January9
One thing that I have, in the recent past, been accused (or, rather, verbally assaulted) about is the fact that I haven’t been practicing my spirituality.
Or, rather, that I am not doing what OTHER people think that I need to do.
Which, although they may be correct in stating that I haven’t been picking up on a spiritual practice yet, makes me wonder…
What the hell does it matter to ANYONE else how I feed my soul?
And I have come to the natural and perfectly acceptable conclusion:
MY SPIRITUALITY IS NONE OF ANYONE ELSE’S BUSINESS UNTIL OR UNLESS I MAKE IT THEIR BUSINESS.
Phew. Glad I got that off my chest.
I have always been one that has been relatively QUIET about my spirituality. Even before I started dating STBX I was a solitary Pagan. True that I had attended Pagan meetings and had some sense of community at that time (and partially into my marriage, prior to having children) that had been essential to me as a Pagan, but I didn’t REQUIRE a working group or even another person to really be spiritual.
I don’t think my solitary path was completely in regards to the fact that STBX was intensely uncomfortable with my chosen Path (although that did have a lot to do with my feeling that it was something that had to be hidden from not only HIS family, but him and my children as well — which was an intensely DAMAGING experience, spiritually), but also because I didn’t feel an aching NEED to be intensely involved in a Circle or Coven group at that time. I could have easily been happy with my spiritual connection to the world.
Why worry about other people then?
This seems to definately be a downfall of mine, in my life, the fact that I put too much stock in what other people think I should or shouldn’t do… and its something that I am very consciously working on in this new year. But to answer the question, I felt very OFFENDED when the Stalker confronted me about my “failure to live up to my spiritual goals” (which is a paraphrase of what he was saying, since he was involved in lecturing me on what he thought I needed to hear, and I was trying to get to sleep) and it got me thinking.
First of all I thought to myself, “how dare this person, someone who I no longer feel intimately close with, give me a lecture on one of the MOST initimate things in my life?” And that made me step back and reflect on what part my spirituality plays in my life, and how I have dealth with my spirituality in the past and present and how I present myself in the world as a spritual person.
And I have realized that I have ALWAYS been one to whom my spirituality is of the utmostly private matter. This is “inner sanctum” type stuff for me, my spiritual feelings, my practice, my connection to the Greater Divinity(s) is, truth be told, something reserved for ME and MY DIETY/IES… and not something I feel terribly comfortable dragging out and placing right on my front lawn in 30 foot blazing LED lights stating “HEREIN LIES A WITCH”…
Nope… not my style…
Paganism… Pam style…
So what do I feel, spiritually speaking, since I have openned myself up for this discussion (even in the limited amount that I have done so here)?
Well… to me my spirituality is private, and it deserves quite respect and reflection. I wear a pentacle, given to me by one of my best friends in the world. It is a golden pentacle with a cresent moon in silver, with a moonstone in the center. I wear it every day on a long (26″) silver chain. I would bet you that 90% of the people who know me, including RGG whom I have been initimate with, have actually never seen this symbol of my spirituality, despite the fact that I rarely leave it off. My best friends, my children, and a few others of like mind would have seen it… and yet I do not consider the fact that it isn’t “out there” to be a statement on the hiddenness of my spirituality or even a symbol that I am somehow embarassed of my religion.
It is simply something INTIMATE, worn close to my heart and next to my skin, something ever present that reminds me of my connection to the Greater Divine in the world, and keeps me conscious of the way I interact with the world around me. It reminds me to be aware of the differences in people, in their essential freedoms to be whom they want to be, and to be aware of what I say and how I speak to people. It reminds me of the need to respect all life, and yet is a reminder that I have a right to defend my consciousness and being (including my psyche and spirit)… In this I act as my own altar to my own vision of Diety.
Is that wrong?
Well… no. That’s the glory of Paganism, for me. There is no set doctrine or dogma. I do not NEED to be a full out decked in gothic makeup, black clothes and big public pentacle jewlry in order to be Pagan… I can CHOOSE to do so, and some do, or I can choose to dress casually, not wear makeup, and not wear my pentacle on the outside of my clothes. Neither style is better, just like no religions is better than another (IMHO), its just different ways that we look at ourselves and interact with our worlds.
