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It's OK to be Negative

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    Keep Busy with Survival

    December 24, 2017 /

    Perhaps all you can say about this year is that you kept busy with survival. And that's a good narrative on its own.

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http://www.turnwiddershins.co.uk/Gatherings/What%20to%20do%20when%20we%20feel%20overwhelmed.mp3

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It's OK to be Negative

themarytracy

themarytracy
Happy New Year! I wrote a post about how to deal w Happy New Year! I wrote a post about how to deal with the hopelessness that may arise as a result of *all the things*. (Link in profile) The only way to keep going when you cannot see the path in front of you is to follow inner guidance. How? By drinking deep and often from the well of universal truth. Photo: Llansteffan
King of the Cushions 😊❤️ #catsofinstagram King of the Cushions 😊❤️ #catsofinstagram
So smol! ❤️ #catsofinstagram So smol! ❤️ #catsofinstagram
You’ve heard of “Elf on the Shelf” now get r You’ve heard of “Elf on the Shelf” now get ready for... “Kitten on a Bootie” 🤣🤣🤣 #catsofinstagram
Important news!!! New 🐈 in the house! Important news!!! New 🐈 in the house!
Whenever I feel lost, I turn to musicals. The mus Whenever I feel lost, I turn to musicals. The musical "Into the Woods”, by Stephen Sondheim, is not the best, but it does have its uses. By sheer accident, the musical ends up showing the psychic development of the characters, who start out as children and grow into full spiritual adulthood. While the main theme of the musical is often summarised as "be careful what you wish for", I find a deeper reading. The characters start out looking up and pleading with the Universe, wishing for what their hearts' desire most, much like children do. They plead and beg to an imaginary “grown up”, for something quite beyond their means, something they cannot bring into their lives by themselves. The characters then go into the woods looking to make their wishes come true inside that sacred place where, fairytales tell us, magic and transformation are supposed to take place, In the first act they do get what they wanted. But they aren't complete. The woods are not done with them yet. And after another round of challenges and catastrophes they do emerge from the woods… changed. The meaning behind this musical seems to be that we aren't fully "done" growing until we have been crushed and defeated. They all go through grief and loss, in one form or another, and by the end they are no longer looking "up" and pleading with a parent / God. They are standing on their own two feet, and leaning against each other. Cinderella even says "Mother cannot guide you, now you're on your own". We believe, wrongly, that if only we went to the king's festival, or we had a child, or the walls of the house were full of gold, then all our problems would be solved. But that's child-like thinking. What would spiritual adulthood look like? We get a glimpse of it in the musical. The characters build a community, and learn to work together and rely on each other. But what other qualities must we look for, in spiritual adulthood? Compassion for others A commitment to truth Being a servant to our soul Knowing in your heart that you must do what's "right" even when it's difficult, you must choose what truly matters even if it's inconvenient. You must align yourself with spirit.
“Our first duty is to our own sanity. America, “Our first duty is to our own sanity. America, and the world that watches closely, are about to find out what happens when most of the population in a country goes insane. Everyone in America is losing their marbles, the predictable effect of a culture that doesn’t value sanity. I’d go even further: the predictable effect of a culture where “sanity” is sacrificed at the alter of “profit”. If I could summarise my “work” in one word, it would be “sanity”. I am interested in how people lose their minds, and how they can find them again. Of course I speak poetically. Mental illness is complex, but we lose our ability to describe reality when we stick too closely to the clinical. So let’s use prosaic language and let’s not get caught up on what each word means. Nature-based cultures valued sanity. Which is why they had regular practices, strong myths, group rituals, all designed to mould the human psyche into its best self. They knew that sanity was the absolute last barrier between a culture and its annihilation. Survival is dependent on people staying sane, on large enough numbers of people staying sane, especially when they are being tested. Before we endure famines, before we face the elements, before we encounter predators, what’s holding everything together is precisely what holds our psyche together, and what holds our collective psyches together is: sanity. America is a cautionary tale of what happens when sanity is lost, either discarded or actively destroyed, in the name of profit. And what happens when sanity is lost? Complete dissolution. What used to hold us together doesn’t hold anymore.” Extract from my new post on my new publication “Widdershins Words”. (Link in profile) Photo: me with a goat. I love goats, though in Spanish they are associated with madness.
Here I am wondering what words would be useful. Ma Here I am wondering what words would be useful. Maybe a picture of the neighbouring horse? Check her out! I feed her apples that I gather from abandoned trees. Whatever words I write cannot be about politics. From a political standpoint, this presidential election is inert. You won’t find any meaning in that narrative, don’t even try. Drop it altogether. Never before has an election been simultaneously so important and so meaningless. Go out and vote, so that everything may stay the same. Instead, my invitation is to ask: how can this matter from a different story? What if the “energy”, the attitude, the “feeling” with which we show up to this event made a bigger difference than the outcome? I don’t want to pretend I have any answers here. But if life has taught me anything is that in difficult times you don’t “find” hope: you make it. You build it with your bare hands. You claw it from the very essence of nothingness and mould it into something precious that comes from you; something you can believe in precisely because you made it happen. Where there was despair, you willed hope into being. And that made it real. Let’s not pretend that anything will get better, today or tomorrow. Times are truly, deeply dark. We won’t find hope by looking for it out there. If we try, we will collapse with the weight of despair as we realise that there’s nothing, not the slightest glimmer of a clue that anything will get better, soon or ever. But perhaps that collapse is necessary. Perhaps that despair is useful. Collapse if you need to. Just remember this one universal truth. Hope is something you can make happen in the midst of unforgiving horror. That makes it possible. That makes it inevitable. #hope #despair #widdershins #tinypractice
Here’s something I took from Martin Shaw. “Kee Here’s something I took from Martin Shaw. “Keep attending to the grace”. How did I attend to the grace today? I worry on days like this, when grace is so hard to find amidst the mundane and uninspired, I wonder just how much we are letting our humanity fade away. When was the last time I’ve had a deep conversation with someone about what truly matters? When was the last time I felt close to the divine? When was the last time I felt… something? We need rituals. They are etched on our psyche. No, more than that. They are the containers, the river banks, on which our psyche flows. They are the paths in which the sacred can become part of us. But it’s almost impossible to hold rituals on your own. It’s hard, you see, to keep attending to the grace on your own. It was always meant to be a communal effort. This is our collective challenge. We only have fragments of possibility, whispers of memory, rituals that were and could be again. We must become the elders we never had. We must follow the guidance we never knew. We must create the rituals we cannot possibly imagine. The business of becoming human is a never-ending journey. It’s endless, thankless, and invisible. It takes place in the dark, silent moments we can steal from the machine, to remember who we are meant to be, to feel how we are meant to feel. And it is up to us, the living ones, you and me, alive right now, to keep that “human essence” present in the collective consciousness. Not letting it fade into nothingness, leaving behind a grey mass of screens, cogs, and bones. Here’s how I attended to the grace today. I arranged different coloured leaves and lay them by the trees. I “rescued” earthworms stranded in the pavement by returning them to the earth. I stood by my favourite tree with my eyes closed. I looked into the distance at the Autumn colours in the forest. Today I heard the “True Love Prayer”. Here are the first lines: May divine grace be your companion As you hold your vision in stillness Have faith that true love is real I don’t think any one of us knows for certain what “grace” is. But we can invoke it. And the natural world helps a lot. #autumn #grace
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