Jumping Around the Blogosphere

Taking another stab at the blogging thing...except this time you can find me at Craft of the Crafty.

New Blog Site

As I'm an eternal appreciator of design and aesthetic, I'm shifting my writings to http://lucidamphibology.wordpress.com/

(Sorry Blogger, but I'm drawn to their templates, look and feel, etc.).

Please visit me there...all, er, 3 of you :)

Lucid

On Guidance

(Image is Silent Winged Prayer by Susan St.Thomas)

There are days.

Days when the daily grind seems fruitless. Days when the routine, the responsibilities, the paperwork, the bills, the deadlines, and even "the work" as a novice therapist - yes, the work that one hopes will be sustaining and fears will be all-consuming - just don't seem to pan out, make sense, fit together.

On these days, I find it difficult to make sense of purpose and meaning. I stumble over wondering about how and how come and why and why bother. I ask myself how civilization evolved into a pile a junk mail and money owed notices. How consciousness and spirit co-exist with VISA, Target, Exxon, the Consumer Way, and the timely death of the American Dream.

On these days, sometimes I'm on it enough to turn towards meditation, to call for my guides and ancestors. On these days, I ask for Guidance.

Perhaps this is akin to reciting the Lords Prayer...of laying in bed on silent nights murmuring those lines long memorized, while fears and hopes traipse about the living room of one's soul seeking a sturdy, comfy recliner to rest upon.

Maybe my practice of calling upon guides and ancestors is really a call for my own Guidance, the intuition and wisdom that's inherent within me regardless of external factors.

In any case, in my lifetime I've finally and thankfully learned to ask for assistance, and whatever the mechanism may be (i.e. something totally cosmic or absolutely sans cosmos) I'm finding that usually I become privy to some sort of tip or clue. As if a flashlight temporarily illuminated a fragment of the dark side of the moon.

This is how I'm coping right now during this precarious and explosive era of human experience - and certainly not how I would have chosen to cope five years ago. Five years ago, I was reticent to surrender to faith. Five years ago, I rejected the idea of religion, dogma, and trust in the Divine. Five years ago, I believed in the paranormal and synchronicity, but stopped short of attributing these phenomena to anything remotely reduced to declarations of human certainty.

Today, some of this still holds true. I do not blindly trust and I am wary of the fogginess of blind faith. I understand there to be such a thing as spiritual bypass, which can be a tempting road to follow. I'm observant of the different flavors in which humans relate to religious systems and structures.

What is different is that I somehow found for myself that delicate balance of trust vs. mis-trust and faith vs. discernment. I don't pretend to know the secrets of the Universe, nor do I feel a pressure to. That said, I also don't need to sequester myself from attuning to a particular spiritual tradition for fear of colluding with the certainties of an Ultimate Dogma. It just doesn't have to be this extreme.

What I can do is hold both; that is, to open myself up to the support and enrichment that a spiritual system can offer without ascribing to it the ego-fed notion that it must be the only Way, the end-all-be-all of Universal Truths.

Lately, I've felt lost career-wise, path-wise, spiritually-wise. Recently, I asked for Guidance and spiritual support. I stated my openness to the process, and assured Them/Me that I would receive such Guidance with intentionality. A series of synchronicities and intuitions led me to a spiritual path and mentor (who seems to be psychologically and spiritually healthy).

So this tale of a Neophyte's Search introduces my journey into the world of the Craft. I'm participating in a year-and-a-day apprenticeship as a solitary through the Order of the Sacred Grove here in the Bay Area, which practices Modern American Witchcraft through a shamanistic lens. The sub-grove I'm apprenticing with, the Laurel Grove, focuses nature, green witchcraft, community practice, and the Grecian pantheon.

There is more I wish to write on this, specifically around the butterflies I feel in my chest around "outing" myself (especially given the fact that my social networking accounts are connected to this blog). And I will write more on this, as I'm sure others in the community have experienced this to one degree or another.

But for now, I leave this post with Trust.

On Patterns

Apparently, I’m on a writing spree. Onward then…the second follow-up to my decidedly late New Year’s post.

