Ramble....
Jul. 24th, 2018 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mdehnersI'm in a weird mood. One of the things I've realized is that all of you and those of my Hardcopy Acquaintance are far along on their personal Paths that your Work is Personal now...you all are way past the need for "101" help or info.
One of the many things you notice as you progress on your Path is that less and less is Useful, let alone Communicable with others. I certainly now have much more sympathy(and thankfully their Patience;>!) for my early Teachers. At least with a group a Group Mind of sorts forms where the same Experience tends to be Seen similarly. But still not the same. Go Solitary for a time and chances are you'll See the same Thing differently than others(unless you're sharing the same mythos as a Worldview organizer). This makes Teaching others even more difficult. Perhaps that's a bit reason this world of alt.rel folk tend toward the lowest common denominator. Certainly the easiest. Heck, it's hard enough in a group to get folks to DO THE WORK, Solitary?!? You need a Will stronger than standard and even then you're going to "blow" things "off" pretty regularly.
One thing I discovered recently about myself was that while I'd dealt with my JCI religious "Issues" I hadn't with that of the JCI culture itself. It wasn't until prompted by a friend's post that got me rethinking my reading of Shinto(and Muskeegee) Rites that I'd missed a BIG ONE.
In the traditional "Pagan" Ways I've read(and I have to agree with Bonewitz that the Hindu spiritual culture of the upper classes were contaminated by 1st Islam then Christianity's worldview) the Rite is the THING ITSELF. It is not a "step" on a "path". They rose from a Need in that culture, not as a step toward some otherworldly goal. And Ragnarok notwithstanding(which is not a Universal Nordic Myth by the way), the more I read the more I Believe that the Ancestors did the same. Yet, here I was having problems with just that because they didn't organically "fit" into some cosmic pattern....or at least an agricultural one:>!
Traditional Wicca was created by folks who hadn't dealt with the worldview either, but then that allowed them to Create a Way that HAS that Integration that traditional Pagan Ways don't. Truthfully, if I'd not had Experiences that have me Believing in the actual existence of Individual Deities I'd have been perfectly happy in Wicca. I'd come to it already Polytheistic and the added discomfort of finding out it was no more historical that Mormonism(which my Mom's side of the family is and remembering what they had to go through being told one thing by the world and another by the church), my time was numbered.
It's hard to buy Wiccan Theology when you've had The Old Man sitting on your bed while you WERE Meditating;>. He ain't no "Aspect"! At least to me.....
Sorry for the word salad. It's been a weird couple of weeks;>
Cheers,
Pat
One of the many things you notice as you progress on your Path is that less and less is Useful, let alone Communicable with others. I certainly now have much more sympathy(and thankfully their Patience;>!) for my early Teachers. At least with a group a Group Mind of sorts forms where the same Experience tends to be Seen similarly. But still not the same. Go Solitary for a time and chances are you'll See the same Thing differently than others(unless you're sharing the same mythos as a Worldview organizer). This makes Teaching others even more difficult. Perhaps that's a bit reason this world of alt.rel folk tend toward the lowest common denominator. Certainly the easiest. Heck, it's hard enough in a group to get folks to DO THE WORK, Solitary?!? You need a Will stronger than standard and even then you're going to "blow" things "off" pretty regularly.
One thing I discovered recently about myself was that while I'd dealt with my JCI religious "Issues" I hadn't with that of the JCI culture itself. It wasn't until prompted by a friend's post that got me rethinking my reading of Shinto(and Muskeegee) Rites that I'd missed a BIG ONE.
In the traditional "Pagan" Ways I've read(and I have to agree with Bonewitz that the Hindu spiritual culture of the upper classes were contaminated by 1st Islam then Christianity's worldview) the Rite is the THING ITSELF. It is not a "step" on a "path". They rose from a Need in that culture, not as a step toward some otherworldly goal. And Ragnarok notwithstanding(which is not a Universal Nordic Myth by the way), the more I read the more I Believe that the Ancestors did the same. Yet, here I was having problems with just that because they didn't organically "fit" into some cosmic pattern....or at least an agricultural one:>!
Traditional Wicca was created by folks who hadn't dealt with the worldview either, but then that allowed them to Create a Way that HAS that Integration that traditional Pagan Ways don't. Truthfully, if I'd not had Experiences that have me Believing in the actual existence of Individual Deities I'd have been perfectly happy in Wicca. I'd come to it already Polytheistic and the added discomfort of finding out it was no more historical that Mormonism(which my Mom's side of the family is and remembering what they had to go through being told one thing by the world and another by the church), my time was numbered.
It's hard to buy Wiccan Theology when you've had The Old Man sitting on your bed while you WERE Meditating;>. He ain't no "Aspect"! At least to me.....
Sorry for the word salad. It's been a weird couple of weeks;>
Cheers,
Pat
