Nimue Brown's Blog, page 412

Good enough

“You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through  the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

Love what it loves.”

(Mary Oliver)

I keep coming back to these words; warm, affirming and hopeful as they are. Beautiful words, full of tenderness, compassion, acceptance. The reason I find these few lines so powerful, is that life experience has, for the greater part, written me a totally different version. My history says, “You are not good, but you must try to be. You should crawl, repenting because your body is offensive and your love is an affront.” I like Mary Oliver’s version better. I want it to be true.

I’ve tended to assume that the reason for this, is me. Of course this is how I experience the world – because I am not good enough. That’s not what Mary Oliver says, of course. Still, the sense that it is fair and reasonable to have people and situations put me on my knees, that of course being wounded and humiliated is fair enough, and of course people are justified in loathing, resenting, attacking and otherwise wounding me. My failures justify it all. I’ve noticed along the way that the various people who have fed into my perspective have all been really keen to make sure I understand I am to blame and at fault and how good they are for putting up with me. The ones I find the hardest are when something wounds me, and saying ‘ouch’ is such a source of offence to said person, so that I end up apologising to them for having been so inconsiderate as to have found what they did hurtful.

There are places where I don’t feel that way. The soft animal of my body loves the woods and hills. It loves the open sky and the wide horizon, the cry of owls at first dark and the exuberant song of the blackbird. The soft animal of my body relishes the comfort of my bed and the arms of my lovely bloke. When there is space, I sing and laugh, and cry, and love fiercely – all the things that I cannot do in those more regular spaces.

I know perfectly well what makes me happy. My joy is often in small and simple things. It really just takes having space and time when nothing seems too immediately wrong, for me to feel peaceful and contented. Despite people trying to tell me otherwise, I eventually worked out that I am not a difficult person to please. I’m just not very good at being happy in the company of people who get a kick out of hurting me, people who are offended by my intensity, or have some other thing going on that makes no sense to me. I am tired of places that are all about blame, and my ‘fault’.

I’m nursing an idea. My life has featured a run of people in it who felt entitled to say what I should do, how I should feel. People quick to accuse and slow to forgive, for whom I have never been good enough. People who would indeed have me walk on my knees through the desert repenting, while they tell me how good they are for me, how much I need correcting and improving. But maybe Mary Oliver is right. Maybe I do not owe that to anyone. Maybe I do not have to be so good that no one ever has cause for complaint. When I’m on the hills or in the woods, when I’m curled in the warm bed, I do not have to be good. I am worn out with the repenting, with the never being good enough, with trying to make this ungainly animal body into something acceptable, which often it isn’t.

Perhaps I could stop accepting that I deserve every hurt, every blaming, shaming humiliation. Perhaps I could stop believing that I deserve to be punished, and that everything which comes to me is justified and earned. Perhaps, rather than fearing rejection and trying to live up to impossible conditions put on me, I could just quit and walk away.

I am not good.

I am no longer able to walk on my knees, repenting

They are too bloodied and I am too tired

The soft animal of my body would like something gentler.

 

I dare to choose that for myself. I have started making moves to change my life, and a promise that when I start getting those old, familiar messages about what a crappy and destructive person I am and how everything is my fault, I am going to walk away. There are better places to be. On the hills. With the people who like me, and who do not have to tell me how noble and self-sacrificing they are being by putting up with me.

Songs from the darkest hours

I’ve been encouraged to show up and blog about the dark places. Knowing that it is useful to do so is really important to me. Depression takes away all sense of worth and purpose. It suggests there is no point getting up and trying. Nothing can be improved. Nothing can be fixed. It brings suffers, me most certainly included, to places of feeling that everything we do will be bound to fail. Of course I know, logically and because of the CBT work I’ve done, that once you let that take over, and stop doing anything, you have nothing to fend the depression off with. You’re just that worthless, useless person who does nothing and it is not a long walk from there to feeling like the world would be better off if you were not in it.

A sense of worth and purpose, a reason to show up. It can be a life-saving thing. And so I show up and blog in the hopes that I can say something useful, something that will help another person not quit today. Tell me that you need me and I have a reason to be here. Let me tell you that I need you to make that visible, that it helps, it makes a big difference.

