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First Posts are always Awkward
Jun. 19th, 2020 05:42 amI had a different journal on this site once, somewhere around the time this site came into being, I'd drifted over with a small crowd of then friends when Livejournal was sold. Those were the only social media I'd ever used; I refused Facebook (and stuck to it regardless of how much pressure was put on me), had zero interest in Twitter, I'm only passingly familiar with anything newer than that. That journal was abandoned and then deleted when I finished drifting out of the sub-subculture that brought me over here - there was nothing in it that represented either who I was or who I wanted to be, nothing that was worth keeping around for the memories, a clean break with the whole sorry mess was the better road to take.
I've drifted even further from the internet in the years since, further from social anything, really. Part of it is lingering burnout from the circumstances that separated me from that sub-subculture, part is the way the whole tone of online discussions have changed since then. I'm one of those people, few social skills and always out of step, the most simple gesture takes an enormous effort even under the best of conditions, any reward to be found is very small if indeed there is any; with that as my default setting, I tend to retreat in high risk situations. For the most part, I've been fine, occasionally nostalgic for the rose tinted view of the good old days, less and less so as time went by, I got along on my own; all told, I think I got out at just the right time.
And now? For one, I've been following John Micheal Greer's work for the last few years, and he's moved over here and brought many of his regular commenters, some of whom have created their own content that I pay some attention to as well. For the first time in a long time, I see a group that might be worth the effort, and the risk, of trying to involve myself with, even if years of inactivity and burn out have kept me hovering just on the edge, making only an occasional anonymous inquiry. Creating a name and a home base where my own novice ramblings can be found is a solid step in that direction, as it was once before.
Second, well one reason I initially joined and stuck with these sites is that I felt I had something to say. That's not been the case for many years, the interests that brought me out of my hermit cave have mostly been stuck in place, and I don't kid myself that anyone cares about the minutia of my daily mundane life - I barely care about it, certainly not enough to get it on record for the benefit of the masses. And so I've been silent. But that may be changing now, and this more laid back public journal like platform may be the best place for these thoughts.
When I joined Livejournal forever ago, it was a way to begin exploring NeoPaganism. I'd had a growing interest in alternative spirituality, I'd had some powerful experiences with a god (or a being I believed to be a god, even believed I knew who it was; I still mostly believe this, even if I feel the need to put a small asterisk next to it) that changed my life; NeoPaganism was - well, never a perfect fit no, but it was what was available and it was close enough. I went out into the online world to meet people and to learn.
And what can I say about the time period now, years later? My time under the NeoPagan umbrella was not only a waste of time, it was actively damaging. All was fine for the short time I was mingling among the Pagan lay people, attending a weekly service as well as holiday celebrations (yeah, I had both of those things, competently run too such that I know they're still going though I have long since moved away; I lucked out with a good initial group); it was when I started looking to something more esoteric, when I recognized a desire to follow the path of the mystic, that the problems really started.
I'm greatly indebted to JMG in a way I can't quite express, as well as to whatever turn of fate that brought him to my attention (and at a time when I was capable of listening). His writings have provided me with the basic foundational practices (that actually work) that I sought in several groups and never found. He helped to point out some of the flaws and problems in the belief system I'd left, as well as its adherents, some things I had noticed but couldn't put into context. Probably most important of all, he gave me an image of the way things actually work (and don't work), a realistic range of expectations - something NeoPaganism (and especially the groups I was involved in) lost the plot on a long, long time ago.
The groups I was involved with toward the end were pretty bad, for reasons that seem obvious in retrospect. Using ideas drawn from The Cosmic Doctrine that have been bubbling in my head the last few days (I'm trying to catch up on the book club), the further I drifted out of alignment with my chosen path's Ring Cosmos, the longer the situation went on, the worse my company got as I moved closer and closer to the edge, the boundary of the Ring Pass Not. Even when it was some of the same people along for the same ride, they just got more delusional. And out at the boundary is only dissolution, something that seems to have happened to many of the people I once socialized with. I admit it's second hand information, from having checked on them online (the ones that still were, sometimes finding stories about the ones who weren't), and yet I noticed a pattern in what I was seeing, that I could see the beginning stages of it in my own life and I was determined to stop it, to course correct, to get back to where it should be.
