Are you now or have you ever been...

More Druidry.

I’ve been thinking another interesting insight I out of my visiting the Druid Grove meeting. At the end of the talk, after the leader had laid out a thumbnail sketch of what Druidry is, she asked each of us to tell the group which level of Druid we thought we were. There’s a cool overview of Druid spiritual tradition Here.

The Druid hierarchy consists of three levels: Bards, Ovates & Full Druids. The bards are pretty much what you would expect, singers, storytellers and entertainers. Though, within the Druid world, they take on additional roles of court jester and intelligence agent. By traveling far and wide, and listening wherever they go, and by having the ear of the king (as the jester), they keep the other Druids apprised of what people were thinking and the state of the land.

The Ovates are the healers, judges, justice of the peace, midwives. These don’t move around nearly as much, working within a relatively small area, so they can know and be known and trusted by the people in that area.

The Full Druids are the top of the heap. The decision makers and teachers. Responsible for keeping balance in all things, including things political.

When asked to pick one of these, I saw that I was somewhere between Bard and Ovate. Music, performance and theater used to be a big deal for me and they consumed a lot of my attention. Now, not so much. My attention is elsewhere and I’m more interested in being a healer than in getting noticed as a performer. To my chagrin, I also notice that “I’m not there yet,” at least in my own mind. 

I’ve been told many encouraging things, but, when it gets right down to it, I don’t feel like a healer. I’ve been told this would happen. That I would reach a point, after the initial coolness of learning all the good stuff wears off, when it comes home to me that the real world is not as simple as it appeared in training. The last thing our teacher told us at graduation, was that we now had unconscious competence, and that over the period of the internship, we will move that to conscious competence and build confidence in our skills. There is no question that I have had to face some hard realities about what I know, how to apply it and the limitations of time, money, and what the clients will allow.

Being out of the game for a month has really shaken my confidence. I had a group session last night that interesting, but not particularly exciting. It wasn’t clear if any of the people there had gotten what they were looking for, and that always makes me feel a bit low. I really need to get over that. People get what they need to get, and they may not be too forthcoming about it. They may not realize what they’ve gotten til some time down the road. It’s really nice for someone to have a really cool experience and tell us all about it, but it doesn’t always happen that way and I need to be ok with that.

It’s clear to me that my journey, to being the type of healer I want to be, is going to take some time. And in that time I’m going to have to work a regular job to finance my “education.” I want to travel more and take more classes, and meet more people. I don’t want the classes in order to “learn” stuff or get certificates to hang on my wall, but to have the experience of what that modality will teach me, on an unconscious level. Any type of training, if you approach it in the right way, forces you to uncover and confront aspects of yourself that get in your way. No one training will uncover everything, so it can easily take years to get to the bottom of the blocks and negative beliefs that keep you where you are.

Having a year and a half off has allowed me to let go of an enormous amount of cynicism about the computer industry. Now that I have a goal, the work is a means to an end, no longer the stultifying activity required to survive. This time around, I will find a position that suits my values, at a company that I can have some respect for. In the past, I would take whatever I could get, based on the premise that I had no value and was lucky to get anything at all. It still feels a bit strange to consider myself valuable, with useful skills that should be respected and listened to, but I’m getting there. I’m still working on striking that balance between honoring myself and standing up for my values, and not being an opinionated, selfish, jerk. As I say, I’m working on it.

Druidry has it cool points, and I may head in that direction someday. But right now, I’m still trying to find my footing in this more mundane world, footing that will allow me the freedom to explore my reality in different ways.

Druidry, My Introduction

I went to a Druid Grove meeting. It was part lecture, part ceremony. Mostly it was information about begin a druid as a philosophy and a life style. As pointed out by the presenter, some people treat Druidry as a religion, but she doesn't. In my mind, exactly what makes a religion a religion is a bit fuzzy. Time to Google.

Ok, I’m back. According to Merriam-Webster, religion is:

: the belief in a god or in a group of gods.

: an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods.

: an interest, a belief, or an activity that is very important to a person or group.

Hmm, these definitions kind of imply that almost anything you consider important could be considered a religion. On the other hand, the first two definitions require gods, and the lecturer completely skipped over the mention of any specific deities. Which would make sense when you understand that she considered it more of a philosophy. The main tenant of Druidry seems to be balance, balance in all things.

You can Google Druidry and learn get as much detail as you want, so I’m not going to give a full definition here, I’m just going to talk about the parts that interested me and gave me insights.

