Slowly but surely they're all growing. I'm so proud!
Thursday, May 23, 2013
look... they're growing!
Not much to say other than to share this:
Slowly but surely they're all growing. I'm so proud!
Slowly but surely they're all growing. I'm so proud!
Monday, May 20, 2013
52 weeks of pagan art journaling: week 16
This week's prompt: Hand Mudras
As a practice, hand mudras are more of a tradition we associate with yoga, but have some basis within the Western Magical tradition.
Do you use hand mudras in your practice/meditation?
I've been thinking a lot about mudras lately, particularly in combination with astrology and palmistry. Traditionally I've only ever used the first and third fingers, paired with the thumb, in my meditations but I'm thinking about switching that up to see if working my way through the elements associated with each finger has any effect.
What about you, do you play around with systems to see what they can bring about in your practice? If you do, I'd love to hear about what you're trying out cause it might be worth copying!
As a practice, hand mudras are more of a tradition we associate with yoga, but have some basis within the Western Magical tradition.
Do you use hand mudras in your practice/meditation?
I've been thinking a lot about mudras lately, particularly in combination with astrology and palmistry. Traditionally I've only ever used the first and third fingers, paired with the thumb, in my meditations but I'm thinking about switching that up to see if working my way through the elements associated with each finger has any effect.
What about you, do you play around with systems to see what they can bring about in your practice? If you do, I'd love to hear about what you're trying out cause it might be worth copying!
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
52 weeks of lists
I haven't been doing this project lately, mostly because I haven't been called to it and I'm working on keeping true to practices that call to me and letting go of ones that don't.
So for a while I let go of this exercise because it just wasn't right for me. And I'm all good with that. But this morning I woke up, wandered over to my feedly blogger feed, saw the prompt and thought... hey... I could write about that. So I am!
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Today the prompt is: What do you want to be known for?
In no particular order, I want to be known for:
Whenever I contemplate questions like this, the next thing I ask myself is: am I living a life that reflects those aspirations?
I think it's really easy to aspire to things but not so easy to actually practice them in the ways we mean to. For example, I aspire to be known for kindness, but in my day to day life am I really known for being kind? Or am I known more for being impatient, gossipy, and temperamental?
In all honesty, I'm probably a combo of the 2, good and bad. I can be really bitchy and sarcastic. I am not always patient with students and some days, with some students, I find it really hard to remember to see them as individuals instead of whiny, self-entitled brats who want you to do the work for them. Yeah. I love my job but there are days and there are students that get in under my skin and I find myself biting my tongue, counting the seconds till I can kick them out of my office. This doesn't really do much for my kindness rep does it?
By the same token, when I think about this question in light of my spiritual practice, I see a disjunct there too. I'm less concerned with magic than my current life choices indicate and at odds with my intentions. I've always been far more interested in the mystical than the magical when it comes to my spirituality. On some levels I'm far more interested in kitchen witchery and healing than hermetics and high magic. This bears some thought for me in terms of where I want to take my practice in the next few years. Impending motherhood has me shifting back to things that I'd left behind in coven work, only to find myself far more revitalized by my more earthy workings: craft based healing and using magic in the mundane objects around me than in formal ritual. I want to feel energy coursing through me and nature and not feel caught in rigid structures.
Yet therein lies a bit of a paradox, because on some level I think that we need the rigid structure a bit in order to have the discipline to learn things. And I'll be honest, it's one of the things I fear the most when it comes to leaving the group: that I won't have the self-discipline and people helping me learn and push myself to grow and then I won't be realizing the spiritual in my life the way I long to.
I don't have answers to these thoughts yet, in fact, I see this blog, in some way, as a means of figuring that out and working towards knowing what those goals are and finding ways to practice said aspirations in my day to day life, both magically and mundanely.
So for a while I let go of this exercise because it just wasn't right for me. And I'm all good with that. But this morning I woke up, wandered over to my feedly blogger feed, saw the prompt and thought... hey... I could write about that. So I am!
