Sister of Flame

Holy Carp, I'm Moving Here Too!

2006-10-30T15:53:00.000-05:00

yup. I'm also integrating the blogs!

www.flamekeeping.org

it's the place to be!

It's not fair!

2006-10-24T09:39:00.000-04:00

I'm always surprised at how much adults cry about fairness. After all, it's not like fair worked when we were five. So why would it work when we're forty-five?

Sure, it would be nice if life were fair. There are all kinds of things that would be nice that don't seem to exist, though.

Fair implies that people deserve what they get, and I think it's definitely dangerous belief that people deserve everything they get. That goes back to blaming the victim for what happens to them. Sometimes people get what they deserve. Often they don't. Lottery winnings don't go to the most moral or most virtuous player. They go to whoever gets lucky enough to win. The most evil criminals aren't the ones who get caught. Just the unlucky and the ones who don't plan.

We can create a more just world, if we work together. We can try to both be just in our lives and work to increase justice. That means we need to be aware of what the laws are and whether or not we need to work to change them. We need to be just in the small things in our lives. Just because we can take advantage of someone doesn't mean we should. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's right. And just because it's ILlegal doesn't mean we shouldn't do it anyway. Civil disobedience shaped our country. Sometimes laws must be fought against. Sometimes they need to be fought for. What's important is that we think about it and do what is just, and create the world we want to live in.

Questions:
How do I create justice? I really don't know. I try to follow the rules, but that's not always justice. And I try to be fair, but I don't know if that's justice either. I do try to speak out when I think something is wrong, but I do it very carefully and I don't poke very far out of my hole. So I should do more. I don't think I create injustice in my life, but I'm not sure I do much to push towards justice either.

What does a just society mean to me? Victims are not blamed for what happens. People treat people as they've earned to be treated. Transgressions are punished, but more, they're worked against from the beginning. In a just society, there is less crime not because punishments are harsh but because there is less reason. In a just society, people have and recognize other options than crime to get ahead. I feel we live in a semi-just society. There are good points, but there are also bad ones. There's a long way to go.

What matters more, justice or mercy? Mercy without justice is hollow, justice without mercy is harsh. They go together. But I think justice is more necessary, even if it is harsh.

Could we ever live in a truly fair world? No, because there are always going to be differences of ability, desire, want, and starting point. That said, I think it's a worthy goal. Some of the most important goals we can have are impossible to achieve. But that's okay, because it's in striving and trying we change the world for the better.

It's your fault this happened

2006-10-17T08:33:00.000-04:00

It's hard not to blame the victim sometimes. I know I do it. It can be so hard to believe that what's going on isn't someone's fault, so we just decide that it is because it's easier than dealing with reality.

Usually we come up with language that tries to make it look like we're being sympathetic, though. Stuff like "if you prayed, God would fix it" is blaming the victim. It's saying that they're not praying enough, or worse, that God doesn't like them for some reason. "It's a lesson you must have needed to learn" or "it's bad karma you had to work out" is similarly blaming the person for what happened. Both of those imply that there was a "good reason" for it to happen and that it's the right thing to have happened.

But doing this is horribly, horribly wrong. When we blame the victim we're saying we can't help reality. That "you should have known better" or "you should have been more careful." It's a refusal of responsiblity and a refusal to admit that we are interconnected.

When we say it's something we can't do anything about, we're saying that the Universe can't be improved. When we blame the victim, we're saying the same thing. We can't improve the Universe because it's the victim's problem.

It's easy to do. But that doesn't mean it's not a lie.

Questions:
Where do I blame victims in my life? I try pretty hard to avoid it, but I don't always succeed. My problem is usually looking at parents and thinking that "they" should have done better than they're doing. And I do this knowing full well how hard parenting is. I blame myself for being a doormat in the middle of the night when my son wakes up screaming and I nurse him instead of encouraging him to sleep through the night. It's hard not to, especially when I do know it's going to make me cranky and that I could make him sleep.

What do I get out of blaming the victim? Control, in a way. If I "know better" but don't actually try to do something, I can hold out the belief that I can fix it. I don't need to deal with the possibility of failure if I don't actually do it. And I don't have to deal with the fact that I'm talking about a separate person. I can't control my son. It's entirely possible nothing I do will get me the result I want. (or it will be something I'd never think of). He's not a part of me. He's himself. When I blame me for what's happening, I deny that individuality to a point.

What needs to change so I stop blaming victims? It's an ongoing process, I think. There's not a once-and-done way of getting done with that attitude. Instead, you do it one piece at a time in each aspect. I've pretty much stopped blaming people for being "dumb" for not thinking the same way I do, so there's progress. And I'm sure there's something I do that I don't even think of. It's a constant process of self-improvement.

But it needs to be done.

What little I have is ... mine?

2006-10-10T07:51:00.000-04:00

I get irritated when I hear that there is "enough" for "everyone" of anything that there clearly isn't. Like money. Sure, there can be enough for everyone, but that only works when the distribution system is working and no one's hoarding, and we all know how well that goes.

Denying reality is not a virtue. It is a good thing to have an idea how the world should be and to work towards that ideal. It is not a good thing to take that idealism and expect the world to already line up to it. When we try to force the world to match our preconceptions, we hurt ourselves and those around us.

The world is not a bounty waiting to be picked. The Divine loves us, yes, but that doesn't mean that our path is smooth and everything is built for our advantage. The world is rough and dangerous, and there's no loving spirit watching over just us trying to fix our life and ignoring everyone else. We have to live with each other with everything that means, the good and the bad.

I try very hard to live without being grasping, without clinging to things that I shouldn't. There is scarcity, and there are things I want and don't have. But I try to be reasonable in the things that I want that are limited, and I try to share what I can as well.

Questions:
What role does scarcity play in my life? The biggest places I notice it is money, because of course there's never enough, and in trying to get published. Because while there's no real limit to the number of books that can be published, they only publish the best, and that's a small number of the whole. And there isn't *enough to go around*. There's only the best/lucky and everyone else. No amount of "enough for everybody" thinking is going to change that.

What do I have that I don't need, and is it worth it? Well, I don't need the size house that I have, although I expect I will need it when I have another child. (or maybe when they grow up a little bigger). I certainly don't need all the chocolate I eat, or the fancyish tea that I drink. On the other time, I don't have much in the way of luxuries in the house. I don't drink alcohol, which gets expensive quickly. We don't eat out often. We buy toys for our son and computer games for ourselves, but we don't spend rediculous amounts. We could be better about it, of course, but I don't think we're crazy about it either.

Do I find it hard to share what I have? Yes, because I doubt the worth of it. What I have, my gifts, lie in writing. But writing is an inherently solitary and self-doubting occupation, so I wonder if my writing is any good and I want to hide it away. But when I do share, I know how I'm doing and whether or not it's any good. When I refuse to share, I refuse to live.

What I give in sacrifice

2006-10-03T12:03:00.000-04:00

I give of myself in sacrifice to the Divine. In return, I get myself.

What I give is in large part this blog. I give in thinking and in sharing my thoughts. I feel like I need to do more, but I'm not sure when and I'm really not sure how. A lot of volunteer things happen on the weekends. Call me petty, but I want to sleep in. (I also don't want to donate money AND time. One or the other, thank you. Both? No.)

I do feel like I've gained more in this sacrifice than I've given. I'm happier and mentally healthier with being open to the Divine. But some of the steps I've taken are ones I would not have taken for myself. I would never have started sharing my ideas of FlameKeeping if I hadn't been bullied/requested to do so. But they've been good for me, and I hope they've been good for the Divine as well.

Questions:
What do I give in sacrifice and why? I give of my time and my thought. I give it because it's what I have and what I value. It's true, giving of my thoughts doesn't cost me anything. If anything, I grow in return. But it is still a gift, because no one else has the right combination of skills to do this work. And I believe it is necessary, or at least valuable work.

What have I gained from the sacrifice? Clarity of mind and purpose. I feel more confident about my spirituality and more stable in myself with what I do. And I'm happier. Is it worth what I do? Yes. This doesn't mean it's all happy joy joy. I've had hard times with this, and I've felt used and overworked and miserable at times. But all in all, it's very worth it. I can give and give freely, and am enriched by giving the gift.

What do I refuse to sacrifice? My family. I would love to have a degree in theology, but I'm not going to ask my family to incur the debt for that, especially since it won't ever bring money back in. If I have the money and I can do it without hurting my family, I'd like to. And I'm sure I'd be able to articulate my thoughts better and do a better job at my work if I could get some help with that. But I'm not going to risk my family or take money away from their needs, and I don't really care what it costs.

When Gods come knocking

2006-09-26T09:27:00.000-04:00

I found this post difficult to write, because I have a hard time discussing the gods in a serious manner. I'm not sure why. I think it's because they simply don't translate well to text. Whatever I say, it diminishes the experience. If I could speak in poetry I might get closer, but my nature is not very poetic.

This is also a very personal essay. For most of my life, I would pray at night that I would be shown how best to serve. Even after I'd started work on FlameKeeping, which is what I was absolutely called (pushed, prodded, nagged) into doing, I'd still ask. Because I just couldn't see that I was doing what I was called to do. I finally, about a month ago, realized that I was serving and that I was doing what I should be doing. It might not be everything I should do, but it is the primary calling. And I'm honored to do it.

Questions:
What does being called mean to me? That I've got the skills and abilities to handle something. This doesn't mean that other people aren't called to the same thing and they didn't hear it, or they hear it differently. I absolutely don't believe I'm the only person to be called to start FlameKeeping. I'm just the only person I know of that heard and came up with this. That doesn't mean other people weren't called. It just means they went a different way or didn't have the abilities needed to put it together. (or they're putting it together somewhere else, and I've simply never seen it. They may be doing a better job).

If I could be called by any god. hrm. I don't think I would have picked Apollo, although I can understand why He picked me. I wanted to be picked by Athena for a long time, because She struck me as an ideal. I wanted to be a warrior, to be wise, to be unconnected. It's not what I needed, though, and it's not who I am. I am nurturer, writer, one who brings things together. I'm not a warrior, although I do admire those who can do that. I'm not one.

Would I rather be called to a task or choose one? There's a certain comfort in being called to one, because then I know I'm doing the "right thing". I've always had a problem with self-confidence. However, I think there's also a certain joy in doing what you know you want to do as well. There's no reason one can't both choose one and be called for another, either. But there is security in a call, especially a call that will never be *finished*. I know what it is I am to do. It's not why I was born, I don't believe in that. But since I'm here, it's what I should do.

We are what our hearts are

2006-09-18T16:10:00.000-04:00

A large part of the reason for this post is because I've been so very tired and worn out lately. It's hard to care for a baby every day, to nurture myself and my family. Every day I work, and every day it's a success if things haven't become a mess by bedtime. (and I don't always have successes). When all I'm doing is trying to keep even, and I can't even do that, it's hard to not feel like a failure.

We don't value nurturing in our society, because it's invisible. It's so very easy to say "all I asked is that you'd do the laundry", but that leaves aside the fact that the kitchen needs cleaning and the baby needs watching, playing with, feeding and changing. There doesn't need to be someone else telling me I'm not doing a good job. I tell myself, and society implies, that I'm not doing a good job because I'm only holding even. I'm not getting ahead. I'm not doing anything. The only proof of a job well done is things not getting worse, and that's very hard to live with sometimes.

There needs to be a change. There needs to be an acceptance of nurturing as something meaningful and important. Because if we don't do it for each other, the world falls apart.

Questions:
Who do I nurture and how? Obviously that list starts with my son, and I do all the things a mommy does. Follow that up with my husband, my friends .. my readers. It's easier to see what I do for my son. For my husband, it's trying to make sure I cook a healthy dinner for us and keeping the house from becoming a disaster area. For my friends, I am a willing ear and hopefully a sympathetic listener. For my readers .. I don't know. You'd have to tell me. :)

Who nurtures me and how? Well, my baby gives me hugs. That's hard to discount. And my husband takes care of me and does his best to make certain I don't overload myself. Very importantly, when I feel a mess he reminds me that taking care of our son IS a real job to him. He supports my decisions and doesn't let me feel bad because I don't have a day job. And my friends listen to me as I listen to them. That's what makes them friends.

How do I value those that nurture me and is it enough? I'm not sure that's a question where "enough" ever qualifies, even though I asked it myself. But going around saying "I appreciate you" sounds goofy, so it's a tough line between appreciative and just weird. And I try to appreciate nurturing by nurturing in return. It's easy to say I appreciate you. It's a lot more meaningful to act on it.

When just barely is good enough

2006-09-12T06:55:00.000-04:00

I suppose I should first say that I have a bias when talking about matters religious and spiritual. I see it all, inherently, as personal. We may meet in groups, we may work together, but in the end, it's something that no one can do for you. You get out of spirituality what you put into it.

That's not to say that people that only show up for services and otherwise fall off the face of the earth aren't annoying as all heck. They are. Religion isn't something you take your weekly dose of, like a pill, and then ignore for the rest of the time. And most certainly, one hour of church a week (or a year) doesn't somehow "make up" for all the wrong things you're doing the rest of the time.

One of the problems is that some religious groups play the numbers game. They care more about the number of bodies than the seriousness of the people in them, and so focus on getting the absolute maximum number of butts in chairs, in the strange belief that spirituality will apparently filter into these people if they just sit there enough. And, being people, they value everyone's work as equal even if it isn't in the hopes of getting the bodies.

All of these things can feel like threats. But they're not threats, not spiritually. We can look at them and feel like they're getting the benefits for free that we have to work so hard for. But, really, what benefits are they actually getting?

I, personally, would rather people just didn't bother with FlameKeeping than treated it as a numbers game or an occasional chore. FlameKeeping is a religion of self and Divine improvement. If you're not willing to do the work, you're just a butt keeping a seat warm.

Questions:
What do I give my spirituality, and what does it give me? I give it at least two blog posts a week. ;) More seriously, it is integrated completely into my life. I work to improve things where I can find them. More, I try to be aware of what I see and do and how that affects those around me, so I can try to do things intelligently. It's easy to want to improve things. It's hard work to actually try to do it.

What do I think of people that use spirituality as a weekly appointment? I really wish they wouldn't bother. I usually see it in Christians, but I know all faiths do it. And if anything attacks that casual certainty, they turn almost rabid. Nothing can question that base assumption, not the religion itself or the world around it. It exists in its own little world, and nothing can deal with it. They're irritating. But they don't affect my spirituality.

Why am I a FlameKeeper? Because it matches the way I see the Universe. I bring to it my gift of language. It brings to me a sense of peace and belonging.

Picking up the pieces and going home

2006-09-06T08:01:00.000-04:00

I'm always amazed at people that have big lofty dreams and yet appear to be doing nothing to actually get there. Lofty ideas about how to solve great world problems, and not so much as a quarter dropped into a charity bucket at a resturant. There's something wrong with this picture.

I'm not saying charity is the answer, mind you. Charity should always be a stopgap measure. It becomes a problem, in my view, when charity becomes something you rely upon. (this problem can be systemic OR personal. I don't want to sound like I'm blaming those that have no choice: for them, the system is broken). Still, it needs to be there to get by.

But we need to do things. Not just sit around and bemoan what's there to do, but actually do it, and with concrete goals. When I go out to weed my garden, I don't say "okay, the garden needs to look perfect". I pick a small section, one I can reach from one sitting position, usually, and say that I'm going to clean up THAT section. And the next day I take the next section. And sooner or later, it gets done.

It's great to have lofty ideals. We all need that. But we also need to clean up this little corner here before we move on to the next one.

Questions:
What do I think needs improvement most and how do I work on it? For a long time, I focused on the material things. What needed help was poverty, hunger, illnesses. And they're all very important to me still, but I don't have the skills to help much there. Where I do have the skills and the drive to change things is with viewpoint. Change the viewpoint, and everything follows after that. (how'm I doing it? *looks around* if you can't tell yet, I ain't telling you!)

Are there things I refuse to act on? I would say, rather, that there are things I'm paralyzed about. I am blessed and cursed with the ability to see big pictures and how things interrelate, and I can SEE how tweaking this over here tweaks that over there. It makes things difficult sometimes, because I see both what I can do and what that does in the long term, and I'm never quite sure if I like what I see.

Can I distinguish between dreams and goals? Are they set right? Well, I think so, but of course, I would. My dreams directly affect my goals, although the ends do not justify the means. (they never do, after all). But I write one post at a time, and hope that the message I'm sending out actually gets received and makes sense.

Getting past the fluff

2006-08-29T08:15:00.000-04:00

I'm always amazed by people that focus on the trappings of things. This essay came out of a discussion with friends about a large number of "generic Pagans" that we see that have absolutely no core to their religion. It's all fluff, all trappings. And yet, when things get difficult, when you actually have an issue, there's nothing there. There's nothing to hold to.

I see a lot of people do this, with many religions, and it saddens me. Religion is never about the clothing or the candles or the pomp and circumstance. They are important, yes, but only for what they lead to. Not for what they are. A candle is a candle .. no amount of dressing it with oil and carving things on it is going to make it an actual religious item. What matters is the feeling and the connection that you have with what you're doing. Not the candle.

This isn't to say that trappings are bad. They're a very useful tool to get to the core of what's important, because that core is often quite hard to articulate and deal with in one's regular headspace. I'm a fan of ritual myself, when the ritual works for me. But the key isn't the ritual. It's where the ritual takes you.

If it's not going anywhere, why bother?

Questions:
Do I get caught up on trappings? I do my best to avoid that in all things. And, in fact, it often baffles me when people get caught up in trappings. That said, sometimes I avoid it too much .. I suck at small talk, which is a trapping of conversation. I sometimes have a hard time with ritual because I skip ahead and forget to write down the steps I took, because I'm doing my best to get past all that. (I also have a hard time writing description for the same reason. it doesn't matter to me, and I want to get to the story. embarrassing). But while trappings can matter, and certainly make life smoother .. they're not IMPORTANT.

What happens when I get caught up in trappings? I get frustrated, and I get bored. When I was trying to be Wiccan for a time, I could only find the trappings, and it irritated me highly. I knew there was more, somewhere .. but I couldn't find it, and it drove me crazy. It was worse than having nothing, because I had something and still didn't have it anyway.

What is the core to my beliefs and why? The most core thing is that I am of the Divine. All that I am is of the Divine, although the Divine is much bigger than just me. And it's core because it changes absolutely everything else. Once that belief is established, it puts a new light on everything. And another core belief is the twin Flames, Bright and Dark. Because when we refuse to allow ourselves darkness and a chance to rest, we stifle ourselves. It's permission to withdraw and a demand to engage both. And, again, it celebrates our sacred nature.

