Shadow Work, I: A Series of Little Deaths

I know I have talked about shadow work before (here) but I have done so much of it and learned so much FROM it in recent months, I feel a series has become necessary, and needed. Shadow work, in my sight, also remains misunderstood in the greater woo-woo community.

So I give you part 1 of the Shadow Work posts: A Series of Little Deaths.

This post is about the philosophy of shadow work.

What I have learned in the past few years of my life, which is when I began paying attention and I "woke up" to the astral, is Life seems to be nothing but a series of little Deaths.

They are little as in small, so many of us don't notice. You keep on chugging through the worst of everything, and there are ups and downs, but rarely do you look backwards and contemplate the series of graves you're leaving behind on your path of chugging forward.

It happens when you love and lose and it really affected you and you can't eat for a month. It happens when you lose someone to death that you really cared about. It happens when you lose a pet, or a family member to something other than death. It might happen when you have a health scare, and nothing actually happens. It might happen when you missed hitting that kid at the intersection by millimeters, because you weren't paying attention. It may even happen when you wake up and somehow you can't remember where you end and someone else begins, and it's terrifying.

We are dying all the time, and the deaths are not the same, nor the same intensity, for everybody. It's pretty much always painful, even when it's sorely needed. You KNEW you had to end that relationship, but it hurt anyway. You KNEW your family member was losing a fight with their health, but it hurt to let go all the same. It's easier to buck up and keep moving forward and get over it than it is to sit with the self you're in the process of burying and hug it and let it cry.

We're told it's bad to wallow for a long time in feelings or depression or normal human reactions to loss. 

This is worse in situations that are considered 'commonplace' or like 'regular life things'. We're told to get over it, it's not a big deal, it was just a break-up, it was just a move, it was just a job loss, just a best friend that hurt you deeply, not like it was a REAL event. Not like somebody died, or something.

Somebody did. YOU did. But maybe it wasn't visible to them.

"Small" things can affect us greatly. And if you acknowledge that you have the right to feel like you're dying because of an "insignificant" life event, because it was significant to YOU, then you are on the right track.

That's what shadow work is for.

It's terrifying to wake up and realize you've lost pieces of yourself. There are stages of grief, they say, but they don't tell you the last stage is dying yourself. Acceptance, they say. Acceptance often means admitting you will never be the person you were before, again. 

You'll be similar, yeah. Still "you" at the core. But something is gone, now, that wasn't gone before, and you will heal and you will come out stronger, but not the same. And that's not a bad thing, but more of an acknowledgement. At the end of your Work you will look back and you will not understand, recognize, "be" that same self anymore. You will wave to each other on opposite ends of the path, and turn and walk away. You will feel like that self is a stranger, because the transformative process of your little death, and your work to go through it, and then eventually build a little headstone and say farewell to that self, has divorced you from it. Put you outside your body, unable to feel, see, and think that way again. 

The Work puts you on the outside the same way having astral awareness does. Shadow work gives you vivid, and sudden, and constant self-awareness. You will know the deepest parts of yourself, and guide those parts by the hand through your inevitable walk into the void and out the other side. And when you are on that other side, you will not look back, and you will know the work is done.

You won't realize you've completed the work until days, months, years later. You'll realize suddenly, as you're drinking some tea and smiling to yourself in Winter, that you haven't thought about Him in 6 weeks. That the things that friend did were really shitty and you will never, ever let someone treat you that way again, because you're worth so much more, and suddenly you actually BELIEVE that you are. 

When you are on the other side, the shadow work will be worth it, because you'll forget why you had to do it to begin with. 

And the You that comes out will be a hundred times better than the you you began with, even if it doesn't feel like that now. It will.

The Danger of Losing Touch: Shadow Work

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Hello, blog. Today I come to you...different. Not-the-same.

I am here to talk about the danger of losing touch. Not with your blog, or your friends, or your anything, but yourself. Not your practice; this goes deeper than that.

This is the ultimate goal of shadow work: to restore the "self", whatever form that is for you, and in whatever way you feel it needs to be restored. When we talk about soul-shards leaving and soul-shatter, we're talking at the base level about a loss of self. How that happens, and why, is another discussion. You just need to know it happened to me, and I thought I had done the Work, and I was Better, and I Wasn't, and that was the best possible thing to happen to me.

I have talked before about how I am two-minded. One half of me is intellectual, is "airy", spends time reading about heavy topics and likes chilling out with ideas. I like to pretend, sometimes, that that's the only half. And I pretend that's the only half and then I act surprised when I turn around and realize I feel empty and lost and I can't honestly explain what I'm feeling because it feels like "nothing". It feels cold. Because at the heart, I have this tendency to sweep my other half under the rug.