I turn to the smallest things. A button sewn back on a garment. The washing done. I make jam. Small things I can point at, as evidence that I am not a total failure as a person. My jam came out ok. I have some merit.

I know, from book reading, that this has its feet in esteem issues. The person with good self-esteem knows that they are intrinsically worthwhile, loveable, valuable, acceptable. Depression and low self-esteem often go together, it can be a bit chicken-and-egg as to which causes what. I should not, I have been told by the books, base too much of my self-esteem on external achievement, or I will fail to cope when, inevitably, I fail at something. I should not base my sense of self-worth on how much money I earn, because that is to turn myself into a commodity. I should not depend on the opinions of other people for a sense of value. I find that very interesting. It’s like reading about Ancient Rome, or Mars: Things I can imagine maybe were, or are, but that are otherwise totally unavailable to me.

I have two things I want to share today. Beautiful, inspiring, reasons to keep writing from Neil Gaiman – http://www.theguardian.com/books/neilgaiman

And this song, which is an anthem to me. A reminder that others have walked these paths before me and survived them well enough to come back and sing something so raw and real that it often makes me cry just listening to it. I do sing this one myself, but I’ve got to be in a very good place to pull it off. Hearing it is a reminder that sometimes I feel together enough that I can sing this for other people. Sit down next to me…

Steampunk Meditation for Self- Transformation

Today’s post is a guest blog sent to me by Alison Leigh Lilly…. take note all ye members of the Secret Order, for if we had a required reading list, this would be on it…

A Steampunk Meditation for Self-Transformation

(Translation with Commentary by Alison Leigh Lilly)

