As we are approaching the end of the year, I thought I’d write down my greatest lesson of 2020 on the path to self-discovery and understanding:
The most important things in life cannot be taught, one must learn these lessons on their own.
Most people seeking the answers to the important things in life will seek out teachers despite this.
Most people will spend a lot of money and time doing this.
Time is required, but not much money is required. The money will be spent anyway.
It’s okay to spend the money. Losing it in this quest is part of the process.
You will absolutely lose your mind several times in the quest.
Losing your mind is part of the process.
When you regain your mind, it will be in a better state than when you lost it.
Each time you go through the process of losing your mind and regaining it, it gets a little better.
When you arrive at your answers, you’ll understand how it was necessary to go through all of the things that were not necessary.
You cannot teach this to anyone, everyone must walk this path alone. No amount of intellectual understanding will prepare one for true, united understanding of the heart, mind and soul.
Laughter is the best way to deal with this knowledge.
“The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.”
J. Michael Straczynski, Babylon 5
Imagine now that each domino had a person standing on it and there were thousands of them in massive concentric circles in an amphitheater.
Last night I had a dream that I was in an amphitheater standing on a giant pillar that looked more like a domino. There were tons of these in large concentric circles and there were people standing on the tops of all of them watching a man speak on a stage setup below in the front. I remember seeing sound equipment around him, and while I could hear that he was saying something, I can’t remember what he was saying. I remember that I was angry with what I was hearing. I tried to get down from my pillar to confront him. I screamed he was lying and couldn’t be trusted. I couldn’t be heard over the crowd, but he seemed to see me and make eye contact. I can’t remember if he said this to me or if I just thought it, but I clearly understood that my protest against him wouldn’t matter and that nothing would change. My partner started to climb down from her own pillar and I stopped her, since it was difficult to get down. I told her to stay there because it wouldn’t matter, and nothing would change. We’d have to do something else. Then I woke up.
This one probably doesn’t need much psychoanalysis to figure out in the current political climate. Here we all are sitting up on our little dominos waiting for someone or something to be the catalyst that send us all into a crashing heap. I don’t care which side of the political fence you happen to stand on, it’s gonna end in tears.
The most interesting part of the dream is my realization that I can’t change the trajectory that the community is on. The man is spouting lies and nothing I say or do will change what he’s saying and doing. No one can hear me in the din of the crowd. They aren’t paying attention to me. Why should they when they are trying to balance on their own domino to keep it from falling? They have their own personal concerns. Whether or not the man on the stage is one of them, I don’t know. Maybe they know what’s going on, maybe they don’t.
The Whore of Babylon, by William Blake
My conclusion in the dream is that my partner and I will have to do something else. What? Perhaps it’s time to go inward, reflect, gain a better understanding of ourselves, our needs, and what is truly important to us. What does one do when the veneer of civilization is peeled back to reveal the jungle lurking beneath the surface?
I hope everyone reading this is well. If you are not well or if you are caring for someone who is ill, I wish you and yours a speedy recovery.
Sometimes, even in these uncertain times, a little sun shines down upon us. This happened for me last Tuesday evening when I conducted my Aries New Moon ceremony. The New Moon is an eclipse after all, so the Sun plays its part and for me it was the final revelation I needed to put everything together. Everything I’ve studies over the past twenty-five years, all conversations I’ve had, the gurus I’ve listen too, the countless books, the writing I’ve done and the inward journey – it all paid off in a five minute mystical experience where it all came together simultaneously in one magnificent cosmic knowing.
Mystics often state that the experience is ineffable. It cannot be sufficiently related or described in a way that helps others understand it. They are correct. I tried to relay the experience to my partner and found it fell flat. There was just too much to translate in a linear fashion. I know I need to work on the processing portion of the experience a lot longer, but here are the major highlights:
* Each individual is a microcosm of God consciousness. We hold an entire universe in our mind. This is the first principle of Hermeticism – All is Mind. But it was the unquestionable experience of that reality that occurred for me. I know this now, it’s not theory or a quaint view. I know it.