The other half is the messy one. The Witch. The Spirit-Walker. The Half-Animal. The one with all the feelings, the good and the bad, the ANGER, the righteousness. The ecstatic visions and the journey and the death rites and the throwing yourself down in the dirt, the mud, and howling like an animal and ripping flesh from bone with sharp claws. She's all wearing the skulls of animals and losing yourself to the night, losing molecule by molecule until you and Night lose track of what is what and you become each other and that's the true fulfillment.

Today I have been reminded that an intellectual practice is not one I can sustain alone. As much as I like to think of myself as this rational, reserved Spirit-Walker--I'm NOT. And I can't pretend I am. And the worst part is I wasn't even aware I had shut that other part of me off, again, until I did the Work and I lit the sacred incense and I poured my shit out on the ground in front of my Underworld betters and said "I'm sorry. Help me." I didn't understand why my facet, the one who guards my heart space, slapped me across the face and told me "You can't keep doing this." I didn't understand and that hurt her worse than anything; the blindness more than the action.

She meant I can't bury this huge portion of my practice. Half of my practice is airy and purity and intellectual--but the other half is human-and-animal, blood and guts and ruin and strong-eats-weak and all of the laws of nature. It's the crashing waves and the thunder and the lightning and all of that in the breath-the-blood of my human body. And that doesn't make it "bad" or "something I don't want to deal with". And at the core, I want to know WHY I keep doing this, so I can stop.

As much as I do offerings and write about deities and Spirits and whatever, it doesn't Fulfill. It doesn't suffice. It feels like eating a feast in an illusion, and the more you eat the more you're confused because you don't feel any fuller. You don't feel like you've eaten at all.

That messy side, the Underworld Side, the Animal--she is the food. She is the hunger and she is the feast all at once. I can read and write about the Work all I want, I can pretend I'm scientific and hard-nosed and academic and what-have-you, but I'm sitting at an empty banquet table wondering why I'm so hungry. I NEED that side of my practice like I need breath and water and food. And it's really sad that I keep realizing and forgetting this.

So this post is about the ultimate goal of shadow work: acceptance.

It's easier to accept things that happen to you and outsider things. It's really fucking hard to accept you are not who you say/think/believe you are. You might realize it, but it takes a while to set in. For me, I think it's finally setting in. I can't promise I'll never lose touch again, just that when I do, I will remember this working, and this moment, and I will hold it tight to me like a flame, and I will stop jumping off the cliff and killing half my soul for the sake of an idea.

This is a promise.

For Boston

In lieu of a post, I am posting here the two versions of healing sigil I have created for those victims of the Boston explosions today. I find sometimes you want to help in any way you can, but you're unsure how to proceed. I made these for people who might want a symbol or a directive for their energy.

It's based off the supreme healing capabilities of the nautilus, and the spiral, and the writing is essentially astral speak for "Energy to Boston", "Safety to Boston", etc. Feel free to print my sigil or modify it.

I kept the jps very large sized in case you want to print them.

When sending support energy, I am always sure to include a "If this energy is wanted", clause. It's find to act as a support, but never forget your source has free will and should be allowed to reject the energy if it chooses.

Stay safe, Boston.

Red Cross Safe and Well Listings

Red Cross local finder

Dear Pagan Community:

I need to explain you a thing.

(This was cross-posted to my Tumblr and I wanted to post it here, as well.)

At least on tumblr, we're seriously sucking at doing Community right. Like, seriously, it is abysmal. And I'm not the only one who has noticed this. Others from various paths have, as well. (I will link to them at the bottom.)

After some great discussion with said people, I compiled pretty much a list of "grievances" or things that have come to my attention that need saying, and I held my tongue on it for a long time, but I feel like the time is now.

So, here is my list.

Debating or discussing your religion with somebody who disagrees (the facts, the figures, even the UPG) is not automatically a personal attack on everything you hold dear. Nor is it an invitation to shit on what somebody holds dear, because surprise, when you do that, you have ceased to debate and instead are a huge asshole.

If you have not been explicitly invited to debate someone’s personal religion with them, and then you try, and they say no, and you persist, you’re also a huge asshole.

NOT AGREEING WITH A PERSONAL PRACTICE THAT YOU DON’T SUBSCRIBE TO DOESN’T MAKE IT “BAD, WRONG, OR EVIL”. IT MAKES IT “SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T WORK FOR YOU.” PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK LEARN THE DIFFERENCE. [Exceptions: practices that contribute to oppression, racism, sexism, and all of those ~isms that are not doing humanity any favors.]