The following is an excerpt (translated from the original Irish Gaelic) from the recovered manuscripts of Madame Fáine Collwaters, renowned Irish occultist and Druidess of the late Victorian Era and protegée to the influential Welsh antiquarian Edward Williams. I have done my best to include notes and references wherever necessary to aid the clarity of the text. Inline notes are set off in [[double-brackets]], with additional explanation in footnotes.

~~~

Induced Vision of Alchemical Transmogrification (In Alignment with the Triple Springs)

The Triple Springs[1], being the centers of energetic rotation located along the vertical axis of the practitioner’s core, are periodically stimulated through induced vision and breathwork as necessary for the transmogrification of diluted spiritus into the concentrated metalliferous earth (ie the lapis philosophorum)[2] sought by the Masters of the Druidic Arts through the alchemical processes detailed herein. Though there are those who adhere with marked imprudence to the now repudiated philosophy of the Southern Schools[3], this Adept obliges the practitioner to be guided by the wisdom of the Holy Agencies in pursuance of the Work, and to be satisfied with no baser influence than these that can be trusted in perfect confidence.

Notes:

[1] What are the Triple Springs? Although the recovered manuscripts are far from complete and I have been unable to find any single, conclusive description of the Triple Springs among the documents as yet, my impression is that these “centers of energetic rotation” are similar to what we might now call “chakras.” This concept of there being energy centers in the body is found in many different spiritual traditions, including the chakras of Hindu metaphysics, the dantian (also known as the Three Cinnabar Fields) of Taoism, and the Three Cauldrons of Poesy described in ancient Celtic poetry. Descriptions of the Triple Springs elsewhere in the collected manuscripts of M. Collwaters suggests an alignment which places the lowest Spring just below the navel, the middle Spring in line with the heart in the center of the chest, and the highest Spring on the brow or crown of the head.

[2] This is a reference to the Philosopher’s Stone, which in the writings of M. Collwaters is often depicted using various metallurgical metaphors, including silver, brass, copper and iron, as well as other alloys, in addition to the more traditional gold.

[3] Here M. Collwaters seems to be referring to a rival occult tradition, named only as the Southern Schools throughout her manuscripts, though scholars have reason to believe this was in fact a veiled reference to the obnoxiously patronizing opinions of her ex-husband. Elsewhere, M. Collwaters notes the Southern Schools’ view of the Triple Springs as “mills” or “keys,” denouncing these descriptions as vulgar and overly passive in their depiction of the Springs. In Manuscript A2, for instance, she writes, “The depiction of the Spring as a key on which an external hand might exert the necessary pressure to turn the spirit according to its will is deeply problematic, as is the view that the Spring may be made to turn as a mill turns, neither giving resistance to the channel in which it moves nor participating in that movement. Rather, the Spring is a vessel, an axis of stored energy, an agent of compression and expansion that involves itself in the activity to which it gives rise by the nature of its composition and material being.” There is some debate over her exact meaning here, but I tend to hold with the view that M. Collwaters sees the Triple Springs as physical as well as metaphysical centers in the body, which the practitioner must work with as an artist works with the nature of (and works within the limits of) a physical medium, rather than expecting to be able to exert complete control over the Springs as though they were merely abstractions or ideas solely in the mind. This view seems to be confirmed by the fact that she regularly encourages the reader to approach the “Holy Agencies” (a term she uses interchangeably for the Triple Springs) as active, creative beings in their own right, which can provide guidance and instruction of their own to the earnestly inquiring practitioner.

The induced vision is as follows:

The practitioner — calm of mind and with the inner eye turned to gaze idly upon the workings of the Triple Springs within the body — observes the Bright Fires of the Sky descending in a cascade of white gold. This white fire engulfs and warms the body, beginning first with the Spring of the Sun [[that is, the highest energy center, located on the brow or crown of the head]]. The Spring of the Sun, stimulated by the circulation of white flame, fills with radiant energy. The practitioner feels the stimulation of this Spring as a gradual rising tension [[as though a spring wire were being wound and tightened inside the body of a clock]]; however, this tension is not that of anxiety or discomfort, but the calm, warm pressure akin to a suspended high-pitched musical tone. As this bright, warm pressure builds within the Spring of the Sun, it flows through the Spring and into the rest of the body. The practitioner observes this process gently as white flames slowly consuming the body: softening the muscles and bones and tendons of the head, the neck, the shoulders, the back, the torso, arms and legs, all the muscles and tendons including those of the wrists, fingertips, ankles and toes. The practitioner observes calmly as the white fire spills over through the Spring of the Sun, filling the mouth and throat with warm, gentle pressure, softening and melting the lungs and heart, the stomach and all the organs, heating the blood and flowing through every pore of the skin until the body is engulfed entirely in a white radiance centered on the suspended Holy Agency of the Spring of the Sun.

