Sustainable spirit – Page 2 – The Sustainable Witch

Sacred body – because, face it, you have one

A good friend of mine believes many healers, shamans, witches, were something other than human in most of their other lifetimes. She believes we chose to be in a human body, on this earth, now, because the earth so badly needs us. I was skeptical at first – but that concept would explain so much about why being in a body is sometimes a challenge for me.

I’m an Enneagram 7 – I flee from pain, and part of what I’m fleeing from is physical pain I experienced when I was very young. In my early years in earth-based religion, my joy was to sink into trance and leave my body behind. I thought of my body – my humanness – as something that got in the way of my connection to the sacred. I sought to transcend being human, being of matter.

Then, some years ago, Mooncrone, a sister in one of my spiritual groups, offered a Hecate retreat on the sacredness of being human. When she told me the theme of the retreat – that it’s sacred to be human – I didn’t really understand what she meant. But over the retreat, Hecate gently led me to the understanding that being human wasn’t something to transcend, as I’d been trying to do. It was key – part and parcel – of being effective as a spiritual being and a spiritual leader. Sustainable body – the willingness to accept my body, in every way. Sustainable spirit – the uses and joys of my body as a pathway to ecstasy and connection, with the sacred and with other sacred human beings.

I worked with Andrea Barrett on my MFA thesis, and one thing she told me over and over was “Learn your own individual process, and learn to love your process, because you’re stuck with it. It’s all you’ve got. Learn to make the most of it.” As a daughter of the Goddess and a priestess, I am human. That’s my process. I have worked to do more than learn to live with that process – I am beginning to fully understand that, far from being something that stands in my way, my humanness and my body are the essence of sacred. Pretty basic for a pagan girl, I know – another basic insight that I somehow missed along the way, and am so grateful to be exploring now.

The blessings of Hecate on us all, spiritual beings having an earthly experience.

The Power of Saying “I Can’t”

I can generally see to the heart of a tangled myth, but I miss simple things that are right in front of my face. Things that are very obvious to others. It’s like some kind of insight dissonance.

This week I realized the power of saying “I can’t” – something others probably figured out long ago. “I can’t” is different from saying “no”. Saying “I can’t” is recognizing when I have no choice, and surrendering to that. Just accepting my own limitations, instead of fighting (again) what I won’t defeat (again).

This week’s “I can’t” was in the realm of sustainable spirit and sustainable body. It acknowledges that I can’t sustain a relationship that consistently wakes me up at 3 a.m.

It’s my way to wake at 3 a.m., unable to sleep, when a relationship or other issue is bothering me. During those early hours, I am generally sitting at the kitchen table, trying to decide whether to make coffee or not, and going over all the ubiquitous guidelines: you can’t change others, you can only change yourself. And let go of the past – it’s just information.

And underneath my inability to go back to sleep is the feeling that gee, I’ve done an awful lot of work to still be someone who struggles with things at 3 a.m. Do I really have to wait until my next lifetime to get this? To be the wise woman who deals with every challenge with equanimity?

No, I don’t have to wait to get it. I can claim equanimity, if I acknowledge “I can’t.”

This week’s 3 a.m. “I can’t” realization – I need more distance in a relationship in my life. A relationship that brings drama, and is lacking in personal responsibility. But it’s important to say – this isn’t about what the other person is doing wrong. If they were solid, had healthy relationship processes, were impeccable – but being in relationship with them still kept me from sleeping – I’d need to say I can’t be in relationship with them, either. It’s not about others being wrong; it’s about acknowledging my own nature and limitations, not as they should be, but just as they are.

I do believe what’s put before me is for my growth, and a gift – whatever form it takes. Saying “I can’t” doesn’t relieve me of responsibility for my actions or choices. But it lets me deal with my life from a place of at least having gotten enough sleep. It’s admitting I’m human, and in admitting that I’m human, setting myself free of expectations that I’m not.

So this week, yes, there’s a relationship moving out of my life. I hope I can navigate that without undue pain to someone else, or to me. But it’s moving out, because I accept that I can’t do this (my life) any other way. I’m finally acknowledging “I can’t” because hours awake in the wee hours of the morning have taught me – it’s the only sustainable thing for me to do.

