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Spiritual Activism

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ac·tiv·ism    [ak-tuh-viz-uhm]

noun 1. the doctrine or practice of vigorous action or involvement as a means of achieving political or other goals, sometimes by demonstrations, protests, etc.

2. Philosophy . a. a theory that the essence of reality is pure activity, especially spiritual activity, or process.

b. a theory that the relationship between the mind and the objects of perception depends upon the action of the mind.

 

What a crazy week it’s been for me!  I meant to post something earlier but ended up in a political fight to save my children’s school against hostile elements in the local administration who do not support or understand alternative educational models.  We were successful, faster than we expected, and their school is safe, for now.  This fight however, has catalyzed our local community to jump into a more proactive, assertive position and advocate for systemic evolution of our failing school system, rather than trying to quietly pursue our alternatives and defensively fight off the constant attacks by the dying system.

The Internet was invaluable in our fight to save the school.  Our campaign had just really got rolling when the administration unexpectedly caved, reversing their decision and reinstating the programs they had cancelled, and we did it largely with social media.  We started a Facebook group which quickly grew to hundreds of interested people, we texted each other, and emailed school board members, the school superintendent, and others.  We had a press conference and an investigative piece was going in the local paper.  This global medium has already been changing our world, but most of that has been through the expanding ripple effect of advertising and the interests of a corporate capitalistic society.  More recently, we (the people) are starting to learn to harness the potential of the global communication network to reach each other in a larger and more profound way, to share information, organize and act.  Human rights abuses have been brought to light by digital video uploads.  Criminals have been caught and lives saved by the quick ability to spread information.  Politicians, governments and police find it harder and harder to get away with things (whether a verbal gaffe or murder) when every crowd contains a number of digital video camera equipped smart phones that are live streaming their actions to the Internet.  Societies are changing through this media use and we are learning that more than ever we have the ability to be at the wheel, guiding that change.  We can see that power at work in the Arab Spring and the global Occupy Movement.

This brings me to the issue of activism’s role as it applies to pagan spiritual matters.  Pagans are a minority, and often face attacks on our beliefs, whether just rude comments from the ignorant, or direct attacks of the adult bullying and hate crime sort.  As a result, we often are hiding in our “Broom Closet” and not very open about our beliefs in order to protect ourselves from social backlash.  Again here, the Internet has been tremendously instrumental in helping to change hearts and minds with regard to pagan beliefs.  Information sharing and networking websites like The Witch’s Voice ( http://www.witchvox.com/ ), online schools and informational websites, Pagan blogs, videos on YouTube and so forth have done a huge service to our faith by raising awareness, reducing ignorance, connecting isolated practitioners and allowing them to become a more unified voice.  We now have national and military recognition and growing acceptance.

Beyond simply raising awareness of our faith itself, what kinds of activism serves a spiritual purpose for Pagans?  Well the obvious answer for a faith which finds it’s divinity in nature is support for environmental causes.  Whether it’s saving your local city park from developers, supporting local, organic food, protecting old growth forests, or risking life and limb getting between whalers and their prey, there are innumerable causes on the environmental front because, as we all know, our environment is under attack by corporate interests.  Besides environmental causes, we also have the same beliefs as most other faiths: in justice, equality, protection for the helpless, sharing with and helping the needy and spreading peace.  All of these are also worthy Pagan activism causes to become involved in, whether you are protesting or ladling out soup.

Working for causes in line with our beliefs, like magic and spellwork, is a type of active prayer, turning thought and emotion into right action.  I also want to point out that, according to the Threefold Law, the law of returns or other karmic principles, you will get back what you put out into the world.  With that in mind, I suggest that you do at least as much, if not more, supporting as protesting.  The lesson we had reinforced from our fight with the school board, and by the Arab Spring and Occupy Movements, and by the information sharing on Pagan websites, is that being on the defensive is a position of weakness.  Protesting what we see as wrong is important, but we also need to be proactively working to manifest the world we want, by supporting and encouraging right action, instead of just reacting to and protesting against what we don’t want.  Pagan sympathetic magical principles teach us energy attracts it’s like.  So in order to manifest the world we want for our future and serve our spiritual beliefs at the same time, we need to find our causes, and then find ways to work in active supporting roles, manifesting positive change and spreading love and truth.

I believe that we are now in a time of great societal change, and the end decline of the industrial age.  I don’t know what the future will look like in terms of technology, because I cannot predict inventions and discoveries, but I do believe that we (of necessity) *must* be moving into a more sustainable future, with technology in balance with people and the earth, but that this transition is not likely to be a smooth one, given the damage the old systems have done and the propensity of old systems to want to hold on for all their worth.  I found a lot of great thoughts and suggestions in the essay linked below.  It is from John Michael Greer of The Ancient Order of Druids in America, and it is his view on how Druids (and in my view modern Pagans in general) can best serve society as we navigate this great global paradigm shift.

http://aoda.org/Articles/Druidry_and_the_Future.html

 

 

Changing Perspectives

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“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

I like quotes.  They can shake me out of a thinking rut.  They may present ideas which are familiar to me, or entirely new, but they present them in a way that gets me thinking about them differently, or that resonates for me on a deep level.  Often they also hold relevance for whatever it is that I am learning or dealing with in my life at the time, but that is largely an illusion of perspective.