But it seems, given the amount of passion Stalker was putting into trying to break into this topic with me, that some people have more of a need to SEE spirituality exhibited than others do. And Stalker seems to have been ONE of those people. You see, he couldn’t understand that I didn’t necessarily WANT to have him involved in my spiritual practices or feelings, that I didn’t necessarily DESIRE having discussions on why and how and for what reason I did this or that or the next thing – I liked the ability to just FEEL and know that it was somehow RIGHT for me. I had resisted, either consciously or unconsciously, allowing him to get involved in my spiritual life and spiritual practices, and very rarely even discussed this part of my life with him. I was happy with that… I didn’t want him in my spiritual life at that time (who knows if I would have ever wanted to share that aspect of myself with him?), but he felt that it was a critical part of “us”…
Communication Breakdown…
Does my choosing to keep my spirituality more private necessarily mean that I am not living up to my spiritual “potential”? Does it necessarily negate my feelings, within my marriage, of being spiritually stiffled by the oppressive form of Christianity that would never have allowed me to express myself outside their narrow vision of “God”? Does it mean that I have no right to have been upset at having to be quiet about my spirituality for those years? Does it mean that I should shut up about not being allowed to have my Pagan books out or have to bite my tongue whenever xFIL ranted about how “evil” non-Christian spiritual practices were? Would it mean that I had no right to have felt that there would have been trouble should I have been open with my children about the various different spiritual paths out there, or if I had dared to tell my in-laws that I didn’t want to attend their church services and that I DEFINATELY did not want my children involved in their particular flavour of Christian faith???
NO… no to all the questions.
Again, the comments were born not out of genuine CONCERN about MY well being, but rather as more of a pointing out of things that hadn’t gone as per Stalker’s expectations of what it was he decided it meant for ME to reconnect to my spirituality. And, it seems, there was hurt because (and maybe rightly so) he felt that it was something that would have been necessary for us to build a foundation of a life together. And my reluctance to really share this with him (and the red flags that I felt surrounding sharing these things with him) was a clear indication to both of us that I had not shared his feelings about the “us” that he saw. And he admitted, in the dying gasp of the death throes of our “friendship”, that he had wanted to be part of my spirituality in order to not be separated from me in the afterlife…
That is just creepy on SO many levels for me…
Spirituality as an ongoing goal…
Now… as I have stated, my spirituality has always been of a rather private nature, even when I was free to have my books and cards and things out in my own home, as now, I have always opted to treat it as a part of me that is just accepted but not necessarily something I feel the need to share with EVERYONE.
But I have also noticed that my spirituality has been changing through the years as well. I no longer feel quite “right” calling myself a “Wiccan” because I feel that as a solitary practitioner of no set Tradition it is hard to justify my “training”. In point of fact, I do not have any formal “training” in the priesthood of the Wiccan Traditions, and have fallen more into the category of layperson. I feel that, having felt so spiritually unwelcome in my own home for so long, I am now in need of really and truely revisiting the deeper site of my spirituality.
Rather than starting off as if nothing had happened, as if I could just pick up my Book of Shadows from where, as a 21 year old girl, I had left off, I decided to start on a Seeker’s Path to discover what it is that I NOW, at age 34, feel CONNECTION with. And I am fully aware that to do this means setting down some of the old familar patterns of “practice” and openning myself up, fully, to looking at figuring out what works for ME. Not worrying about creating a Tradition of my own, not worrying (right now) about fitting into an already established Tradition, not worrying (right now) about joining a formalized Coven… but just truely SEEKING.
Part of this is my ongoing wish to create a piece of sacred space for myself within my home. It is ongoing, right now, because I am still very much in the process of unpacking the things that I have taken from my old life and sifting through those things to make space for what is truely NECESSARY for me. So, its slower going than, it seems, those who feel free to judge these types of things for others might necessarily be happy with. But its not forgotten. There are plans in the works… but there are many plans in the works and they are all intertwined physical-emotional-psychological-spiritual-theoretical and just because I might not have quite gotten through the cleaning out (physcial/psychological/emotional) phase in order to cleanse (spiritual) and create (physical) and dedicate (spiritual) my own sacred altar.
Pam’s Life Lessons:
- my spirituality is MINE and I have every right to share or not share this aspect of myself as I see fit
- I have no real NEED for my potential partners in life to be PAGAN, as long as they can accept that I am
- I can be happy SEEKING my own Path as long as I have the freedom to connect to the Greater Divine on my own terms
- I accept that things will happen when the time is best, and I will get up an altar when everything comes together to make it right.
- I can be a spiritual person without having to necessarily have everyone around me share my spirituality
- I can be a spiritual person and enjoy my connection to the Greater Divine in the small things in life and be quite happy
- I have the inalienable right to choose who I share my spirituality with, how I share it, and how much I celebrate my spirit, and no one has the right to question ME on what I might NEED or WANT out of my PERSONAL and PRIVATE spiritual journey
Click here to download your copy of the Freak Manifesto
THE GIGGLE Mail around Group