Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's just past midnight, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. With certain exceptions, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note:  Any question received after then will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted. (I've been getting an increasing number of people trying to post after these are closed, so will have to draw a harder line than before.) If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 143,916th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.0 of The Magic Monday FAQ here. Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says. 

The picture?  I'm taking a momentary break from chasing down photos of my lineage. Today is the spring equinox here in the northern hemisphere, one of the holy days of the Druid calendar, and this is a photo of the spring equinox sunrise as seen from an ancient stone chamber at South Royalton, Vermont -- one of many astronomically oriented megalithic sites here in New England. The photo's courtesy of New England Antiquities Research Association (NEARA), which was gracious enough to send it around yesterday morning.

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With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***

Comments

[open_space]

I think I have an addiction to negative thinking and on avoiding happiness if it is not exactly the way I want it. That sounds really odd but it seems to be the case. Perhaps I like to blame everything on something or somebody else because that way I can escape the responsibility that I have on my life. I've seen this topic discussed before here and if I look back I have always flinched on it when I read it.

This past few weeks I asked about an affirmation about changing my life but before deploying it and after realizing that anywhere that I might take my life to probably isn't worth getting to if I don't do it joyfully I would like to add some positivity to it but one thing I don't want is for it to become "brightsided"

Do you have any advice on how to cultivate a positive mindset about the circumstances I encounter in my life, despite that I want to change them? It certainly isn't good to go about hating my day to day when at least at present, is the best that I can get. I feel that with my present mindset nothing I get would be enough and that seems as much a part of the problem as the circumstances by themselves.

[ecosophia]

This is the sort of situation where I very strongly advise systematic journaling. It makes things much easier if you can unpack the tangled feelings from the past that are getting in the way of clarity in the present.

[open_space]

After I finish moving to my new apartment, I have to do some serious ordering of my life. That's the first step at least, too many bad memories in the current one. A fresh start seems like a good opportunity to get these things in order and start some "systematic" journaling instead of messy journaling.

It won't be fun, the way I flinch from it tells me that, but at least right now it is clear to me that I cannot pursue anything else with success until I start pursuing it from a stable place and with my life in order, be it magic or be it a different career or much of anything else. I do have to thank Saturn for that. On week two of the Training the Will series now and going for another lecture of the MOE lecture tonight. Hopefully I will make it for attunement shy of three weeks from now. After that I might dare to do the OSA work which seems like an even more 'systematic' approach to journaling, but for now moving is my goal, then attunement, then, I'll figure out. :-)

Wish my luck!

[ecosophia]

Luck!

[jprussell]

Not exactly a mantra/affirmation, but a potentially useful frame for thinking: Jordan Peterson recommends treating yourself as if you are "someone you are responsible for helping" (it's his second rule in 12 Rules For Life. The idea is that if you have a friend, loved one, or pet that you care about, there are a lot of things that you would see clearly that you might hide from yourself or not do for yourself (true fact: more people make sure their pets take a complete course of medicine than take it for themselves). It also accounts for overly-positive thinking that doesn't catch bad patterns - if you saw your best friend dragging himself into the same problems over and over again, eventually you'd tell him to stop, rather than saying "I'm sure it'll be fine".

At any rate, if you wanted to turn it into an affirmation, maybe something like "I follow the advice I would give someone I love in all situations."

On a more magical/symbolic side of things, one thing that seems to be helping me is to focus on the watery/heart-based side of things to balance out the airy/mental side. "Feeling" things more clearly and strongly is not all sunshine and rainbows, but it does seem to be helping the more I let myself do it.

Best of luck in your work,
Jeff

[open_space]

Thank you Jeff! And thank you for your message before that too. Funnily enough I've been trying to do something like that, looking at it from the outside to try to avoid the pitfalls. That idea about self-responsibility is definitely part of it for me, and I need to root it in self love, for otherwise I feel that I am just an angry boss with myself that demands to keep going forward no matter what. Sometimes that self-responsibility is to take it easy with oneself, I don't want to face burn out or something worse.

I think I need something like that about focusing on the feelings as well, something that focuses on not removing value from what I do too despite that I don't like it. It might not be the best, but doing bad work in a bad mood is worse that not doing any work at all... Hmm. I do need to think this through for a bit more but I feel I have a tentative affirmation now that can help me get up from the mud, clean myself and start walking again. Wish me luck! Transformation ain't easy, huh.