Text of a conversation yesterday evening. Basically, I've been keeping up with the psi and other excercises, but in an increasingly half-baked way. My momentum isn't gone, but it's going. I've been having lots of chats with the guides in an attempt to get to the bottom of my problems with energy work and also magick.
They gave me some news that I
really didn't want to hear.
Hoping to get past all this navel-gazing stuff soon and onto something a bit more useful. Please bear with. Plain = me,
bold = them.
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Okay. Well, I'm having serious problems with doubt here, guys. I'm also finding it increasingly hard to focus: I keep getting distracted by petty little worries, anxieties and resentments. Can you help me with this? Please?
You know what you must do.
[I am about to ask what, but before I even write the word I'm presented with a slew of images, all of myself engaged in various meditative, divinatory or magick-related tasks. My new tarot deck features heavily.]
You must strive to be free of your all consuming doubt. You drown in it. You have forgotten much, our scribe.
[This is true. I'd been going over some old magickal records, and was shocked by how many acheivements I'd managed to blank out, or write off as 'coincidence' or 'imagination.']
NOW is the time to free yourself. Fret not over the small things and move through the door. Now is the next great step you have to take.
What step, though? I mean, what system should I work with? How can I work with any magickal system when they all seem so hollow right now?
Know that you are free, first. There is a gate within your chest that you have locked. You fear: lies, deception, self-delusion; you fear stealing and twisting the beliefs of others. You fear also the fate of [certain mages in the past]: not the death that may await, but the selfishness and callousness that hubris brings in its wake. You fear to make slaves of those you might teach.
Fear not. You are not those other men and women. You are yourself. Open the gates of your heart and mind once more. You have nothing to fear from yourself. There is only freedom beyond.
But I'm sort of lost right now.
You will not be lost forever.
You fret yourself over Gods. Fret not over Gods at this time. Only say in your heart: "It is my desire to be wise and virtuous. I know I will stray from that path, but I shall always return; I do not claim perfection. I do not claim virtue but the striving for virtue; I do not claim wisdom but the striving for wisdom."
In this manner the penitant and seeking soul may become wise and virtuous, in time.
Know that there are many spirits in the world. They walk up and down from earth to air and air to heaven; they walk from air to ocean and cavern and rock. Know that there are great multitudes of spirits, and that they appear in certain guises, both true and untrue. The way will be made for you to treat with these spirits. Beware falsness, but fear not.
[The word Gods in this context was used to refer to religious systems, and my own unease about muscling in on others' cultural turf. The term 'virtuous' is used more in the Daoist sense. Thus the passage as a whole tells me not to worry right now about finding the 'right' system; it'll find me.]
Great changes are afoot in your heart, our scribe. Open that gate now, and be at one.
(I don't know where to start.)
You have already started. Have faith, not in us but in yourself.
Maintain your journals. Meditate. We would advise you to pursue your plan of increasing the reach of your sleeping memory. In dreams there is much wisdom.
Note well: In all things you must banish shame. The shaman -- for that is what you are -- (Oi!)
must fullfill --
OI! I am DEFINATELY
NOT any sort of shaman!
Yes you are. This you know.
No, I'm bloody not!
Yes you are. You have always been In the past, we know, this gift has been ill-used. It went hard with you in those days, and so you foreswore the name of 'shaman'.
Yet that is what you are. More, you shall be a shaman and scientist in one, so that the gifts you bring back will be rendered easier to comprehend.
I'm worried about becoming one of those "Look at me, I'm a shaman, I'm so magickal and mystical and spiritual and wise, pay my gas bill and buy me beer" types of people.
You contrubute nothing to others by witholding power from yourself.
To return to our initial thread:
A shaman must be focused. She must not allow herself to be distracted by fear of mockery and ridicule. To be a shaman, you must be shameless! [RML, laughing]
And sham-less.
Understand that this is no easy thing. You must work, you must strive; you will suffer.
I'm afraid of losing everything.
Dear scribe, do you not see? You have nothing left to lose anymore.
[I was drawn up short here, because they're right. Materially speaking, I'm where I was always afraid of ending up if I got "too far" into magick: unemployed and dependant on another.]
I have my relationship. I have this life.
But you will not lose them.
Promise?
Nothing is certain. But you won't lose them to magick. You might, on the other hand, lose much to stagnation, to ennui, to despair.
But job, career, wealth, you are bereft of these, and fearful because of it.
Fear not. Give of your time to magick. You will gain strength that will aid you in your mundane life, the earthly foundations of your magickal world.
You must be free. You can be nothing else.
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But I don't want to be a shaman. It's all hard and stuff. *Whine*