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In no particular order, I want to be known for:
- creativity
- integrity
- loyalty
- calm
- meditation & yoga
- kindness
- spirituality
- healing
- sustainability
- community
- story
- family
- knowing what matters and not getting caught up in the rat race
- honesty/truth
- practicing what I preach
- living a life that is my own and not what society hands me
- environmentalism & social conscience
Whenever I contemplate questions like this, the next thing I ask myself is: am I living a life that reflects those aspirations?
I think it's really easy to aspire to things but not so easy to actually practice them in the ways we mean to. For example, I aspire to be known for kindness, but in my day to day life am I really known for being kind? Or am I known more for being impatient, gossipy, and temperamental?
In all honesty, I'm probably a combo of the 2, good and bad. I can be really bitchy and sarcastic. I am not always patient with students and some days, with some students, I find it really hard to remember to see them as individuals instead of whiny, self-entitled brats who want you to do the work for them. Yeah. I love my job but there are days and there are students that get in under my skin and I find myself biting my tongue, counting the seconds till I can kick them out of my office. This doesn't really do much for my kindness rep does it?
By the same token, when I think about this question in light of my spiritual practice, I see a disjunct there too. I'm less concerned with magic than my current life choices indicate and at odds with my intentions. I've always been far more interested in the mystical than the magical when it comes to my spirituality. On some levels I'm far more interested in kitchen witchery and healing than hermetics and high magic. This bears some thought for me in terms of where I want to take my practice in the next few years. Impending motherhood has me shifting back to things that I'd left behind in coven work, only to find myself far more revitalized by my more earthy workings: craft based healing and using magic in the mundane objects around me than in formal ritual. I want to feel energy coursing through me and nature and not feel caught in rigid structures.
Yet therein lies a bit of a paradox, because on some level I think that we need the rigid structure a bit in order to have the discipline to learn things. And I'll be honest, it's one of the things I fear the most when it comes to leaving the group: that I won't have the self-discipline and people helping me learn and push myself to grow and then I won't be realizing the spiritual in my life the way I long to.
I don't have answers to these thoughts yet, in fact, I see this blog, in some way, as a means of figuring that out and working towards knowing what those goals are and finding ways to practice said aspirations in my day to day life, both magically and mundanely.
Monday, May 13, 2013
52 weeks of pagan art journaling: week 15
This week's prompt: Illness
How do you see illness in relation to spirituality? Do you see them as being connected or as being separate?
In my own recent experience, my baby brother, who is estranged from the family, suffered from a rather serious medical incident involving a coma and brain surgery.
As a magical practitioner, I found myself hesitating when it came to intervening in his case with magic. In fact, this is something that I often question when it comes to magical medical intervention because I do tend to see much in the way of illness as being somewhat linked to spirituality. This is not to say that I think that every illness is the result of spiritual dis-ease or karmic debt, because I don't.
On the other hand, sometimes there are clearer cases, like my brother, where it seems quite possible that the illness in question is somewhat related to karmic debt. (It's a long story, but suffice to say that I have good reasons to have this perception). As a Wiccan with a strong Buddhist bent, I believe that part of my duty/service to the Divine is related to easing the suffering of others, so this is where my questions become a bit complex.
I believe that I should do what I can to help, but I also believe that sometimes nothing can be done because the individual in question needs to learn the lesson that is being given.
For example, a coworker of mine recently approached me to tell me that she feels like she's been hexed because she keeps falling ill or hurting herself. Upon closer examination and discussion, I felt like it was less of a question of being hexed and more of a question of her needing to slow down and let her body heal before forging ahead; that the universe was trying to tell her to slow down and take care of her health through a myriad of small wounds and illnesses that were forcing her to stop.
I don't think this is always the case for everyone. In fact, the same brother who is estranged from the family, has suffered his entire life from a serious medical illness that I would never attribute to karmic debt. I actually believe that he has been dealt a rather shitty hand in life when it comes to some of the stuff that was handed to him genetically and in terms of his biological family (not mine).
What he has chosen to do with that and the other opportunities that have come his way since then however, do feel like they factor into where he is at in life right now. On some level I feel that he's been given this amazing opportunity to start again with a cleaner slate and want to help him, only to see how he is mucking it up again.