* I attained union with my Higher Self. Through this I understood things like how my intuition works, how magick works, what it really means to be an empath, why my tarot readings have been so accurate and why they go amuck when I freak out. It was like a download of information that happened so fast, I’m still unpacking it all.
* Perhaps the most beautiful part of the experience was the sudden realization of why Venus chose to work with me over the past few month – nearly a year now. It was something I never understood because I never had an affinity toward her before that moment when she stepped forward and made herself known to me. It was out of knowhere that I heard her voice telling me she was the one who could take me the furthest. That night I had sudden and fast revelations about myself that I had never understood before. I intuitively knew I was on the right path with her.
So, this New Moon, I finally realized that she represents the self-acceptance I was missing in my life. All the beauty and love and jealousy and envy and grace and femininity and wrathful anger and the proclivity towards getting in a snit over small things, and divine forgiveness, all these wonderous paradoxes that Venus represents that I refused to allow myself to acknowledge – that was the Great Lady simply reasserting herself in my personal pantheon. Venus is Self Love. She had long been telling me: Know Thyself. It finally all clicked.
I could now with total awareness incorporate these earthy aspects of sexuality, sensuality, beauty, the physical – these things I was taught to be ashamed through experience and hard lessons. All those years of internalization that I was trying to deprogram, just fell away in an instant!
* And finally, your truth is yours. If it gives you energy and helps you grow, then embrace it! If it causes you pain and suffering, then let it go. It’s not as easy at it seems. So many of us hold on to destructive beliefs because we’ve been told it’s the path to salvation. But if you aren’t thriving, you are still in pain, and you are not growing, it’s not be the right path. There is no right religion or belief. Some are more conducive to growth than others. Some are more restrictive. Some are downright harmful. Find something that brings you happiness and light. But most of all, find what helps you to grow in spirit. If it shuts you down, walk away. There’s something else out there that’s better suited for you.
It’s been a while since I last posted a blog entry. A lot has happened. I haven’t so much as cocooned this time around as I’ve been processing the results of some powerful magick in my life. The results have forced me to hit the ground running and have given me time for little else in my life right now. It began in August with a trip to Pasadena to visit my dear friend Nick. The intention was to figure out where we were heading with our new business, but it turned into something a bit deeper than that. I can only speak for myself, but it became a trip of self-realization. I figured out more things about myself and why I was so stuck in my life.
“Know thyself”
This was probably the most difficult part of the transformative process that I’ve gone through, because I realized that there was a lot of self-hatred that I had never understood before. I brushed it off because I didn’t understand it for what it was. How often have I taken the time to write “Know Thyself” in this blog? It’s one of the reasons I was so stuck and unable to move forward. I annoy the hell out of myself and I often project that annoyance on to others. So, stuck I was and I wasn’t budging until I dealt with it.
One of the important aspects of the transmutation
process is learning to love all the things about yourself, even the things you
hate. It’s an oxymoron. How can you love the things you hate? But it is
possible. One method is to see it in others. When you can see it in them and
you can love them for it, you can look within and turn that expression of hate
into the same type of love you have for the other person. We’re so much harder
on ourselves than we our with other people in our lives. We don’t cut ourselves
the same sort of slack we would for them. But if you’re like me, sometimes I
don’t recognize how pissed off I’m getting at such minor things that I do. I
build this list and it turns into a giant pile of “God damnit! Did it again!”
Each little thing turns into a litany of failure to change that annoying thing
I do. Then I see it in a friend or that others do it so often it’s been turned
into an online meme and I think, maybe it isn’t so big after all. Maybe most of
us are just goofballs and it’s nothing to get so upset about. Maybe I ought to
just chill.
A Gila monster
Or maybe we actually are we’re blowing up at others and becoming screaming Gila monsters, but we don’t immediately see that because deep inside we know it’s something we do ourselves and it pisses us off. Our relationship with others is a mirror reflection of the relationship we have with ourselves. When we work to repair the relationship with the other person or when we work to repair the relationship within ourselves, we repair the whole of it.