In this state of intense heat, the practitioner observes now the Dark Waters of the Sea ascending in a rising tide of silvery black. These black waves flood and cool the body, beginning first in the Spring of the Moon [[that is, the lowest energy center, located just below the navel]]. The Spring of the Moon, stimulated by the circulation of black water, fills with restful, dark energy. The practitioner feels the stimulation of this Spring as a gradual increasing tension [[as though a spring wire were being wound and tightened inside the body of a clock]]; however, this tension is not that of depression or lethargy, but the calm, cool pressure akin to a suspended low-pitched musical tone. As this dark, cool pressure builds within the Spring of the Moon, it flows upwards through the Spring and into the rest of the body. The practitioner observes this process gently as dark waters slowly flooding and cleansing the body: softening the muscles and bones and tendons of the lower back, the thighs and calves of the legs, the upper back and chest, the shoulders, arms and wrists, all the muscles and tendons of the body up through the neck and bones of the skull itself. The practitioner observes calmly as the black waters spill over through the Spring of the Moon, filling the stomach and internal organs, softening and purifying the lungs and heart, cooling the blood and flowing through every pore of the skin until the body is flooded entirely with a cool, dark tide centered on the suspended Holy Agency of the Spring of the Moon.

In this state of balance between the Spring of the Sun and the Spring of the Moon, the alchemical process begins, giving rise to the Vital Energy of the Land. As the mingling of fire and water produces steam, the practitioner works with the energies stored in the two Springs to open and transform the third, the Spring of the Earth [[that is, the middle energy center, located in the center of the chest in line with the heart]]. The practitioner observes as the Springs of the Sun and Moon unwind and release their tension, rotating together to turn the center Spring between them [[as though along a gearshaft inside a clock]]. The practitioner feels the stimulation of this Spring as a gradual thickening energy, as the Breath of Life emerges through the mingling of the Holy Agencies of the Sun and Moon. Through the Spring of the Earth, stimulated by the spiraling circulation of Bright Fires and Dark Waters, the practitioner directs and communicates the Vital Energy in order to shape and move the Red Ore — either through physical gesture or through the guidance of the inner eye. Through the crafting and movement of the Red Ore, both inner and outer transmogrification occur as directed by the will and intent of the practitioner and communicated through the agency of the Triple Springs.[4]

[4] This last paragraph requires some further explanation to clarify M. Collwaters’ meaning. After circulating energy through both the highest and lowest Springs, these energies are visualized as meeting in the center, in the Spring of the Earth located in the chest, and mixing together to produce a third kind of energy: the vital energy or “Breath of Life” (in this case, visualized most likely as steam), which is the lifeforce of the physical world. The Breath of Life is associated with both the lifeforce of living things (such as plants and animals), and the animating force of the earth itself and the metals which are mined from it. The Red Ore which is shaped and transformed by the Vital Energy is the physical body of the practitioner herself. Alternately, the same technique can be used to “charge” another physical object (most likely a talisman or other symbol crafted out of metal, stone or bone). In either case, the physical object becomes a “gear” which is “turned” by the combined energies stored within the Springs that has been gradually built up and then carefully directed and released, and in being turned in this way, the will of the practitioner influences the world around her. This entire process can be imagined as similar to the act of winding up a clock which is then set loose to tick on its own until it winds down, or using steam-power to drive an engine or even to produce electricity which can then be transmitted (or “communicated”) through physical wires. From a metaphysical perspective, we think of this exerted influence as “spooky action at a distance,” or in other words, magic.

Exactly how the Vital Energy is used to shape and move the Red Ore is open to interpretation, but M. Collwaters seems to suggest that this can be a matter of actual physical movement and gesture (for example, physical exercise of the body, a kind of Victorian Yoga, or the crafting of a physical object or tool), or through creative visualization (ie “charging” an object or the body itself). One way to use this technique as a visualization might be the following: The practitioner raises their hands, palms facing inwards, about one foot apart and one foot in front of the body on level with the chest, elbows slightly bent, as if holding a basketball ready to pass. They visualize the Vital Energy flowing out through the palms of their hands as steam which condenses and thickens into a kind of red molten metal or ore which is soft and malleable to the touch. The practitioner then visualizes molding this red energy into a particular shape or symbol which represents their intention or the desired result of the meditative work. At this point, if the practitioner has chosen not to work with a physical object, they can either “absorb” this symbol back into themselves through the Spring of the Earth, or they can “release” this symbol by visualizing it dissipating back into steam as they slowly move their hands farther and farther apart in a gesture of opening and release.

Uncertainty

