ribs us of all motivation even the extrinsic one.

As with all things I feel like I am going to have to meditate on it a little more!

Bright Blessings xxx

Rising Up

Rising Up

Ending Competitive Thinking.

As girls and women we are often in positions where our power is less than that of the (male) system around us and men in the system.

We have to work twice as hard for credit and for our voices to be heard than boys do. This leads to a competitive cycle that damages women, one in which girls and women "police" the male system and will attack, shame, and blame other women for not participating in the system or being different.

I was never very good at fitting in. I hated gossip and small-mindedness. I hated competing. It was far easier to be "one of the boys" than walk the mine field of female friendship/competitive bitchery.

I did have female friends as an adolescent, but not after I left school really.

At college I was surrounded by Thesps and YiPs (Thespians and Youth in Performance). This exaggerated the normal competitive female social strategy to an extreme. Even the boys and men on our course bought into it wholesale.

The normal exacting (and narrow standards) got even smaller.

Of course I rebelled. 

I did make female friends but many dropped out either because of the pressure or because they got pushed out by the lecturers.

At university it was different, but essentially the same.

Pretty early on I was dumped in "character roles" or "old lady". The male acting/drama lecturers (not one female lecturer on the whole site) were vile and would bully and be abusive to women (to toughen them up of course) especially ones who weren't white, blonde and big breasted. Many dropped out, for many reasons. I lost and gain friends quickly.

The female friends I made in my early twenties vanished as soon as I had my daughter.

Little by little women came into my life whom I bonded with almost instantly, though not all of them lasted and some got lost in their own rage/drama cycles.

I am very lucky to have a feast of wonderful women as friends. They teach me, up lift me, remind me of my own song when I forget to sing it.

We as women, and as mother's need to make spaces for other women that are supportive, non competitive places to help break this cycle. We need to show women that they are stronger side by side. That there is enough, and that they don't need to compete with other women. We need to value ourselves enough to know that we do not need to take from other women. It is a destructive cycle and one that devalues us all.

In the end our songs do not have to be the same to be a harmony, or a symphony. That it is the whole of the sound that is important. When we give recognition to women who came before us, when we stand by the choices and the ability to choose of women, when we empower and come together we are such a force!

This is one of the reasons that I created a community for female seekers on g+ which you can find here.

For you men and boys out there understand that "women"is a catch all term for a vast array of people. That having a token "woman" in a room full of men is not enough because this exacerbates the problem. Speak less, and listen more. That we are people, not things.

I think there is hope and there is a positive shift towards community instead of competition. Long may it continue.

Bright Blessings xxx

You can buy my books here.

Or shop here.

 This blog was inspired by my wonder friend B. Love you.

The Greatest Lesson

The Greatest Lesson

What is the greatest lesson? 

As a spiritual teacher I often get asked this question and to be honest I don't always have an answer.

In fact, I don't have all the answers to anything. I know a lot but when it comes to someone else's spiritual life and path there is only one person with all the answers they need. 

Only the self.

You.

You have all the spiritual answers within yourself that you need. That doesn't mean you won't be sparked or taught or inspired by others. Or that techniques or systems can't be explored through a book like the The Key Opening the Doorway to Magickal Practice.

What it does mean is that YOU must open the doors.

Always.

That if you seek within your mind and heart it will never be a wasted journey.

We have been conditioned by Abrahamic faiths not to think, not to seek, that the spiritual self  comes through (male) leaders of that faith. That the answers will be given if you are "good" enough.

Your mind is a garden and you allow are responsible for what you choose to grow there. What grows in the shade is just as important as in the light. What is poison, what is medicine what gives nourishment, all of which you can control, IF you choose to try.

This in modern terms is "mindfulness".

I prefer headology.

First sight and second thoughts. 

That is to see what is actually there with no judgement, no need to add or take away.

Second thoughts mean to watch your own thinking. Watch your train of thought. 

Add and remove, look at what it is telling you. Be the observer within your own mind and it will teach you things I have not even imagined for you.

Fundamentally I believe in embracing yourself, in finding your own worthiness and path.

I could make a lot more money just writing the normal pagan book telling you you must be this or that, shaming and blaming, ridiculing those who are different (Christian or pagan), but I won't.  

Your true power can never be given to you, only you can embrace it, use it and open the doorways to the happiness and wholeness you deserve.

Are you bold enough to try?

Can you let go of your fears and old ideas?

Shall we begin? Imperfect in our seeking but wild and free?

Bright Blessings xxx

Vulnerability and Addiction

Vulnerability and Addiction.

First off this is just some ideas and brain stuff I wanted to put down to see if it had any cohesion.

If vulnerability is the necessary birth place of the joy and the authentic whole happy self (Watch this if you don't understand), but is also deeply uncomfortable for a huge amount of people. To reduce this discomfort people numb (all feelings are numbed not only the good feelings robbing the person of the ability to feel happiness or joy,) and maybe this anxiety of vulnerability is the crux of addition.
We now know that the cage (in rat addition testing) is a greater determining factor in addition than the access to the substance.
What if the "cage" for addicts is vulnerability?
If so, this might be why the group therapies, like AA might have some success for some. They are giving both connection and force the addict to address their actions in a very vulnerable way.
The success would depend on whether they found their whole-heartedness, and learned to connected and be vulnerable, or simply found other ways to avoid shame or deal blame.
Shaming addicts, would of course, be the worst most painful thing for them to endure. This shame and self loathing is exactly what they numb to avoid.
The level of addiction may not be based on external trauma, abuse or tragedy, instead it may stem from fear of shame, low self worth, the need to control something within themselves they fear is unworthy or shameful.
All of this comes back to the culture. If the culture, country or family have strict lines of what is worthy/unworthy, acceptable/shameful and more importantly numbing behaviour becomes more extreme; this is a breeding ground for addition.
Britain is  particularly good/bad for this kind of culture. Repression, stiff upper lip, and an intense dislike of strong emotions (good or bad) it is the perfect breeding ground.
Add into that poverty (which is labelled as a personal failing not a social disease) and the narrow margins of acceptable feelings it is unsurprising Britain has an addiction problem.
Yet if this idea has any kind of truth in it we need to rethink addiction, numbing (alcohol in particular) and strong emotion. In particular shame and and blame.
Vulnerability is a bitter medicine, uncomfortable but needed for joy and fullness of life. If we could teach others to embrace it how different the whole world could be.

Bright Blessings xxx