Blessings of this Pisces eclipse, to those who seek the balance between accountability and sustainability.

Blessed Imbolc

It is Imbolc, here in the Northern hemisphere – festival of hearth and home, divination, candles and firelight. A time for cleaning house –

Cleaning house. Like many of those I know on this path, as our country continues to grow more chaotic, I am turning to hearth and home for some sense of grounding and comfort. One friend noted he was baking bread. Another is selling things she no longer needs or wants. I am sorting and organizing my shelves. I wish I could sort and organize on a much, much greater scale – a national scale – but while I can do what I can do, I don’t have an impact that’s as far-reaching as I’d like.

I’m not just sorting and organizing things, but also thoughts. I am always interested in the ways I am conflicted as a witch and a woman. There’s a lot of insight into what we feel conflicted about, I think, and even more insight into what form that conflictedness takes.

I have been conflicted about trusting myself again, after the crash and burn of the election. I never saw it coming (a common lament that I share with most of my friends). What does a witch do, when Her power is so needed, but she feels disempowered?

For myself – the last weeks have taught me to let myself flow intuitively and feel whatever is up – anger, helplessness and disbelief, some days. And today, at this celebration of light and home, and the simple things that make life worthwhile, I’m allowing myself to feel joy in simple things. Right now, connecting to joy, when I can, is the key to sustainable spirit, for me.

My Imbolc corn dolly is one of those things – made a decade ago, braided crown, gold thread, a shell to mark her powers to create and rejuvenate. Today, I take joy in Her, and in the simple and not-so-simple things she means to me. Women have been crafting these dolls in various ways for centuries – we endure. In the simple act of braiding and shaping the wet, softened husks, I remember the connection I felt to the Goddess. No one can take that away from me.

Blessed Imbolc to you. May whatever you feel conflicted about inform you. May the growing light show you what it is you need to sustain you.

Marketing. Blech.

Marketing. It has been much on my mind. I’ll start by acknowledging that I’ve worked in Marketing much of my life. I have only worked to market products or services I believed in – not just to be authentic to my values, but because I market effectively by loving something and presenting it in such a way that it appeals to others, too. If I don’t believe in it – I’m just not very effective at promoting it.

But I find myself really repulsed by marketing, these days. I feel like I have a kind of PTSD around it. That image from the Trump press conference, of all the manila folders, supposedly full of plans to turn his business over – and, apparently, all blank pages. It’s all about image, and nothing about substance.

And Oprah’s big push for WeightWatchers right now. In the commercials, she’s so energized. So gleeful. As though she hasn’t led women to spend millions on her other “this is the final solution” weight loss plans. It’s all about image, and nothing about value.

It’s all about how you spin it. And nothing about honesty. I know the idea that marketing is vile is not a new concept. I just haven’t ever been as repulsed by it as I am right now.

Which brings me to sustainability, and sustainable spirit – my own. I am in the midst of finding my way into being self-employed. This process is proving to be thrilling and laden with anxiety. I need the work, I need the income, and I’m determined not to do anything that falls outside my values (or why not just go work for someone else?).

After a few weeks of trying different things, here’s what I know. Marketing myself is, for the most part, not sustainable for me. There’s something about it that decreases my effectiveness doing my work. Meaning – when my focus is on marketing myself, my effectiveness with my clients is, I believe, lessened.

I don’t entirely understand this. I don’t in any way cast aspersions on the healers, energy workers and spiritual workers I know who do market themselves, and do it well. I get to keep in touch with them and their work, in part, through the marketing they do. I have every faith in their authenticity.

But I believe “marketing” played a big role in where my nation and our culture seem, to me, to be today. So though it sounds crazy to say it – for now, if people want to work with me as a coach, and for healing, they will just have to find me. I have a web page, and I’m keeping it. I’m posting what I hope are helpful posts on my Facebook page.

But I’m not spending ten hours figuring out how to run an effective Facebook ad. Instead, I’m staying in touch with the change agent within me, and the energetic desire my clients have to change, and working with them to build a bridge between what is, and what can be. I’m better at that work. And just hoping that’s enough, on its own.

many thanks to Gardenwitch Whitewing, for reminding me it was time to get back to the blog …

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.