So that happened for me.
While I still have moments where I get angry with
myself, I’m also much quicker to forgive myself. As a result, I’ve found my
relationships with friends and family have improved. I’m far less likely to
explode or act out in anger or frustration. When I do, I move quickly to
resolve the problem. Mostly, I’ve learned to let things go. If I make a
mistake, I learn how to correct the problem, let go of the anxiety and move on
to bigger and better things.
I have much gratitude to Nick for giving me the time and space to sort that out for myself. We had a lot of fun and got into all sorts of shenanigans. I also learned that Nick was my true soul brother, so this trip was priceless. It took me about six weeks to unpack everything I learned on it. That’s how you know it’s good, it takes a while to process all of it.
The Venus by Michael Parks
In September, I had a revelation about how poorly I treat my body by not taking care of it in terms of what I eat and ignoring health care. This relates back to that self-hatred. This came through my work with Venus one Friday in mid-September when I was feeling great self-pity because I hated my work, I wasn’t feeling well and nothing good seemed to be happening. Venus took me by the scruff and basically told me that I was killing myself! I had to get off of my ass, stop eating sugar, get myself to the doctor and start making the changes I wanted to see in my life. Otherwise, I could just walk out into traffic and die already because that is where I was headed! And she was right. Venus takes no shit and definitely has no time for self-pitying bullshit. It came through intuitively, but the feeling was quite palpable. I can feel it now as I type the words. She was angry with me and rightly so.
That Saturday I made a few appointments to visit some doctors. I started eating better and threw out all of the sugar in the house. I began treating myself better, exercising more, drinking lots of water, getting my work done on time, working out a daily schedule and just basically getting my shit together. Next Friday, out of the shear blue, I received a job interview from a third party I never heard of before. One month later I had a job that I liked that paid well with benefits. Along the way there were a number of other moments of magick and synchronicities that I won’t write about here, but it’s made the experience quite spectacular and beautiful. I put in the work, made a few sacrifices, and Venus had my back.
It’s also been exhausting and, in some cases, frustrating,
but I’d rather have it this way than what went before. Change isn’t supposed to
be comfortable, that’s why so many people resist it. I can’t say I welcome
change with wide open arms yet, but I do see it as an opportunity rather than a
sentence. That is worlds apart that what I would have said just a year ago.
What continues to amaze me is how much I am learning along the way. In terms of magick and my work life, I’ve come a long way baby! I couldn’t have imagined I’d be here now when I started this journey back in April 2018. The changes have been felt in body, mind and spirit, and I am so grateful that the Universe kickstarted this transformation. Now I am planning to work on a deeper spiritual transformation for 2020. I want to hone my witchy skills in plant medicine, but also dive deeper in to the mystical knowledge of Hermeticism, Gnosticism, and Sophia and the Divine Feminine. I have a feeling as we head into 2020 and beyond, we will need more healers and lightworkers in the world to help with the rifts that have developed over the past few years. I feel more ready for it now that I ever have before!
The Buddha didn’t really say this, but kinda he did.
I haven’t been blogging of late as July turned out to
be a rather difficult month. Five planetary retrogrades, Chiron in retrograde
(the Wounded Healer is strong in my natal chart), and a solar and lunar eclipse
– oh my! You could say that this month was full of important lessons and growth.
You could also say it was like getting hit with a meteorite traveling at the
speed of light and you’d be right as well.
I wish it were this benign!
Last year on
this date, the universe gave me an important lesson. You can read about it in my first
blog post. And up until a few months ago, I thought I learned it. I did
actually learn it, but we don’t always follow the lessons we learn, do we?
Intellectual knowledge requires life experience to truly drive home the point
and transmute itself into Wisdom. Obtaining Wisdom is often done through
challenges, obstacles and pain. During this eclipse/retrograde season, the
Universe sent another loud message to get my head out of my ass and to stop
falling for all of the shinies. All that glitters is not gold and all that.
