Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

Spiritual Parallax

Okay, no one ever said spirituality was easy.

(How’s that for a one-line opener?)

No, seriously. If you think spirituality is easy, then you’re either a one-day-a-week organised religion-type who doesn’t think about it on the other six days, or you’re not trying.

Spirituality is all about trying to be better than you currently are. This automatically becomes difficult because of the following issues:

1) You’re constantly improving, so you always think the new stuff you’re learning is hard. Ever take piano lessons as a kid? The early skills you pick up become incorporated into your skill set and applied to subsequent learning. Problem is, we don’t see it. We keep starting new pieces of music, and they’re always hard. We never think that if we go back and play something we worked on a year ago, we’re much better than we were at the time. The same thing applies to spirituality. You work through an issue, it becomes part of you, you hit another issue, and all the time you’re saying, “Gosh, why doesn’t it get any easier?”

2) We tend to work through the same issues in a different context, and we don’t realise it until the lesson’s learned.

3) You can understand an issue with your head, but until you understand it with your heart and soul, it will still be an issue. (This is my Waterloo.)

4) Your needs change as you evolve and develop throughout life. This means that you can sometimes be working on an issue long after it’s past, not realising that you should be focusing on another issue. You’ve got to stay alert and sensitive to your own needs.

5) You can always be better. Always.

When you realise that spirituality is a daily thing, an expression of your relationship of whatever you consider the Divine, then two things happen: you understand that each action you make is spiritual, and you see that our innate laziness has made adherence to a one-day-a-week religion an easy way out. One of the reasons I follow a neo-Pagan path is because I have to do it all myself. No one else tells me what I ought to think, or interprets words for me, or that I’m forgiven. I have to struggle through it myself. Ultimately, this means that I learn the lessons on a much deeper level. It also means that the solution to the problem is intimate and personalised, so to speak.

It doesn’t, unfortunately, make it easy.

Lately, people have been talking to me about how blocked they feel spiritually, and I sometimes wonder if it’s because we think too much. We create our own obstacles; we choke up our own expressions of creativity and joy. We prefer to be miserable, because for some vague socialised reason, we believe we ought to be unhappy. We create exercises to “work” on our expression, our connection to the world around us. We “practice” our spirituality.

Whatever happened to being?

Maybe we ought to borrow Nike’s slogan of “Just Do It”. Or Yoda’s good old “Do or do not – there is no try.”

Live it. Breathe it. And congratulate yourself for every day you live, because you touched people somehow. You put words down on paper. You punched keys. You smiled. You daydreamed as you looked out the window. You made dinner.

Yes, you’re trying to improve yourself. However, saying, “I didn’t do what I dreamed I could do” does more damage than good. Positive reinforcement, in this case, is worth more than negative reinforcement. Being better doesn’t mean being unhappy. The old adage of “No pain, no gain” has no application here. Yes, we suffer, we deal, we’re stronger. That doesn’t have to happen every day, though.

Be thankful for the little things. Be open to the idea that yes, it can be easy. And stop making it harder than it has to be.

Just do it.

Yes, Yes, You Love Me, Thank You

Oh, honestly, people – I’m frustrated, not on my deathbed.

But thanks go out to everyone who left comments, e-mailed, or called as soon as they got off-line and tied up my phone for two and a half hours. Heartfelt thanks. Ceri even called long-distance from her writing retreat in Lower Prospect.

I’d be even happier if it would rain, damn it – really rain, indicating a low pressure front coming through, to break this dreadful humidity. Maybe I’ll head over to the secondhand bookstore around the corner this afternoon to look for the Dorothy Sayers books Ginger recommended for me – that ought to incite the heavens to hurl water at me, especially if I wear a white shirt.

Keeping things in perspective, I recently began to read Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo. And I thought I had problems with my back, and with mild chronic pain! Now I just occasionally feel guilty while I read it, knowing that in comparison, my health is far superior to what hers was.

I spent seven hours yesterday writing a 36 page take-home final exam (those who know will know), and to my stunned and utter incomprehension, I am still not done. It’s maybe only 80% complete, but after yesterday, I need a day away from it.

End Of The Tour

This morning will be the last class to the current session of the eighteen-week intro course to alternative religions that I teach. (For those of you who are neo-Pagan and have a Thing About Payment For Anything Religion-Related, this is a survey course of info on various world religions, and does not teach craft itself. You have no idea how tired I am of explaining this.) This set of students is particularly special, and I’ll miss them. We won’t losing touch, of course; I’ll just miss hearing their opinions and thoughts, and watching them make connections between various mythologies and modes of thought from different cultures at different points in history.