Keeping the Faith

2006-08-25T07:50:00.000-04:00

Part of the impetus for this essay was frustration. I am incredibly sick of people, when faced with difficult situations, saying we need to have faith in God.

Which is not to say that I have anything against a faith in God, Gods, the Divine, or whatever else people have faith in. But I think saying we need to have faith in some being that isn't here is a bit of a useless statement. It's easier to have faith in a god and wait for that being to solve it than it is to have faith in humanity and work to solve it. And while these faiths are not exclusive, I think that a lot of people do use faith in God to get away from having faith in humanity.

I'm not saying people should have irrational faith. Humanity is what it is, a mixed group of people of which some are pretty darn useless and others are so overpowering our minds are in awe to simply know them. But with all of us, the more we push ourselves and each other to be better, the better we can be. We need to have a rational faith, but we need to have faith. When we say humanity can't do it, all we do is create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Questions:
Do I have faith in other people? I try to. It's easier to have faith in people as a concept than actually having faith in the individuals I see, of course. But we are the Divine, all of us. If I don't have faith in people, I don't actually have faith in the Divine.

Am I someone others can have faith in? I hope so. I do my best to live up to everything I can be without overloading myself (which lately is my problem). If I overload myself, I can't do anything well. But I try to keep up with the commitments I've made. I try to do the best I can at what I do without getting crazy about it. And I try to be the sort of person that I would want to be friends with if I wasn't already me. I don't want to look at myself and see giant gaping character flaws that I can't stand in other people. (as always, this sometimes works better than others).

What does believing in humanity mean to me? It's incredibly freeing. It means that we are the solution to the problem, not just the problem. It changes our focus from out there to down here, from external solutions to internal. When we wait for God to fix something like an illness, people just keep getting sicker. When we have faith in humanity, we back it up with concrete work like funding and research. When we have faith in humanity we know we have everything we can have to get the answers.

We are incredible, both individually and together, if we let it happen. We have incredible power to change things at our fingertips. All we need to do is actually buckle down and do it.

Religiously completely off topic!

2006-08-24T11:17:00.000-04:00

HeartShadow, your faithful religious blogger, has started writing a novel online at http://www.warriorsofthesungod.com and she'd like everyone to go and read it. (and why am I talking about myself in the third person?)

Anyway. Everyone go read it. Go love it. It's wonderful. And if you don't read it, you won't know what everyone else is talking about, so there.

I destroy myself, does anyone care?

2006-08-24T09:35:00.000-04:00

I have problems with this. I do things that aggravate my wrists even though I already have carpal tunnel syndrome, for example. I also have diet issues .. my stomach has a lot of problems, so things that get me through day to day are probably very bad for me long term. My diet is fairly high-fat, which isn't good long-term. (on the other hand, if I don't get enough fats I feel very sick in the short term, and that's no good either).

We tend, however, to ignore what our behaviors do to the people around us. I knew someone that would routinely get drunk and high. And he drove. As far as I know, he never got into any accidents this way. He never hurt anyone. But I was waiting for that phone call, the entire time I knew him, of finding out he'd either been arrested or had killed himself. Or, worse to me, that his roommates had gotten arrested because he had illegal things in the house.

I have the right to do whatever I want to myself. I make the choices and I live with them, and I think that's reasonable. However, I don't have a moral right, necessarily. What I do affects the people around me. If I were, for example, to commit suicide or run away or something, that would affect my child, my husband, my parents .. the readers of this blog, the readers of my online novel, and everyone else that I come in contact with regularly. Nothing happens in isolation. If I abuse myself, I am abusing the people around me.

Questions:
In what way am I self-destrucive? Mostly, my eating habits. I do what I have to to get through the day, but I don't really think about my food or worry about having a properly balanced diet, and I should. I have a baby now, and I need to be in the best possible health to take care of him, if nothing else. (also, since I'm still nursing, I'm eating for two, which makes it even more important). As far as the why .. it's a combination of laziness and stomach problems. I'm going to do what I need to to get through the day long before I worry about what I'm going to do when I'm 50, because if life is miserable, what's the point of living it longer?

How do my habits affect other people? Well, I'm the cook in this family, so what I eat, everyone eats. If I cook junky food, three people are eating it, not just me. (baby so far secondhand, but he'll be eating tablefood soon enough). If I make fatty food, I'm giving it to everyone in the family. It's never just me. As far as how it affects the Divine: if I give myself a heart attack, I'm not going to get much writing done, am I?

How have I been affected by others? I already mentioned the friend that I was convinced was going to kill himself or someone else with his drug use. I had other friends that would engage in behavior that didn't match what they said they wanted to do, and then would get mad at me when I pointed that out. I've seen a number of people do similar things on a smaller scale. We love our self-destructive habits, that's often why we do them. They're our excuse, our escape. But that doesn't make them good, and it doesn't make them right.

Hope for today.

2006-08-23T08:20:00.000-04:00

I feel very strongly that what we believe affects everything in our lives. When we truly expect nothing but horrible things, horrible things is what we get.

I'm not saying we should live a Pollyanna like existance. If I go running around in the bad parts of town by myself at night, I should expect bad things to happen to me. I don't deserve them, but that doesn't mean that my belief in the goodness of humanity is going to protect me. Rationality is a good thing.

But if I go around expecting people to not like me, they're not going to. If I expect bad things to happen to me, I'm only going to see the bad things .. I'm not going to believe in the good ones when they happen. Mindset affects everything.

Questions:
What is despair and why is it harmful? Despair is when we refuse to admit that the Divine is improvable. It says that things are bad and will not ever get better, or at least not better enough. And when you believe this, working to improve things becomes impossible. Seeing what good already exists in the Universe becomes impossible. The Divine looks through our eyes and sees only pain, and this feeds back into the Universe.

What is hope and what do I hope for? I hope that humanity can be better than it is .. and I hope that I can work to that end. I hope to improve the Divine. I also hope for the personal things .. love in my life, my baby to grow up happy and healthy, another baby, to get my novel published .... many things.

How do I balance clear seeing with optimism? Well, I try to see every likely outcome to a situation. I know, when I send in a novel, that the odds are much better that I'm going to get a rejection letter than I'm going to get a yes. On the other hand, if I never send it out, I'm simply assuring that it will never get published. So it's hard, but I send it out and hope for a good answer even while I know the odds are incredibly stacked against me. And I do this in other aspects of my life as well, but this one's the most obvious.

Ooh, Baby!

2006-08-22T08:04:00.000-04:00

I really hate the idea that emotion is license. I think it's one of the most dangerous ideas that people have. (ranks up there with "I can't judge another's actions ever" and "everything is equally good").

One of the emotions most used as license, and most exploited, is lust. If there's a way to make something sexy, it's the way to go, regardless of the effects. (try being a woman and looking for professional and not-sexy. It's nearly impossible. Even when you refuse to play the hobbleskirt-and-heel game (how do people move in those things?) women are still dressed as sex appeal, not as attractive but not interested. Either that or I'm totally shopping in the wrong places). But it seems like everyone's trying to sell for lust, and if that's not what you want, you're out of luck.

I'm not saying we shouldn't feel lust. Not only is that impossible, but it's unreasonable. After all, I have me a baby .. I say no lust, people are gonna laugh at me. :D I am saying we need to be responsible with it. Don't fantasize about your officemate, especially if either of you are married. Don't get hung up on celebrities and think that it's reality. Be responsible with yourself, and remember that no matter what you feel, that doesn't give you license to act.

Questions:
How is lust appropriate in my life? How is it inappropriate? Well, I'm married and monogamous. Acting on lust towards anyone not my husband would be severely inappropriate. Other people acting in a lustful manner towards me (again, other than my husband) would be both inappropriate and deeply disturbing.

What do I do if I feel attraction towards someone completely inappropriate? I do my best to pretend it never happened. If need be, I avoid the person .. which might not be fair in the short run to that person, but is better for everyone involved. I don't have the right to act on any lustful feelings that are to people other than my husband .. I made a promise, and as long as I'm still married, that promise stands. I also get irritated if I feel someone is trying to evoke lust in me.

How do I react when people try to use lust to sell to me? Mockingly, usually. "Hey, look, there's a pair of boobs trying to sell me something!" I'm as attracted as the next person to the right character on a TV show, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't help sell the show .. but please, I don't need boobs to sell me toothpaste. I'm not going to buy a car because it'll get me women. Or men. Or, really, anything but from point A to point B safely and with good fuel economy. I find the attempt of using lust to sell stuff really irritating. (it doesn't help that with me, they usually miss. more cute geeky men!) But it's inappropriate .. it doesn't work, that toothpaste won't get me men, and to constantly try to sell something with a lie is irritating.

Also: lust grants you no rights over the one you lust after. I want to make that PERFECTLY clear. You lusting after me is your problem. If you have any respect for me at all, don't make it mine. And that goes for ALL instances of lust that is inappropriate .. don't make it the problem of the person you're interested in unless there's some belief it may be reciprocated. And take No for an answer.

None of your business if I do!

2006-08-18T09:01:00.000-04:00

Privacy. It's a political concept as well as a religious one, and it's the political aspects which caused me to write this essay in the first place. Privacy is one of those things that is absolutely necessary and yet politically difficult to accept. We all want to know what the people we don't like are up to, and we all want the people we don't like to not know what we're doing.

So why am I so obsessed with privacy? It's not because I'm "up to" anything .. far's I can tell, I'm a fairly boring. I write my novels, I write this, I play some video games, I mother my child .. someone could watch me every hour of the day and not find anything objectionable. This doesn't change the fact that if someone WAS watching me, my behavior would change. It's impossible to behave the same way while watched than it is while unwatched. (and who the person was would change things, too .. if it was someone I know, like my husband, my behavior would change less than if it was a stranger .. if child protective services was watching, EVEN THOUGH I do not mistreat my child, I'd still change my behavior out of paranoia. It's impossible to behave the same way while watched).

Part of our identity is what we do when there is no one and nothing watching us. Who we are in the Dark Flame. When we have no space for our privacy, when our Dark Flame is suppressed "for the public good", we smother ourselves. I don't think that's worth it. I value myself too much to accept that kind of surveillance, and I value other people too much to watch them, too. It's just not worth the cost.

Questions:

How do I view privacy, and do I respect people's? Sometimes I think I over-respect it, to the point of being afraid to intrude on other people even when invited. But without that space of freedom, we lose ourselves. I would not intrude on that for other people any more than I'd want other people to intrude on mine.

What do I only do alone? In high school, it was gardening. It gave me space to think and to relax. And I did miss it, for years. I thought what I wanted was the gardening, but what I really wanted was the space. Now that I'm a mom, that time is when I just have a bath for half an hour while my husband watches the baby. It's a chance to just let my mind wander and to have nothing I need to worry about. And I NEED that time, too. It helps to make me whole.

The Dark Flame's need for renewal .. I really don't think that's something that can recharge in public. It can perhaps recharge when you are with people, but that's not always the same thing .. it's the alone in a crowd thing. Even then, it's much harder when you are with other people. There is no freedom to be without internal censor when there are other people watching. It's much harder to risk failure when you know someone IS watching ....

Ooh, looky what I did!

2006-08-17T08:45:00.000-04:00

I'm so proud of me for this blog! ooh yes indeedy.

Well, not really. I am proud of what I've done .. I've worked hard, and it's good to see things coming together. This work has meaning, and I'm proud of that.

But I don't let myself see it as finished or as the only thing I need to know, either. It would be easy to let pride blind me to all the work left to do .. and that would be a bad thing. If I were to look at what I'd done and think that it made me a better person than the people around me, that would be a problem.

There's nothing wrong with being proud of what I've done. The problem would be if I thought that was enough.

Questions:

Where do I feel pride, and did I earn it? I feel pride when I finish writing a novel .. or even when I've finished my daily writing tasks I've set myself. I don't think I feel pride for things I haven't earned .. although I do feel astonishing pride when my son hits a new milestone, and I'm not entirely certain I have earned that.

How do I react to pride? It motivates me .. I want to feel it again. I like looking at something I've done and being able to say I've finished it. Of course, I also want to have the best possible product to be proud OF .. it's easy to be proud I finished a novel. It's a lot more meaningful to be proud that I've written a GOOD novel. (and it would be astonishing to have written a good PUBLISHED novel .....)

Pride in other people? It ... depends. When I can see justification for it, I appreciate it. There's power in knowing that you've done something and being proud of your accomplishment. When I see no justification for it, however, it scares me. Pride without justification is dangerous, because it's fragile. It's based on sand and the tide is coming in. People that have their pride based on nothing are very quick to lash out and hurt others to try and re-establish their own worth in their eyes, and they are very scary people.

There's nothing wrong with pride .. as long as you earn it and let it motivate you. When you let it blind you, then it really is a downfall.

Here, truth truth truth!

2006-08-16T07:45:00.000-04:00

I'm always astonished by the idea that truth is a thing that can be owned or quantified. "Don't you want to know the TRUTH?" is a sentence which usually makes me giggle: often because the "truth" then shared strikes me as anything but true. But they hoard truth in their little boxes and keep it safe from anything outside that truth, for fear the truth will be shattered by contact with reality.

I think truth is stronger than that. It is what underlies everything, the one strong reality that IS everything. When truth can't stand up to the rest of the world, what you have isn't truth. It's a process of uncovering, also, not a once-found then done. I absolutely find astonishing the idea that one can "find truth" and then move on to a new hobby or activity. Finding truth is a lifetime activity, if not longer.

Seeking truth and creating beauty is one of the important things that we do. Sharing our knowledge of what we find, seeking more and sharing more, improves the Divine. Whenever we try to lock truth in a box and claim we've found it, we deny the rest of the universe that's out there.

Questions!

What do I seek? What do I find? I seek questions, because I think that answers are .. doubtful. It's easy to answer a question and think you're done with it. But the value is often in the question, not the answer. The same question can be revisited many times and a new answer or set of answers found again and again. A question opens up a line for truth. An answer, when you think you're done with answering, ends that line.

Do I keep things boxed up? I certainly hope not. I know there are some things which I view through a narrow lens .. I do think that in some things, there is a right way and a wrong way. I'm not about to take up driving on the other side of the road simply because I question whether traffic laws are valid. But for things that aren't simply a matter of convention, but matters of truth .. I try to keep my mind open while not having it fall out. I'm not going to believe things just because someone says them. There are things which fly in the face of conventional wisdom and logic, and while I may listen, I'm not going to believe it simply because it's there asking for belief. Logic and common sense are important too.

Am I content with not having all the answers? I think so. I don't think I'd know what to do if I had all the answers, actually. If everything was known, what would be left to do?

I take great comfort in the knowledge that there will always be more to learn, more to discover. It gives motivation to me to know there's always something new around the corner. If there wasn't, life would be incredibly boring.

When we mourn

2006-08-15T07:59:00.000-04:00

When I wrote this, a friend of mine had just lost her father. And I was reminded of the losses in my life and others, and how people try to cope with them.

And we don't know how to cope, I don't think. We find grief and death uncomfortable, because it's a reminder of our own mortality and the mortality of those we love. We don't live in a world full of death anymore. People still die, but they are "supposed" to do it in a hospital bed when they're old. When it's sudden, when it is someone young .. whenever we're not expecting it, it hits us as a shock to the system. Something that's "wrong".

The problem is, death is a natural part of life. There must be an end for life to have meaning. People that refuse to grieve get locked into a weird place where they can't move forward, because they haven't accepted that the person is gone. But if you do grieve, people avoid you as though death and grief might be catching.

Questions:
Have I ever felt a time I couldn't grieve? Thankfully, I haven't ever been in that situation. I don't know what I would do if I was.

How do I deal with someone that is grieving? Very awkwardly, because I don't know what they need. I try to not close the person out, though, and to simply be there. I tend to make awkward humor, because I hate seeing people in pain, but I'm not sure that's a good reaction.

What is a good reaction societally? I think there needs to be space. I don't think there should be a society-standard reaction, because everyone is different, but I do think there needs to be some space .. and maybe something where a month after the death, there is a renewed reachout to the person. We reach out at the time of the death, but then never again .. and I think there needs to be a second or third reachout for the person, so they don't feel so alone when they start to come out of it.

Seeing the Shadow between the dark and the light

2006-08-11T07:49:00.000-04:00

Like the other rituals, this one depends upon the Meditation of the Flame as its base. I won't re-describe that here.

Inside that, however, is the seeing of the shadow. I use the mirror here because I think it's important to see ourselves when we do this. A mirror-self is much like a shadow-self in how we feel .. it is ourselves, but different. When we see ourselves half-lit in the mirror, it is like seeing a familiar stranger. Ourselves, but not.

There is a line down the face that flickers and moves that is the line between the Bright Flame and Dark. This meditation draws specifically on the idea of moving that line, of bringing things into the light to examine then, but then letting them fade back into the darkness.

This meditation draws upon the illusion that these things can be looked at out of context. That I can look at my anger, and not the things that anger me, or not the reasons why, or what lies beneath that. In the dark, all these things are bound together. In the light, we can see them individually but incompletely.

This balance, dark to light and back, gives us the ability to see deeper into ourselves. And the more we know ourselves, the more we improve the Universe.

That which I keep hidden ....

2006-08-10T08:15:00.000-04:00

The one thing I've taken out of both Wicca and Jung is the idea of the shadow-self. I found the idea first in Wicca and chased it down, because it's an idea that stuck with me. We do denigrate parts of ourselves, and we do hate that part we denigrate in ourselves when we see it in others.

In my shadow, I think I have issues with anger. (hence using it as an example). I'm never sure how to deal with it, and I'm a little scared of anger, both my own and others. I was reading about anger as a motivator to do things, and felt all smugly superior because I didn't feel that anger. Then I thought about it, because my reaction seemed all out of proportion. And .. I do feel anger. I just squelch it, or deny it, or try to relabel it something else. But that doesn't mean it isn't there .. it means I fear it.

This doesn't mean I want to get more angry. Anger is scary for a reason, and there's no real advantage to being angry. What it does mean is that I need to accept the anger I do have, and find productive ways to channel it and deal with it. Even if that's to decide to not be angry about the issue, I can't do that until I recognize the anger in the first place.

I have a shadow side. We all do. The trick is doing my best to not let it take control over me.

Questions:
What is in my shadow? Did that part. :) I'm sure there's more there, but that's what I'm finding today. (it's a hard question to answer, after all).