I question, everything, a lot. It means there are a lot of days when I don’t know what I’m doing, or what the point is. People following the blog have been generous indeed with support and kindness during some of those brutal times of lost direction and lost faith. My publisher at Moon Books, Trevor Greenfield was an absolute soul-saver when he asked me early this year to write him a Pagan portal. Spirituality without Structure will be along soon.

I question myself. I doubt. I pick over, chew over, gnaw until things bleed sometimes. I wrote about dark places recently. I did not say how much my own dark side frightens me, but it does. How deeply I fear all that seems wrong in me, and there is so much. There are days when I have no sense at all of there being anything in here that isn’t made of wrong. Sometimes I have a headspace that allows me to see that as a manifestation of depression, but there are also days when all I see is the wrongness, and the idea of letting myself off the hook by saying I am merely ill, is unpalatable. There are days when showing up here is hard, when I fear that anything I post will look like self-indulgence, but every time I’ve risked one of these, someone has found it resonant. If, by sharing, I can make the dark paths a little more bearable for someone else, then there is a point.

Some of you lovely readers walk the dark paths. You’ve shared stories and kind words when you’ve had something to spare. I don’t have much to offer today, but this is something I wrote recently. This time of year, and this state of mind have me thinking about all that is unacceptable, all that our civilizations have punished through time. The witches who were hanged, the heretics who burned, the gay and lesbian folk who were deemed monstrous. The mentally-different, straightjacketed at best, the learning difficulties folk who were demonised, the outsiders and the unacceptable. To anyone else who suspects that there may not really be a place for them in the village, I offer this.

Beyond the pale

I am your dishonoured dead

Buried unhallowed for fear

Transgressions in this life might

Transcend my passing

And haunt you yet.

Crossroad grave and stake

Exiled to the wasteland

For sins forgotten.

A forlorn waif now

Hungry remnant of ghost

To mourn outside the gate

Beyond the bounds

Unnamed, unclaimed, unmarked

But not quite silenced.

The dark side

We were walking, and I mentioned to my companion that he is one of the few people I really trust. He warned me, half-jokingly, that there is a much darker side to his nature, one that isn’t usually visible. I knew this. I asked him if he had considered the possibility that I trust him because I can see that in him.

We all have threads of darkness in our psyches. We all have impulses towards all manner of things that aren’t socially acceptable, aren’t good for us, or safe, tame, or clever. What I’ve found along the way is that a lot of people are totally in denial about this. It’s natural enough to want to present to the world as something made of goodness and loveliness, but the denial of the dark side tends to result in problems. I think much of the hypocrisy we see in both religious and secular hierarchies can be blamed on this refusal to recognise the dark.

When you don’t admit to those troubling impulses, they do not magically go away. What can happen instead, is layers of denial, justification, warping your view of the world to make it possible to keep believing that you are good and right. A person intent on denying the darkness within themselves can be tremendously damaging to encounter.

On the other hand, someone like my aforementioned friend, who knows their darkness, can be a lot safer to be round. They won’t be acting out of repressed impulses. Furthermore, if a person who owns their darkness messes up, it can be talked about, because they aren’t afraid to admit their capacity for that which is a problem. That way lies solutions.

I know my darkness. I’m obsessive. I have a huge capacity for rage and anger, which can manifest in really destructive ways. For the greater part, that tends to be turned against me, because that seems safer and more appropriate than unleashing it on the people who inspire it. I’ve mostly healed from what I did to myself the last time that happened. It is ok so long as I can keep it secret and hidden, but the problem with that method, is that if someone who cares for me sees the very literal damage my rage inflicts, that too is painful for them. There are no easy answers.

I know how to cause pain. I have an absolute knack for working out exactly where a person is vulnerable and where to hit them for maximum effect. I can hold resentment for years. I also have a dark and twisted imagination, allowing me to envisage hideous things. The inside of my head is full of monsters.

All of these things, if buried and left to fester would make me an absolute nightmare of a person. If I tried to pretend I did not do them, I could not guard against them or manage them. In owning them, I am able to work with them. Obsession can be unhealthy, but it also gives me a lot of power to harness for getting things done. The same is true of the rage, which I’m finding political outlets for. The tools that make a torturer can be used other ways, the desire to cut people up might make you into a good surgeon rather than a psychopath. That I can see how to hurt people can be turned around sometimes, allowing me to also see how to help. And that dark imagination, full of fear and horrors, is useful for being an author. I write stories, and nobody in the real world dies.

Spiritual writing

There is a long tradition of people writing about their spiritual experiences. My first serious contact was at college, where I read some of the writing of Puritans. They had quite a formula for writing about religious experience, and it always started with explaining what terrible sinners they had been before they found the light. It’s sweet, and rather touching to read people for whom spitting in the street and taking the Lord’s name in vain constitutes terrible sin.

