So long and thanks for all the fish.....

With the changes going on in  my life, I am retiring the title of Coffee Priestess.  I have started a new blog called Life of An Armchair Mystic.   I am inspired by a peer to codify my practice and at least publish it in blog form.  I am not sure how it will evolve just yet. 

What can you expect from the  new blog?

A commitment to weekly posts published on Wednesdays (day of Mercury and communication) that will be a combination of my own ritual process and the background information I use.  A sort of electronic file cabinet of correspondence and memory.

I will still be largely focused on the Wiccan Wheel of the Year but will include bits and pieces of my shamanic training (Ode to Jane Smallman) and Buddhist influences as well. 

And because I can, I will be also including my manifesto on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and how it and motivational psychology are intrinsic to spiritual practice.  (When I was a chemical dependency counselor I taught a recovery class every 3rd Tuesday on The Hierarchy of Needs and through school and Wicca classes I seem to write a paper every 5 years or so on it.)

As much as I want to comment on the various social challenges we are experiencing I am going to limit my comments and instead focus on how to transform the pain and frustration into something more useful.  While my life is not perfect, I see progress each day and as we say in AA progress, not perfection.

With that gentle readers, I welcome you into the world of the arm chair mystic. Grab your beverage of choice and enjoy the ride!

Transforming Pain On The Path

Happy November to everyone!

I was planning on writing more about ancestral practices but have a slight change of plans.  Yesterday, a man decided to deal with his pain and frustration by driving a rented truck onto a pedestrian walk way in Manhattan and killed 38 people in the name of his religion.  When I was watching Morning Joe today one of their guests said that we can either transform our pain or transmit our pain and it struck a cord in me.

We live in a broken world. We are oppressed, disenfranchised, marginalized, and then ignored. Our media and social media outlets capitalize on that pain and sometime with well meaning and thought provoking questions but more often than not it magnifies the issues and not really resolve them.  How do we deal with the constant influx of distressing information and how do we transform it into something positive?

I like the idea of transforming pain. The Wiccan Rede states An It Harm None Do As Thou Will but we fall short.  We hurt others in our selfishness and we hurt ourselves.  The first step in the process of transformation is the same first step that is used in the AA Twelve step program.  We admitted that we were powerless over ________ and that our lives had become unmanageable.  In my own walk I am powerless over my sense of rejection.  It can overrun my life if I allow it too.  The second step become more important of coming to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity….Awareness

Because of my pagan leanings I choose to see that power as the Goddess and her Consort but it is also my community and elders and their wisdom from traveling the path before me.  Surrendering my ego and sense of righteousness in order to understand someone else’s side of the story is a vitlal necessity  and then that leads into the third step of surrender…. Giving my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand him.  It is not easy to recognize when we need to walk in active forgiveness and surrender. Both are necessary as a part of transformation.

As a nation, as a world, we need to stop seeing our pain as isolated incidents. That we are the only ones going through our confusion and frustration, our sense of loss and our sense of what needs to be done in compensation.  We do not always know the best way but we are willing to yield the pain of our ego to the wisdom of compassion we may  heal more than just ourselves in the process.

May the month ahead bring you encouragement, empowerment, and peace.

Blessed Be!!