Why do I keep them there? What's my advantage? Well, anger scares me. As long as "I don't get angry" I don't have to deal with the fear (I've no idea why it fears me, either. Working on that too). But avoiding the situation completely doesn't work either, because I either let people walk all over me (no good) or I deny the motivation for my own actions (also not good).

I react badly to anger in other people as well. It terrifies me. I don't know how to deal with it or what it does. I don't like the fact that it seems to take people out of control or that it spurs people on past what would be "logical". And that's not a rational reaction either, because anger is useful and helpful at times as well.

But knowing that anger is related to my shadow helps me cope a little more with that anger, because I recognize my reaction is irrational. And that gives me a chance to slow down and think for a moment.

But it's how I feel!

2006-08-09T08:07:00.000-04:00

Part of the impetus for this essay was someone telling me that I didn't have the "right" to be hurt by the way someone else was acting, because she had every right to act that way. I found that doubly insulting .. both the idea that I was trying to constrain her behavior (I wasn't, I hadn't even TOLD her I was hurt!) and the idea that I didn't have the right to have my own feelings. And I found that idea incredibly insulting.

There seems to be no middle ground for feelings. Either I feel it and that's reason enough to act, or feelings are meaningless and everything should go by logic. Both of these are patently unreasonable expectations, but we still seem to operate by them anyway.

It's soul-defying to be told you're not allowed to feel things. It invalidates everything that you are. Being told you've no "right" to be hurt, or angry, or insulted .. that's saying you don't have a right to exist, in a way. It's a way to imply that you're not even real. When someone told me I didn't have a right to be hurt, it felt like a kick in the gut .. and I didn't even hear it firsthand, nor do I take the speaker as a person of high importance in my life. And it was STILL a kick in the gut.

We have an absolute right to our feelings. Even if they're inconvenient .. I have an absolute right to have a crush on someone inappropriate, after all. I just don't have the right to ACT on that crush. And that distinction is absolutely critical.

Questions:
What feelings do I just react to and why? mmm .. I try to not "just" react, although that's hard. Irritability is a hard one to rein in, although I know I should. Happiness is one I tend to just let loose .. it's hard to be dangerous with happiness. Although even then, I try to be sensitive to place and the people around me. Sometimes that works better than others. (and sometimes, I just don't care. When I'm around people that glory in moping, I've been known to be defiantly happy just because I could. EVERY directed emotion can be used as a weapon as well).

As far as "safe" emotions .. I don't think there are safe emotions, I think there are safe emotional situations. It is safe to react to the love I feel for a spouse (usually, depending on the marriage. it SHOULD be safe, at least!). It wouldn't be safe for me to react to a crush, especially in front of said spouse. It's usually safe to be happy. It may not be wise to be angry. It's almost always not safe to react to anger by throwing a punch. It's not what you feel. It's how you react to it.

How can we allow ourselves to feel while still limiting our action? I think the first step is acknowledging that it IS possible. It's perfectly possible to want to hit someone and yet refrain from doing so. Indeed, it is the stronger person that doesn't throw the punch. But more, I think we need to promote restraint in a systematic fashion. It's not simply as individuals that we need to show restraint, but also as a culture. How we respond to other people's emotional reactions determines how much of an emotional reaction we're likely to have the next time. But we also have to allow ourselves to feel. We need to respect and acknowledge our emotional reactions. It needs to be safe to say, "This made me mad because."

When we as a culture or as individuals say that someone is not allowed to feel, we set ourselves up as arbiter over their Flame. This is absolutely immoral, and I think it's damaging on both sides. We all have an absolute right and need to feel. Only reactions should be judged and controlled.

Loving kids

2006-08-08T07:56:00.000-04:00

Children are a special case when it comes to FlameKeeping. They are dependent upon us, needing us to help nurture and shelter them, but at the same time they are their own people and need to learn and explore their own Flame. Finding a balance between protection and freedom is a constant tightrope nightmare for every parent.

So far, I have it pretty easy on that. My little one is only one year old (almost!) and can't get up to much. His freedom is one room, and I'm always there to watch him. But I still have to not run when he falls .. only when it hurts. I have to let him scream out his frustration at night so he can go to sleep, as opposed to holding him the entire time. Even now, when he can't even walk or talk, I have to let go a little.

So how do you balance? I don't know .. and there's certainly no clear-cut rule, no one thing that will fit every child and every situation. Parenting is too individual for that. I do know that too much freedom with hurt a child, because he won't have a chance to learn about rules .. and sooner or later, rules come for all of us. And too much protection will hurt a child, because then when they do get freedom, they won't know how to handle it.

We have to love our children .. and we have to put their needs ahead of our own. As hard as it is, we have to do what's right for the child .. not just what's right for us.

Questions:
Should we try to eliminate risks? No, in general, both because risk is inherent for success, and because teenagers could make crossing the street dangerous. You can't make safe someone that doesn't want safety. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make things safer, because there's no point in needless risk. But it needs to be thought out and the tradeoffs weighed.

How do you balance care against suffocation? Carefully and constantly. There's no way to make one single rule, because children and situations vary. All broad rules will have exceptions, sometimes very important ones.

Love your child, and try very hard to do what's best for the child in these decisions, not what's best for the adult. It can be hard to tell, sometimes .. but when we have a child, we make a promise to that baby that we're going to do the best we can for the little one. That promise never runs out.

it's a party!

2006-08-04T09:26:00.000-04:00

The important part of this is the mindfulness. It's so very easy to view food as nothing but fuel, meals as just something to get through to get on to the next thing. This is a time to actually think about it.

What difference does it all make, I bet you're asking. Who cares where the food comes from? Well, it matters. Food isn't interchangeable. Some choices are more environmental than others, some are more humane than others .. there are a lot of choices to make. Being mindful is an important part of FlameKeeping, and refusing to think about these things because it's all too big is an abrogation of responsibility. We vote with our dollars every time we buy food. It's important to make certain that's a vote we're happy with.

And it's important, too, to take time with family and friends and simply enjoy them. We are a species that craves contact with each other, and yet we're very good at making that contact less than what we need. This is a time to enjoy each other, enjoy yourself, and put aside worries for a short time.

After all, the Universe is improved when people in it are happier, and that includes you.

I'll get you!

2006-08-03T08:30:00.000-04:00

I'm frequently bothered by the rhetoric of punishment and retribution in our country. People talk about deterrence, but we seem to be focused on the idea of punishment. There's the idea that someone hasn't paid "enough" for what they've done, as though a year in jail or a certain dollar amount was equivelent for what they've done. And that always makes my blood run cold. There is no "enough" .. there simply needs to be an adequate deterrence. (this also bothers me with corporate law .. the fines are usually so small they don't get high enough to stop the behavior).

I think about this sort of thing a lot because I have a baby, and he's old enough that I have to start paying attention to what he's doing and start corralling him. And of course, there's the spank/no spank debates and everything else. What I'm finding, though, is that the only thing that gets his attention is removal .. sticking him in the playpen. So I don't engage in the issue of spanking, because this "works". Punishment isn't the goal here .. getting him to stop turning off the computer is.

Questions:
Why do we punish people? Well, I try to punish or push back to stop the behavior. I don't want to actually PUNISH them .. I want it to STOP. Sometimes this means removing myself from the situation .. and if that's what it takes, that's what it takes. While I want the person involved to learn from it as well, the only person I can control is me.

I don't deal well when people try to "teach me a lesson" .. usually because I find such reactions amusing. One person went around trying to spread rumors that I "radiate evil", which I find absolutely hilarious. I think I was "supposed" to learn to not tell this person anything that she doesn't want to hear. What I did learn was that she's got a messed-up view of reality.

If I was in charge, how would I punish people? I'm not sure there would be jails .. or at least, jails would be solely for people that couldn't be allowed out in public. I'd make people work for their punishment, because I think you learn a lot more slaving away doing meaningless labor than you do locked away from society. And I would make it something that couldn't be construed as "manly" so people wouldn't want to "go to jail" to "become a man", which happens now. As far as what would happen after that, I don't know. But it might be interesting to see.

A dance with flame

2006-08-02T08:34:00.000-04:00

Poetry is important, although I'm not very good at it. Some ideas are better said from a poetic angle than they are directly. Which makes this very hard to talk about.

I can discuss the inspiration. I had a two-day .. hrm. I suppose the best word is "visit" from Papa Legba, a Voudoun spirit. Needless to say, this startled me immensely. The more I looked into him and researched him, the more I felt that I'd been focusing too much on the logical end of FlameKeeping.

Religion is inherently illogical. There comes a point when one must simply let go and dance with the Flame.

Sometimes one must just let go. And it's not an easy thing to do. It's not a logical thing to do. But when it comes to faith, that's not something that can be held onto with strong fists or examined by a logical mind. Faith defies logic, defies strength, defies everything that we try to use to examine our lives.

Sometimes, there isn't a clear answer. Sometimes there isn't a logical path. Sometimes one must simply let go and dance.

And when you do, you become whole again.

Don't cross me ....

2006-08-01T07:57:00.000-04:00

I don't remember if I wrote this in response to something specific or not. Really, it doesn't matter, because it is a statement of what happens all the time.

It's very hard to know where boundaries are. And it's hard to know if one's boundaries are reasonable. There are times I feel totally stepped upon, yet have no idea what to say because my reaction seems unreasonable to what happened. What makes that even more difficult, though, is that people don't realize something even is a problem until you make it clear.

My baby knows how to handle personal insults. He screams his fool head off. (of course, he also does this when he wants a diaper change, a snuggle, or that toy back, so it's hard to tell what the problem is). But there is a time in our lives when we know that when something happens we don't like, we respond. Somewhere along the way we lose that .. we learn that we must go along to get along, that we have to fit in with the community, that we have to find a way to bend ourselves to fit the mold given us. And it's worse for women than for men, but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem for men as well. We're all told to just "shut up and take it."

I don't have any easy answers. What I do know is that when you bend, and bend, and bend, you're stifling your Flame. Perhaps the problem is your boundaries, and then you need to find a way to make more reasonable ones. But perhaps the problem is people simply treating you like a welcome mat, in which case the absolute correct response is to refuse to play that game any more.

Questions:
How do I handle transgression? Usually, poorly. I tend to just take it because I so hate confrontation. When I get pushed too far, I explode, which makes the issue the explosion and not the actual problem. I'm VERY bad at this. (I work on it, but it's hard to deal with long-established patterns. surprise! I'm not perfect. darn).

Do I feel oppressed by transgression? No, I don't. I've managed to arrange my life as to avoid most places where I do feel oppressed .. like most day jobs. (hopefully this writing gig will pay at some point!). I take care of the house and the kid as well as I can, and it works for my husband and myself. When I tried to work a day job, though, I felt absolutely twisted and broken into something I was not. And unfortunately, there was no way to respond that let me keep my job, because the system itself simply didn't work with me.

How do I react to other people's reactions? I try to get past the anger and to the actual problem .. the actual anger is pretty useless. It's a reasonable response, and it tells me that there is a problem, but it doesn't tell me what the problem is. I try to be reasonable, though, and not react badly to other people what I actually see in myself. It is easy, however, to say this .. harder to do it.

Did you hear what she said?

2006-07-28T08:26:00.000-04:00

Gossip is a tricky issue. I've been at the receiving end of harmful gossip, and it hurts. At the same time, there are times that information needs to be shared and people see it as harmful.

Sharing information is how we define our groups. I don't talk about people that mean nothing to me, after all. It's easy to tell how much someone matters by how much one speaks of them. I talk all the time about what my son is doing, about my husband, about my friends. Is this gossip? Well, that depends on what the person listening thinks of it. If they don't like what they're hearing, or think the person I'm talking about wouldn't like it, it's usually labeled as gossip. If it's nice, it's just conveying information or chatting.

We are a speaking animal. It's how we define ourselves and our relationships to each other. This makes how we use our speech of critical importance .. because what we say defines us to each other.

Questions:
When is it appropriate to speak? It's appropriate to speak when it's something that should be heard, or when it's something that's considered "common knowledge". I don't care if people refer to me as married, for example, because I consider that common knowledge. I feel the same way about people knowing I'm a mother. Depending on the social culture I'm dealing with, however, I might not want the fact that I'm Pagan being talked about, and it certainly depends on how it's spoken of. I do not consider lies about other people appropriate unless the truth will cause a great deal of harm and no good .. information about someone cheating, for example, although it will cause harm is information that should be conveyed to the people involved. But that doesn't mean the fact that a person cheated on his girlfriend should be common knowledge to everyone, either .. even if it is a part of the person's history. But people interested in a relationship with this person should know, because it's an important piece of history that relates to their situation. It's very complicated.

Where is it appropriate? When it's information that needs to be conveyed. Even if it's harmful information, if it's something I need to know, not giving me the information is worse. Not giving me information that's important is a bad thing .. even if it's "gossip." But it should be information you're sure about, or at least you should be careful about giving the proper definition. If you're not sure, say so! Being honest about how much you know is as important as what you know.

How have I been harmed by gossip? People have made up all kinds of incredible things about me, which clearly hurt. I suspect it's part of the beast of being a teen girl, and more when you're already the outcast. It's much harder to think about how I've been helped, because often you don't know what information is being conveyed. I know that when bad things have happened to me, people talk about it to each other when I'm not there so I get comfort even by people I haven't spoken to directly.

Information, in and of itself, is neutral. What matters is what we do with it.

nobody's business but mine

2006-07-27T08:03:00.000-04:00

I really hate the idea that I'm supposed to be "Pagan" everywhere I go. Or that I'm supposed to be "Mommy" or "Heterosexual" or whatever. What I am doesn't need to be the label on my sleeve.

I am many things, and I value all of them. I don't keep secret about what I am .. but I do use discretion. I don't want discussions to turn into "What the heck is FlameKeeping" all the time .. or, my favorite one, "So is that demon worship or something?". Gah. It's only people's business if it's relevant .. if I'm in a religious space or something. And when it's not relevant, it shouldn't be necessary to talk about. I can't STAND when someone is religionX (be that Christian, Wiccan, or whatever) whenever they talk. Everything relates to the religion internally, certainly, but it doesn't need to externally.

My privacy matters to me. What I do affects the people around me, as well .. so I can't just do what's right for me, but also what's right for the people around me. If I choose to be publically Pagan, that will affect my child and my husband. If I am publically known as creating my own religion, everyone's going to look like crackpots. Discretion here is quite a virtue.

Questions:
How do I know whether to be public or private? I tend to fall on the "private" side of that line, when in doubt .. this blog, moving things public, is difficult for me. Making things public in my offline life is even more difficult, because these are people that know me as a writer or a mom or a wife first, and only later as a FlameKeeper (if at all). That said, I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut when something rubs me the wrong way, so I tend to say things anyway. But I try to not talk about religious matters, or any other private matters, when it's not relevant. (I don't discuss my sex life with people either .. I'm not ashamed of it, but it's not anybody's business but mine and my husband's! and, if relevant, my doctor.)

What do I do when one sphere pushes too far into another aspect of my life? I ran into this recently when I joined a gaming server and put the FlameKeeping website as my website. There were a number of questions and a bit of .. not hesitancy, but certainly notice that I was doing something odd. On the other hand, it was my choice to put it out there. Otherwise, I am the same person that I was and I behave the same way.

What do I think should be private? Should be public? I think things that relate to one's work-life should be public, or at least public-safe. If you're embarrassed by your job, you need to rethink your work .. or your non-work life. (If you're proud of your job and embarrassed about it around your friends, perhaps you need different friends?) Embarrassment is a good sign that something should be re-evaluated. However, there's nothing wrong with privacy. If it's not relevant, there's no reason to talk about it. That doesn't mean, though, that you don't have to still live it .. just because it's not relevant in your outward life doesn't mean you can ignore it internally. Also, I think there needs to be sensitivity about relevance .. if something becomes relevant, it should be mentioned. There is a fine line between privacy and secrecy .. if you feel the need to keep something secret that is important to your life, that needs to be thought about long and hard. Secrecy can be sign of a problem.

I rule!

2006-07-26T08:45:00.000-04:00

This is a hard one for me to comment on because I so fear being in control .. almost to an unhealthy point of avoiding it. I can't stand the idea of people relying upon me to think for them or guide them ... which makes this whole religious thing a little weird, really. I don't want people to have me do their thinking for them. I can give the questions and a framework, but the answers are something each person has to find on their own.

Some amount of control is necessary, clearly. I won't allow people to smoke in my house, regardless of the situation. I don't approve of heavy drinking and won't have that near me either (and, of course, I don't go to bars. I don't go to a bar and then try to keep people from drinking!). I don't try to control what people do in their own space, but I do limit what is done around me. Then you can make your own choice what you wish to do. (And I do my best to be completely upfront about what I do and don't want to deal with .. I don't change the rules in the middle. THAT is bad manipulation).

Questions:
What do I try to control? I try to control certain behaviors around me. I don't want people to do things I find objectionable, and I control that by either removing myself from the situation or speaking up, depending on what's appropriate. (usually by removal. I dont' deal well with confrontation). I don't try to control people .. other than actual lawbreaking and the like, you can do as you want and it's not my concern. I simply try to make certain that I do not appear to be endorsing things I consider objectionable .. after that, it's your problem.

Do I let myself be controlled? To an extent, of course .. I follow the laws as best as I'm able, which is a control. I follow the *social customs*, which is more of a control .. don't let the outside of the house get too scary looking, don't go outside looking like something that just got run over by a baby ..... That said, if the rules are something I disagree with, I don't follow them. There's a "rule" that says women should be "put together" to go to the grocery store, including makeup. I don't think I even OWN makeup at the moment, and if I do, it's old and should be tossed. Clearly I only follow the rules that matter to me .. a little social isolation from people I don't even know because my hair isn't perfect doesn't bother me in the slightest. I have other things to worry about.

What happens to a person that is controlled? to the controller? I think when one person tries to actually control another, you have two people trying to live off of one person's Flames. Flames cannot support anyone other than the person to whom they belong .. I cannot live off of yours, no matter how much Flame you have. Trying to control another person is a way of saying you don't have control over yourself. And to the person controlled, there isn't enough Flame for themselves. It's as if you are a candle on a windy day .. you might not ever gutter out, but there is no light and no warmth.

It's draaaaaaaaaamaaaaaaaa

2006-07-25T08:44:00.000-04:00

It's hard to resist drama sometimes. After all, we are each the center of our own world .. so OF COURSE what's going on in my life is most important and dramatic and difficult and whatever. It just gets problematic when you forget that other people have their own lives and their own drama as well.