As someone who wants to help others, I find myself hovering on the line between intervention/action on his behalf and staying safely in the realm of prayers offered up to the god/goddess, leaving it up to a less discriminating judge than I feel that I am capable of being in this moment.
How do you see questions/incidents like these when it comes to your own magical path? Do you think that illness is a lesson or does it have nothing to do with spirituality?
How do you see illness in relation to spirituality? Do you see them as being connected or as being separate?
In my own recent experience, my baby brother, who is estranged from the family, suffered from a rather serious medical incident involving a coma and brain surgery.
As a magical practitioner, I found myself hesitating when it came to intervening in his case with magic. In fact, this is something that I often question when it comes to magical medical intervention because I do tend to see much in the way of illness as being somewhat linked to spirituality. This is not to say that I think that every illness is the result of spiritual dis-ease or karmic debt, because I don't.
On the other hand, sometimes there are clearer cases, like my brother, where it seems quite possible that the illness in question is somewhat related to karmic debt. (It's a long story, but suffice to say that I have good reasons to have this perception). As a Wiccan with a strong Buddhist bent, I believe that part of my duty/service to the Divine is related to easing the suffering of others, so this is where my questions become a bit complex.
I believe that I should do what I can to help, but I also believe that sometimes nothing can be done because the individual in question needs to learn the lesson that is being given.
For example, a coworker of mine recently approached me to tell me that she feels like she's been hexed because she keeps falling ill or hurting herself. Upon closer examination and discussion, I felt like it was less of a question of being hexed and more of a question of her needing to slow down and let her body heal before forging ahead; that the universe was trying to tell her to slow down and take care of her health through a myriad of small wounds and illnesses that were forcing her to stop.
I don't think this is always the case for everyone. In fact, the same brother who is estranged from the family, has suffered his entire life from a serious medical illness that I would never attribute to karmic debt. I actually believe that he has been dealt a rather shitty hand in life when it comes to some of the stuff that was handed to him genetically and in terms of his biological family (not mine).
What he has chosen to do with that and the other opportunities that have come his way since then however, do feel like they factor into where he is at in life right now. On some level I feel that he's been given this amazing opportunity to start again with a cleaner slate and want to help him, only to see how he is mucking it up again.
As someone who wants to help others, I find myself hovering on the line between intervention/action on his behalf and staying safely in the realm of prayers offered up to the god/goddess, leaving it up to a less discriminating judge than I feel that I am capable of being in this moment.
How do you see questions/incidents like these when it comes to your own magical path? Do you think that illness is a lesson or does it have nothing to do with spirituality?
Thursday, May 9, 2013
revisiting an old goal
For Imbolc I set the goal of seeing this art show. I'm pleased to say that I finally made it and it was totally worth it!
Sneak peak of Mr Faye enjoying the show (wow, look at me getting all personal and showing pics not only of myself but also of my partner... next thing you know I'll be posting Baby Faye on the webs too! Who knew. I started this blog with no intention of ever sharing this stuff. I guess things change and so on and so forth):
Anyways...
It was an interested exhibit and the gallery did a nice job of contextualizing the art for those of us (me) who didn't have the cultural knowledge to fully appreciate the work.
It's interesting, lately I've been on an art and culture kick. I suppose I'm trying to squeeze some in before the baby arrives. But I also suspect that it's partially due to the weather being nicer and wanting to get out more. I kind of hate winter. I really think I'm meant to live somewhere warm! What I'm doing in eastern Canada (ok, maybe not east to those who live on the East Coast, but east enough for this West Coast lady), braving Canadian winters, remains a complete mystery to me.
That said, it's been a nice change of pace and has reminded me of my love of art and culture, and why I hold them to be so important in our society even if society doesn't tend to agree. I love it when art can make you think, be it in a photograph, painting, book, or music. I need to remember to do more, even as a mother, to nurture that in my personal life, in the life of my wee little family, and by extension, my community because I do support and show how it is valuable.
What was the last work of art (music, photo, book, movie, painting, etc) that prompted you to think?
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