The funny thing about balance is that it’s not static. If you stand something up on end, sooner or later it will fall down, due to some external influence. There’s the concept that I was introduced through robotics called Dynamic Balance, which is how people, or instance, remain upright while walking and running. This is opposed to Static Balance, which describes how things remain upright while standing still. Early robots all used static balance algorithms when they moved, and needed to remain completely centered at all times. The severely limited their speed and stability; they were pretty easy to knock over. The newest models now use dynamic balance, which allows them to be “out of balance” in one sense, while remaining upright.

For instance, when you are running, especially when you are accelerating, you are out of balance; your center of gravity is not directly above your feet. You stay upright and move forward by continually catching yourself on one foot, then the other, as you continue to fall forward. You stay upright through a balance between how fast you are falling forward and how fast you are pushing back with your feet. Lean further forward, and you speed up (or fall down), lean backwards and you slow down or stop. Dynamic balance means you are continuously adapting and compensating for the changes the world throws at you. I say all this because the speaker spoke a lot about balance, but seemed to imply that there was a single, static, point of balance, and the job of the druid was to find and maintain that state.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that in this context, there is no such thing as one balance point. Everything is in motion, all the time, and don't retain our balance as much as we create new balance every day. What may be a great solution and bring balance today, could be a disaster tomorrow, when circumstances change. And things always change. When we expect change and anticipate upsets, we are able to navigate through life with a certain amount of grace. Ever tried to stand on a surfboard or a skate board, while it’s not moving? It’s Hard! A bicycle is so easy to balance when you're moving, really difficult to balance when your standing still. It’s the same way with life; if you try and fix your life into a single routine and resist change, you will find yourself working really hard, constantly facing upsets as things happen and the world shifts and changes around you. On the other hand, if you are open and can accept change, then bumps and perturbations are easy to recover from. Not to mention that life is a whole lot easier.

I’m as guilty as anyone of finding a situation I like, and, once there, wanting to keep everything exactly the same. Or having an ideal of how things should be, aiming for it, and getting upset when anything in my life threatened that course. When you’re young, change is cool, when you get more set in your ways, change becomes annoying. When Steve Jobs died, I had a sinking feeling that Apple, the Apple I knew and hitched a lot of my identity to, was gone. Of course, Apple is still here, but he Apple that I believed in is not. In reality, it’s probably been gone for years; That scrappy, counter-culture startup with unique products that gave the computer world the finger, had been fading for a long time, but I could pretend it was still there as long as Steve was running things. Now Apple is different, for better or worse, it’s different. Get over it.

That’s dynamic balance. The fact that work, school, church or pretty much any group you belong to, is going to change. You know you’ve been with any group for a while when you catch yourself thinking about “the good old days.” People come in, people go, kids grow up, your interests change, and you find yourself having to make the choice: Do I resist change, ignore new opportunities and allow my world to contract, or do I embrace change and try new things?

When you try and keep everything the same, same job, same friend, same hobbies, same music, same movies, same interests, you risk focusing on the details and minutia of life, and being constantly upset by all the wrinkles that life throws at you. It’s like being on a ship in the middle of the ocean and being totally focused on running the ship, so much so that you pay no real attention on where the ship is going. And then you’re surprised when you look up one day and discover that you’re in a place you never expected, and probably never wanted. That’s a life of static balance.

On the other hand, if you're on that same ship, but you have a clear idea of where you're going, then the details of running the ship are only as important as they need to be, in order to get you there. You give them just as much attention as they require, and no more. If things change, you adapt, because you know your purpose is what's important. When your purpose is clear, you can always find your way back, no matter how many storms, crosscurrents, or other obstacles appear in your path.

Some of you may have noticed that this analogy works on two levels. First, it's a journey to a particular goal. But, if you zoom back a bit, you see that the journey is your life, and the ship is your day-to-day reality. The size of the ship, it's complexity and all the "stuff" on board represent your physical and emotional baggage. And there is no goal, but instead, a purpose, a guiding principle or principles, that inform your choice of direction and give you a context to interpret all the things you see and do along the way.

To be a modern-day, philosophic Druid, is to seek dynamic balance in all things. A balance that allows you continuously adapt to the obstacles life throws at you, and the missteps you make along the way. Even if you fall, you can roll with it and get back up. If the obstacles seem too great, you can find a detour or alternate route. Your guiding principles allow you to adapt to changing conditions while informing you of which changes and actions are compatible with your values, and they can only do that if you release your attachment to the details of daily life.

Thoughts on The Seth Material

More thinking about the The Seth Material. I am dwelling on what he said about reality. I have problems with thing like The Secret on philosophical grounds, because I just can’t see how it could work in any reasonable way. I mean, just think of what would happen if everybody could, and did, manipulate reality for their own personal benefit? Wouldn’t the world be a total chaos of competing interests? What would happen when the interests of different people clash, like both wanting the same thing? You can see the problem here.