From Celtic Devotional, Caitlin Matthews asks the manifestor this: How can I change my thought patterns to empower my goals?

Great question. Loaded, but great. There is a school of psychology that addresses just this called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (sounds juicy, eh?). I imagine managed care systems heart CBT, as it’s designed to be short term and results oriented – and therefore cost efficient.

My managed care grumblings aside, CBT is shown effective in treating issues such as depression or anxiety. The basic premise is that thoughts and beliefs influence emotional states, and emotional states influence behaviors. I would add into this the effects of thoughts and emotions on the soma.

If I can isolate my habitual thoughts, observe their impact on my emotions and behaviors, and modify those thoughts as necessary, then with some practice I might be able to reshape my experience of myself in the world.

There’s a mindfulness plug here, as mindfulness is a means to observe our internal landscapes in the here and now. (Actually, some clinicians are beginning to blend CBT with mindfulness practices).

So.

Back to Caitlin Matthew’s question of how can I changed my thought patterns to empower my goals? In my previous post, I identified the following as energies I wished to invite or “manifest” into my life:

“The quality of being open to possibilities. The ability to dream and dream big.
The knack of believing in myself. The expansion of my worldview.
The transmutation of anxiety into a peaceful stance.”

What stands in the way? For me, an incredible bohemeth of negative self-talk internalized. She is doubting, critical and doesn’t know how to be any other way. She holds the torch for those souls (do they know who they are?) who told me I was less than so many years ago. She’s a dedicant to strife and a believer that one is not entitled to ask for much beyond the rudimentary basics of existence. You see, somehow suffering and fulfillment became sickly interwoven in my family. Somehow, a culture of “I can suffer more than you” dominated the scene; a talent show of sorts where certain people paraded the weight of their baggage, while others were told to shut-up, eat their popcorn and enjoy the show. She weighs in as a judge for this show. A veritable Simon Cowell of sorts.

I understand what needs to change, but the how is the tricky part. How to change thought patterns that were etched into your gray matter at a very young age. Yes, I can map out my beliefs, become intimate with them, create countering beliefs and affirmations…and this all helps. It does.

For me, matters of spirit also arise. It is in spirit that I am big enough to fold my arms around Her and ask Her what it is she really needs with compassion and patience, as a precious few have done for me. It is in experiencing myself as more than my thoughts, my emotions, my body…and at the same time understanding that I – this ego concept of “My, Me, Mine” – is mutable, shape-shifting, impermanent. In all of this maybe, just maybe, Her fear will undergo that alchemical process of transmutation.

In the service of Love and Peace.

On Manifestation

I’m not the most timely, prompt or consistent blogger, and yes, it’s taken me a tad bit over two weeks to reclaim a percentage of my focus reserves for the purposes of the written word.

For the handful – quite literally a handful – of souls who have stumbled across my patch of the world wide virtual garden, I present you yet another attempt on the behalf of yours truly to practice the element of discipline via creative expression and (and this is a very big and) follow-through.

My last post borrowed material from Caitlin Matthews, who offers a number of poignant questions geared towards supporting folks in clarifying their goals, which is a popular ritual in many culture at the onset of a New Year or cycle of another nature.

My last post also indicated that I would follow up on these questions in new posts, which I suppose requires some “follow-through” on my part. (See how this is all coming together?)

So. Here it is.

Question One: What am I endeavoring to manifest now in my life?

There’s a back-story to this. Two years ago when I was 28 and experiencing what I can only describe as a cornucopia of Saturn Return phenomena, I interned as an art therapist at a hospital in the SF Bay area. It was my last year of graduate school, and as the year progressed I became more and more distraught about my mountain of school debt, the prospects of finding a post-graduate internship that would pay enough to wean me off a diet of burritos and macaroni and cheese, and the incessant fear that due to my sensitive nature I would be devoured by the field of mental health. These are common concerns for people in my situation, and of course it’s easy to say to a struggling friend or colleague, “This too shall pass.” However, when it’s you sitting in the labyrinth of your own fear, it’s a much more difficult inner dialog.