White privilege – vulnerability, no guilt

“As an activist, I run into a lot of white people who feel guilty or ashamed of their privilege. I have yet to see it do any good. Generally, it leads to paralysis and hesitation… if a person is buried deep into guilt and shame they are not much good in the battle.”
– Noreen Patience Deweese, Member, Black Lives Matter Solidarity Task Force

“Good in the battle” – I had a little internal thrill of “yes” when I read what Noreen wrote above, in a post on Facebook. That’s what I want – to know what to battle for, and then battle well.

I am in the midst of sloshing through the mire of my own privilege, and the ways I’ve been and continue to be unable to recognize it. I have some experience with that dynamic – with realizing there’s a whole landscape of perception and approach in my life that I want to change. It was the same dynamic when I began working with the concept of “I referencing” – there was a painful period of NOT I referencing, and (cringing) hearing myself just after the words had come out of my mouth.

Same thing lately, when the scales fall and I see what I couldn’t see before, for privilege. It happened to me recently when I went to an organizing meeting at the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. The meeting was on how to save San Antonio neighborhoods from our development-crazed city government. To my surprise – we started back 150 years, and looked at all the diverse San Antonio neighborhoods that had disappeared each decade, fallen to development, to “progress”. Privilege had let me blithely believe my neighborhood was the first to be threatened – that this oppression was something new.

It would be easy – in those moments when I speak or see out of a place of privilege, and then recognize it for what it is – for me to feel guilt and shame. I don’t, or if I do, I stop going down that road as soon as I recognize what I’m doing. Sustainable spirit – I want to be good in the battle. I don’t have the energy for guilt and shame. I don’t believe they accomplish anything.

So in addition to actively seeking where white privilege influences my perception, I’m working to be willingly vulnerable without guilt. Willingly open to change without shame. Willingly able to hear what I just said that I wish I could take back. I’m willing to do that, and willing also to be kind to myself. Because this is not a one-day battle. I believe those engaged in it are in it for the long haul. I am, too.

I’m issuing a gentle invitation to myself, and to you too if you like. Instead of putting energy into guilt and shame, I’m putting my energy into a continued willingness to be open, and vulnerable. I’m taking the words of Leonard Cohen to heart: “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

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Baubo’s challenge

I don’t believe I need to list for you the ways in which this is a time to try a witch’s soul. Even filtering what I read and know, I find I expend energy, daily, in pulling myself up out of the dark box of current events. The magical work I do, the spells I weave, the prayers I say or sing are all out of my belief that I can shift racism to respect, poison to nurturance. They express my belief that I can offset those who, as Jackson Browne says, have learned to forge the earth’s beauty into power. I have my list of what I work to change, and my guess is you have a challenging and worthwhile list of your own.

Maybe, like me, you find it hard some days to keep the faith. Headlines, Facebook, the abuses of power, the ignorance of the fearful can all get me down. Then I remember the story of Demeter and Baubo.

In the ancient myth, Demeter is crushed by her sorrow at the loss of her daughter, who was (in some versions) abducted by Hades and taken to the underworld. Demeter is so distraught that she withdraws her support for life. The earth, and all that lives on the earth, begins to die. Baubo, an old woman and a servant, comes to Demeter, and in bawdy, foolish ways, makes Demeter laugh. Through that laughter, Demeter finds herself and her role as nurturer again, and the earth comes back to life.

Some years ago, I read an analysis of the story (I wish I could remember the author…) that suggested Baubo was saying to Demeter: the women cannot despair. When the patriarchy overwhelms us, we have to keep the faith, because if we don’t – humanity will die. We cannot give in to despair. We are the nurturers of life, and we have to find a way to recommit to that, no matter what.

I knew, as soon as I read that, that it was true. That I (we) cannot give up. Sustainable spirit. And keeping the faith.

For me, this myth has expanded to include all those in my communities, all of whom are nurturers of life, and beset by the patriarchy. I am grateful for those in my communities who stay engaged in the fight, and with a sense of humor too. Their insight and their big hearts inspire me to stay engaged, and to be open to laughter – they are a big part of how I sustain my spirit.

Blessings to us, Baubos all.
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