One possible out here, is to say that you need to be enlightened, to a certain point, before you can make any meaningful impacts on outer reality. That way, you will not be totally greedy and will work with the flow, so to speak, aiming for general benefits. Well, Seth says that’s not so: We all constantly construct our own realities, apparently using some template, but filled in using our conscious and subconscious beliefs as the guide. The trick is that each one of us has our own, personal, reality, which implies that how we experience the world doesn’t necessarily correspond to what others see, and that there is no objective reality out there. He uses the example of three people in a room with a book. In this example, there are three copies of the book, one constructed by each person, none more “real” than any of the others. The books are similar, but never identical. He also says that our personal realities only connect at a few points. I am truly not clear about what that means.

Notice that he said that we construct our personal realities. That everything we see and hear and touch and experience is constructed by us, for us, and no one else can see or perceive any of it. This raises a several questions for me.

My first thought has to do with the psychic and paranormal: Are these perceptions part of our constructed reality, or are they “leaks,” as it were, around the edges of our constructed realities, allowing us glimpses of what is behind the curtain? This is certainly logical and makes a lot of sense, given the context, that, no matter how well we construct our worlds, they will still require a certain about of “buy in” from us in order to be accepted fully. Just like in movies and games, where it requires a willing suspension of disbelief in order to become fully immersed, we have to play along with the rules and not notice the flaws and inconsistencies that might ruin the effect. Paranormal perceptions could be one of those flaws, which might explain some of the enormous interest in, and the incredible resistance to, the subject.

If we all construct our on versions of reality, how do they correspond so closely to each other, especially considering that Seth says they barely connect at all? (Maybe they don’t correspond as closely as we think, how would we tell, after all?) Is there some kind of underlying reality or….something…that connects us all and keeps us in sync with one another? It’s said that we’re all connected through our higher selves. That would provide a mechanism for connection, and the fact that we are generally not aware of this connection allows for information to be exchanged between individuals to co-ordinate their realities on a subconscious level. There is still a lot of speculation here, and I plan to keep reading. I’m most interested in information on just how we manipulate this reality that we’ve created. (Isn’t everyone?) Subject of another post.

Ghost Tours in the UK

On our recent trip, my daughter wanted to go on all of the ghost tours, they seem very popular now. The tours mostly just covered local folklore, but each one had spot and story that was worth the effort.

The first one was a walking tour, in York, where the last stop was the most interesting. This was at a main church, but not the main church. I can’t remember what it was called, but there is a statue of Constantine as a young man, outside. The church is currently undergoing a restoration. (Which seem pretty typical for the UK right now. They seem to be in the midst of a lot of preservation and restoration of their historic sites.)

The interesting story for this place starts with a friend of the tour guide. This friend was apparently doing some work in the church before they started the restoration, and he says he clearly saw a group of Roman solders walking through the church. They were only visible from the knee up, the rest being below the floor, and they seemed to ignore the building, walking through objects and walls, and then disappeared after leaving the building. He saw them clearly enough to be able describe their clothing, weapons and armor accurately. Nobody believed him, of course. But later, during the restoration, they discovered a Roman road beneath the church, in the right location and depth to account for the path the solders took and how far their feet were below the current floor level. The guide had more to say, but that was all that I really cared about.

The next ghost tour was on a bus in Dublin. Again, mostly history and folklore on a blacked-out bus. I supposed they wanted it dark and spooky while he was telling his stories. (The summer sun goes down pretty late at those latitudes, so you have to make your own dark.) There were only two stops where we got off the bus, one in the catacombs of Christ Church and the other at a park.

The park was the last stop, and it contained a ruined church. The park is what used to be the church grave yard. The bodies were still there, but the headstones had mostly be moved to the sides and lined up along the walls of the park and the church, roughly corresponding to the places where they had been removed. I saw this more than once on this tour. In Chester, they reused the headstones as paving stones, shades of Poltergeist!

Nothing but the stone walls remain of the church. Apparently it has be burned three times, each time killing people. The first time was after the reformation. Someone got word that a secret Catholic Mass was being conducted there and burned the church with the people inside, killing everyone except a few of the leaders that were then tortured and executed. The second time was a hundred or so years later, when it caught fire during a service and killing everyone inside. The third time took place in the mid 60’s. The church was a ruin at that time, but i guess there was still stuff in it to burn.

The guide told a story that happened about ten years ago, during one of these tours. A Mexican woman was on the tour, and she was a medium. When they got to this point in the tour, she remained outside and refused to enter the church. When asked why, she said that she was not welcome there.

