Opening...again

Since the loss of my brother in July, I have been struggling against an old obstacle.  I have worked relentlessly the past ten years to open myself to feeling…everything. I began with being open, engaged, and connected in ritual space, then with connecting to inspiration, and intuition, and imagination, love and grief and sorrow and joy, desire, passion and pleasure, anger, purpose and power…everything that makes me a living, breathing, loving person. 

Being closed off to my Self, my mind, soul, heart, body, and shadow, is like being asleep, or half-alive.  It feels like sleepwalking through the world, and it has robbed me of my energy, my motivation and my joy.   It has also robbed me of my compassion, empathy and connection to others.

The loss of my brother was the first but, there have been a series of losses, none of which I have felt fully.  And while I have not lost my connection to my Gods, I have not returned to the head-blindness and deafness, for which I give thanks, this disconnection from feeling is an obstacle that has become intolerable.  I will not live that way again. 

I visited the Sweat Lodge this past weekend and there I became acutely aware of the current state of my magick.  I gave thanks for the blessings I have been given. I offered up the distractions and worries (and a portion of my grief) that interfere with my being fully aware and connected to myself, and I asked for the return of opening that I may again fully engage with all of myself and with those that I love and with my purpose in the world.

This past week, in conversations with two of my coven-mates I had become unexpectedly “emotional”, even becoming disproportionately angry about something relatively trivial.  At first, I did not recognize why I was feeling so strongly, and then it occurred to me that my prayers within the Lodge had been heard and were being answered.  I give thanks for the return of opening, and I will continue this work. 

One of the ways that I intend to do this is by engaging in new experiences and striving to be fully present with them. 

This has reminded me that the lessons of this life are always repeating, we become more adept at the work each time we return to a lesson, we learn new ways, and practice and practice and practice, and through practice we become wiser and perhaps more graceful.

So, I am opening…again.  May my Gods bless me in my work.

Experiments

We are constantly changing.  When we are involved a process of spiritual evolution, our abilities and the ways in which we function, are constantly growing and shifting. 

In order to learn how to live with these new perimeters, we need to experiment.

We need to try new ways of doing things.  We need to test different ways of magick, of loving, of living, of being.  

Some of our experiments will teach us about what no longer works, some will teach us what might work and we may need to adjust our course along the way.  Partial successes, failures, false starts, miss-steps, course-corrections are part of the process.  Perfection is not a realistic goal.  We learn by trying and every time we attempt something new, or in a new way, we gain understanding through the experience. 

I am a fan of the scientific method.  I enjoy the experiments and the exploration.  I enjoy the creative effort of figuring out what works,  how I work.

The journey itself is the point.  The journey IS the magick.