I think that’s one of the most special parts of teaching: seeing the dots being connected, the illumination spreading across an individual’s face as s/he fits a bit of information into his/her world view.

It’s not for everyone, of course. There are hard parts too. Students come to you with problems, seeking guidance or the input of someone more experienced, and there are times where I freeze up and wonder how I got to this particular point, when I was assigned the position of mentor. What if the support I give is inadequate? What if I mistakenly point someone in the wrong direction? I know, I know; everyone has free will, and is responsible for their own choices. When someone places you in a position of trust, however, there’s a lot of responsibility that goes with it. (I have a feeling that very statement indicates an unlikelihood of misleading anyone; I take this too seriously. And somewhere out there, I know that MLG is saying, “You see? And you claim that you’re not a leader!”) Teaching is rewarding as well. I learn things from my students too – new information, new ways of connecting A and C (who says you have to go via B?), new points of view and opinions that in turn connect into my own web of thought and belief.

So, today’s the last class. I’m not quite sure how we got here so quickly, but there you are. I’m a little down about it.

Now I have to figure out how I’m to pick up groceries for tonight’s dinner, a parcel at the post office, and a birthday present, and still carry all my teaching textbooks, since my husband has taken the car to work today. And of course, my tea has gone cold.

Stalking Authors

When I’m feeling singularly uninspired, I meander about and look at what other writers think and feel about writing.

Jane Yolen is an author I’ve been reading since I was about eleven. On her For Writers page, she says that [t]he Muse is an ornery creature and rarely comes when called. She wears feathers in her hair and birkenstocks on her feet and is often out in the woods when you are home at your keyboard. Which is all too true.

She quotes Gene Fowler: Writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead. Of course, she goes on to point out that writing isn’t agony, and the majority of the time I’d agree with her; I’m not one of those people who thinks that an artist has to suffer in order to create, or to be able to create, good art. Every once in a while, though, yes, it really does feel that hard. Yolen also quotes Roland Barthes: The author performs a function; the writer an activity. It suggests that an author has a job, but a writer is the job. (I don’t remember ever reading anything so inspiring when I read Barthes a few years ago, but I might have missed something.)

However, the nicest thing on the page was this:

A writer has many successes:

Each new word captured.
Each completed sentence.
Each rounded paragraph leading into the next.
Each idea that sustains and then develops.
Each character who, like a wayward adolescent, leaves home and finds a life.
Each new metaphor that, like the exact error it is, some how works.
Each new book that ends–and so begins.

Selling the piece is only an exclamation point, a spot of punctuation.

Which is remarkably inspiring.

Reviewing The Past

More articles have been posted and linked over at Owldaughter’s Read section, including the first chapter from Reconstructing the Past in the Academic Novel: The Concept of Nostalgia in Thatcher Britain. Yes, I know there are hordes of you out there who have been simply dying with impatience to read this magnum opus, and you’ve just been too shy to ask. Here’s your chance for a taste.

It’s hard to believe that I finished this just over three years ago. It’s even harder to believe that I defended it successfully and it was accepted with only three minor changes. t! and I were chatting earlier about successes and accomplishments in our lives, and I continually forget about my thesis, or value it at much less that I ought to. Damn it, I have a bound hardcover book on my shelf with publication data in it, and the title on the cover in gold. I had to sign a release form for Her Majesty the Queen (that’s Elizabeth, not my mother) granting her permission to store a copy in the National Library files. This is huge.

Plus I’ve written two novels, and have two more on the go. My writing accomplishments alone ought to reassure me that I’ve done some pretty impressive stuff in my first thirty-odd years.

Everyone has similar accomplishments under their belts – not necessarily theses or novels, but projects of significance that we would admire in anyone else except ourselves. So why don’t we feel fulfilled?

On Wedding

I’m becoming nostalgic. Two of my acquaintances are getting/were married this year, and others are talking about it. I’ve been snooping through on-line photos of their wedding gear, dress fittings, and parties.

I’ll have been married four years this September. It was an absolutely fantastic day. Seeing all those posts by others about preparing and the day itself, I’m getting slightly mopy and misty-eyed.

It sems unfair that we only get to do it once if we stay with the significant other we’ve married. I think we should throw ourselves more weddings. Not just anniversary parties – real weddings.

Heck, it would give we ladies an opportunity to wear our wedding dresses again. Maybe we ought to have a Bridal Party where everyone can wear their wedding finery. (I’m just imagining the photos – half a dozen brides gathered on a lawn somewhere. Wow!) We could all get together and rent a small hall or something, cater a meal, have a cake made, do the photograph thing…

And then pay to have the dresses cleaned and boxed again.

Oh well.