After some time, she did enter the church walls, then gravitated to one corner where she proceeded to have a conversation with a “boy” no one else could see. She described the boy, and his description matched that of a local boy that had died in the fire in the 60’s. At that time, kids of the neighborhood played in the church. Now there is a gate at the one door and it’s locked.

Interestingly, the fire seems to have been set, but it’s still an open case as to who set it and why. Sure, she might have heard about the case somewhere, but the guide insisted that is was a small bit of local news that never made the national or international news.

For myself, I definitely sensed something in that area, inside the church, and especially near that corner. I didn’t want to get to close to it. Later that night, after we returned to the hotel room, I did some remote releasements on entities trapped in and around that church. Sure, maybe I’m undermining a tourist attraction, but I’m sure that the tour will function just fine even if there aren’t any ghosts still trapped in the church. And besides, how can you possibly justify keeping a sentient being trapped in limbo for entertainment? So you can make money? The guides will never know the difference, since they don’t seem to sensitive to this stuff at all, and I really could not, in all good conscience, leave them there.

Perhaps that’s why I was supposed to go on this tour, to free those spirits. I don’t know, but, when it comes to explanations, you pays your money and you makes your choice.

Getting Noticed

We just got home from our trip, we were gone a month to Norway and the UK. Not really my choice: If totally left to me, I would have stayed home, but was persuaded to go, and my instincts said I would get something out of it, so I went.

I suppose I did realize a few things, and maybe start to create some things Hard to know, but I think that some of the results will show up down the road. For me, it was mostly about being with people. I notice people so much more these days. I used to be so wrapped up in my own thoughts, feelings and worries that I had a really difficult time understanding what was going on with others. And now that I see what’s they’re all up to, I can’t help but wonder what all the fuss was about. What was I so afraid of?

The next thing I noticed about myself is that the monuments and places didn’t mean all that much to me any more. I just don’t seem to care about traveling that much any more. The first few times, it was cool and exciting, but now it’s generally uncomfortable, everything is different that it’s a constant to adapt. You always have to be a bit careful and you are always having to make decisions without all the information you’d like. It’s not a huge deal, but, after while it just wears you down and you just wish you could eat something familiar, sleep in a bed you like, or use a shower that doesn’t have some odd quirk. It’s so hard to find a place or the time to unwind. You’re always on the clock, needing to be somewhere or do something. And, if you’re not, you feel like you should be. You’re only there for a short time so I feel guilty just sitting around. I should be out, doing something.

After a trip or two, I got over the whole “it’s so cool to be in another country” thing. After that, I just wanted to blend in and act like a local. That put a lot more pressure on me to learn to speak and act like everybody else. Ug. This time, something interesting hit me when we were hanging out in the UK, it occurred to me that most of the people around us were tourists like us, and didn’t have a clue that we were American, or even not from the UK. Even when we were walking down streets in London or Dublin, nobody had a clue until we opened our mouths. Even then they didn’t seem so sure, other than the fact that they knew that we “weren’t from around here.” And, when the subject came up, everyone we talked to seemed to think it was cool. That’s a pretty odd feeling for me, but there it is. So it seems that most of the people you see or interact with overseas, on a casual basis, probably don’t realize that you’re from the US, and, if they do, they like the idea and want to hear more about it.

People really are the same everywhere. People in every country complain about their governments, and for mostly the same reasons. Sure, the details and the politics differ, but the overall feeling of being left out of the system seems universal. All people seem to have the same concerns about money, work, traffic, family, and the future. The challenges are different in every country, and the rules are different, but, at the end of the day, we all want the same things and we all need to work just as hard to get them. In each country, some things are easier, but other things are harder, so it all balances out in the end.

I learned, or perhaps recognized, a few things about myself too. I used to really be interested in architecture and history. Not so much any more. Now I’m mostly just interested in the really ancient stuff, and, even then, I mostly think about the people and what it was like to live then. I think I would have liked to hang out the choir people more, but Courtney and Jackie pretty much kept to themselves most of the time, so I needed to abandon them to get any face time with the rest of the group. I couldn’t do that a lot. And I couldn’t ever completely forget about the things that I had waiting for me when we got back.

I’ve been officially “out of work” for over a year now. That feels a bit strange. I’ve been living off saving and what little income I’ve been able to generate, but that may be coming to an end. This past year has been an important journey for me. I still don’t know if it’s over. I’ve learned about myself and have managed to change quite a bit. My attitudes about money and working have been transformed to the point where I’d like to have a job, but I’m not in a panic about it, or even concerned that much. Should I be? It feels like I ought to. I’m also not particularly worried about running out of money. It feels like I should be, and I certainly would have been climbing-the-walls desperate by this point a few years ago. But I’m not.