Having community pull, or clout, because people follow you is not an assurance of someone who has their facts right, or straight. Don’t assume those two things always follow.

By the same token, people who have clout or community pull are human, and therefore can be wrong, and it’s not necessarily worse to be wrong with a lot of followers than it is to be wrong with only a few. Being popular doesn’t mean you stop growing on your own journey; nor should it mean you refuse to BE wrong. Popularity is not a wrongness-shield.

Ninety-Five percent of the time ignorance is not the fault of the individual. With so much fucking bullshit information out there, it’s a lot more rare to be immediately educated than coming in ignorant. Do not assume ignorance happens in a vacuum and is a disease instead of a symptom; nor should you assume squashing an ignorant person like a bug is going to solve said disease. I understand anger and feels and these things all tied into ignorant opinions, but as a community, it really doesn’t appear to be doing us many favors by ‘army of oneing’ each other on the individual, inter-personal micro-level. Ignorant opinions can become educated, but shitting on people is not a great way to pave that road. The person behind the arguably asinine opinion on the internet is human, as are you, and topics so personal to our experiences can breed hatred and biting sarcasm easily. But I would argue that’s still not DIRECTLY the fault of that one ignorant person, who is the product of this society and environment that supports ignorance and misinformation, and not necessarily a constant cause.

When you make people AFRAID TO SPEAK in your own community, you are doing something very fucking wrong and you need to examine all of those things. At least if someone speaks from ignorance, that speaking spurs learning and discussion and knowledge and the person is more likely to come away a better individual. Making a person afraid to speak for FEAR of being ignorant (because being ignorant = being publicly personality assassinated in their mind, because it happens in this community) is only perpetuating said symptom of a disease. A community functions only so long as respect as human beings is a given on both sides; otherwise nothing can come of it.

By the same token it’s very good when people from lots of different backgrounds are encouraged to speak out against attitudes of ignorance in the pagan community, because when we silence those people too, we get fucking nowhere. Encourage people to speak their truths, especially if they’re not in the “mainstream”, without fear of being ridiculed.

If someone is honestly and willfully ignorant and a fucking asshole, then we can maybe break out the curse jar. (Example: People who purposefully take advantage of and manipulate others via occult means like I mentioned in my last post.)

Not every practitioner in the community is a teacher, or wants to be. Not everyone is up for debate, or wants to be. Demanding or expecting everyone to be either all the time isn’t fair, either. Respect boundaries and don’t be a dick.

 Please go outside sometimes. Please. Don’t forget your practice is just as much about doing as it is about debating and talking about doing. (You can do both! And I’m a shining example of failing at that balance in the past.)

At the end of the day, if we can’t stop killing each other over opinions and ignorance and shit we don’t agree with, we’re never going to grab our collective balls long enough to get anything done as a group. And that’s fine, if you don’t want that. But I would like to see it, someday, and I think we could make that happen.

Other related posts:

Kemeticism is Like a Fandom

The Logistics of Running a Kemetic Anything

Bringing the Doing

When To Bring Out the Side-Eye: Occult Info Edition

(I found this Michelle-Side-Eye-on-google.)

Okay I realize this is probably treading directly into uncomfortable territory for a lot of people in the community, but I've heard an alarming number of stories in the past few weeks from people over private message and other means about this very topic and I feel I need to address it. I feel like I'm not good enough at psychology to tackle it properly but I'll try in my ineloquent fashion anyway. And this is my experience, YMMV, standard disclaimers etc.

That topic is: When should you be concerned or suspicious when other people offer you information about your own metaphysical background/self/energy/guides/Gods?

Just to get this out of the way, I am NOT shitting on Godphones and people who are asked to act as intermediaries between certain physical parties and certain spiritual ones. I know several people in my life who have been indeed been told by Deity "Go tell this person this thing for me."

There are a couple reasons to do that:

1. The Deity legit can't reach you for whatever reasons and so reach out to others to deliver their message.
2. Sometimes it's a test of your ability to listen.
3. Sometimes it's a test for the person telling you, as well.
4. Sometimes it's contract-related between you, the intermediary, and the Deity.
5. Annnd it can be a little from each column too.

So that's by no means unheard of and it's a practice that deserves to be respected like all roles taken on by those who walk the Path, whatever roles they may be. To be clear I'm NOT talking about people who legitimately Godphone or oracle upon request for others and its part of their path. (I myself do tarot and oracle/akashic readings for people on request.)