I tend to be the sort of person that gets drawn into other people's drama. I want to help .. I ACHE to help people. And drama-laden people feed off of people like me, because until I get fed up and leave, they can use my sympathy over and over. It's taken me a long time to realize that there's no purpose in me continuing to support such people, and to back away. But it's still hard, because that's the way I'm wired .. if someone is hurting, I want to help. But it's not help for them .. it's enabling.

Questions:
When do I indulge in drama? When the baby won't sleep ...... when I'm having issues writing .. when I feel fat and unloved and a mess. But I try pretty hard to snap out of it as quickly as I can, as well. There's no real point in dwelling in the problem .. the important point is to solve it or live with it and move on from there.

Do I get easily drawn in? I certainly used to. I've been in a couple codependant relationships like that .. they were friendships (somehow I always had better control over my love life than my friendships) but they were abusive and codependant. I have a hard time knowing where the line is, where someone is actually working and where someone's just dwelling in it. Lately I think I may have gone too far to the other side .. I see someone that looks like they're dealing with a lot of "stuff" and I become very self-protective. And I do still want to help .. but I don't want to dance that dance again.

How do I evaluate when it's help and when it's drama? Well, the most important question is, do they listen to advice, or do they just have the same problem over and over without changing anything? People who actually have problems want to solve them. They want to get out of the hole they've fallen into. People that live for drama always have an excuse why the advice doesn't work .. or if they take the advice, they end up in the exact same situation again almost instantly. So you have to decide .. if someone's not going to listen, are they worth the headache? Most often .. not.

I like stuff

2006-07-21T09:36:00.000-04:00

I do. I really like stuff. Lately, I cannot be allowed ANYWHERE that they sell baby/kiddy toys without a short leash. I would cheerfully spoil my baby rotten and enjoy every minute of it until, y'know, it backfired. And I like me-stuff too. I'd happily buy tons of books, pens (why do I like pens so much when I always use the computer?) computer games .. things like that.

But I also know that food is more important than books. (that's why there's a library!). Keeping a roof over my head is more important than the latest in shiny plastic goodness to give him. Being healthy is better than being wealthy, too .. sure, we could make more money as a family, but not in a way that would be healthy for us.

We have enough, and while a little more breathing room would help (a LOT! donate to your guru! *grin*) we're managing .. and that's what's important. We live within our means as best we can.

I don't particularly care if my clothing is brand name. (to be honest, I'm not even sure what that /means/. I mean, they've all got labels in them .. so what?) I'm not going to spend extra for the priviledge of sticking someone else's name on my butt. I don't care if I'm spending more conspicuously than the neighbors. I don't even care if the furniture all matches, although I do someday long for a living room that looks a little less like a tornado hit it. (not that I expect I'll ever have one .. I'm the tornado!)

But .. we're comfortable. And that's plenty.

Questions:
What do I desire and why? Oh, I desire many things. :) Most of them I leave on the "I desire" list and just sigh over, because they're impractical or far too expensive .. although I have to be careful to not let hubby know, or he'll try to buy them for me anyway! But I adore things like pen sets, especially fountain pens .. craft sets .. baby toys ....... But I try to be reasonable. After all, a roof and food is a lot more important .. as is my husband working only reasonable hours and spending time at home with me instead of always being at work!

What do I buy that I shouldn't? Craft sets and computer games. I LOVE computer games (and I'm starting to discover the joy of online gaming .. oh dear ....) and I love craft sets. But I never know what to do with the craft set thing when I'm DONE with it!

How do we prepare for the future? That's the one thing we're not doing .. our budget is close enough to the line that we really don't have much in the way of savings. Which is why, if I don't get a book published by the time our youngest is in school, I'm probably going to go to work part-time and just take that paycheck directly into savings. (But I'm NOT just going to rely on my writing career .. too many people set goals on something so difficult to get. I refuse to bank my family's future on something that may never come to pass, even though I truly hope it will).

What did you say to me?

2006-07-19T08:18:00.000-04:00

I wrote this essay because I was irritated by the spirit in which people were discussing FlameKeeping. There seemed, at least to me, to be a need that some people had to mock what I'd written and degrade it. I've run across that while working on critiquing novels as well .. a desire to degrade another's work, and if not the work, then the person. The point isn't what was actually written, but the chance to degrade it.

And it hurts, it always hurts. Even honest critique hurts .. I can look at what someone said about a novel I wrote, agree completely, and still feel a sting .. because it means I didn't do a good job in the first place. And when someone doesn't understand something I wrote and responds incorrectly, it hurts.

It's really easy to be critical, to tear things down. And sometimes that's what's needed. I'd rather be told the flaws of something from a friend that can break it gently than a stranger that just doesn't care. But that doesn't mean a friend can just say whatever in the guise of "being honest", either. "Being honest" doesn't mean the rules of courtesy go right out the window. "Being honest" can be used as an excuse to be cruel, but the important part, and what will be remembered, is the cruelty.

Questions:
Do I build people up or tear them down? I try REALLY hard to build up. I don't see any advantage in tearing people down, and I've had people try to tear me down too often for me to see virtue in it. I try very hard to speak about the idea and not the person, because when you start attacking the person, all the other person hears is the attack and not the message. I don't see any point in destroying people. The world does a good enough job of that as it is.

How do I react to criticism? I try to take it well, regardless of the spirit in which it's meant, but I've spent a long time getting torn apart, and I don't like it. If I think someone's just trying to tear me apart, I shut down. (and start crying. embarrassing). But if it's honest and it's useful, I try to listen and incorporate the ideas (if I like them) and not take it personally. After all, the way someone criticises says a lot more about them than it does about me.

Spirit is not scarce. This, to me, is a cornerstone of how the world works. We use scarcity models to explain almost everything. Food prices, availability of medical care .. everything goes around supply and demand and scarcity. Spirit needs to not go by this model, not be viewed as scarce. It's so easy to see people that have an abundance of spirit and feel the need to bring them down to your "level" to make yourself feel better. There are no levels in spirit, though. There is no scarcity. And destroying other people only destroys yourself.

Love me for who I am

2006-07-18T08:34:00.000-04:00

I wrote this because I'm appalled by standard pieces of the American dialogue of what "love" is. So many people don't see a problem with claiming love, then imposing their own ideas of who the person is and what a "correct" relationship is on the other person. That's not love, that's possession, and people are not possessions.

It's so very easy to see people only as they relate to yourself, and it's so very wrong and sickening. What's worse is, we celebrate these screwed-up ideas in our literature and television. This leads people to think they're reasonable values, and the circle begins again.

I refuse to be a possession, and I really hope I'm a good enough mom to not see my kids as possessions. (I'm fairly certain I don't see anyone else in my life as possessions .. but my baby is barely even a person at all!)

Questions:
How does love blur ego boundaries in my life? Well, I can't worry just about my own happiness, because I can't be truly happy if the people I love are not. My happiness is especially bound up with that of my son's, because I have such control over his happiness. (also, screaming icky!) What I do can make him happy or destroy his world in an instant, so I have to be careful to help keep him content and cared for. And I have to love him enough to do what's right for him and not what's easy, as well, because what makes him happy now won't work to keep him happy later.

Do I keep my ego barriers high or low? For a long time, they were very high. I was incredibly self-protective, and I still am for new people. It takes time for me to trust people. However, that doesn't mean that I don't let people in, and it doesn't mean that I don't work on it. I've had my ego barriers so high that no one could get in. It almost killed me from the loneliness. I would rather risk the hurt and actually live than stifle my flame to death out in the cold.

Do I nurture flames and love without counting the cost? I do remain protective to the point that if someone's using me, they're out of my life. I try very hard to make certain that I am not treated as a possession by the people around me. (I had a hard time with that for a long time .. not, oddly, with boyfriends, but with female friends. It doesn't have to be romantic to be abusive). But I don't look at how much I do for my husband or my son as a cost. It is what I do for my own happiness. And my husband gives back, so it's not a one-sided thing. If it was, then I'd be counting that cost. My son, of course, can't give back yet in any meaningful way .. but I love holding him so much it's close enough. *grins*

Most importantly, I love people for who they are. Keep that in mind, and it's much easier to go right.

Swooping in to save the day ....

2006-07-14T13:33:00.000-04:00

It's me, HeartShadow! Here to rescue you from the emptiness of your daily life!

Or maybe you're going to rescue me today. It varies, and we all take turns rescuing each other from those things that overwhelm us. We all like to be heroes, and we all need to be rescued some days. Today, for example, I could really use a rescue. I'd love to have someone come in and take care of the baby and clean the house and otherwise just give me a day off. Sure, it doesn't work that way, but it's a nice dream. And there's nothing wrong with dreams, as long as we recognize them for what they are instead of believing they are more.

And, of course, there are deeper problems than mine. There are people out there crying for a rescue from abusive life situations, from chronic pain and illness .. if there is a problem to be had, people have it. And they do need heroes if they can't get out of it themselves, but they also need to do what they can. When you sit and wait only for someone else to rescue you, you can't take advantage of the rescue when it is offered. We need to make certain our standards for what we're looking for in a rescue aren't too high. (if it works, take it!) It will never be perfect. There is no hero on a white horse coming to save you from your life. If you want saving, you need to do everything you can to do it yourself. (I do believe the Divine will come partway if it can and help .. but that help only comes when you've done everything you can, or there will still be a gap. And sometimes, there's just nothing that can be done).

Questions:
What do I want to be rescued from, and why don't I just do it? Well, I'd love to be rescued from my health problems, but I'm pretty much stuck with them. And there are days I want to be rescued from motherhood .. but we always have days when our life just isn't what we want. Most of the time I love my life, and so I wouldn't want to leave it to be "rescued" for something better.

If I could change anything for a rescue .. I'd give myself some kind of mother support group. As to why I don't .. I adore my baby, and I adore motherhood, but I think a group talking about nothing but babies would quickly drive me crazy. I mean .. they're not THAT interesting. One's own baby is of cosmic interest, of course. Other people's babies .. not so much.
I do need to do more about that, though, and try to figure out some way to get myself more support without ending up wanting to go insane and beat people that I disagree with. (I don't do well with people doing something I see as "dumb" .. and let's face it, a lot of parenting stuff ends up pretty dumb to someone! I'd hate to think of what people think of me as a mom sometimes .....)

What value does the dream hold? I think it's an important dream. When we look at that and think it's something we want to be, then work towards it (as opposed to just giving up because we don't have superpowers) we can do a lot of good in the world. Things only get done because people choose to do them .. and the more that people choose to make the world a better place, the better it will become.

Thinking Twice ...

2006-07-13T08:38:00.001-04:00

This essay goes slightly against human nature. We like to use mental shortcuts, and stereotypes and prejudgements work with the way we think. It takes work to reassess, to take a step back and think about what we feel.

I have a hard time taking seriously anyone that's dressed in certain ways .. especially a man with his underwear showing over his pants. (seriously, what's WITH that?). I can't look at someone dressed that way and take him seriously .. which is too bad. They might have something very meaningful to say, to think .. I'm dismissing, with that, most boys under the age of twenty in certain areas. That's not fair to me or to them. And that's a fairly minor issue, too. (it's not like I teach in a school where this is a common fashion, or are otherwise thrown into contact with people dressed this way regularly and need to deal with them).

I think it's important to know how it is we come across, but I think it's also important to try to come across well. When you know that how you come across affects people, it's reasonable to try and be careful about how you come across. I don't go crazy about this, but I do try to make certain I don't look crazy when I leave the house. My hair is combed and looks somewhat normal, my clothing isn't outragous (exceptions made for days when I'm walking with the baby to get him to calm down. Then I look crazy, because I don't care about ANYTHING but getting my baby quiet!) Give people a chance to have that second thought.

Questions:
Do I see others as they are or as I think they are? Well, at first I have nothing but my own preconceptions. But I try very hard to not hold to those, to let people change my ideas both for worse (which is, unfortunately, easy), but also for the better. I go on the assumption that I don't know a person as much as I can, and let new information in. Sometimes it even works.

Negative stereotypes: ... that's a hard one. After all, when you hold them, they look reasonable, right? The big thing for be is things that look "stupid", whatever stupid is to me at the time. However, I try to not apply "stupid" in one area to the person in general, but instead assume they simply are bothering me in one area.

Do I assume the negative, and if so, why? I really don't know. It depends on my mood, of course: the more angry and hurt I am, the more I expect things to get worse. But I still want to try and keep a positive attitude. People give us what we expect of them .. go into a situation expecting the worst, and that's exactly what you'll get. (not to say all problems can be resolved with attitude .. but it never hurts, and can often help!)

Hell is other people .....

2006-07-12T10:03:00.000-04:00

Okay, we all know who the people are that drive us crazy. So now what?

My biggest problems were in the dorms .. and I'm embarrassed to say, I pretty much did nothing about it. I didn't know what to do, and I didn't want to be "the bad guy" either. There really isn't a polite way to tell someone they're annoying the hell out of you, after all. So I just dealt with it. Were I to be in that situation now, I think I'd be a lot less willing to just shut up about things.

I've had a lot of people see me as compassionate and think that means I'm a doormat. There's really not a lot of acceptance for compassion in our society. It makes people look weak. So I've had the problem of people using my compassion, and myself, without seeing me as a person with my own feelings.

Questions:
What happens when you don't see the other person as Divine? You treat them badly, because they're less than you are. Sometimes you even see them as inhuman. It can result in the worst of excesses against other people, especially when one country sees another country as inhuman and not part of the Divine. It cannot be said enough. We are ALL human. We are ALL part of the Divine. There are NO exceptions, not even for that guy/country/ethnicity.

I want to treat people well. Everyone is part of the Divine, and all should be treated as holy. In reality, I have my good days and my bad days like everyone else. I try very hard to be honest with people without being rude, though. (honesty is no excuse for rudeness!) We are all part of the Divine. Treat people with the respect you want them to give you.

How can you make peace with people that irritate without compromising yourself? First rule is to figure out what isn't negotiable. Perhaps the smoking is non-negotiable, but you don't care that much about the music playing. See if there's some way to build a compromise with the other person that doesn't break either person's core desires. There's usually room in the middle, if you don't hold to positions simply because they're there. Only hold to the important ones. Everything else is up for grabs. After all, if you're not willing to bend, the other person won't either.

Jumping the Cliff

2006-07-11T08:32:00.000-04:00

It's hard to talk about transformation in a reasonable way. It's something that happens outside and around words, not in clear language. Also, what needs to change is different for everyone as well. So I can't just offer a simple step-by-step understanding of the process.

I can offer my own experiences. I've had to throw myself over a few emotional cliffs in my day, and it's impossible to do that unscarred. Bits and pieces of what you were do their best to drag you back as you try to walk forwards. It's very easy to feel tethered and dragged back up the cliff you just tried to get back down.

What it really comes down to is faith. When I started actually writing and sharing my religious experiences, it felt like jumping off that cliff. I went from being able to keep everything very private to sharing some of my inmost thoughts and feelings, and I don't even know who's reading. I'm just tossing the information out there in the hopes that it will do people some good. And I want to go back up that cliff sometimes .. to pull back into my shell and hide everything away. It's embarrassing and uncomfortable being open like this. At the same time, that's a really hard cliff to climb back up. I'd have to change a lot of other things that I really like about myself. The information is out there. I'd either have to change myself so that it would no longer be true, or remove the access to it .. and that would run into a large number of other problems for me. So I can't go back up that cliff, as much as I might want to.

Questions:
What transformations fear me? That's a hard one to answer, because I've gotten pretty good at taking those cliffs. I fear when my son will go to school .. I'm afraid I'm going to be one of those women who will blubber uncontrollably. But that's four years away or so, so I think I'm safe for now!

What would I use as a parachute? Well, for my son going to school, I'll use the rest of my life. I'll take that time that he's gone and USE it .. work on my writing, play my video games, whatever it is I haven't been doing because he's been here. (maybe even housework!) I'll take advantage of the time I have so that it's not empty.

What do cliffs and transformations mean to me? What do I hope to find on the other side? Every transformation has in it the seeds to becoming a better person. When I jump over, I can take that chance to improve myself in a drastic fashion. Those aren't casual opportunities, and there's really nothing else like it. When standing at the edge of the cliff, I have a choice to make. I can pull myself into something greater and jump, or I can ignore my chances and cling to what I know. But when I jump, for those few minutes, I can fly .......

Giving Freely

2006-06-30T09:33:00.000-04:00

Charity's a constant problem with me. I hate just giving money and watching it go .. I fear what it may do. Where it may go. But that's what people want .. money. It's hard to find places to volunteer, and harder to find places where the volunteering means something. And even when you volunteer, the people want money as well (which really infurates me. You get one or the other from me .. you only get both AFTER I decide you're worth it. If then).

I also feel, rightly or wrongly, that charity is part of actually enforcing the system which leaves people at the bottom. I'd rather change the system than pay into it .. even if that's not always a reasonable goal. So giving to charity makes me feel sometimes almost dirty .. which isn't reasonable, but is very scary. I get burned out very quickly in places where I feel all I'm doing is enforcing the system.

It's a problem for which I don't see any real solution .. if I did, I'd probably be working on implementing it. I just think .. we celebrate the Divine poorly with our charity system. We encourage apathy, not among those that scramble at the bottom to survive (Because they are not apathetic, whatever we tell ourselves) but among those that feel that a gift of money settles things. We sit with our fancy televisions on expensive furniture and feel virtuous because we're giving that dollar a day to some children's charity, and then ignore the people we pass daily that are starving in our streets.

We have the ability to feed everyone, but we don't. We have the ability to give everyone access to clean water, but we don't. Why don't we? I don't know .. but even more, I don't know why more people don't ask that question.

Questions:
What do I give and why? I don't give much, and I should. But I get paralized by the choices. Right now my favorite charity is the Heifer Project .. because it gives wealth, not just cash. Wealth has meaning and brings value far beyond the cash value .. cash just feeds once and is done. Feeding is important .. but building wealth is so much more so.

What do I think about charitable systems? I think they're full of people, and as such, there comes a point they become self-sustaining. I suspect a lot of them would absolutely freak out if hunger just disappeared. That said, I think a lot of them are full of good, caring people .. I've worked in nonprofits. But once it becomes about the money and not what you can do with it, you've reached a serious problem state. And they almost all reach that point.

What would I change and why? That's the problem, I just don't know. I'd rather change things at the government level to keep people in housing in the first place than build a house with Habitat for Humanity, for example. Not that building that house isn't important .. but if ten people get kicked out of housing, and we build one of them a house, are we really helping? The system is too big and I see too much, and it paralyzes me. I need to see smaller, and I don't know how. (or maybe I need to see bigger and find an answer somewhere .. but I don't know how to do that either).

