Perils on the Path
Tim and I were reflecting recently on aspects of our spiritual/personal journey that for whatever reason, tripped us up along the way. These may have been things we read that we took to heart, other opinions that we too easily absorbed, or ideologies we over-invested in. Now, I don’t believe we can ever go totally off course, and there are usually lessons that can be gained from any detour. What we’re mainly talking about are things that ultimately proved unhelpful that we then had to work to unravel. Things that didn’t add to our experience or understanding of ourselves, except in the discarding of them. Which, I suppose, is also valuable, even if in reverse!
We’ve compiled a handful of such lessons below which we hope you will find resonant. We also hope that through our exploration, you may too be empowered to unpack whatever nonsense you’ve been carrying beyond expiration.
Lesson 1: Your Practice Doesn’t Need To Look A Particular Way (Julia)
Whether reading overly prescriptive texts or engaging in an online forum that projects a certain spiritual aesthetic or disposition, eventually one needs to realize that none of that is the ultimate truth. I now actually consider it fairly suspicious when things start all looking and sounding the same. I do realize that we need to try things on as we grow, but it’s important to know what is ours and what is a guise. We also have to realize that a lot of what we consume is going to fall into the category of trend, and maybe not for everyone, but certainly for many. I know I have wondered to myself...should I be dancing in the forest right now? Should I be reclaiming my wildness? Should I be using that new deck I see everywhere? I mean, maybe! You see, there is beauty in all of that, but that beauty shines brightest when it’s authentic to the practitioner. I think ultimately I have learned, and am learning, that it feels best when I stay in my own lane. Aspects of spiritual practice are just that - they are aspects. The essence of who we are is unconcerned with all of those details.
I have also come to see that we have to do this work within the framework of this unique essence and our personalities to some extent. The reality for me is that my spiritual practice is fairly mundane and spills into everything. It’s there when I’m watching TV, when I’m reading, when I’m grocery shopping etc. Obviously, the images I post on Instagram are curated because taking photos of the things I love is a creative outlet and passion of mine, but behind the scenes, it’s pretty messy and for this, I have judged myself too harshly. I do rituals on a whim. I merge elements of many systems and ideologies together, adhering to none in totality. I don’t consider myself anything in particular except maybe a seeker. I rarely ever see things in black and white terms. I don’t think there is a right way to do anything. Maybe all of this makes me incredibly sloppy and non-committal or maybe it makes me flexible and open-minded? We can spin it any which way. But I realize in the grand scheme of things, I basically know nothing, and this not-knowing keeps everything else in check. So in the absence of knowing anything for certain, what else is there to do but your own thing, no matter what it looks like? I used to let these inclinations make me feel less than in my practice, but now I also see how they could, in fact, be a strength!
Lesson 2: Spiritual Terminology Can Be A Judgment Trap (Tim)
Early on in my spiritual journey, I fell into the trap of black-and-white thinking, which found its ultimate expression in the phrases high and low vibration. This was around 2014, when the Starseed and ascension movements were gaining a lot of steam - and, along with them, certain ideas of what it meant to be “spiritual” (though, looking back on the history of religion, I suppose that is nothing new). As I came to learn, good, wholesome things that could be deemed "spiritual" were considered high vibration - healthy eating (especially raw veganism), abstinence, speaking and behaving a certain way, etc., while other things, like fast food, modern entertainment, sexuality, alcohol, drugs (no matter the context), swearing, and so on, were low vibration. Though I’m sure most others were able to take these ideas with a grain of salt, in my case, this new discovery laid the framework for a masochistic reward-and-punishment complex that I used to torture myself for the next few years.
It didn't help that I was only a couple of years beyond living in a dreaded low vibration - after all, I was a recovering drug addict who, only a short time ago, smoked three packs of cigarettes a day, ingested every noxious substance I could get my hands on, and expressed myself in a way that would make any sailor blush. And my new, high-vibrational spiritual identity, who did all the right things, ate all the right foods, and acted the right way, was obviously much better than the person I used to be. Couple that with the fact that I was an undiagnosed autistic person who'd spent his entire life fighting to gain approval from the people around me, I had a volatile cocktail of shame and self-reproach that was ready to bubble over at a moment’s notice.
As long as every condition in my life was perfect - I was eating, living, and acting "right" - I considered myself to be an acceptable human being. By my definition, this meant that I must have full, 100% control over my anxiety and other psychological shortcomings at all times… less than two years after weaning myself off the dangerously high doses of Xanax and Seroquel that I had been prescribed by my doctor. And if I couldn’t keep it up? Well… in my mind, that meant I was a complete and utter failure at life, and that, once again, I had proven myself to be an inadequate human. Low vibration became the scarlet letter I branded myself with whenever I failed to live up to the impossible expectations I’d set for myself.
This set me up for a cycle that lasted years as I fought to escape my low-vibrational nature - my past... my neurological shortcomings... my “baser” instincts. I tried everything, but no matter how hard I pushed against it, my shadow always pushed back even harder - and it remained this way until I learned to simply stop pushing. Even then, it still took a great deal of deep psychological and spiritual work to overcome the damage I caused myself with these dogmatic and ultimately unhelpful concepts.
Lesson 3: Discrimination Should Be Applied To Even The Most Respected Works (Both)
Reverence is a beautiful thing and we cannot tell you how much we’ve both grown in our practice by exploring the work of magicians, occultists, and spiritual leaders from all eras and walks of life. However, we have learned that we need to be careful about replacing our own authority because of what someone who knows a lot said a hundred years ago.
Of course, some of it still applies and makes perfect sense to our practice now, but this is where discretion comes in. Oftentimes when exploring older works, it is helpful to remember they were written in a very specific period of time, and that period, looking very different than it does today, certainly would have had an influence. We must keep this in mind when we go back in time. We must use discrimination. We must ask ourselves why the advice was as it was, and we must further question if it still applies in the exact same way now.
A lot of occult literature is obscured and for good reason. Some of those reasons, persecution for example, no longer apply in many societies today. As such, our modern literature reflects this. There are also topics one inevitably crosses in older works, especially as it relates to sexuality or how to deal with the shadow side of one’s nature, which sometimes feel perplexing. Perhaps this was good, self-preserving advice at the time, but surely things shift, adapt, and evolve. And back to the point about obscurity - it’s also good advice to not take everything literally. When we don’t understand something, we have to assume it's not meant for us to get. It can be a mistake to take something we don’t understand and approaching it at face value. Let your confusion be a guide and a red flag.
The biggest thing is this: just because someone you respect wrote something down, doesn’t mean it has any practical application today. It may, but it may not. It's always best to see how these things feel to the self, first and foremost. And understand too, no authority, no matter how revered, has it all figured out. It is possible that some of what they shared came from a place of projection, or fear, or the cultural landscape at the time. And even if that isn’t the case, even if it really did come from a place of deep knowing, that still doesn’t mean it has to apply to you and your practice today. Reading anything (whether written a week ago or a century ago) is a process of sifting for gold. If you can do this without attachment, you will surely find the bits that actually do have value, while freely discarding the rest.
While we could go on and on about what hasn’t worked for us, it’s also important to remind readers that there is no shortage of things that have. The purpose of sharing this is to demonstrate that everyone’s journey is unique and you can pick things up and put them down as you see fit. Above all, we honour everyone's right to decide for themselves what their journey and practice entail, regardless of what others are saying or doing. There are as many paths to attainment as there are people in this world. Sometimes the key to finding your unique way is as much in figuring out who you are, as it is in discovering who you most definitely are not.
With Love,
Julia & Tim