I spent three years running in circles, running myself into the ground, trying to figure it out. The wingnuts of the latter years were easy enough to dismiss, to recognize those bloated leeches clinging to my mind, pick them off and move on. But it wasn't just the wingnuts, it was even the saner people from earlier on; it was the whole NeoPagan dynamic, everything I'd been exposed to, had come to believe, was mostly all wrong. The expectations, the how things really work (and don't work, let's not forget that) might have been the biggest obstacle. That world view, as I've come to realize, is too heavily (and no doubt unconsciously) inspired by modern fantasy fiction tropes that have little to do with any reality, spiritual or otherwise. In retrospect, I think a lot of the people around me were larping at being powerful wizards and deep visionaries; there was that high level of dysfunction, people whose personal lives are one dumpster fire after another, that is often seen in these circles, and that larping seemed to serve both to paper over how miserable they openly were and to provide an excuse for why they had to be so miserable (just the cross I have to bear being the holy chosen one of deity X - ugh, the number of times I saw some statement like that).
There is also the way that personal issues and spirituality became welded together, tangled in an unholy mess, turning the gods into an unhealthy coping mechanism. Part of that may well have been baggage that naturally came to the surface and needed dealing with, but a lot of it I think was not so natural, more deliberately done. This is an idea I'm just starting to play with, so I'm nowhere near ready to expound on it in any great detail. Just that it may have made it harder to see things that needed to be given up, and that much harder to actually do it.
I like to think I've come to a turning point. Tentative divination (tentative because I developed a bad relationship with it in the years I was running in circles and desperate for clarity, I'm cautiously dipping my toes back in) suggests there is something there but it's fragile, the pull toward old ways of thinking and the emotional load that was placed on them is still powerful. I'll have to work hard to get out of its orbit, to keep the realistic expectations in mind, It may be that I've been in this position a few times before over the last three years and each time couldn't hold on to the fragile new beginning when the old ideas moved back into place and raised objections that the outcome wasn't what it should be so there must be something wrong, leading to another crash and burn. Maybe understanding the process will help in some small way to weather the storm; I know it won't be everything, but it is something different.
That's what I can offer to the discussion: the experience of being set on a spiritual path, being knocked off of it, and the ongoing struggle to claw my way back. The problems in NeoPaganism and where I found traditional occultism to make more sense, because I highly doubt I'm the only one who has had such troubles while yet avoiding dissolution (hell, if JMG's predictions are correct and NeoPaganism has set itself up for a messy implosion that will be arriving very shortly, that number is likely to go up).
I don't expect many to read, but for anyone interested, welcome aboard.
I've drifted even further from the internet in the years since, further from social anything, really. Part of it is lingering burnout from the circumstances that separated me from that sub-subculture, part is the way the whole tone of online discussions have changed since then. I'm one of those people, few social skills and always out of step, the most simple gesture takes an enormous effort even under the best of conditions, any reward to be found is very small if indeed there is any; with that as my default setting, I tend to retreat in high risk situations. For the most part, I've been fine, occasionally nostalgic for the rose tinted view of the good old days, less and less so as time went by, I got along on my own; all told, I think I got out at just the right time.
And now? For one, I've been following John Micheal Greer's work for the last few years, and he's moved over here and brought many of his regular commenters, some of whom have created their own content that I pay some attention to as well. For the first time in a long time, I see a group that might be worth the effort, and the risk, of trying to involve myself with, even if years of inactivity and burn out have kept me hovering just on the edge, making only an occasional anonymous inquiry. Creating a name and a home base where my own novice ramblings can be found is a solid step in that direction, as it was once before.
Second, well one reason I initially joined and stuck with these sites is that I felt I had something to say. That's not been the case for many years, the interests that brought me out of my hermit cave have mostly been stuck in place, and I don't kid myself that anyone cares about the minutia of my daily mundane life - I barely care about it, certainly not enough to get it on record for the benefit of the masses. And so I've been silent. But that may be changing now, and this more laid back public journal like platform may be the best place for these thoughts.
When I joined Livejournal forever ago, it was a way to begin exploring NeoPaganism. I'd had a growing interest in alternative spirituality, I'd had some powerful experiences with a god (or a being I believed to be a god, even believed I knew who it was; I still mostly believe this, even if I feel the need to put a small asterisk next to it) that changed my life; NeoPaganism was - well, never a perfect fit no, but it was what was available and it was close enough. I went out into the online world to meet people and to learn.