And another change is that I’m getting more and more comfortable talking about who I am and what I do. A lot of people don’t like it, but there you are. You hear plenty of stories about being who you are and standing up for what you believe, but it’s all theory until you do it yourself and start taking the flack for being different. It’s come home to me that I can’t do what I do, and help the people who really need it, without coming out and telling the world about the woo-woo stuff I believe in and deal with, on an almost daily basis. That’s an ongoing challenge that I suppose I will have to continue to deal with for a long time to come. Though, now that I think about it, I suppose that anyone that stands up for anything, anywhere, no matter how noble or unselfish the cause, will have people writing and saying nasty things about them, cutting them down, trying to hurt them or just gathering some attention for themselves. Since it happens to everybody, the only way to avoid it is to not get noticed. Since that’s really not a option anymore, I have to learn to accept the pot shots as what they are and not get too concerned about them. I know it seems different, and somehow more real, when it’s happening to me, but it’s really not that different from what happens to anyone else who stands up and get noticed in this world, for any reason.

The Seth Material

I  reading The Seth Material by Jane Roberts. I'm  a little surprised that it's as readable as it is. I suppose that I assumed that it would be dry and esoteric, but Jane makes it quite pleasant. It actually draws you in. I also thought that it would be a bit dated, and it would just be a rehash (to me, anyway)  of ideas and concepts that I was already familiar with. Turns out that I was wrong.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. The field of, what do you call it, metaphysics? Is sort of an underground movement, largely unrecognized by any of our media, which means that there is much less standardization and cross fertilization of ideas between different groups than might otherwise happen. So, despite the fact that this material has been out there for about 40 years, large chunks of it have not wended their way out into the larger community. 

On the other hand, the field is fairly new, in many ways, and still evolving. You could say that it's only been a relatively few decades since the grip of the Big Three religions has loosened to the point where competing ideas can be openly discussed without significant social, legal or religious backlash, so the field is still a bit of a Wild West with lots of ideas striving for recognition and dominance. There are a lot of contradictory, or at least confusing ideas, battling for recognition and dominance. It's also stumbling a bit while trying to find it's roots in ancient traditions. For some, it really is dominance, rather than consensus, that they're after. I would really prefer that we figure out what's really going on, as best we can, rather than set up yet another religion/belief system, but that's just me. Some people like the mystery and exclusiveness of their beliefs too much to contribute to expanding our understanding of what seems to be a greater reality.

In my own explorations, I have discovered a great similarity behind many different belief systems. It's almost like I can see how the same basic ideas were adopted and then morphed to fit in with the pre-existing beliefs. I suppose that always happens, but, to the outside, it makes it appear that there's a confusing pltethora of competing ideas, when it's really variations on a theme. It's like Christen sects that supposedly believe in the same thing, but can be very passionate about differences that, to outsiders, can very subtle and seem unimportant to the overall message.

It doesn't help that the ideas themselves are difficult to wrap you head around, like, for example, reincarnation. On the surface, this seems such a simple idea: You die and are born again. But very quickly the questions start coming: Why do you come back? What is the point? What determines what kind of life you are going to have? Is it wrong to switch sexes? Does it go on forever? If not, how do you get off the merry-go-round? If there's no judgment, no God, no threat of punishment, what incentive do people have to be good? Why is there evil? Why do we remember past lives, doesn't that mess with the plan? Why do past lives "bleed through" in memories, birth defects, phobias and other health issues? Google "Reincarnation" and you will find a whole lot more questions and discussions, from many points of view, that serve to muddy the water still further.

I don't have answers for all of these, just opinions, but I have always felt that the reason it seems so confusing is that there's a bigger picture we just not seeing. This book has given me a glimpse of that bigger picture. It's also reminded me that I still have many prejudices and basic assumptions that make these concepts very difficult to wrap head around.

In the part I'm reading now, Seth says that we all create our own reality. He specifically states that that doesn't mean we create the universe, just our personal reality. He also makes it clear that he's not talking about subjective experience, but creating physical reality. Exactly how that works, with many people interacting with the same objects, is not clear to me. Seth talks about it, that's one of the parts I can't get head around. Maybe in time it will become clearer.

I have no trouble with the idea that how reality appears and how it actually is, can be very different, but really getting it, is something else. Sort of like the idea that the moon and sun appear to go around us, when it's actually the other way around, I'm trying to come up with some kind of framework I can use put all the pieces into, that makes sense to me. No luck so far. I think I have too many hidden assumptions getting on the way, but, by holding to the possibility that it could make sense, I'm allowing for the kind of breakthrough that could change my life.