Other People's Flames

2006-06-29T08:34:00.000-04:00

This one's hard. I have an easy time seeing the Flame in myself. Seeing it in other people .... that's harder.

As far as the selection of people I've picked for this .. I think it's important to remember that the Divine is in all people, from the clerk at the grocery store to your spouse to your boss. The more we see the Divine in other people, the more we treat them as Divine and worth celebrating, the better we become and the better we make the Universe.

This is a goal-state, though, not something I expect everyone to manage every time. When I have to deal with people that I think are idiots (that's my big problem .. people that aren't using the brains they have), I have a hard time seeing them as Divine. I like to think that the Divine has and uses whatever intelligence it has.

That all said, idiots are still of the Divine .. and, even more embarrassing but true, I'm sure there are things that I do that makes other people think that I'm an insane idiot. So it goes both ways.

As much as one might want to, you can't go around picking people you don't like and claiming they're not part of the Divine, or they've renounced their Divine heritage, or anything like that. They might be people that need to be confined, or corrected, or otherwise kept from harming other people, but that doesn't make them less Divine, simply less connected. It's so easy to look at people and say that THIS one can't possibly be Divine, can't possibly be connected, and simply is lesser. But in the eyes of the Divine, no person is less than another: all are loved. This does not mean that mortal justice doesn't matter .. of course it does. If you do bad things you need to be made to stop doing them .. and if that takes away from your freedoms, well, you should of thought of that before you did the bad thing.

But all is Divine. Celebrate Creation.

What is Morality?

2006-06-28T09:36:00.000-04:00

I've been asked in the past where the morals are in FlameKeeping .. where are the parables, the rules, the strictures. I don't believe in them. It's far too easy to make up a list of rules .. and have people twist them, ignore them, rewrite them. The more rules there are, the more grey area there is to wiggle free. (don't believe me? Look at the IRS tax code!)

So there are two rules, but those rules put all the burden on the practitioner. All are Divine isn't an easy rule (of course, neither is "love thy neighbor" and people flub that one all over the place too). You can't just give lip service to people being Divine and then treat them badly, either. And you can't apply a simple rule to interactions .. you have to actually think. It's hard (I flub it sometimes too .. sometimes it's hard to remember someone's Divine when they've just done something irritating!) but it is, I believe, honoring the Divine in all things .. and all people. Even the ones I don't like. (some parts of the Divine, though, belong over THERE and not near me).

And the other rule, to improve the Universe. We're all going to tackle that one in different places too .. some people are going to see that as an injunction to keep their house clean (not me!), other people will see that as an injunction to get out and be a political activist, others will give to charity .. there are so many ways to improve the Universe, and there is no one true way here. The important thing to keep in mind is that everyone, still, is part of the Divine .. even the people who have different ideas on how to improve the Divine. Good people of good will can sit down and talk this out and at least understand why their ideas differ.

I'm very afraid of giving moral rules more narrow than this. I'm absolutely terrified of how my words could be twisted, having seen it happen to so many before, and perhaps I don't speak enough because I'm afraid of what might come of it. But also, I don't want to narrow the scope of people's creativity. There are so many ways to make things better, so many places to improve life, so many ways to relate with people. If I start giving rules, I narrow the scope and narrow the imagination. Think freely.

Questions:
What does morality mean to me? It means doing all I can. I don't worry about what I can't do .. of course, I have no particular desire to go around murdering people anyway, so it's not like I feel narrowed down. But it's not enough to not-do. There are also things I need to go out and DO.

What does it mean that everyone's Divine? Well, it does mean that the fact that I hold grudges is a problem. I'm very fiercely self-protective, and it's hard for me to remember that the other people, no matter what they've done, no matter that they've hurt me .. are still Divine. Even if I don't like them much. But it's hard for me to remember that people I think are idiots or mean are still Divine, and still need to be treated as such. It is, always, easier to see as Divine people that think like me and act like me. But of course that's also meaningless .. I was going to be nice to them anyway. It's a stretch to remember sometimes that it's the people I don't like that I have to treat as Divine .. even as I continue to not like them.

What does it mean to improve the Universe? I find this one easier, although I'm never sure if I'm doing enough (or even anything at all .. I tend to have a hard time seeing my words as having a real effect, even though I believe in the power of words). It does speak against my own personal hangup, though .. apathy. I'm the sort of person that would be happy to just sit at home and let the world go by and "think" about changing things. This calls me to get off my butt and actually DO something. Hopefully these blogs count.

Inward Flame

2006-06-27T10:50:00.000-04:00

The important part of this particular ritual is pulling together the two flames, bright and dark, into one. The two flames make for easier imagry, but we are each one person, one soul.

I use the split flame as imagry in a number of places because I think it's easier to grasp. The two flames feed off each other, certainly .. there is no one without the other. But I think the split can be seen as a little too real .. as though we have two aspects that are actually separable.

We are ONE Flame, light and dark both. When we look into ourselves and see one light-dark Flame filling all we are, then we see Truth.

me be buff!

2006-06-23T08:23:00.000-04:00

This is one of the harder essays for me, both to write and to put in practice. I've had body issues my entire life .. when I was younger, I was chubby. I wasn't *fat*, but I was on my way there, and children can be very cruel. So it didn't take much for me to think of myself as *fat*, even though I was really only a little chubby. Now I'm much thinner, but I have health problems .. stomach issues and carpal tunnel problems. Lately, I've started having migraines that leave me dizzy and disconnected, which is really a pain when taking care of a baby! So I don't like having a body, I don't like BEING a body .. I try to escape into the realms of the mental and the spiritual, where I feel healthier and don't have to deal with pain. But that doesn't change the reality of the fact that I AM a body, and that if I neglect it, I am neglecting the Divine as well.

However, as of writing this, I've managed to exercise for five days in a row. For me, this is quite an accomplishment. I'm very bad with exercise .. and until recently, I couldn't really put my baby down long enough to exercise anyway. But I'm making a concerted effort to get myself into some kind of shape. I'm just looking for the astonishing energy boost working out is supposed to give me .. I'm ready for it any time now .....

I've gotten better about what my mind chatters on about. I no longer think of myself as fat or as lazy. (well, not often on the lazy). I try to think well of myself while also being honest about it. I don't think there's any point in puffing myself up, given that reality will just cut me back down to size. But there's also no point in beating reality to the punch and putting myself down first. It's something I'm working at.

It's very easy to treat oneself badly. It can become a challenge, to see who can mistreat themselves the most before reality has a chance to get there first. But it's the wrong idea and the wrong game. We are all of the Divine. We are all special. And when we degrade ourselves, we are degrading the Divine.

Questions:
How do I take care of my body? Well, I'm exercising. I watch what I eat, although my eating habits aren't something dieticians would approve of .. it's right for MY body. (if I ate a *proper* diet as is usually described, I'd make myself very sick due to my stomach problems). I'm better at taking care of my mind .. I try to think about things, I write creatively, I write here. I don't let myself stagnate.

Do I do a good job celebrating my sacred nature? oof. I try to. It's not something I think about regularly .. it's something I am. Of course, I spend a lot of time babychasing .. so one could say I spend a lot more time celebrating my son's sacred nature. But I try to celebrate myself as well. Exercising! Five whole days!

How do I love myself? This took the most work for me to accept. I am sacred, I am lovable .. the two are one. It's taken a long time for me to accept myself as what I am, and longer for me to see the worth in that. There's nothing wrong with being imaginative. There's nothing wrong with being creative. There's nothing wrong with being different and uniquely myself, and I love myself for it. (most of the time ....)

He loves me .. he loves me not ..

2006-06-22T08:40:00.000-04:00

I get so irritated at the "love story" motif of our civilization. And don't get me wrong .. I love the happy ending, I'm even a closet romantic .. but ... not EVERYTHING involves being in love. Not everything involves being coupled. Life is most certainly more than the constant falling in and out of love and the euphoria of the moment. There is more to life than being "in love", and the more we focus on the euphoria of falling in love as the central state of life, the more we damage ourselves in being capable of actually having a sane relationship.

My biggest problem, I think, it the fetishization of romance and falling in love. It's a state that usually has the stupidest thinking, and we're turning it into the central point of our lives. Yes, it's a nice feeling when one looks at one's beloved and gets all warm and mushy. I don't want to detract from that. But it's a very stupid state. You can't live there. The more we view that state as what "love" should be, the more we detract from the very real work of being in a relationship. It's not all hearts and flowers. Sometimes it's babypoop everywhere and 3AM runs to the emergency room. When we look at love just as the flowers and ignore the babypoop, we end up falling out of love regularly and then blaming the other person for not being perfect.

We need to fall in love with the person, not the fantasy. (at least when we actually do something about it. As a teen, I fell for a lot of fantasies. I never dated them, though .. I knew enough to know I didn't even want to. Fantasies were a lot safer). But when another person is actually involved, we need to remove the blinders. I can honestly say that I love my HUSBAND .. not the man I wish he was, not the man I think I can turn him into (and how stupid is that? You get what you marry .. you don't get to remold the person into what you want later!)

Questions!
How does the Divine relate to my love life? Well, I found someone that I can see the Divine in on a daily basis .. no small task. The people one sees every day are the easiest to see the flaws in, after all. How does my partner being Divine relate? I can't just treat him as an object or someone in my way. He is my husband, my life partner, and a part of the Divine. I can't just blow him off when I'm tired or when I don't want to deal .. which, of course, makes for a stronger marriage as well.

What happens when both people aren't seen as Divine? Things can get out of balance if only one person is seen as Divine. If it's the other person, you neglect yourself. If it's you, then the other person becomes merely your sattelite. In neither case is it love. Love comes from a place of balance .. neither person "better". If one person is "better" than the other, there will be problems no matter how much love there is to start.

What's better, being whole or being in love? It's been brought to my attention I worded this badly. :) But if you're not a whole person before you fall in love, you won't be a whole person after, either. I do think I'm a better and more complete person with my husband than without him .. however, that doesn't mean I was half a person before I met him. I'm myself first, part of a couple close behind that. The second that changes, the system is broken.

Time, time .. for quiet.

2006-06-21T15:04:00.000-04:00

I want to make it clear: I've nothing against entertainment. I watch TV .. I read novels voraciously and write them myself. I'm a rabid computer gamer. *grins* There's nothing wrong with entertainment.

There IS a problem, however, with living one's life for television, or novels, or computer games .. and refusing to give space for oneself and one's own thoughts. I have learned so much more about myself and, I think, become a much better person since I've started giving myself time just for myself: no television, no book, no computer. Just sitting and thinking. And it's a hard habit to get into .. I'm used to having something in front of me. But I think it's good for me to just let my mind wander. And if that's into daydreams, that's fine. The important thing is that my mind is active and creative.

But also, I know myself better. And in that knowledge, the things that I don't like I'm working to change. It's scary. I don't want to blow this off and make it sound like this is an easy task, because it's not. Sometimes the things one finds rattling around in one's head are scary .. I routinely get images of myself sick or dead. And that doesn't mean there's something wrong with me, it means that it's a fear that comes back .. I'm not always in great health, and sometimes I almost expect to fall over at some point. Dealing with the image helps me cope with the fear. It's not easy or convenient, but I think I'm better off since I've started accepting those images.

Questions:
Do I know and like who I am? I think so. Some days more than others, of course. There are days when I don't like myself much. But most of the time, I think I like who I am. And more, I like who it is I'm becoming, because life is about becoming, not about being. Life is a process of change.

Emptiness and stillness ... it's about being alone with myself. It's about not being empty, paradoxically. When I let myself be empty, I'm also full .. I have myself. When I fear emptiness, I fear that I cannot fill it myself. When I accept it, I find so much more on the inside than can exist on the outside.

What are the advantages and disadvantages? Well, the disadvantage is in part time. There's ALWAYS something for me to do, especially with a wee widdle baby that doesn't like napping. But the advantages .. I can be alone with myself. I know who I am and I like that person. And I'm better able to deal with being with other people and being responsible for my child, because I'm stronger in myself. I know who and what I am and where I'm going, and there's very little that could be a disadvantage to outweight that.

Acting Judgement

2006-06-20T10:43:00.000-04:00

I wrote this because I get really pissed at all the people I run into that are so afraid of choosing the wrong thing that they "choose nothing." It doesn't help that most people that do this somehow manage to ethically excuse what they WANT to do, while making everything that's hard somehow "wrong" or "interfering with another's free will" or something like that.

Life is interference. There's no way to live without affecting the people around us, and any attempt to do otherwise is either delusion or survivalism to an extreme (and probably an unhealthy one). As I've noted before, we're a social animal. Trying to be anything else is not only counterproductive but unhealthy.

I accept that I'm going to screw up sometimes. I don't like it much, but that's just tough. If I don't live so that I can screw up, I'm also not living so that I actually LIVE, and what's the point of existance if I'm going to spend it cowering in fear of what I might do? I truly believe inaction is as much a choice as action, and we are responsible for what we could do but don't.

Questions!
Why is fault irrelevant? Well, it's useful if you're trying to figure out WHY something happened .. where the problem occurred. But the blame game doesn't solve much of anything. If you're actually using it to solve a problem, that's one thing. If it's just to blame someone for the mistake, it's useless. And when you're spending your time on who's to blame instead of how to keep something from happening again, you're focusing totally on the wrong problem.

Why is inaction a moral choice and action? Well, because it's still something we choose. It doesn't always FEEL like a choice .. but it is one. (by inaction, I really do mean where you knew and didn't do something .. if you don't have the knowledge, and you've no reason that you SHOULD have gotten the knowledge and didn't, then it's just one of those things). Inaction is a copout, and a dangerous one. We live through what we do. When we choose to do nothing, that's still a choice and it can often be a dangerous one.

How do we get past confusion to action? Gods I wish I knew .. and I'm not being flippant. I often have the problem of being so overwhelmed I don't know which direction to go in. Usually I just pick one .. especially if it's multiple choices, none of which are any more clearly morally good or bad .. Just do one and go from there. It's like when it's time to clean the house .. the entire thing as a project looks miserable, but if you start with cleaning up the sink (or the bathroom, or finding the floor) you can do one piece, then the next piece, and so on. Sometimes we just need to stop looking at all that forest and look at a tree.

Love me Love me Love me!!!!!!

2006-06-15T10:07:00.000-04:00

We are, at heart, a social animal. A herd animal, a pack animal .. we don't necessarily fit into any clear-cut distinction, but we are clearly a social animal. While we may need differing amounts of alone time, we starve if we don't get enough social contact. Friendship is where we go for that contact and how we view healthy contact.

It's a loaded concept. To some people, anyone they associate with on a semi-regular basis is a friend. To others, it's a carefully guarded prize to be sought. I'm one of the carefully-guarded types .. I'm very choosy who I'm going to consider a real friend, and who's just someone I associate with/hang out with. I'm also quick to drop friends if I feel hurt, and I need to be a little less quick to cut and run .. I've been hurt a lot by people that claim to be friends. It makes me very leery of ones that might hurt me. It's far too easy to demand things of "friends" that would never be asked of other people and to hurt them accordingly.

That said, it's also far too easy to hermit and refuse to let anyone get close to me, and that's not healthy either. But I'm very picky who I trust as a friend, and very picky about how much I trust them.

Questions:
What do I give and receive? Is it balanced? Oof, I asky hard questions. I think it's fairly balanced .. I don't feel taken advantage of, at least. For the people in writing group, I give and receive critiques. It's the purpose of the group. For the people I chat with, we give each other advice about our lives, commiserate, and otherwise discuss life. The conversations do feel balanced, though, which is important.

Why is it wrong to expect people close to "understand"? Well, because we're not mind readers, for one. And it's so very easy to let one's own life take over everything, and expect other people to feel the same way. But they've got their own life taking over their own stuff .. they don't need MY life on top of everything else. When we just let ourselves take over and expect other people to "understand", what we're really saying is that we're more important than they are, and that their life doesn't matter.

Am I friends with "safe" people or people that challenge me? Well, some of each, of course. I'm challenged sometimes, and I know I challenge others sometimes. But I refuse to lower my standards of right and wrong for friends (which has cost me a few .. oh well) or otherwise lessen myself for the sake of friendship. I tried being someone people could love instead of myself a few times .. it lasted for about three days, then my usual charming self emerged. These days, love me for me or not at all. I refuse to be less than what I can be, and I refuse to make myself into something that's "comfortable" for other people. If what I am challenges you, live up to the challenge.

I give the gift of Flame

2006-06-14T11:25:00.000-04:00

Like the post on copyright, this is an odd post. It's more about the nuts and bolts instead of the structure itself.

But nuts and bolts are important, or there is no structure. Sure, a structure built this way, with anyone able to tack on pieces, isn't going to look the same as if it was designed and drafted by a single hand or group.

FlameKeeping is inherently built to include other people's ideas and contributions. It does not exist except as built by its followers. I feel incredibly strongly about this. The more you give to FlameKeeping, the more you get out of it. It's easy to say you're a member. It's incredibly hard to get your hands into the dirt and plant the seeds yourself.

We all explore the Universe our own way. This is a chance to share your viewpoint and bring it to others as we bring our viewpoints to you. I cannot emphasize enough how important this is to me. It's easy to say our viewpoint isn't meaningful and that we have nothing to contribute. But I don't think that's even remotely reasonable. We are all the eyes and hands of the Divine. We all have minds to think and hands to act. Every time we say we have nothing to share, we denigrate the Divine.

I challenge every person reading this to come up with a way to share their view of the Divine and to find a way to make it grow.

A sacred calling

2006-06-13T11:33:00.000-04:00

I don't think we, societally, believe that much in callings anymore. After all, what matters is money, right? You can buy anything else you need.

Of course, you can't. There are so many things money can't buy. If your job is killing you, is the money worth it? I don't think so.

We've also lost our ability to think smaller. Everything has to be the big leagues. Either I will write the next Great American Novel, or I won't write at all .. because what good is being a second-rate hack? Either I will be President of the US, or I will never run for political office. The fear of being second-rate cripples us from doing what we love. Even if we let ourselves do what we love, we refuse to give it a priority in our lives, calling it a "hobby" and letting it get shunted aside.

I am doing what I love. I am a mother and an author. Even if I never get a novel published, I'm still going to keep writing, keep working at it. (I'll be ticked, but that's to be expected). And I love being a stay-at-home mom, although part of me really can't wait for him to go to school. :) But because I love it, I do a better job and am happier. I might be able to make more money out of the house, but would it be worth it to me? No.

Questions:

What are my callings? Right now, mommy, author, and this religious stuff. Conveniently, that's also what I'm doing. And I'm content with that.

