What are you?

So, what ARE you anyways?  I’ve droned on about what I’m not, but what am I?

Well, let’s start with the literal.  I’m a Reiki Master.  Which to be honest, is a term I hate.  I’m certainly not a master, I don’t feel like a master, and I don’t really think others would see me as a master.  It seems like the label is just there for our western sensibilities that like to associate achievment with things like degrees and job titles and such.  I’m a Reiki Master, but I’m really just constantly learning and evolving.  I’d like in the future to write an entire post dedicated to the ways I try to incorporate reiki into my daily life.  Like I said in the previous post, I’m a busy woman.  I like to multi-task.  I try to find whatever odd moments in the day I can, and play little reiki and intuition games.  More on that later.

I value having a living spirituality, one that adapts and changes with my needs.  I am drawn to the idea of ritual and magic and I find these things to be simply beautiful ideas.  I have however had the unfortunate experience of actually trying to make them a part of my practice and just feeling well… silly.  I can’t tell you how much I’ve wanted to not feel silly doing these things, but I can’t help it.  I’ve tried over and over and I always just end up focusing on how self-conscious I feel even though it’s just me all by myself.  I decided that no matter how beautiful the idea of formal ritual is, if all it’s doing is making me feel silly, it’s not going to get me to that point of focus where I can grow.  I still do rituals of sorts, but they are simpler, and more focused on meditation, grounding and visualization than they are on spell casting or anything like that.

As far as tools and things go.  I used to have dozens of various witchy knick knacks and things.  Athame’s and chalices and tons of books and a huge incense collection and all sorts of fancy things.   I had several boxes worth of pagany books on all sorts of topics.  When I moved to California I donated all of them to a local pagan group, keeping only my tarot cards and books, my pendulum, and my crystal collection.  I hope they are all happy where they are.  I occasionally find myself missing my books, but I realized that I was looking so hard for something outside of myself in books and tools and all, that I was completely forgetting the most important part of any spirituality:

And you who seek to know Me,
know that the seeking and yearning will avail you not,
unless you know the Mystery:
for if that which you seek,
you find not within yourself,
you will never find it without.

And so I got rid of all of it, except for a few things, and decided to start looking within.  Since then I’ve come across a few miscellaneous books that I’ve gotten for free, such as the Course in Miracles, along with a few healing books that align with my Reiki practice.  I’m trying not to go back to being a spiritual hoarder, though hoarding in other areas still needs some work (ugh, you should see my closet!)

The most important part of my spirituality is transcendence, as I mentioned earlier.  Traditional pagan paths look towards the old ways for guidance on spiritual development.  My take on the path to spiritual development is anthropological.  Spirituality is about connection, to yourself, to the universe, to other people.  The main goal of any religion or spirituality is to give life purpose through that connection.  That’s it, pretty simple.

In the old days, in agrarian societies, it made sense to look for omens in falling brooms and baying cattle.  But for me, in Los Angeles, I just don’t have a connection to that lifestyle.  I am connected to the honking horns, the street vendors, farmer’s markets, grafitti, and crowds of people.  Let’s not forget my plethora of technological doo dads.  I can’t remember the last time I heard a cow moo, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never run through a field of wild lavender.  Mugwort and Nightshade are not herbs I can pluck walking down the street to the coffee shop.  There are no rowan or oak trees growing nearby from which I can harvest wood for a wand.  These things became spiritual because they were at one point woven into the fabric of the people who were living around them.  I have more of a connection to the morning glories and roses and apricots growing in my garden than I do to most of the plants listed in herbal correspondences.   In taking a lesson from the great faiths of the past, I want to find ways to utilize my environment to foster my spiritual connection.  Which can be…. a challenge to say the least.  I’m still learning the best way to do this, which is mostly what this blog is about.