However, there’s an important aspect to this approach, as relevant today as it was then: Vulnerability. It’s the flawed sinner who draws the reader in, the Puritans knew. I’ve read a lot of spiritual texts, from various people of all kinds of tradition. I can divide them into two camps: Those who express confidence, and those who do not. The confident writers have a very clear sense that it all works, their beliefs are well founded, substantial, dependable. They have systems that explain reality and their place in it. Those systems vary a lot, so the person who reads widely finds no one clear solution. Some authors can come across as having it all figured out, which, if you don’t, is off-putting. How do we respond to these great, wise gurus who have unlocked the secrets of the universe? Many will share things we can be doing, but I’ve never been able to go from one of those books to the same place of certainty about how the world works.

Which is largely why I fall into the second camp. I’ve not learned much from the people who claim to have it all figured out. I’m not always sure I believe them, even. The writers who move me, present far more humble, human faces to the world. They aren’t perfect, they don’t know it all. They make mistakes. They get lost and confused, they go through crises of belief and disbelief, they change their minds about key things and the path is not smooth for them.

I empathise with this. I don’t find the spiritual life easy. I don’t find any spiritual ‘truths’ to be simple or self-evident. Things happen to me that I struggle to make sense of. Reading other spiritual travellers whose feet of clay have fallen off the path now and then, helps me. I feel less alone, and less stupid. I feel inspired by their struggles, by the triumph of determination over uncertainty, by the way in which they keep coming back to try again. Recent reads that really worked for me in this way include Tiziana Stupia’s ‘Meeting Shiva’ and Mark Townsend’s ‘Diary of a Heretic’.

I am a ‘warts and all’ author because this is what I’ve got. I’m a very long way from being enlightened. There is a lot that confuses me. I get depressed and frightened. I don’t reliably believe that the universe is full of love. I don’t reliably believe that Gods exist, much less that they give a shit. What makes sense today may not help me at all tomorrow. I seek spiritual experience and philosophical insight with very little idea what I’m doing and no idea if I’m getting it right. I see from other authors that I’m not the only messy, chaotic meanderer in the realm of spiritual questing. That comforts me.

For me, what matters most is the journey itself, the questing, pondering and reaching. I fall over. I get up again. I break my heart. I have another go. This is what life means to me. Those people who have found their certainty, are most welcome to it. I would not begrudge anyone the clarity of deep insight or the apparent wonder of knowing how it all works. I don’t know how it all works, and because I am flawed and messy, I’ve yet to find someone who had it all sussed in whom I could trust. I am too sceptical, too cynical, I wonder if the certain folk are really, in their hearts, as confident as they claim to be, or if they are in the business of selling Truth. Truth, after all, is a more attractive commodity than doubt. Maybe these are people who have not been tested beyond breaking point and are therefore not full of cracks and holes. Maybe they are genuinely enlightened. I can’t tell. All I know is that I respond best to the authors who share their pain and confusion, and that I have no certainty to offer.

Epic fail

I’d meant to write about something else entirely today, but I’m so angry about this that I need to vent. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/11/genetics-teaching-gove-adviser

Apparently government advisor Dominic Cummings thinks that genetics play a far greater part in a child’s learning ability than any teaching. This is clearly meant to be a justification for dumping on the scrap heap any child who doesn’t achieve enough at a speed the government approves of. Einstein was a late starter. Not everyone blooms at the same pace, and every child deserves a chance no matter what the issues of their background.

What really makes me sick is that, scientifically speaking, this is bullshit. It’s more than twenty years out of date bullshit as well. We’ve been studying intelligence in humans for more than a century. We know, firstly, that intelligence isn’t one thing. There are many different, identifiable forms of intelligence – the physical intelligence of a footballer is very different from the abstract reasoning intelligence of a mathematician, which is different again from the social intelligence of a charismatic leader and so forth. It can take a while to figure out where a person’s strengths are, and current education is geared towards academic thinking. Which intelligence were you talking about, Mr Cummings?

What the current scientific thinking identifies is a range of influences on the development of intelligence. Yes, your genetics are one of those. The culture of your family, what praise and support you get, the culture of your peer group, and to some degree, your educational experience are also in the mix. No, education alone won’t do it AND WE’VE KNOWN THAT FOR AGES. The culture the child is in makes a huge difference so VALUING EDUCATION is a critical part of making a culture that allows people to flourish. We’ve known for a good twenty years that the most critical role of genetic intelligence comes when the environment is deprived. In a stimulating environment, genetic intelligence is less informative of outcomes. In an impoverished environment, genetic qualities really stick out. A few minutes with a search engine will fill you in, if you want more details.