And what can I say about the time period now, years later? My time under the NeoPagan umbrella was not only a waste of time, it was actively damaging. All was fine for the short time I was mingling among the Pagan lay people, attending a weekly service as well as holiday celebrations (yeah, I had both of those things, competently run too such that I know they're still going though I have long since moved away; I lucked out with a good initial group); it was when I started looking to something more esoteric, when I recognized a desire to follow the path of the mystic, that the problems really started.
I'm greatly indebted to JMG in a way I can't quite express, as well as to whatever turn of fate that brought him to my attention (and at a time when I was capable of listening). His writings have provided me with the basic foundational practices (that actually work) that I sought in several groups and never found. He helped to point out some of the flaws and problems in the belief system I'd left, as well as its adherents, some things I had noticed but couldn't put into context. Probably most important of all, he gave me an image of the way things actually work (and don't work), a realistic range of expectations - something NeoPaganism (and especially the groups I was involved in) lost the plot on a long, long time ago.
The groups I was involved with toward the end were pretty bad, for reasons that seem obvious in retrospect. Using ideas drawn from The Cosmic Doctrine that have been bubbling in my head the last few days (I'm trying to catch up on the book club), the further I drifted out of alignment with my chosen path's Ring Cosmos, the longer the situation went on, the worse my company got as I moved closer and closer to the edge, the boundary of the Ring Pass Not. Even when it was some of the same people along for the same ride, they just got more delusional. And out at the boundary is only dissolution, something that seems to have happened to many of the people I once socialized with. I admit it's second hand information, from having checked on them online (the ones that still were, sometimes finding stories about the ones who weren't), and yet I noticed a pattern in what I was seeing, that I could see the beginning stages of it in my own life and I was determined to stop it, to course correct, to get back to where it should be.
I spent three years running in circles, running myself into the ground, trying to figure it out. The wingnuts of the latter years were easy enough to dismiss, to recognize those bloated leeches clinging to my mind, pick them off and move on. But it wasn't just the wingnuts, it was even the saner people from earlier on; it was the whole NeoPagan dynamic, everything I'd been exposed to, had come to believe, was mostly all wrong. The expectations, the how things really work (and don't work, let's not forget that) might have been the biggest obstacle. That world view, as I've come to realize, is too heavily (and no doubt unconsciously) inspired by modern fantasy fiction tropes that have little to do with any reality, spiritual or otherwise. In retrospect, I think a lot of the people around me were larping at being powerful wizards and deep visionaries; there was that high level of dysfunction, people whose personal lives are one dumpster fire after another, that is often seen in these circles, and that larping seemed to serve both to paper over how miserable they openly were and to provide an excuse for why they had to be so miserable (just the cross I have to bear being the holy chosen one of deity X - ugh, the number of times I saw some statement like that).
There is also the way that personal issues and spirituality became welded together, tangled in an unholy mess, turning the gods into an unhealthy coping mechanism. Part of that may well have been baggage that naturally came to the surface and needed dealing with, but a lot of it I think was not so natural, more deliberately done. This is an idea I'm just starting to play with, so I'm nowhere near ready to expound on it in any great detail. Just that it may have made it harder to see things that needed to be given up, and that much harder to actually do it.
I like to think I've come to a turning point. Tentative divination (tentative because I developed a bad relationship with it in the years I was running in circles and desperate for clarity, I'm cautiously dipping my toes back in) suggests there is something there but it's fragile, the pull toward old ways of thinking and the emotional load that was placed on them is still powerful. I'll have to work hard to get out of its orbit, to keep the realistic expectations in mind, It may be that I've been in this position a few times before over the last three years and each time couldn't hold on to the fragile new beginning when the old ideas moved back into place and raised objections that the outcome wasn't what it should be so there must be something wrong, leading to another crash and burn. Maybe understanding the process will help in some small way to weather the storm; I know it won't be everything, but it is something different.
That's what I can offer to the discussion: the experience of being set on a spiritual path, being knocked off of it, and the ongoing struggle to claw my way back. The problems in NeoPaganism and where I found traditional occultism to make more sense, because I highly doubt I'm the only one who has had such troubles while yet avoiding dissolution (hell, if JMG's predictions are correct and NeoPaganism has set itself up for a messy implosion that will be arriving very shortly, that number is likely to go up).
I don't expect many to read, but for anyone interested, welcome aboard.
