next stop, mysticville

[chelidon]

I used to be so into digging into the details of magical practice. I mean, I read voraciously. I could argue the relative merits of angels on pinheads for eternity. Mastery was my goal, both breadth and depth. I immersed myself in practical skills -- everything from QBL to gematria to triads to Celtica to drumming to the Dead Sea Scrolls to...well, everything I could get my hands on. I thoroughly desired to be the Renaissance practitioner, a learned mage in as many disciplines as I could manage to fit into my day. I spent countless hours pouring over tomes, electronic or print, trying to research the past, develop and refine systems of practice, find the right words, the right names, the right forms, even knowing that the outer forms are but abstract representations of the inner truths, still, I delved, defined and refined into the ever-hungry alembic of intellect and knowledge.

Yet somewhere along the line, over the past few years, months, weeks and days, my whole approach changed. I suddenly realized the other day that esoterica has become so much less interesting to me than it used to be. I just don't care about the theories, the concepts, the models, the history, lore and minutia nearly as much as I used to.

So much of what I did now seems just mental masturbation, energy and effort expended not in mastery, as had thought, but in avoiding digging too deeply. I kept myself busy with sparkly details and musty ephemera, and kept myself from being fully present by pulling my mind off into the lands of scholarship, abstractions, and complex mental constructs.

What I am interested in at this moment are the true stories. Not the pretty stories, not the stories with happy endings and neat morals, or surprising (yet prosaic) Deus ex Machina ending, but the real, true stories, in all of their messy, at times ugly, complexities and ambiguity.

After decades of focusing on relentless doing, of pursuing skill, mastery, esoteric knowledge, historical research, of mining the rich veins of How, right now all I want to do is be, right here and right now. I am not so much interested in the What and the How as the Why.

Gods help me, I think I'm becoming a mystic. Who knew? (well, you did, marys_daughter)

Comments

[draiguisge.livejournal.com]

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. ;)

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

Took you long enough, honey. :)

I'm just joking -- I reached this point several years ago. Oh, I like a good bit of theory as much as the next person, but mostly it's so I can make better sense of an experience I've already had. I spent 10 years, maybe longer, studying, hunting around, LARNIN', just to figure out that I needed to ignore most of the books and theory and just muck about and get into magical messes.

That said, have you read Lon Milo Duquette's "My Life With the Spirits"? If you want to read about some hilarious messes, he's the guy.

[marys-daughter.livejournal.com]

...takes one to know one ....

welcome to the beginning ....love you

Letting go. A story for my kinsman.

[storm-and-raven.livejournal.com]

I used to need form for ritual, somewhere along the way I found that my rituals were very simple things. Listening to a stream roaring after a storm or trickling on a hot summer evening, looking at the blue of the sky or the light on the land. Feeling and being connected.

I found my answers in the curve of my child's cheek and the slant of his/her lashes against the skin as s/he slept peacefully. I found that connection - deep, true heart connection had more to teach me than any and all books that I could ever read.

I have found the esoteric in the realm of healing and was able to deepen my healing skills once I let go of the idea that I needed to understand it, needed to do anything other than to simply be present.

These days, home and hearth are important, as are my loved ones' presence. Cooking and eating good food, enjoying a nice fire, and slowing down are important. Feeling my feelings, owning my confusion, realising the finiteness of life in this human body, these are the things I am learning.

I have felt for a long time that all I do when I read someone's how-to book, or their theories, or mental constructs is getting a glimpse into their process, not deepening my own.

Don't get me wrong. I think I have plenty that I can learn from others, but for me it is in the interaction with others that I learn. Not in the passive activity of reading their thoughts.

YMMV, kinsman. Life is goddamned precious. Your son can teach you more, if you let him, than any book ever written. Love is the most powerful force there is.

Makes me want to go out and change the world, it does. For my children and for their children. And thus for all children.

Winter love to you, my mystic kinsman.

[loreleyjacob.livejournal.com]

I think that being a mystic suits you :)

[draiguisge.livejournal.com]

Haha, I read that too fast, I thought you were talking about a 'mystic being suit' and started wondering where I could get one of those, too. ;)

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it would fit impeccably, and would be whatever it needed to be in the moment, while never actually changing its true nature at all... ;>

[snakey.livejournal.com]

O NOES! o_O Do we need to do an intervention?

Srsly, though, it's not necessarily an either/or.... The esoterica is the pretty shiny, but it's not the *point*. On the other hand, if you have a vague grasp of the *point* (or the absence of one, depending on how Zen you're feeling) the pretty shiny is nice for its own sake. Knowledge is a good thing, and esoterica is a great way of abstracting the worlds, but tbh I don't see it as any more Ultimately True And Important than my Peninsular War or perfume geeking. Being able to quote Obscure Mystic Tomes is impressive, but sometimes it's just as meaningful to quote Buffy. And vice versa. :D

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

hee hee. I can just see that now..."we're concerned that you haven't been keeping up on your Enochian calls..."

I've always tried to keep a balance between being and doing, in fact, taught a path about just that at BCWC three or four years ago. But, truth be told, I've always been firmly on the mage side of the mage/mystic continuum, always fascinated with the shineys. Many of my favorite practitioners, like Ivo Dominguez, marys_daughter and yezida are those who, in my estimation, have held a good balance here, combining knowledge and wisdom, mind and body (not that it's about duality, either, but you get the idea).

What I'm finding is that recently, my own balance has been shifting much more heavily towards the other end of that continuum, and that feels totally right and natural, but it still feels like a major shift, and it's something I want to be aware of, even as I meander down the path.

It's not that the shineys are in any way bad or wrong, but it's feeling like my own theory about spell-crafting -- much of the careful creation and manipulation of physical components (whether eye of newt or insulators in an orgone generator) are there to keep the discursive mind busy and occupied and thinking it's doing something important while the real work happens under the covers. In the same way, I'm looking harder at the possibility that the shineys were there to keep thinking self occupied while the real work took place. Or, less constructively, they kept me so busy I avoided some of the deeper work.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Wait, weren't you one before? *confused*

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

*lol* :>

I've always tried to walk the mage/mystic balance, but my own perception, anyway, is that I was usually somewhat over on the mage end of the scale somewhere. I've spent a lot of time playing with systems, models, techniques, done a lot of reading, researching, practicing, cogitating, experimenting. Nothing wrong with that, but lately, all of that relentless doing has seemed much less interesting, and I'm seeing at least some of it as distraction from the work, rather than the work itself.