What have I given up as a calling? As a child/teen, I wanted to go into medical research. I saw myself as coming up with a cure for AIDS or cancer or something. And yes, I gave that up. Flunking Organic Chemistry was a bit of a wake-up call there, that I was in over my head. I also realized I was a lot more interested in behavior than chemistry, and changed my major. Is a dream gone? Yes, but it's been replaced by better ones. I don't regret the change.

Is there something I've always wished I could be and am not? Well, part of me wishes I was Christian, but that's so I wouldn't have to do the work of STARTING a religion .. I could just go with what someone else did. But that's my lazy side talking. :) And I wish I could sing well .. I can hold a tune, but only sometimes. There are many things I wish I could be and am not. However, none of them are integral to who I am .. they're just nice things that I'd like to add in to myself. (ability to draw would be stellar!) And I've played around with them, too. I just suck at it. :) But I've always tried.

Loving Gods

2006-06-08T08:15:00.000-04:00

Gods are something difficult to talk about. They don't match a world of bills and computers, televisions and automobiles. That doesn't mean they're not there, but it does feel a bit like talking about the Tooth Fairy. They're simply not quite reasonable, not quite logical. They're analog in a digital world.

Why do the gods even exist? Well, I'm fairly certain they do exist, so that's a bit of a silly question. I mean, squirrels exist, and the only thing they've ever done for me is fall on my head. Not exactly useful here. I don't know the why. I just know that they do.

Gods are part of us, and we are part of them. I don't think every person needs to have direct contact with gods, but I do think that contact is part of what makes us what we are as a species. Opening ourselves up to what's beyond us brings us closer to both the gods and ourselves. The Divine cannot speak to us in language we can understand. The gods, being closer to us, can whisper more directly. It's still difficult, but it is possible.

Questions:

Do I deal directly with any gods? Yes. I often speak with Apollo. He set my feet upon this path many years ago. It was and is my choice to walk it, but he certainly pushed me in this direction. Do I deal indirectly with gods? Quite probably, but it's hard to know.

Do I have any use for gods? Wow that's an arrogant question .. and I asked it! I have use for the concept of gods, certainly .. and my life has been richer with gods involved in it. I cannot imagine what life would be without them.

How do gods relate to the Divine? Like all things, gods are part of the Divine as well. And not just as puppets, but as independant beings. So they interrelate with the Divine much as we do, only with a closer understanding of the Divine and their interrelated nature. This, of course, doesn't stop gods from having disagreements as humans do. They are also individuals, and as such, are going to disagree. But they are also part of the Divine Whole.

Idealism

2006-06-07T08:20:00.000-04:00

I am, clearly, an idealist. I believe in a better world and that humans can bring it around if we're willing to try hard enough. I'm going to try to not be overly political here, but it's difficult, because religion is inherently political, inherently subversive. When we focus on the big picture and go beyond petty distinctions and borders, when we ignore the things that separate us for the things that bring us together and point to humanity's commonality: these are subversive acts. Governments and groups focus on the power they hold and the people they control. Taking back control and refusing to play the same game is a subversive act.

But I'm not being political here. I'm talking about ideals. I do dream of a world in which everyone has enough to eat (which is more a matter of transportation than anything else .. we HAVE enough food. We just need to change the market forces so that feeding people is necessary). I dream of a world where we judge people on their words and actions, not their ancestry or orientation. I dream of a world without bigotry in all its forms. (hey, why dream small?) But I recognize that these are dreams.

This doesn't mean I don't work towards them, though. I usually try to work on bigotry, as I don't know enough about market forces to work on hunger. I speak out wherever I am about the subject when it comes up. I vote against bigoted laws, and I write congresscritters about them. It might not be much, but I also don't just sit there and decide that since it's not me they're after, I can just ignore it.

I say this not as a polemic against bigotry (but don't be bigotted!) but to point out that ideals are meaningless if you don't live them and work towards them. It takes people and a lot of work to change things. It's not enough to be idealistic and to hold good morals. You then have to take them into the world and work with them, and butt heads with reality to try and make them work. It's a long slogging process, but the ideals are fairly meaningless if you don't use them to start action.

Questions!
Where is reality lacking, and what would I change or make better? Oh, there's not enough space for that. I think I'll leave it at, what I would change would be separating the views of moral and economic worth, and caring for people based on the fact that we all morally have a right to exist simply because we do. There will always be some kind of economic divide for as long as we have a money system, but we can make poor a lot more survivable than it is. Let's stop blaming them for what they are and start bringing them up to what they can be.

Where have I compromised my ideals? Like everyone, more times than I can count, more places than I can mention. Sometimes my ideals are in conflict. Also, I hate confrontation. If someone gets in my face, I tend to back down or hedge. But I always hate myself for it later. It's sometimes necessary to compromise .. to hold one's nose while one votes for the lesser evil. But that doesn't make it desirable.

Where have I given up and what questions am I afraid to ask? Well, I'm spending an awful lot of time specifically asking the hard questions, so that's a hard question to answer. The more afraid I am of a question, the more likely I am to write an entire essay about it.

There was a while that I just gave up. It's very hard when it looks like yourself against a world of indifference. And all I have to offer are ideas, which are fragile against the light when compared to the gaping wounds of society. But ideas are the only thing that have ever changed anything. Without the idea, we wouldn't have agriculture, sanitation, or this computer we're communicating through. Without the idea, there is no change. The only sure thing is that if you give up, nothing will happen or change.

Feeding Flame

2006-06-06T07:44:00.000-04:00

These two flames are the symbol and metaphor for everything in FlameKeeping. As the central metaphor, of course, they become both imperative to talk about and incredibly difficult to talk about, because anything I say leaves more out than it does in. So there are bits and pieces here and there as I try to explain the Flames.

I speak about them as though they're separate, but really they aren't. They're a single two-headed flame shooting out light and darkness simultaniously. The problem is that we fear the darkness. We fear the selfish, but I think more, we fear the fact that we aren't in control of the darkness. The dark flame is inherently a place which moves us, as opposed to us moving it. In the darkness we aren't simply our own individual self, we are also a mote of the Divine, subject to the influences of that which lies within and outside ourselves.

Question time!

Which flame do I nurture more? My knee-jerk reaction is to say the dark flame. I'm much more comfortable by myself doing religious things than I am with people. On the other hand, I spend a lot of time working on things that I intend to share with other people, like these essays. So I'm not sure if it wouldn't be easier to say that I have an easier time with the dark flame, but spend my effort on nurturing the bright one. It's complicated.

How would I nurture the other flame? Well, I don't have a problem with my dark flame. So I'd nurture the bright flame by actually doing things where I can see an affect .. by talking to people, interacting. Doing things. I should also give money, but I really HATE giving money to charities. It just disappears and I have no idea where it's going or what it's funding, and I never feel like I'm doing anything. Personal issue. I'd volunteer more, but I'm busy mommying .. when he's older, though, and I can leave the house with him. Although I suppose mommying counts as nurturing the bright flame .. I'm doing for someone else and all.

Do I think balancing them is important, and how do they interrelate? Well, that's one question. Balance is important because they interrelate. If you don't nurture your dark flame, you lose the "you" that makes life worth living. If all you do is nurture the dark flame, you also lose the "you" because there's nothing for you to push against, and you're alone in the dark.

We need darkness and we need light. Only when we balance these and grow them both can we grow as a person and better the Divine. Otherwise, all we're doing is chasing ourselves in circles.

I am Individual, One of Many, and part of the Divine Whole

2006-06-02T08:39:00.000-04:00

Perspective in life really can be everything. It's so easy to see ourselves as the center of the universe, and forget that everyone else is the center of their own universe, too. And it's easy to see ourselves as nothing but a speck and forget that we're also important in ourselves.

I've never believed we create our own reality. To me, that's a way of blaming the victim. Poor people don't choose to be poor, and hungry people don't choose to be hungry. And if I was creating my reality, it would be a much healthier one, and I'd be better looking. That said, we do choose how to perceive our reality. I can easily make myself feel horribly worse by thinking only of the pain in my life, and how insignificant I am, and feel like absolutely nothing. Or I can focus on all the good things in my life, and how I'm connected to others, and all that there is for me to explore, and be happy. It's a choice. Not always an easy one (some days, life is just miserable. And of course, I'm not talking about clinical depression here .. I'm talking about the words we tell ourselves. Clinical depression is something very different, go see a doctor).

But perspective can be everything. For a long time, I could only see myself as one person among many. I didn't see anything particularly redeeming about myself, and wondered why I even existed. And the more I saw myself that way, the worse it got, because when you use only that perspective, there's nothing particularly special about any one person. It's what you do with your life that matters, and I was a college student. I hadn't done anything yet. When I changed my perspective and saw myself as special to myself, many things became easier for me. (This was not an easy change. It took a long time for me to stop thinking I was useless, to get rid of the nagging thoughts that asked why I was special. I don't want to make it sound easy .. just doable and necessary).

I am Individual, One of Many, and part of the Divine Whole. All of these are true at the same time.

Questions!

How am I individual? Well, I'm the only mommy of my son, the only wife of my husband, the only me. One of many? I'm a FlameKeeper (which makes me both individual, as I was the first, and one of many, because there are others), I'm part of a writer's group, I'm part of a group of friends, I'm part of a community, a country .. all of which are important as well. And I am part of the Divine Whole in that, simply, I exist. I bring joy and light and darkness to the Divine, as it does to me.

Do I love myself for who I am? Well, I do now. I didn't used to. I wanted to be anything else .. or I wanted who I was to be more desirable and acceptable. I had to train myself to deal with people, and I'm still not always great at it. I had to learn to accept that I would always be short, that my brother would have better hair (although he's going bald! hee!), and that I would never be classically socially acceptable. On the other hand, now I value my abilities more. I may not be classically socially acceptable, but then, I fit in well with the people that I enjoy talking to, and I don't have to spend a lot of time trying to fit in with people I don't understand. It might be better if I tried harder, but I have other things to do with my time that are more rewarding. :) There comes a time when you stop bashing your head against a brick wall. Do I love other people for who they are and being part of the Divine? I try to. Sometimes I fail with individuals .. again, I don't deal well with people often. Which makes people doing things I just don't understand hard to deal with. But I try.

How do I balance being special with being insignificant? Oddly, I find it easier to accept being special if I'm also insignificant, if it is just perspective. Because there are so many people out there, and I am just one of them. Even if I do something extraordinary, odds are good someone else could have done it at least as well given the tools. But I am also special: others might have done it as well, but they could not have done it the same way. My perspective brings a viewpoint that other perspectives cannot give. It may be a similar viewpoint, the differences may well be almost nonexistant. But I am unique, and my viewpoint therefore is too.

I know only that there is so much left to know

2006-06-01T09:13:00.000-04:00

I often wonder at people's certainty. They "know" what reality holds, whether it's what God is or that there is no God or something else. The interesting part is that they "know." They have all the answers, and shove every question into their own worldview to fit the answers they already have.

It's convenient to try to shrink the world to what we can already understand and hold. We want to understand things. But when we try to shrink the world to what we can understand, we limit our own ability to grow. Sure, it's easier to think God created the world as opposed to evolution, with all the twisty paths that created us. But just because it's easier doesn't make it true. Just because we want it to be true doesn't make it true, either. I want it to be true that I'm rich and God loves me especially more than anyone else because darn it, I deserve it. I accept that I'm not rich, and that I'm not any more special than anyone else .. I AM special because I'm me, but that doesn't make me better than other people.

I guess what I've always wondered is, what are people so afraid of? Why can't what exists be larger than what we can hold? I find the Universe more beautiful knowing that there is always more for me to learn, both on a macroscopic and microscopic scale. Why shrink the Universe? It's more beautiful as it is.

Questions:

How do I try to hold the world smaller, and how does it limit me? I hermit. I don't try so much as to hold the world smaller as I try to limit my interaction with it. And it limits me because life is enriched by experience, and I'm not experiencing as much when I limit my interactions with people to just what I want to deal with. It's "safer", certainly, but growth comes from risk.

Do I see a conflict between science/reality and religion? Nope. If there is one, religion looses. If my religion tells me the sky is really pink with purple polka dots, and I look outside and it's blue, and everyone I talk to says it's blue, the sky is blue. The most I'll hedge is that it's blue for all effective purposes, but really, it's blue. There would have to be phenominal cosmic reason for me to doubt not just my eyes (Because they screw up, although not on color so far) but everyone else's eyes as well.

Part of the problem with that confusion, of course, is that religion frequently speaks in allegory. There might be a reason there's a myth where the sky is pink with purple polka dots that has great meaning. That doesn't mean it needs to be taken literally. We limit ourselves when we don't allow for multiple meanings at the same time .. some of which contradict each other. Regardless, if reality says there's a box there, religion isn't going to save you from kicking it by pretending it's not there.

Faith needs to be free. If it can't stand up to what it faces, the problem is with the faith, not the Universe. The more we try to hold our faith secure and refuse to examine it, the more we say we don't really believe. If we're right, after all, our faith will hold up to whatever the world throws at us. If we're wrong, what's the advantage of holding the faith?

The Dark Flame and You

2006-05-31T09:24:00.000-04:00

I get really irritated by the idea of light = good and dark = bad. I can understand the idea, certainly. The dark can be really scary, since we don't know what's there, we don't know if we're safe or not. We can't see, or see indistinctly. Light and warmth are safe and friendly, especially when everything around is dark. But the quickest way to ruin your night vision is to look into a light, as well.

The world is not all clear and distinct. We need a place to rest, and that's within ourselves, in the darkness. In a self-denying worldview, this is egotistical, certainly. Inside ourselves should be a place we reserve for God and not ourselves. But that's a false distinction, because we are the Divine, and the Divine is us. When we deny ourselves, we are denying the very Divine we're supposed to be making a place for. The dark flame is the Divine that we are to ourselves.

I cannot stress enough how important keeping a healthy self relationship is. This isn't the self-esteem pep talk that we get so often in the schools. Instead, it's a view of how we see ourselves is how we relate with others. We don't need to pump ourselves up; we need to be honest and loving with ourselves. Yes, we need to be positive, because we bring about what we perceive. But the dark flame is the healthy love of ourselves (not narcissism) that lets us grow and become better than where we start off. It's easy to limit ourselves to the light, but light is external. Light shines upon us from others. The inner darkness is where we grow.

Think about it. Seeds start in the dark. Babies grow in the dark. We sleep in the dark, and sleep is definitely something that benefits only ourselves (except, of course, that if you don't sleep, you become useless to others as well. The connection is inevitable). When we deny ourselves the healing power of darkness and quiet, we aren't being fair to anyone. The Divine whispers in the darkness as well as shining in the light.

Questions!
Am I in balance? Well, I try to be. Some times are better than others .. it's a balancing act, not a state one achieves and never needs to find again. I think I tend to favor my dark flame over my bright .. I'm inherently a lazy person, and I like people to be kept at a certain distance from me so I can deal with them on my own terms. This keeps me focused fairly inward, although I try to use that focus to turn again outward with these blogs. But I still don't have to see how it affects people, so I tend to doubt that it does any good and denigrate what the bright flame does. As I said .. it's a process.

Is the darkness nurtured as well as the light? Again, I'm focused a little too much into the darkness. It's safe in here. :) I should work harder to focus outward. I should also write about it, since I appear to have avoided the topic. And of course the imagry doesn't bug me, it would be silly of me to use imagry that bugs me! :D

I tend to feel the Divine connection much more with the dark flame than the bright one, which is a problem. The Divine is both, as well as in other people's Flames. But I like to focus inward and poke around in the corners of my head and avoid looking outward, so I deny the connection. Flames can burn as well as guide, and I've been burned a few too many times to reach out easily. And only in reaching out does the Divine fill up the bright flame.

Thoughts on the Meditation on the nature of flame

2006-05-30T08:39:00.000-04:00

This meditation is, I think, where I really figured out in my head what FlameKeeping was all about. Not that the stuff I wrote before it is garbage .. if it was, I'd've deleted it and pretended I'd never heard of it. :D But this is where I wrote down something that really helps someone else see where I'm coming from and lead another to the same place. As important as the rest of the structure is, this is where you reach inside yourself and start to live it.

"I participate in creation seen" and "I participate in creation unseen" are to me two of the most powerful phrases in the English language. I participate in creation. Not a passenger, not an unwilling person being tugged along by the winds of chance and fate .. a participant. This is a statement of power, of choice.

I participate in creation seen: This statement speaks of the work we do that is visible to others. This is when we paint, when we build, when we sing. (okay, singing is audible. close enough). Of course this doesn't mean that we aren't buffetted by the realities around us as well, but it does mean that we also push back into reality. I am participating. I am here, I am present, I am in the moment. I create.

I participate in creation unseen: This is of the work we do internally. I participate in making myself what I am, in how I view my experiences and my life. It's easy to forget just how important the creation unseen is, but everything we are is built on it. I participate in building myself. I refuse to be simply the sum total of what happens to me, but instead build on what I have been to become what I wish to be.

These are not just words, not if you mean them when you say them. This is not just an empty ritual. This is a statement to the Divine that you participate with it in creation, in living, in life. This is declaring that you live life, not simply accept it.

"I bring light to the darkness." "I bring darkness to the light." Humans are creatures of extremism. We like to focus on one side in exclusion to the other, forgetting that truth and life tend to be in the middle .. or sometimes, a combination of both extremes. Light brings clarity, but also removes the ability of things to change what they are. Darkness brings a lowering of boundaries, which can lead both to change and confusion. Both are necessary. We need to learn what we can from both, then take what we learn into the realm of the other. "I bring light into the darkness" is not a statement of good over evil. It is a statement of clarity into confusion. "I bring darkness into the light" isn't evil over good. It's a statement of bringing the possiblity of change and growth into stagnation.

I bring light into the darkness. I bring darkness into the light.

I participate in creation seen. I participate in creation unseen.

do you?

Societal ecstasy

2006-05-25T10:56:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure where to begin. Or, for that matter, where to go from there.

Ecstasy is scary. It's more scary in someone else, given that we're talking about a person changing fairly rapidly and fairly completely. It's our nature to try and force that to fit a mold and a system that lets us continue to compartmentalize the world and safely keep things within boundaries.

But systems have limits. The more we try to cram things into systems that just don't go there, the more things leak out the sides. I feel like we live in a society right now that frowns on ecstasy, creativity, difference in all its forms. If you do it well, people will celebrate you and pay you considerable amounts of money, but the process between being a dabbler and getting to the point of money is hard, both because the process itself is hard (which is fine, because that's what the market will bear) but also because creative people are mocked and told to get a "real" job. Even successful ones are viewed as playing (which they are, to a point), but as though such play is bad. Why do we crave entertainment, but degrade the work that goes into creating it?

