Internal change and the external world
Aug. 10th, 2004 06:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dedekind_cutI've spent the last two years (and more, actually, but the process seemed to accelerate greatly in the last two years) watching the church I love disintegrate.
For too much of this time I've felt like the walking wounded, too numb to practice magick, too weary to continue pouring energy into the festival I'd worked on each year for 10 years, too out of touch with the moments of deep friendship and ecstasy that had originally brought me to this church.
I saw decisions made that were an echo, if not an exact repitition, of past decisions that had been mistakes. I saw patterns danced again and again, resulting each time in the loss of valued people, the negation of good magick and the propagation of negative thinking and anger. And it seemed that my attempts to address these issues, to point out the patterns and what I saw as errors, were misconstrued and caused more devisiveness.
Finally secrecy, manipulation, and betrayal drove me to resign.
I've spent 5 months trying to heal, and have only just begun. The wounds are deep, the desolation left behind is no longer overwhelming but still is just below the surface and too easily touched.
I just posted the words below as a response to an old friend from the church, someone I'd lost track of and recently reconnected with here. As I posted them, I realized that I need to be living this advice myself now. Here is, perhaps, a way to heal and to bring back into my live that which I have lost in the past few years, that which I valued most in the church. New beginnings . . .
"True magick is an operation one performs on oneself. Instead of bending the universe to one's will, one bends oneself - and the universe adjusts to that change.
"If you ever studied chemistry, you may remember the concept of dynamic balance when working with chemicals in solution. Change one element of the equation, and all the others adjust to accommodate the change.
"This works in the everyday world, too. Magick performed to self-actualize, to make oneself into a person who is attractive to those one admires and who fits in with those one wishes to know, causes changes in the outer world. It must be real magick, real internal change, not the donning of a mask to make oneself appear different.
"It's not instantaneous -- it's a gradual process, but if you work at it consistently, you eventually realize that many of the things you wished for have become real in your life - perhaps not in exactly the way you originally envisioned, but in a satisfying and fulfilling way nevertheless."
I am a Priestess. I know how to do this.
For too much of this time I've felt like the walking wounded, too numb to practice magick, too weary to continue pouring energy into the festival I'd worked on each year for 10 years, too out of touch with the moments of deep friendship and ecstasy that had originally brought me to this church.
I saw decisions made that were an echo, if not an exact repitition, of past decisions that had been mistakes. I saw patterns danced again and again, resulting each time in the loss of valued people, the negation of good magick and the propagation of negative thinking and anger. And it seemed that my attempts to address these issues, to point out the patterns and what I saw as errors, were misconstrued and caused more devisiveness.
Finally secrecy, manipulation, and betrayal drove me to resign.
I've spent 5 months trying to heal, and have only just begun. The wounds are deep, the desolation left behind is no longer overwhelming but still is just below the surface and too easily touched.
I just posted the words below as a response to an old friend from the church, someone I'd lost track of and recently reconnected with here. As I posted them, I realized that I need to be living this advice myself now. Here is, perhaps, a way to heal and to bring back into my live that which I have lost in the past few years, that which I valued most in the church. New beginnings . . .
"True magick is an operation one performs on oneself. Instead of bending the universe to one's will, one bends oneself - and the universe adjusts to that change.
"If you ever studied chemistry, you may remember the concept of dynamic balance when working with chemicals in solution. Change one element of the equation, and all the others adjust to accommodate the change.
"This works in the everyday world, too. Magick performed to self-actualize, to make oneself into a person who is attractive to those one admires and who fits in with those one wishes to know, causes changes in the outer world. It must be real magick, real internal change, not the donning of a mask to make oneself appear different.
"It's not instantaneous -- it's a gradual process, but if you work at it consistently, you eventually realize that many of the things you wished for have become real in your life - perhaps not in exactly the way you originally envisioned, but in a satisfying and fulfilling way nevertheless."
I am a Priestess. I know how to do this.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-08-10 07:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-10 12:12 pm (UTC)I am really sorry to hear what has gone on with the church. I heard some of it at FG, and was hoping the lemmings wouldn't go off the cliff, but it sounds like they did. Or maybe that's unfair to lemmings.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-12 11:09 am (UTC)I like your icon, but it's tiny and therefore hard to read. Do you know what it says at center? Looks like "Shana Shobat" in which case Shana would be year, but I can't make sense of the rest . . .
no subject
Date: 2004-08-12 07:34 am (UTC)I know the magick you can wield from being in ritual space with you, and if folks like you are trying to make magick anew, then I have great faith that it will happen.
BTW, I'm friending you, so I can keep up with you. I'd be honored and delighted if you did likewise.
self-actualization
Date: 2004-08-12 10:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-02 12:49 pm (UTC)May I have permission to post "New Beginnings" in my journal with a link to either this post or to you directly?
)0( T'ai
no subject
Date: 2005-01-02 03:08 pm (UTC)nt,
kris