Keeping the faith

An inspiring post from TerrieLynn Bach on my Facebook feed this week read: The world isn’t falling apart, the veil of the world-wide corruption is lifting.

I do believe the veil of corruption is lifting. And in the process, the going is getting rough. This post looks at what it means to be committed to keeping the faith, while the spirit is getting hammered by current events, email and social media feed.

Keeping the faith: for me, that means being open to what is happening and doing magic around what’s happening to feed the change, either the change taking place, or the change I envision.

This past week, though, I reached the end of my spiritual rope, at least as far as keeping the faith and keeping open to what is. This past week, I opened emails and FB posts that just took me down. And before I could breathe my way back up, another took me down further.

I think I hit my rock bottom when a gentle, kind, shining soul whom I admire very much posted an image that just felt like it opened me up and left me open. I have tools – breath, movement, visualization. I used them. It still took me the better part of an hour to stop feeling the impact of that image.

I could step away from all the content coming at me. But as others have noted, there are stories the overculture would keep secret if they could, if social media and sharing didn’t put them out there, and keep them alive. We are our own news organization, and, like others, I see great value in that. It lets me know about things that are wrong and that need to be fought. It also affirms, by letting me see change happening in areas where I and fellow witches have done magic.

So I have to ask myself how to find the balance, between knowing what is, and my own sustainability?

Here is what balance looks like for me right now: I am not stepping away from reading what comes at me. And I am not unfriending anyone. Almost everyone on my FB or who emails me is a witch with whom I share community. I believe in their ethics and their instincts. If they choose to put the energy of a post out there, I trust there’s a reason. That approach leaves me open to the energy of what they choose to share.

To bring balance, it’s my intention that, for the month of September, I’ll breathe in and transform the news and posts that are hard to see. The practice of Tonglen is one of the places the Buddhist and the witch in me meet. In that practice, I can choose to breathe in pain, density. Breathe out healing, space, possibility. There’s comfort in that practice, of taking it all into the body, and then releasing it from the body.

And regarding the energy and images I send out to others, it’s my intention to not post or email anything this month that would be hard for others to see or know. Why am I doing this? Because I need to know some posters are safe in the way I need them to be safe right now, and since I can’t get that, I’m going to be that.

Sustainable spirit. Honoring my human needs. Breathing in and breathing out; and being the change I need.