Ecstasy cannot be bought or consumerized. It's not capitalistic, not communistic, not any economic system. But when you experience ecstasy, you become more content, which makes it harder to sell things to you. So ecstasy is subtly discouraged, because it's not profitable. Happiness is supposed to be found in a soft drink or new shoes or clothes, not inside yourself. And, of course, if you can't find happiness in yourself, no amount of clothing is going to get it for you.

Have I embraced or denied ecstasy? I believe I embrace it. I try to encourage it. In that moment when I dance with the Universe, I exualt in it.

What responsibilities does ecstasy call for me to lay down? I find, more, that it calls me to take responsibilites up. When you see that you are part of a greater whole, it becomes more imperative to take interested and encourage the growth of the greater whole. It might be self-interest, but it's still impossible to ignore others when you feel connected to them.

That said, I have found that I ignore more expectations when I feel more in touch with the Divine. Expectations that I haven't agreed to and don't really like, such as what a "proper" mother is, a "proper" wife or woman, that sort of thing. I really don't care what's proper, so I have laid down those expectations. But I think I have more responsibility, because I cannot separate myself from the whole and pretend it all just doesn't matter.

The people around me .. ouch. I really don't know. I know that I see myself sometimes as more "special" because I am doing this and my husband does a day job. (I try to beat up that little voice when it pops up. After all, I couldn't do his job, either. If we were reliant upon me for income, we would be much worse off.) But it's a voice that shows up sometimes. I hope I don't stifle him. But it's hardest to encourage those that I'm close to .. after all, if hubby was just as good as I am, what need would there be for me? When I am experiencing the Divine, I do not feel this way. But when I'm not, sometimes jealousy gets the better of me. It's an ongoing process, and often a painful one.

And you know, that was a little more introspection than I'm really comfortable with. I'm going to need to think about that for a while.

Ecstasy and Boxes of Words

2006-05-24T09:51:00.000-04:00

This is another hard one for me, because I'm going to be trying to put deeply personal things into words. And I'm not sure I can very well.

I have experienced ecstasy. (and I do not mean the drug). I saw, in a moment, the entire Universe, and felt it look back. There was no "me," even, simply a great throbbing dance of life. It was a long moment, but only a moment. I've spent years trying to get back to that feeling, off and on.

And here I am, creating a box of words for the concept. That's what religion is, after all. It's a way to try and tidy ecstasy up, to normalize it, to give everyone a similar set of experiences to go through and find the same point. And there's a point to that, of course. Without a guide, we could never experience the same things. It's the nature of humanity to want to share experience and a point of reference, both for good things and for bad. The problem is that religion is a very easy way to box that ecstasy out of non-religion activities. We try to keep transformation in places where it's safe and comfortable, and ignore the fact that it just doesn't work that way.

This is so incredibly hard to talk about, even to just the computer with no one here to judge if I sound like a lunatic. Ecstasy defies words, defies logic. It's like putting on a pair of glasses for just a second, and seeing clearly. Then the glasses are gone, but the memory of how everything looked remained.

Do I allow room for ecstasy or box it up? I don't know. I try to allow room for ecstasy, but at the same time, I've got an infant, I work on my writing, there's housework ..... daily life gets in the way. It's hard to have room for transcendance between dirty diapers. (and I'm not sure I'd want any revelation I might find in there)!

Can I accept transformation? I have in the past. I suspect I would manage in the future. I'm pragmatist enough to simply react to whatever's in front of me. Some changes, of course, are easier than others. Do I want it? Well, right now, not so much. Or at least, not most of the things I can think of. A major religious revelation that pointed me into a drastically different direction would really piss me off. Something that gave depth to what I already do, on the other hand, would be welcomed.

As far as what ecstasy would change, that's probably a dumb question. Unless you're actively struggling against a change, it's impossible to tell that in advance.

Using people

2006-05-23T09:36:00.000-04:00

This is one of those topics that never seems to end with me. The problem is, I'm very GOOD at using people. I don't usually do it on purpose, but when you see how people react and what they're likely to do, it's very easy to push the right button and get people to go the way I want them to.

It's also very easy for me to hermit. It's almost disturbingly easy for me to do so, actually. I often don't like people much, so it's desirable for me to limit my interactions with them to MY desires, MY standards. Play the way I want you to or go home. When I remember that other people are people to, I'm ashamed of my actions. Which, of course, makes me want to hermit more, so I don't have to deal with the consequences. It's cowardly, but it's easier than dealing with people and admitting I screwed up. So it's a constant battle with me.

At the same time, I fear using people, because I know I'm good at it. I've avoided reaching out and making certain contacts that would probably benefit me incredibly in the writing world because I see no way to make them that aren't hypocritical. Even when the contact is available in part to BE exploited, I don't like myself when I do so. So I avoid contacts that aren't mutually beneficial. It might make life harder, but when I close my eyes at night and look over my day, I find myself a lot easier to live with.

Question time!
Who do I treat as a means? I try very hard to treat no one that way. It's actually harder for me with family: I'm much more likely to treat my husband as the kitchen-cleaning man who should be cleaning my kitchen, damn it, than I am to mistreat a stranger. What do I hope to gain? Well .. a clean kitchen.

Do I let other people treat me as a means? That's something I'm less good about. When I meet new people, I'm so desperate to fit in that if it half-works, I'm likely to let myself get trampled on for a time in an effort to not trample back. Then I either disappear or blow up. (I don't do quiet for long. Often: five minutes. But sometimes a lot longer). It's often easier to be treated as a means than cause a scene, and that's something that's hard to avoid doing.

What do I do about strangers? I tend to see them as scenery, yes. If I actually have to interact with them (shop clerks and the like) I try to be polite and see them as a person doing a job, not just a job. If they're someone that just happens to be there, I give them their privacy and expect them to do the same to me. I'm very scared of strangers .. not that I think anything's going to happen, but because I haven't the foggiest idea what to say to them. I'm far too likely to put my foot in my mouth, and that fear makes me babble and increases the odds, so all in all, I prefer simply to not talk to them at all. Perhaps it's more accurate to say I fear myself with strangers. Irritating people, even people I'll never see again, bothers me.

I think it's easy to see people as objects, especially people that you don't actually have to deal with. And I've told off my share of telemarketers. (seriously, dudes, STOP CALLING ME!) But when we remember that people, even annoying people, are real, and have their own feelings and needs, I think we become better people ourselves.

Yes, I judge

2006-05-19T09:22:00.000-04:00

I wrote this after being irritated at someone saying people shouldn't judge, or perhaps calling me judgemental, or that Pagans are "better" than judging. It's something that crops up regularly, and it never fails to piss me off.

We all agree that we shouldn't trust our wallet with just anyone, for example. I don't know anyone that would trust a random stranger with their housekeys. So, we judge. And that's a good thing.

What do I judge on? I try to judge based on what people say and how they act, and not ephemerals like dress or weight or attractiveness. (that said, my hubby's darn cute, and I have the most adorable baby ever. so there). There are some things I judge on that I'm trying to work on. People that talk about God a lot bother me due to early upbringing, for example. Which is a little embarrassing given what I'm doing here. :)

Questions:
Why do we judge? Because otherwise we have absolutely no useful way to make decisions. If I can't judge based on actions, I might as well use a dartboard to pick political candidates, friends, a spouse .. not a good plan. When shouldn't we judge? When we don't have the information we need and a decision isn't necessary yet. Like, deciding to judge all people of group X. Unless it is a self-chosen group (I freely choose to judge all people in a group of "We Hate People" to not be people I want to associate with!), I shouldn't be quick to judge on association. It's information I can use, but it's not the whole story.

What do I think is appropriate to judge on? I think I answered this already .. what people say and do. If you're a jerk, I get to judge you as such. :)

How do I want to be judged? On my actions and my words, not on things like the fact that I'm a woman, or that I'm short, or things like that. I have no problem being judged on my writing: or at least, I have no problem having my ideas judged where I write about them. I don't want my character judged solely on my fiction.

And I really hate being judged based solely on the fact that I'm female. It happens with some regularity. I will be looked at and dismissed because of my reproductive organs, or because I'm a mother, as though being a mom and a woman completely destroys any brain cells I might have had. I suspect this is a common problem among minorities, and it's offensive. No one has an exclusive lock on intelligence, good ideas, or anything else. So while I don't want to associate with people that look at me and think that way anyway, I still find it offensive that people are so blind as to assume that a woman is somehow lesser. (or even worse, that as a woman I'd be willing to sleep with them just because they're a man. I do NOT think so).

If I can judge, then I can choose who I do and don't want to be associated with. If I can't judge, then I can't choose to get away from creeps that want me for nothing more than my body. What would you choose? (if you choose the body, you've never been chased by a creep). So, yes, I judge. And I'm proud of it.

Death, Life, and living

2006-05-17T11:09:00.000-04:00

Believe it or not, I do not fear death. I fear dying at times, and I fear dying with so much undone. I have taken on a task that I know will never be complete in my lifetime, and that is writing this religion down. And of course I fear the death of my loved ones, because life would be so much less rich without them. But my own death does not scare me. It will come when it comes, and in the meantime, I have too much work to do to worry over something I cannot change.

This doesn't mean I'm careless, of course. I don't want to get hit by a car or die of skin cancer or any of the other things carelessness can cause. And I don't want my loved ones to miss me, either. But I can't live worried about an afterlife when there's so much to do in this life. Whatever afterlife there is (and I really only expect to loose my ego, my self-ness, and become again a part of the Divine), it will be there when I get there.

Questions:
What do I do in fear of death? Well, I don't play in traffic. :) But really, other than normal safety things, I don't live my life in fear of death. I'm much more afraid of sickness, of having more pain. And I feel like I'm weak when I say that, because people can and do survive and thrive with much worse health, but I still fear being sicker. So for things like my diet, even if in the long term it sets me up for a heart attack, I will eat this way anyway because it makes life so much more tolerable in day to day life.

What blessing has mortality brought to my life? I think that being able to accept that I won't ever be able to get everything in my life done still leaves me with more motivation to get as much done as I can. There will come a time when there is nothing left but my words; so I need to make certain the words I leave are the right ones.

How can we live without certainty? I don't think I could live with certainty. Or at least, I would not be me if I knew the time of my death. It would be hard to take threats seriously if I knew they couldn't kill me. And if the time was soon, I might give up and get nothing done instead of getting done as much as I could in life. As life is, the lack of knowledge pushes me to get as much done as I can while still planning for tomorrow.

There is no life, no push, without the eventuality of death to give us impetus. And there is no new life without death to mke room. I can accept that I will die one day for the joy that my baby brings me. If it's all or nothing, I will take both and count myself lucky in the bargain.

Living in Time

2006-05-16T10:18:00.000-04:00

I don't believe that we create our own reality. If we did, I would be a lot healthier (and just a touch thinner .. I've got my vanity too!). What we create is possibilities.

I think this is an important point (that we create possibilities, not reality) because when we believe we create reality, we ignore the realities of the people around us and the world we live in. "I create my own reality" can lead to horrible narcissism. It leads to the belief that people are poor through some kind of insane "choice" and that riches come through positive thinking instead of work. What we have are possibilities. I can choose to work for health, to work for wealth, to work for people around me. And I can't choose everything, either: there are only so many hours in a day, and I have to make tradeoffs. Right now, most of my choices are fairly small-scale - my son and husband, my writing, my religious work. I know I should do more out of the house, but I just don't have the time and the energy to add more to my workload.

Questions!
How do I create my future? Well, I got married and had a baby .. that defines the next twenty years or so pretty clearly for at least a good chunk of my life. Whatever else I do, I will also be a mother. That's a clear choice. I also work on my writing .. if I want to be a published author, the only way to get there is my butt in the chair and my hands on the keyboard. If I don't do the work, I'll never get the reward.

What cycles am I in? Well, the great cycle of life .. I have become a parent and perpetuated myself upon the world. That's the biggest cycle. And then there are the daily ones of things like housework .. I eat, I dirty dishes, I clean them, I cook in them, I eat. I have a monthly writing group I meet with. I chat with my friends most weekdays. My husband works during the week, which also affects my time and cycles. Most of these cycles, I've chosen. I certainly chose wife, mother and author, and everything else seems to come from them.

How am I an individual? Well, I'm the only me there is. (thank goodness!) I'm also part of a greater whole .. I may be the only mother of MY son, but there are many mothers and many sons out there. I am the only person writing THIS book, but many people write books. It is when I forget that there are other mothers (or that my husband is also a parent, and that father is as meaningful as mother) that things get confused. I am equal with other people. The difference is in how I choose to interact with others, not that they exist.

I want, you want ...

2006-04-24T09:25:00.000-04:00

Conflict: a natural order of the species. We want things, and we can't all have them. Whenever I see a religious system that is supposed to get rid of conflict, I laugh. If we could get beyond conflict, we wouldn't be human anymore. It might be better, but it wouldn't be human.

So getting beyond conflict ain't bloody likely. There's always going to be the problem of people wanting what they can't have. So how do we conflict without warring? I don't have an easy answer to this. I don't think there is one. I do think that the most important thing that we as a species need to stop doing, though, is demonizing each other. It's easy to declare a conflict because the other person isn't human (or the same kind of human, or whatever you classify yourself as). It's harder to be honest that you simply want the same thing. And it's almost impossible to think about which person actually deserves the object (or whatever) more. But we should.

Questions:
What is worth striving for? What isn't? Well, clearly anything needed for survival is worth it. survival good. After that, it's really a cost-benefit analysis .. is it worth what I need to go through to get this object? If it's a child's toy for Christmas, probably not. If it's something you've wanted all your life, it's probably worth it.

How do I handle conflict with grace and dignity? Poorly. :) Conflict scares me. I tend to simply withdraw, and if I can't withdraw, I panic. I try, though, to deal with the issues rather than the people, and to see all sides of the question. I don't always succeed, but I do try.

How do I see the things I'm in conflict with? As very, very scary. So I try to avoid it when I can. I try to see conflict as natural, but it scares me. Anger in general scares me, my own and others. I don't know how to handle it, so I avoid it. But I try to see conflict as natural and an opportunity. Some day, maybe I'll make it. But I do my best to always see the people I'm dealing with as actual people. Win or lose, I don't want to demonize people. That's just not healthy to anyone.

Bad things gonna get you

2006-04-21T08:58:00.000-04:00

I can't stand the idea that misfortune is the result of some angry god keeping score with your life. What happens is a result of what's happened before and what you do about it .. cause and effect. The idea that someone's keeping score, and that good things will "eventually" happen to good people and bad to bad .. it makes me sick. It's such a cop-out.

We are responsible for what happens in life. That's a collective "we" .. I'm not responsible for your actions in any way, but I'm also not responsible for what's done TO me. I'm only responsible for what I do then. I don't want to sound like I'm blaming victims here. You're only responsible for the choices you made (which does, however, include the choice to do nothing). But the Divine doesn't act through other people to reward or punish you. What happens is what happens, nothing more.

(this means, of course, that I have to take responsibility for my carpal tunnel problems. I didn't know that typing the way I did could cause problems .. I didn't know what I was doing was damaging myself. But that doesn't change the damage or the fact that it's my own damn fault.)

Question time!

okay, I've no idea where I was going with the first question. Let's assume it made sense at the time. Do my actions match the desired consequences? Well, I certainly try to get the results I want! But more clearly .. since I want to be an author, I don't sit there and moan about my brilliance. I sit on my butt and get my hands on the keyboard and write. And write. Then I edit and edit. THEN I do the hard part, and stick the damn thing in the mail. I don't sit there and assume that if I'm a good person, the Divine will come down and plop a book with my name on it on my lap.

How do I manage misfortune gracefully, and does it help? Well, bitching and moaning doesn't really do much good .. to use the earlier example, my carpal tunnel problems. Sure, I could bitch and moan about it a lot. I could complain and try to get sympathy. I could sit on my ass and try to get other people to take care of me. OR, I can recognize my limitations and live as full a life as I can around my pain. Let me tell you, the second one works a lot better.

Destiny control: there is no man behind the curtain. This is freeing and terrifying. Because it means that if I succeed, I did it because of myself .. but if I fail, that's on me as well. And not because of some bug I squished as a kid, but because I just wasn't good enough/tried at the wrong time/got thwacked with bad luck. What I do affects the people around me, as they affect me. But basically, I have to accept that things are going to happen. It's how I deal with what happens that I grow as a person.

Oh, you can go to BLEEP!

2006-04-20T13:26:00.000-04:00

I even do it myself. I see something horrible, and I wish a nasty afterlife on the person. Sometimes, you just want to believe the person is somehow, in some way going to pay for what they do. However, I don't believe it will happen.

I think afterlifes are a hedge against the possibility of death or eternity being something we don't want. We fear the idea that we may at some point close our eyes and not be able to open them again, that there will be absolutely nothing.

I find the idea of actually WANTING to damn people, WANTING to believe that they're going to rot in hell or suffer a bad afterlife or anything like that, morally reprehensible. You want something bad to happen to someone, fine. Sit there and wish an anvil would fall on their head. But wishing someone to suffer FOR ETERNITY .. ugh. If we are the Universe, and what we wants reverberates into the Universe, us wishing any part of the Divine ill for eternity is wishing ourselves to suffer as well.

If there is such a thing as hell, or karma and reincarnation, or anything like that, the Divine will handle it. What matters is living THIS life as best as we can.

Questions:
Why do we wish bad lives/afterlives on people? Because we're not very nice. Only we like to think we're nice, so we dump it on the Divine and then claim it's out of our hands. But mostly because we're not very nice people. There's always been more interest in Hell than Heaven .. in punishment rather than reward. Reward bores us. Punishment for people we don't like, though .. that's interesting!

As far as controlling actions .. that's why we have laws and moral suasion. Sure, you can do something I don't like .. then I get to not like you, tell you it was bad, whatever seems appropriate. Wishing someone to suffer for all eternity for doing something I don't like seems a bit overkill .. who am I to get the power to do that to someone?

Controlling the afterlife .. I think most people confident of going to Heaven tend to be jerks, honestly. There's a feeling of entitlement. And for Hell, people convinced they're going THERE have nothing left to lose .. nothing. It's a control mechanism, but once it snaps, everything goes out the window. When we use karma, we start paralizing ourselves for the fear of what might happen from what we do. (By karma, I'm using the Western notion .. I don't understand it in context well enough to make a statement). And when we assume that "karma" will take care of a person, we don't necessarily protect ourselves or pay attention to our own actions.