We also know that the single greatest indicator of your likely success in life, is how much money your parents have. Not how clever they are, but how rich they are. The two do not dependably go together (see the royal family, half of America’s ruling elite, and the Tory government for clear evidence that there is no correlation between wealth/power and intelligence). Mr Cummings, it appears may be unable to distinguish between the effects of wealth, and the effects of genetics. Whether this is because he lacks the wit to put it together, or it’s a consequence of serving a political agenda remains to be seen, but either way I hold that such an under-informed, under-read person should not be in any position at all to make pronouncements about education.

I was, for the record, the first person in my immediate line of descent to go to university. This was not due to a blip in family intelligence, but to opportunity. Most of my cousins have also been able to do this. since It was never about the brains, it was about being able to afford to go. Judge me by my ‘genetics’ by the level of formal education my parents or grandparents had, and I’d have been booted out of education at 16 and sent to stack shelves.

Acceptance and letting go

One of the easiest ways to be hurt, is to have expectations of ourselves, or others, that are not met. When we meet the ‘perfect’ lover, and want them to carry on being perfect in every way, we are setting ourselves up to suffer. When we cannot accept feet of clay in our teachers, human fragility in our friends, the shortcomings of our parents and the mistakes of our children, we create a world of pain for ourselves.

I think we all have to go through the tricky transition from parents as the godlike figures of our infancy, to parents who have power over us and can reward or punish, to parents who we start to see as capable of error. The recognition that our parents are not all-knowing can be liberating, but also alarming. For me, it brought realisation (and relief) that I would not be expected to achieve the divine levels of insight I had formerly been attributing to all adults.

I have certainly turned out to be a failure and disappointment for others along the way. The feeling of never being good enough has haunted my life, and I’ve never been sure whether that was a fair reflection of problematic shortcomings, or that the people around me were maybe judging me harshly. I’m working on just plain accepting that this is what I get sometimes, not beating myself up if I know I’ve done all I could, and not blaming them or getting angry with them for wanting me to be more than I am. We’re all flawed and we’re all in this together.

Acceptance of others and compassion for them is a theme you will find running through all kinds of spiritual writing. However, for the abused child, the beaten spouse, the bullied employee, this is not a good line to take. If acceptance holds you in a dangerous, destructive place, then it isn’t helping. It’s worth taking a step back here. To accept the way someone is, does not mean glossing over it. Acceptance is not saying ‘oh, this is all fine and fair’. Acceptance begins with honesty. Much of the time that means being able to say ‘yes, my friend hurt me with this one, but there was no intent to harm, it was an honest mistake and we can let that go and move on.’

If someone is brutalising your body, heart or mind, then the truth of that needs to be owned. Accept that there is cruelty, malice, or a level of incompetence that is dangerous to be around. Accept that they are unreliable, or outrageously selfish, incapable of empathy, careless, or whatever the issue is. Know it and name it. Then step back from it to an appropriate degree, whether that means offering less, or taking whatever you can carry and getting out the door. If you’ve accepted that someone is toxic to you, don’t stay around to be subject to further bouts of poisoning. You can accept them from a distance. You can feel compassion for them, from a distance.

I’ve met people along the way who have made clear they expected me to be perfectly compassionate and supportive of them, but who could not be asked to ‘walk on eggshells’ for me. It’s curious how eggshells always come up. I’ve stuck around for some of it, too, years in more than one instance. How it works in practice is that the other person gets to open their mouth and let all the anger, frustration, resentment, jealousy and so forth of the moment, spew forth at me. This, I had to take with saintly composure, because not to is ‘unfair’ to them. It is hurtful, attacking, I am not compassionate enough. If they wound me in such an outburst, they may say afterwards that they didn’t mean it, and I am supposed to accept that and be fine. It is unfair of me to want kindness from them, they have to be spontaneous, free to express themselves. But god help me if I take their words with a pinch of salt on one of those rare occasions when they meant what they said.

What I have come to accept is that this is bloody awful to be around. I can never be ‘saintly’ enough to pacify such people. I never give enough and never do a good enough job of accepting their… whatever that is… to make them happy. My discomfort is not to be spoken of. I accept, therefore, that in such situations all I can do is absent myself.

There was a time when I felt that ‘failing’ in me, keenly. I believed that I really should be able to do more, give more, tolerate more. Unwillingness to accept my own flaws (perceived or real) kept me in contact with people who regularly shredded me.

I’m not a saint, nor am I capable of infinite compassion. I recognise that I’ve read a lot about how I should be more compassionate, but find I need to accept my own limits. One of them is that I am no longer prepared to martyr myself to what I increasingly see as other people’s selfishness, and toddler tantrums. Come out a little way to meet me, and I will give you my all. Expect me to bleed myself dry for you, while you speak of eggshells, and I’ll be some other place.