Touché, Universe.
I am living through a financial scare right now. This summer I lost a good portion of my income temporarily as a number of my courses were canceled due to low enrollment. I started sending out application to schools all over the state. I stopped working on my new projects, the ones I love, the ones I believe will lead me to a better, more authentic life. I abandoned my pursuit of my Personal Legend, as Paulo Coelho called it in The Alchemist. I did this out of fear. I retreated back to what was old and familiar. To a place I already know no longer serves me.
Double punch!
The Universe sent me another big fat HELL NO! And then
rerouted me to where I need to be again. Last year it was wrapped in a massive
hail storm. This year, I was left with a much longer lingering affect which
won’t be lost on me anytime soon. It’s been said that stupidity should be
painful. This was physically and mentally painful. It left me sick, beat-up, worn-out
and drained of energy.
This time around, however, I was able to reap the
benefits of the growth I experienced over the past year. I’m not wallowing in
this mistake as I would have before. I’ve been able to forgive myself. It
wasn’t immediate, but it wasn’t months longs either as it would be in the past.
I gave myself a few days to recover from the blow and nurse my wounds. Then I
started a routine to get myself reoriented and back on track.
Here’s the gist of my lesson. Self-transformation cannot begin with giving in to old patterns, old ways of thinking, old jobs, and old thoughts about self. That will only breed more of the old. Self-transformation begins with deep self-reflection and taking steps in new directions. It’s far more than applying intellectual knowledge. In some ways, intellectual knowledge can get in the way. It’s about developing intuition and applying the lessons of lived experience. In other words, cultivating Wisdom. How often have I written in this blog, Know Thyself?
Fear, Doubt, Uncertainty, Anxiety, these negative thought patterns that ego clings too, need to be ejected. Easier said then done, right? But not impossible. Meditation helps quite a bit. It lead me to the realization that I had to realign my goals to place personal transformation at the center of everything. When I placed my income and financial prosperity as my stated outcome for my transformation — out of fear and a sense of lack in my life — what I got back was more fear and lack in my life.
I tell my students, don’t focus on the grade, focus on
the learning. If you focus on the learning, the grades will follow. They resist
this. I often hear, “I need to get an A in this class! How do I get an A?” I
tell them to focus on learning and understanding the content. Read my feedback
on your assignments. Apply that feedback. Ask questions if you don’t
understand. There is no other magic pill for getting an A in the class.
What I learned was that I was doing the same thing as
my students: I focused on the financial outcome rather than the personal
transformation required to live an authentic life.
But this set back isn’t without it’s gains. For one, I have much more empathy with my students. I can get very frustrated with them when they don’t heed my words. What I learned is that it’s quite hard to do when there is so much at stake. Fear, Doubt, Uncertainty and Anxiety rear their hydra heads and scared the bejesus out of me! It is the same for my students when the fear a bad grade will keep them out of a certain program or that they will lose financial funding. Or they won’t meet the impossibly high goals they set for themselves. I understand that one more as well.
I also learned to trust in my instincts and the
synchronicities around me. Everything within and around me told me that I was
going backwards. I convinced myself otherwise. I convinced myself that it was
just a temporary setback to my ultimate goal until I got back on my feet. When
ego is scared, ego lies. It’s a hard lesson to learn, but an important one.
The most important lesson, was that once I released
the death-grip I had on controlling my finances, opportunities started to flow
towards me. Ideas that I previously found elusive started to flow from me. I
feel like for the first time in my life, I know what I want to do and how to
get there. What it took was a realignment of priorities. Focus on the personal
transformation, let go of my attachment to results, and the results that I need
in my life will manifest.
It’s been a long, hot mess of a summer. But it’s also been quite productive. I know what I need to do and I’m getting on track with how to do it. The witch has finally awakened, let the magick begin!
By Tarotmum13 ~ Just a Tarot-mad mum writing about the things she loves - might be Tarot and Oracle cards, might be my little girl, might be crystals or pendulums, might be my cat!
Awakening the Witch 