What I'm talking about is deliberately using occult or metaphysical information, often fabricated, in a concentrated effort to control, extort, or manipulate another individual. 

So let's say for example you can't really see your past lives and for whatever reason you maybe want to, but you're not really thinking about it. You start dating someone who seems okay and starts to tell you about your past lives. You believe them, because you don't REALLY have evidence to the contrary, so it's an either-way thing. They weave this extensive backstory between you and the person and write this grand tale in memories about how you've always been together and always will be and ~destiny~, and like I said, you don't have evidence to the contrary and you like this person, so you might get a little creeped, but you're kinda like "Maybe they're right?"

And that's where it begins. This is where Imma stop you and talk to you about ethics.

As a healer-type, I am very concerned about ethics. I won't send a single spurt of energy to somebody without asking them, even if I have in the past, EVEN if they've given me permission to do so at any time. And even then I take precautions; I tell the energy to shut off if at any point they decide to stop accepting. (And it seems to indeed shut off.) Also being an Oracle-type, I tend to Know things about other people right off the bat. Example of this is Otherkin-type energy, animal guides, Deities; a lot of that I can pick up. (Not all the time, not for everybody.) However, unless explicitly asked, I'm not going around telling everyone I meet this information.

Why? Several reasons.

1. I accept I could be completely off base and I respect the feelings of the individual before MY feelings, so I don't want to create an awkward situation, unless, as I stated, I am specifically asked about a topic or my feelings on something they feel. Especially if this person is of a religion or faith that would directly contradict what I have seen and might become upset by my info.
2. By telling someone this information I may be inhibiting their natural exploration or pathfinding and I don't think depriving them of that discovery process is my place.
3. Even if explicitly asked by the person I can be told "no" because the Spirits agree with me on point # 2, and ethically speaking I'm not going to act against those wishes.

Also my morals are not everybody's morals and that's cool too. I'm setting you up an example of someone who legitimately does oracle and divinate for people without desire to manipulate, through my list of ethics.

Again, there are times at which I will be legitimately moved by things to tell people information, and that's not what my article is discussing. I'm trying to tell you, even if it's me, and I listed my ethics up there for you, you still need to be suspicious as fuck of my information. That's not offensive to me. I consider that basic spiritual self-defense.

Being suspicious is a very good survival instinct you should develop on purpose. Being suspicious as fuck has saved my ass many times on the astral, especially when dealing with mimics. 

In the above scenario--your SO weaves you a tale about your past lives you can't ACTUALLY refute because you have no evidence of your own to counteract--step 1 is to examine why this person is telling you this.

Is it:

    A) Because they legitimately saw this and really want to tell you?

    B) Because they're providing context to make your relationship seem like "more" than it is?…Why?

    C) Because, by inventing a story, they are weaving the beginnings of a manipulative web in which you accept what they say as fact on metaphysical matters you can't refute?

Can you REALLY discern which it is? Would you bet years of your life on it immediately? What if you bet wrong? Plenty of people have. I saw it happen in my own house.

This is the issue with trying to turn your personal experiences/knowledge into something another person should automatically jive with.

Let me tell you some shit:

Just because you can't at present refute it doesn't make it automatically true.

At least for me, I require proof either way. Me and Rosebell really do have an astral past. How do I know this? This information was shared, disputed, discussed, re-discussed and rewritten multiple times--equally--between us. It still is. The difference is when somebody comes up and begins telling YOU all about YOUR life and the room for discussion isn't there. They're not interested in your thoughts or experiences. They're only interested in what they know about you. Why are they so hell-bent on telling you how things are? (Again reiterating this is unsolicited, as in, you didn't ask for this info)

Your experiences are yours. Period. If something doesn't feel right to you, it's not. Disregard it. Get the fuck out. Side-eye the shit out of people that relay all your lives to you and it involves them or especially them having some sort of power or connection over you. You feel Otherkin and someone tells you "I have uber epic psychic powers and I can tell you're not, so you're not"? Punch them in the face. Then leave.

BUT--YOU CAN BE WRONG! I've been wrong plenty of times about things in my metaphysic journey. But I'm saying BEING WRONG is your experience to have--NOT SOMEONE ELSE'S. You can absolutely be wrong about things--and the person might be right and have best intentions, but they're still intervening. If you think you have a God bothering you and it's someone else--that's your discovery. Same with being Otherkin, or being Empathic, or a Dreamwalker, or any number of things. There were people who knew I wasn't Wolf-Otherkin way before I did, and they respected me enough not to tell me until I figured it out for myself at the correct time for me. (It turns out it's Fox, if you're curious.) I side-eye the shit out of people who try and tell me things (unasked) because I wonder--

"What's so bad about ME being wrong about MYSELF? Why are you trying to prevent me from having the experience of learning to be wrong and analyze my self-perception?"