Small night mysteries

I walked home in the dark last night, my route taking me through a wooded stretch, where I needed the torch – I don’t see well in the dark, and it gets pretty dark in there. It was a dry night with a soft breeze, and leaves were falling from the trees. They came down in front of me, bright and golden in the torchlight, vivid against the unlit background. A quiet and soft rain of discarded leaves, rustling against the ground as they landed. It was a beautiful experience.

I had missed this.

For the last two years, narrowboat life had given me trees aplenty – hedge trees, edge of canal trees, but not places I could regularly walk where trees surrounded me. On top of that, the last few autumns have been harsh, weather-wise, with angry winds and torrential rain stripping off the leaves. There wasn’t much scope for gentle flutterings.

This year, autumn is taking its time. The tree outside my window has turned to yellow and brown in a leisurely way, and still has a few green leaves. The nights have been relatively balmy, the weather mild and I like this gentle season a good deal more than that which the last few years have delivered. I love that I live somewhere where I can easily go out and walk amongst trees, too. It is a very different experience, being in amongst trees rather than seeing a few here and there. I’ve missed that. I’ve missed enjoying the autumn.

I know a lot of Druids see themselves as solitary people, craving distance from the majority of humans. I’ve done that. I’ve lived for short stretches in places there were no other lights at night, no other humans in shouting distance. I’ve looked at the vast night sky and felt the loneliness of it. I’ve walked, as our ancestors would have done, in natural places with little light, watching the shadows morph into mythical beings, some of whom, the stories tell me, might be hungry. Sometimes you have to go outside the village to remember what the village was for in the first place.

Pagan Culture

When we encounter any community, our perceptions tend to be coloured by first contact, and by the loudest, most attention-grabbing members. That’s inevitable, especially if it doesn’t occur to you to think these things may not be representative.

For the last twenty years or so (the time frame during which I’ve been paying attention) the media has courted the louder, more unconventional side of the Pagan community. Quiet people doing gentle and sensible things whilst modestly dressed are not a story. Vibrant costumes and strong opinions have always been much more engaging, and the media loves a freak show. It’s not afraid to cast you in the role of madhouse entertainment even if you aren’t willing to come up with the goods, either.

In online discussions, there is always an abundance of people who will say something quiet, interesting and non-confrontational, but that gets drowned out easily when others are determined to shout. The peaceable get lost amongst the dramatists, the thoughtful lose out to those who say a lot before thinking, quite often the reasonable are silenced by the loudly irrational. It takes one or two voices to create a totally skewed perception of a whole community.

That can be damaging in a great many ways. Firstly anyone looking in from outside will see the noise and trouble makers far more easily than they will spot the gentle majority. Secondly, those on the inside may lose sight of being part of a quiet, sane and reasonable community if just a few people kick off. Yes, there are some dodgy Pagans out there. I say this with confidence because human beings of dishonourable and unpleasant intent turn up everywhere. Of course we have them, too. I am troubled by what fear of them does to the wider community; this sense that we should start from a place of mistrusting each other, assuming the worst, expecting poor behaviour and so forth. The trouble is, that kind of attitude begets the very mistrust and misbehaving we need to challenge. In a culture where it is ok to shout, accuse and mouth off, mostly what you get is negativity. Most of us are not like this by nature.

I know a vast number of Pagans personally. I’ve been privileged to attend events and rituals for more than a decade now. I’ve come into contact with volunteers in numerous organisations in all kinds of capacities. The vast majority of Pagans are lovely, well meaning, warm hearted people. The vast majority of Druids are lovely, well meaning, warm hearted people. A small, vocal minority are all too often managing to convince us otherwise. A handful of shouters and delinquents can leave us feeling like our whole community is a shoddy, shameful mess and a dangerous place. It isn’t. We have to hold that ground. That doesn’t mean being naïve about possible hazards and those who misbehave. Quite the opposite. It also means not being over-credulous in accepting the idea that everyone around you is a potential threat, because once ingested, that kind of negativity destroys community.

This is not a call to arms, because that would entirely defeat the object. This is a call to yarn and tea, to poetry and splendid hats. This is a call to stories about the good and meaningful things you are doing. Sing the praises of your own quiet activism. Talk up the many good spaces, the lovely events, the beautiful Groves and fabulous rites. Try not to get angry with the angry people, because it just feeds the fire of their rage, and while they are yelling, there is not much scope for helping them.

Most importantly, please, please refuse to believe that the noise of the antisocial few represents the culture of the majority. If we let the ones who strop about like angry teenagers (maybe some of them are in fact angry teenagers, it’s hard to tell online)… if we let them dominate the discussions, shape the spaces and define how we feel about our people and our culture, we have lost our culture, and to be honest, we will have deserved that outcome.