For all the dismay and turbulence I experienced that year, I was blessed by a wonderful clinical supervisor. Karen was in her early to mid forties, and her eyes reverberated with the tides of the gray seas. All people are special, and some seem to shine. She was one who those who shined.

Our supervisions were a blend of clinical discussion and personal mentorship. On a particularly dismal day I brought up my concerns to her. I lamented about my anxiety (that old school, pesky companion of mine), my financial woes, my fears about my career choice, and on and on and on. Almost in tears, I stared blankly down at my hands clenched in the folds of my lap.

Karen asked me a question: “What do you want for yourself?”

I shrugged and whimpered something about wanting any clinical job that would allow me to eat and hold down a cheap rental. Karen pushed on.

“What else?”

Well, I thought it might be kind nice not to screw up too much as a green therapist, so I said just that – I didn’t want to fuck up.

“What else? Barring all obstacles, what do you want for yourself…anything, think grand.”

A funny thing happened, and that funny thing is that I had absolutely no answer for her. No one had ever asked me, and I don’t believe it ever occurred to me to ask myself. There were no words for her answer, no “Oh, I’d love to travel the world” or “Why, I’d like to write a best-selling novel.”

Karen did something important for me that day. She modeled a stance of believing in possibilities, something that was desperately lacking in my childhood. Karen taught me about the nature of manifestation, in that to manifest one must have a vision unencumbered by the weight of past baggage.

I learned something about myself. I didn’t know how to dream. I didn’t know how to expand my realm of possibilities. I didn’t know how to believe in myself. It was as if those muscles were withered and in need of a personal trainer. I think this can often be the case for people who grew up in conditions permeated by a consistent stream of crisis, instability, loss and trauma. We learn to just get by, to just weather the storm, to just come out on the other end. We also learn that that at the other end is just another storm to weather. While for some this can become a path towards inner strength, adaptability and resiliency, I believe this comes at a potential cost. The cost is that our worldview is consumed with the notion of survival. Survival is important, I don’t argue that. However, when it preoccupies the physical, emotional, and cognitive systems, the quest for just getting by kills the creative process of drawing up vision and manifesting change.

So, what am I endeavoring to manifest now in my life? The quality of being open to possibilities. The ability to dream and dream big. The knack of believing in myself. The expansion of my worldview. The transmutation of anxiety into a peaceful stance.

You know, the basics, the grit, the foundation.

The New Year is Up and Running

I know. The turning of the New Year is already in full swing. People already wrote about their New Year's resolutions, intentions, hopes, dreams, etc., etc., etc.

I know. I'm a week late. But that's ok. I'm not one who turns myself over to the conventional New Year's Resolution where quantifiable gains are of focus. You know what I'm talking about: lose 25 pounds in three minutes, be published in a prestigious literary magazine five times over, schedule regular colonic treatments in addition to quarterly liquid cleanses, create a 5 year plan within the first trimester of this year...

Still, there is something undoubtedly significant about the changing of the year - a concrete, in your face moment in time to symbolize the cyclical nature of life and beyond. I recently read a 12/31 post from Blogickal (post title "Three Big Rocks") that offered a nice perspective through which to consider the New Year in conjunction with personal evolution. So many juicy morsels in this post, some of which the author picked up from other resources and kindly passed along.

Among these morsels are some excellent questions to facilitate self-inquiry. Among them are (borrowed from Celtic Devotional by Cailtin Matthews):

- What am I endeavoring to manifest now in my life?
- How can I change my thought patterns to empower my goals?
- What old connections can I release now, for my highest good?
- What wisdom is seeking to reveal itself to me at this time?
- What new idea has seeded itself this winter, and how can I best nurture it to fruition, as the Earth nurtures her seeds?
- What are the imprisoning fears that I feel ready to release?
- What part of me will awaken as the rebirth of Spring arrives?
- How can I best focus on my blessings this season?
- How can I turn negatives into positives?
- How can I make the best use of this lifetime?

My initial intention was to repost these questions with my own answers (pertaining to myself of course), but in reading them again I visualize each as stand alone writing topics in their own right. One idea I have in terms of integrating this into developing a spiritual practice is to meditate on each question for a week and then write of what transpires.