I am unfamiliar with Dr. Dyer’s work, but as I understand it, the quote above is about changing perspectives, or a paradigm shift, which can lead to changing the things on which you focus your attention.  Although I suppose it could also mean that paradigm shifts cause you to perceive things with new eyes, not just pay attention to different things.  In other words, you may still be looking at the same thing, but suddenly it seems different to you because your perspective has changed and you are thinking about it differently.  Really it is you who have changed.

Just as I mentioned in my previous post, whether we are seeing outward or inward motion on our spiral journey is only a matter of which direction we are focusing our attention at the time.  However, I also see other spirals of synchronous ideas spinning out from that quote, things related to manifestation, consciously directed energy, reciprocity and exchange of energies.

If you practice a pagan faith, you are probably familiar with the principle that word and thought are akin to acting, because you send the energy out into the universe with your words and thoughts.  The word is the deed, I often remind myself.  More than that though, you also shape yourself with your thoughts, not just emotionally and psychologically, but on a cellular and genetic level as well.

I am currently studying these ideas in Epigenetics and will share more on this later, probably in a series of posts, since this is a complicated topic.

A Single Step

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A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu, Chinese philosopher (604 BC – 531 BC)

Hello world and welcome to my experiment!

What does it mean to be pagan and to practice a nature based faith, in the modern world?  How do I balance my beliefs with immersion in a technologically and capitalistically based society?  How do I raise my children in this society, while sharing my beliefs with them but not indoctrinating them?  How do my beliefs translate into action, how do I live my faith?  How do I follow a calling to live a life in service as clergy?  How do all these things balance and coexist with other important aspects of my life like my relationships, my role in the community, and taking good care of myself physically and emotionally?  These are the questions I ask myself each day.  I pray that by sharing the steps along my spiritual journey, my struggles and hard lessons learned, that it may both serve to clarify and motivate my own progress, as well as help others who might find themselves on common ground with me.  This will be a learning curve for me, as I become familiar with the mechanics of blogging, and work on improving my writing craft to be something worth the time to be read.

Julie Andrews taught me that it’s often good practice to start at the very beginning.  After all, it’s a very good place to start.   So let’s begin with a definition of terms, namely, why ‘Spiral Journey’?  A journey immediately brings to my mind a destination, whether somewhere far flung and exotic, or a retracing of familiar paths to a beloved haunt.   Destinations however, are not really the point of this journey I mean to share.  The lessons learned and the goals reached on the spiral journey happen along the way, and there is no difinitive point in time or space where you reach the end of the journey.  Even death is just another waypoint along the path.

The spiral is a path that may seem to go nowhere but round and round.  This is true, but also deceptive.  All things in nature cycle: the seasons; the waters of the earth as they move through seas, sky and back to land, running down to the sea; the orbits of ours and other worlds; the constantly expanding spiral of the galaxy.  Cycles are all around us.  More than that of course, we are a part of the cycles, and we ourselves cycle.  Birth, growth, aging, death, rebirth, all humanity is subject to this immutable natural cycle.  Even if you do not believe in an afterlife or reincarnation, our cells are recycled in rebirth as our bodies decay and feed other forms of life.  Nothing in nature is wasted.

So the spiral is a symbol and a literal representation of the endlessly changing face of life.  Like the universe, the spiral is ever expanding as you go, and like a strand of DNA we spiral in both directions at once as we walk our path, both inward and outward.  Both directions have a physical aspect and a spiritual aspect.  Spiraling inwards we focus on  awareness of our physical health, our emotional and psychological baggage, as well as inward  listening to ourselves, meditation, stillness, the energies within us and learning to use them.  Somewhere deep in that inner vibration we find the frequency which is also the outward spiral.  On the outward spiral we focus on the outer manifestations of our bodies and physical action, and on reaching out, exploring our place in the world and the universe, our interactions and connections with others, the lessons we learn from each other, and how our energies interact.  Like Janus, the two-faced Roman god of transitions and doorways, we face both directions at once, walking the spiral both inwards and outwards simultaneously.  Only our focus changes, from moment to moment, as we examine our path.

This blog is an attempt to put the lessons I learn and challenges I face along my path into language, to make sense of them myself and to be shared with others.  I hope to find good stories, humor, humility, love, useful tools and occasional nuggets of wisdom on my journey.  My path is not the path of anyone else, yet still I hope that sharing my journey can enrich the experience, for me, and for those I touch along the way.

And so we begin…