By the same token, you don't have to prove your feelings, or your personal knowledge, experiences, or Spirit-relationships to anybody. You live in your own head, and therefore your truth is personal and inherently your own. I like evidence and self-analysis as much as the next person, but reality is by its very nature happening inside your head. Reality is personal. Nobody gets to change your personal reality for you, before you're ready, and if they want to, you should question why. 

The worse-case scenario is the one I mentioned above. Be warned there are people in the community who will attempt to use fabricated occult things to exert control over you. I feel as though this is a somewhat unique angle to approach manipulation from; precisely because they're telling you things that could be false but you can't overtly PROVE either way. And if you're naturally trusting like me and a newer Path-walker and you respect this person and think they want to help you learn, all the worse. If someone tries to implant false memories of your past/change your perception of reality (this is similar to Gaslighting techniques) it can be generally refuted by other means. But someone inventing facts about you spiritually--what do you do then?

Well I'll give you a few steps I've found have helped me out.

A) If you suspect the information of being true, get several opinions.

Especially if you know OTHER oracle-types or spirit-walkers that deal in information--ASK THEM. Especially if someone is talking about your astral calling or your Gods or something and your gut is saying "This seems a little fucking creepy." Ask for confirmation from several sources. Ask your Gods. Ask your Guides. Ask your cards. Ask trustworthy or otherwise un-involved people that don't know either party very well and won't be biased.

B) Exercise suspicion of motives.

Analyze every possible reason behind the person telling you this information.

Even if it's someone earnestly trying to help you out. I prefer people be suspicious, even of information I give them.

C) How does that make you feel?
Does this information make you want to fucking run? Why? Really think about this step. Sometimes the information really does confirm something you know, and that's cool too.

D) If I accepted this information as fact, would it change dynamics in the corporeal relationship between me and this person?

If you accept this story as fact, does it change your corporeal thoughts about this individual? Does it make you think they're more...'powerful' than you? More worthy of respect? More worthy of being followed? WHY? Does this information throw off the balance of power you thought was there before? Does it leave you on the lesser end? Is it legitimately DESIGNED to produce this effect?

Especially the last point is a huge red flag of an occult-manipulator. If the information is DESIGNED to make you doubt yourself, your feelings, your autonomy, or your position is 'Equal' to someone else--to me, that's a very giant huge scary sign of someone out to fuck you up. Seriously--if you suspect someone of doing this, tell somebody you really do trust. If you don't have somebody, you can tell me. (My tumblr is here, it has an anonymous ask.) Really. I'm fucking tired of seeing this happen to people who were vulnerable at the time and looked at as an easy target. (Me included.)

It should also be said people serving as Godphones and intermediaries communicate messages that may unsettle you. That's not automatically a sign of illegitimacy! Deities do that. Some information does that. But in my experience the last point (D) is not something that happens with genuinely helpful people that are doing their jobs. It's work. It's not a personal vendetta to eradicate your autonomy, like an occult manipulator strategy might be. They are totally different things. I'm only mentioning them in the same article to illustrate how NOT THE SAME they are, lest people conflate the two.

And you can ABSOLUTELY ask for help! There's nothing wrong with that at all! If you suspect Loki is on your ass and you know a few people who Godphone for him, there's nothing wrong at all with asking for a second opinion to confirm your feelings, if they (and he) choose to tell you. But in that scenario you have inklings already and are seeking out help for yourself; as opposed to someone attempting to fabricate entire lifetimes that have 0 connection to you in an attempt to...gain something from you. And even in the case where I am moved to seek out confirmation from other people, I still keep my suspicions and analysis of motives. 

This series of questions is designed to keep you safe and keep you wondering. It's a series of things I wish somebody had taught me when I first encountered people I perceived as more open/powerful/oracular than I was, and therefore to be trusted. Staying on your toes like this will hopefully prepare you better in the case you run into one of this unfortunate individuals, and has the added bonus of prepping you most excellently for Spirits on the astral; of whom many are manipulative and will invent shit to get you to trust them.

I don't mean "trust nobody". I've come to believe the vast majority of people really do mean well. Rather I mean "give people (and Spirits) time to earn your trust, and thus prevent stupid situations from occurring." 

There is a difference.