For now though, I share these inspiring thoughts with anyone out there who happens to stumble into my neck of the blogosphere.

To the Compassion Fatigued

The Three Monks are doing a Spread the Love Now! Group Writing Project. For the rules for submitting an article go to one of their websites.

http://www.urbanmonk.net/233/spread-the-love-now-group-writing-project/
http://kentonwhitman.com/blog/2007/12/21/spread-the-love-now-group-writing-project/
http://themiddleway.net/2007/12/21/spread-the-love-now-group-writing-project

To the Compassion Fatigued

I have a knack for grabbing a newspaper, flipping to some random page, and with less than conscious intention landing my eyes on a narrative laced in brutality, drenched in suffering, and devoid of hope.

There are those of us who lap up this consistent feed of suffering, immersing ourselves in collective despair much like gnats drowned in a half-drunken pint of warm Pilsner. Others swipe this reality away with a voracity reserved for those who simply cannot bear one more kernel of fear. There are those who, in the face of a seemingly never-ending torrent of injustice, get angry, find their voice, and take action. Still others, in a grind for the restoration of control, dish it out onto someone else.

I could go on, as there are countless styles that members of the human race employ in coming to terms with the unthinkable, the unbearable, and the unconscionable. My own style is in transition, and this is where an important lesson in compassion emerges.

Historically, my strategy has been to put myself in the eye of the storm so that I may assume a helper role. Like most people, my proclivities stem from my own rearing, which in my case crafted an empathetic, intuitive, compassionate, and sensitive constitution. I am driven by a need to be engaged with the complexities of the human condition, as well as to contribute to the growth and healing of the collective consciousness. These are gifts, and as such I’m thankful for the lived experiences, both sweet and wrenching, that I owe this learning to.

As there is light, there is a shadow side: vulnerability to merging with the emotional states of others, over-identification with suffering, hyper-vigilance, assuming responsibility that simply is not mine, layers upon layers of guilt, self-neglect, martyrdom, and burnout.

I experienced the onset of Compassion Fatigue, or vicarious trauma, during my first year out of graduate school while working as a therapist at a rape crisis center that was poorly run. The intense clinical work combined with the chaotic, unhealthy work environment left me emotionally drained. I began to see the world as a terribly dangerous place. I was hyper-vigilant of my surroundings. My soma became physically ill with colds and infections I couldn’t shake off. White hairs began to sprout, and my sleep morphed into a dreamscape of nightmares. Close friends commented that I didn’t look well and asked if I was o.k.

The film of denial coated onto the relationship between my job and my well being eroded, and in its place were the assumptions I held regarding compassion. I realized that I’d relegated myself to an unconscious and psychologically young paradigm that limited my ability to simultaneously hold compassion for others and myself. In this paradigm, there was an unspoken rule, which is this: Only one person gets to have their needs met. From which I derived a related belief: Taking care of myself comes at the cost of someone else, which I cannot bear.

With eyes wide shut, I subscribed to the deeply engrained belief that my worth was based on my ability to meet the needs of others. Psychology labels this as codependency. I reframe this as an issue of the soul and, ultimately, love.

Rather than junk the idea of becoming a therapist all together or continue in my victimhood/martyrdom, I took responsibility, listened deeply to my inner voice, and made choices that I felt were in my best interest. I left that job with a deeper understanding of my limits and the intention to renegotiate my relationship to compassion.

What began as a mini-crisis in the realm of work deepened into a spiritual inquiry of love. The external motion of delivering compassion was out of sync with the internal process of replenishing love to the Self. I believe this can also become inverted as self-involvement hinders the capacity to extend love beyond the Self.

Today, I find value in small, everyday acts of compassion, such as helping a blind person across the street, acknowledging the dwindling life force of our Christmas tree, being gentle with myself after a tough day, or paying mind the energy I take in and put out into the world. Today, I strive to balance love and compassion with limit-setting and respite. Today, I try my best to remain open to both the light and shadow intrinsic to the human condition.