In short, we need to take responsibility for our own lives and our own communities. We can't let people go because karma will get them or they'll go to hell, and we can't do what we want in this life in the comfort that we'll be rewarded in heaven later. Life is our responsibility. Now we have to live it.

In the Beginning ...

2006-04-19T14:54:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure how I feel about this essay, actually. I don't find it wrong in any way, but I'm not sure I find it very meaningful personally.

Clearly there was a moment of creation. Once there was nothing, then there was stuff. (either that, or both physics and our concept of cause and effect are very off). But I'm not sure that creation after that is very meaningful. After all, we ARE here .. that doesn't make us an inevitable reaction of creation. Simply that if we weren't here, we wouldn't be asking this question. :)

It's easy to get caught up in questions of why we're here and what the gods are like and other such questions. After all, we're naturally a curious species. Anything we don't know the answer to is of interest.

But what's important, to me, is that we are the Eyes and Hands of the Universe. We need to remember that we are Divine and that we are instruments of the Divine. The specifics are interesting, but probably pretty irrelevant.

Questions:
Why is it so hard to communicate directly with the Divine? Because it's completely ahuman. If there are aliens, it's all of them, all of us, all of the bugs and the plants and EVERYTHING. My mind shudders back at the attempt. I do think we can touch that force with our minds .. but we can't understand it or chat with it. Simply experience it.

The whole individual/part of the whole thing .. I don't know how to put that into words. It is to me a natural state, not a question. Like many things, we are the eye of the paradox .. both completely individual and completely part of the whole.

Why are we alone and lonely? Because there is always the fact that inside ourselves, there is just us. We can have invisible friends, characters, even gods in there .. but we're still just us. We are a social species, but there is always a part of ourselves that we feel is separate. As far as how we cope with that .. I'll let you know if I ever figure it out myself. Best I can come up with is to be honest with the people around us, to lower our boundaries to those we trust.

I embrace the Universe

2006-04-14T10:50:00.000-04:00

I really never know how to put my relationship with the Divine into words: and so, often, I don't. I avoid the topic and stick to the stuff that does go into words more easily. I fear misleading people, and so say nothing at all.

Questions first:
How do I see the Divine? I don't have a picture, clearly .. The Divine is everything, and I can't see that far. I find it easier to look at small pieces. I can see the Divine in a leaf unfurling on a tree, in my son's eyes, in the bird that lands outside the window and chirps at me. There really aren't any words to describe the way the Divine moves in my life. I see the mundane things .. the bird, the leaf .. but at the same time, I see them as sacred and part of the Divine. The Divine is all things. The Divine is love. These things I take on faith.

What do I wish I could hide from the Divine? The list is endless. I can be petty, I can be heartless .. I routinely stick my foot in my mouth. There are so many things about myself that I wish I could hide from the world. To show them to the Divine .. to be honest in myself before the Divine is painful sometimes. I can't even lie to myself about these things, as much as I wish I could. But at the same time, I know how loved I am for myself, which is something I couldn't know if I lied.

What is the way I should relate to the Divine, and how can it be messed up? I need to be honest, both with myself and before the Divine. It's so easy to lie, to pretend. And sometimes it's necessary to pretend: my son doesn't need to know I just want to bawl instead of change his diaper or feed him. Better that he sees a happy Mommy. But I can't lie to myself, and I can't lie to the Divine. When I try to lie, I end up talking only to myself.

I think one of the most important things about relating with the Divine is accepting that you're not in charge of the relationship. I have to accept that my life is going to get pushed in ways I hadn't intended. (like, y'know, this blog. and the other blog. and this entire religion thing). I'm not powerless in this: I have the ability, the right, and indeed the duty to be sure that where I'm going is where I want to go. I can refuse anything. I just have to accept the consequences that come with my choices.

I am not subservient or a child .. I am simply a part of the Divine. As a part, I have responsibilities towards the whole, and it has responsibilities towards me(itself). But most of all, there is love.

Happy Happy Joy Joy!

2006-04-13T09:26:00.000-04:00

We live in a pleasure-centered culture. If you watch commercials, or listen to them, or whatever, everything circles around pleasure .. getting something and having the momentary flash of glee about it. But most of the stuff that we're told we absolutely can't live without doesn't actually bring us happiness. It drugs us for a second into pleasure, but .. pleasure is easily found and easily lost, leaving us to seek it again.

I try really hard to not get sucked into the pleasure-seeking game. (sometimes it works better than others - there are some REALLY cute clothes this season ... *g*) But it really is never enough. No matter how many clothes I have, they won't make me happy. No amount of chocolate or sex or other quick-passing pleasure will ever make me happy.

The real problem is, pleasure is easy. I feel down, I buy some shoes. Or have sex, or gamble, or have a drink .. These are seen as actual ways to solve problems. On paper, it looks rather silly, but we still all do it to some extent. If you think about it rationally, though .. do those shoes actually solve anything? (unless, of course, you were barefoot before or otherwise actually NEEDED shoes). Do they grant you happiness? Or do you just bring them home and stick them next to your other shoes and want to buy more the next time you feel down?

Happiness is hard work. There are so many things that can make a person UNhappy .. but finding a way to accept and enjoy what you have is hard. Our own culture strives against that .. after all, happy people don't bring in money as much, because they're not out buying shoes. Good little consumers need to be perpetually dissatisfied if they're going to buy more. Isn't that lovely? We want other people to be unhappy so they'll impulse-buy our goods/services/whatnot in an attempt to feel better. It's rather sick what we do to ourselves that way.

I choose to be a revolutionary. I seek long-term happiness instead. (and if I find pleasure along the way, that's good too).

Question time!

How does pleasure differ from happiness? Pleasure's easy and quick. Happiness takes work and maintenance, but can last for a lifetime. How do you balance wanting both? By accepting that I can't have everything. :) If something offers me pleasure at the expense of happiness, I just don't take it. (or, well .. when I'm good. I'm human too, ideals fall short of reality). But, y'know .. I might want the chocolate, but I'd rather feel good about my diet. I'd like the shoes, I'd rather have food for my son. Once you get into the habit, it's not as hard as you'd think to be responsible .. because as long as you think about it the right way, it feels better, too.

How do we overcome our desire for pleasure? Well, that's one of those conditional things. We're always going to want and like pleasure, and that's just fine. But we need to think first and indulge later, not the other way around. Pleasurable things are always resistable. That doesn't mean we should always resist .. but it does mean "I couldn't help it" makes a lousy excuse. We need to learn to be able to resist when it's detrimental, or get help if we can't do it alone. (there's no shame in getting help. It is shameful to continue to injure yourself when you could get help and don't).

How is happiness unselfish? I think a large part of it is because happiness doesn't cost anyone anything. My being happy doesn't hurt anyone. There are no limits of happiness, so that if I have some, someone else can't. How do I define being truly happy? Being content in what I am. Finding each day something to look forward to instead of something to dread. Celebrating my life instead of just living it.

And lately? I'd say I'm doing pretty well, too. :)

Ahh, Ego and Masks

2006-04-12T09:59:00.000-04:00

This was a hard essay to write, and an even harder one to apply to myself.

I don't like people much. I don't like the way I act around people, I don't like the assumptions people make .. I have a very hard time fitting in with groups. So I wear masks when I deal with people. I try to be nice, to keep from pushing my mind onto people. (I don't actually succeed often, which is part of why I don't like people: they tend to not like me).

Society doesn't like people as they are, and the Divine doesn't accept people for anything but themselves. It can be very hard to thread those lines. Some days I manage that better than others. (It's one of the biggest reasons I hermit myself. I'm working on it).

So what do all these masks really mean? They're stifling. A mask can never fit right, can never feel right. I hate it when I feel the need to act "appropriately", the need to be a good little office drone, to keep the conversation off of topics that people just shouldn't know. (Ask me about TV shows, I'm blank. Ask me about something weird and esoteric? I'll go for hours. It can be fun, but not in an office!)

This is, however, the face I present to the Divine. I do my best to be myself, even at times when it's inconvenient .. I tone it down, but I don't erradicate it. After all, this is who I am. If I can't love the Divine as myself, then I cannot love it at all.

What masks do I wear? The one I wear the most is one of confidence and competence. I like to project that I know what I'm doing and feel confident about it, but it's really a lie. I'm not confident at all. I constantly have to remind myself that other people see me as competent, that I have skills and worth.

What dissonance does it cause? Other people don't see me as I do. And while I prefer their image, it isn't necessarily a true one. Sometimes I wonder just who it is that people are friends with, and if they'd like me if they saw the real me. On the other hand, confidence isn't the sort of mask that really fools people, so it's a silly thing to worry about. Not that that changes the worry, of course.

How do I drop masks? I force myself to be aware of them. The more I realize something isn't real, the more I don't like being it. How do I live without them? One day at a time, of course. One day at a time.

Order! Chaos! Crazy Weird Life-Stuff!

2006-04-11T09:35:00.000-04:00

I've always found the idea of order as some ultimate good odd. Order is certainly easier in a lot of situations. When the order that you're dealing with is good, it aids in good-things happening faster and more reliably. But order in and of itself isn't a "good". It's a system, and like all systems, it's as good or evil as the people and building blocks that create it.

This doesn't mean I'm an anarchist, either. (I'm not tough enough for anarchy. Big people would walk all over me. No good). I'm a big believer in order and routines where they work. I simply think that it shouldn't be kept simply because it is there. When it stops working, it needs to be re-evaluated and scrapped if necessary. Changing things up might be scary, but sticking to a system that doesn't work anymore is just silly.

I'm not going to answer the questions in order this time, because I think I've already answered them. Order and Chaos aren't opposed .. they're opposites, but they're not opposed, and you certainly can't append "good" and "evil" to them. They're limited in the way they don't bend to the realities of the situation, they're good when they promote the good of the people involved.

How do we balance security against change? Security needs to be constantly re-evaluated. Are we staying put because it's what we want, or because it's there? Are we happy where we are?

My life currently is pretty ordered. (ordered around the baby!). My day tends to be fairly repetitive. However, this doesn't strike me as a problem because it's the life I want. I'm doing something I greatly enjoy: mommying and writing. If I hated mommying full-time, though, it would be time to start looking into other options. The order in which I do things isn't the problem: it's how I feel about that order.

I really love the life I have right now. And in loving it, I accept that it may change, and that I can't cling .. I can't cling to my son being a baby, because he will grow up. I can't cling to writing /this/ novel, because one day it will be finished and I will be writing a different one. Things change, and things stay the same. And I love it all the more knowing that I have to love it /now/, because someday I won't have it to love. (I will still have my son, but he won't be my baby anymore ....)

I Deserve Minions!

2006-04-07T11:49:00.000-04:00

I wrote this essay in much more of a first-person than usual. I'm not sure why.

I do think this is an important idea, though. We think so much about what we deserve. It occupies our language, our thoughts, our dreams. So many people wait for what they "deserve" to fall into their laps. So many people wait for life to come to their door instead of running out and claiming it for themselves.

We deserve many things from each other, just as we owe many things to each other. It's what we get for living in society: debts and gifts. But the Divine itself owes us nothing. Life is a gift, as is what we do with it. For that give, WE owe the Divine to use it .. to live fully and share ourselves with the world.

What do I deserve? Nothing, from the Divine. From people around me, I deserve to be treated fairly .. good for good, and ill for ill. Doesn't mean I always get it, but that's what's deserved, and that's why when someone acts against that implied deserving is so harsh. But that's all we "deserve".

How would my life change if I saw life as a gift? I try to do that already, and it has changed my life. Joys are more clear when they're gifts. Even when I've earned the gift, it's still a gift, because that is life. I could focus on the bad things .. but I like life better when I focus on the good. :)

I think owing things to other people and to the community at large is easier. We can see who does and doesn't follow through with their obligations, who is and isn't honorable. This is clearly easier in smaller communities. But we all owe things to each other. What's owed to us .. It's very different to look at things as what we should get and what we should give.

We focus so much on what we want, what we think we've earned, what we can get. Life is so much richer for everyone when we focus on what we can give, what we can be for each other. Sure, you can live your life for your gadgets and your perfect house and what you can get out of people. But it's a pretty lonely way to live.

Stop "deserving". Start earning. And actually LIVE.

More submission

2006-04-06T13:11:00.000-04:00

This is more about submission directly to another person.

And I'm still not talking about the little things. If you agree to go along to a movie you don't particularly want to say because it will make your husband happy, that's not a big deal. I'm talking about serious submission .. letting someone else choose for you what you will do with your life, or whether or not you will do something of a serious moral nature. I've known people that try to give over everything to another person. They define themselves as submissive to the point that all they want is someone to take control for them. And you know what? That's not living. That's not even remotely living. That's just existing.

We are each our own person. I can't give over my responsibilities to you, and you can't give yours to me. It might be easier if we could .. hell, I know there are days I'd love to just turn everything over to someone else and be a monkey with opposable thumbs. But I'm not, and if I tried to live that way, I'd be cheating myself and the Divine.

Why is submission wrong? Because it's impossible and a lie to oneself. Why is it impossible? Because we can't give ourselves over to someone else. We're not robots and we don't have a remote-control. Trying to be someone we're not and give over our responsibility to someone else just doesn't work, and the more we try things that doesn't work, the more messed up we get. Attempting submission stands between ourselves and the Divine.

Why do we try to dodge moral culpability for our actions? I'm the one that asked this, and I still want to respond with "duh". We don't like seeing ourselves as bad people. We hate to see ourselves as doing bad things. So when we feel trapped (for whatever reason) into doing things we don't like, we find a way to prove that it isn't our "fault". Even if it's a lie.

Why isn't the law an excuse? Because nothing's an excuse. Just because something is legal doesn't make it moral. Slavery was legal for most of human history under various permutations, but we now look at it as abhorrent. It never changed the moral culpability of the people involved, either. Nothing does. You can't change what's moral by changing the law.

Submit unto Me!

2006-04-05T08:39:00.000-04:00

Or, actually, don't.

Submission is one of those issues that is a real hot-button for me. And by submission, I don't mean letting someone else make a decision when you don't care about the answer. I'm talking about a total giving up of control.

Do we need to give up control? Yes and no. I think we need to stop pretending we have control over things we don't, certainly. I don't control my cats .. and believing I do, or even that I can, is only going to leave me irritated when they go off and do their own cat-thing. (and even if I could control the behavior, their minds are their own). I think submitting one's life to that acceptance of reality is both healthy and necessary.

People mess themselves up all the time trying to control things they can't. And they mess up their lives trying to relinquish control over things they have to take responsibility for. It's a hard balancing act. But it's also really quite pragmatic. Trying to control things that you can't is never going to work, after all, and can only make you miserable trying.

What do we need to submit to? Everything we can't control. That doesn't mean LIKING it, certainly. I can submit to the fact that my baby's teething without liking that fact! But at the same time, I'm not going to punish him for screaming, either. It's not his fault. But until I accept that he's teething, it's not my fault, and it's something we need to get through, I'm going to be trying to handle situations that don't exist. And nothing will get solved.

Moral culpability means it's my choices that caused something. I did it, so I need to fix it. Which means that things that are under my control, I am morally culpable for. Anything outside of my control, not responsible.

Why must we accept a lack of control in our lives? Because as long as we believe we can control everything, we're going to drive ourselves crazy. Much of the daily wrongs that happen in our lives are attempts by people to control things that they can't. And yet we have to accept that we do have control over some things. We control ourselves and our decisions, and we need to take responsibility for that. When we refuse to admit our own responsibility for our own decisions, we also run the risk of committing great evils.

I fear people that refuse to admit they have control over themselves, because they will act as they please and deny the inevitable consequences. And I fear those people that try to control others (not convince, control), because they will never be happy with themselves.

All-Natural Escape Hatch!

2006-03-31T06:42:00.000-05:00

As I bet you can guess, I get very irritated at people that look for places in the world that are "better" than the places they currently live in. Nature is better is one of the classic irritants, especially when it's applied historically as an "always true".

We, as a species, have spent most of our history fighting nature. Fighting droughts, floods, bad hunting and poor crops. Plagues and locusts. Our world was always tied up with and in contrast to nature. Woods were scary places where anything could be, not idyllic wildernesses to explore. To claim that we've always loved nature is to have absolute blinders on our own history and the way humanity works.

These days, most of our contact with what we see as "Nature" takes place in parks and zoos and other planned outings. And, of course, the forest is beautiful when you can then leave it behind and go home to your lovely comfortable house. (I love the woods. I also love my computer and microwaves). And I think we like to romanticise Nature because we *can* go home to our nice house with the computer and the microwave. Even if we don't actually do it, for most of us it's an option. We don't live off the land directly, and so we don't see it the same way.

The problem with this is, first of all, that we're destroying our human world at the same time. "Nature" exists everywhere. There are birds in the city, squirrels, even deer sometimes. The "natural" places exist within the human world, and what we do in one affects the other. They're not separate. Every time we start romaticising one over the other, we act as though what we do to the one we reject is irrelevant.

And what kind of humans are we when we foul our own nest because it's already "impure"? Pretty damn stupid, if you ask me.

ooOOoo, more questions! (what a shock!)

Why do I think we separate the "natural" and "human" worlds? Can I say because we're idiots? No? Okay, I think it's because it's safer to stick the "sacred" far away from us. If nature is where sacred is, we go there, we do our sacred thing, then we get to "go home". If HERE is sacred, we have to behave very differently. If only THERE is sacred, we can behave any damn way we want over here. (not really, but we think that way some times.)

Why is the Earth impersonal? Why do we think otherwise? I'm not really sure. Nature has always been a grand-scale encounter. Even tornados, the most small-scale appearing weather as they pick one side of the road to go down and skip every other house, are impersonal. But it's easier sometimes to see things as personal, I guess. We can fix personal things. We can't do anything about grand cosmic forces.

What happens when we deny the sacredness of our surroundings? We destroy things. Nature was the enemy for a very long time; and it shows in how we've treated the natural world. Our world is a beautiful place: both the human and the natural parts. When we neglect one for the other, we lose an important part of what makes us sacred.

Open-Source Religion

2006-03-29T09:27:00.000-05:00

I thought about not commenting on this post. After all, it's a housekeeping detail more than a religious post, right?

Well, not really. I think the fact that religion should be free is very important. (that is, monetarily free). At the same time, I think that pastors should be given a living wage, so I'm a little conflicted on the issue. :)

I'd love to be getting paid for this. After all, this IS work. (and if you don't believe me, you try it!). And I figure if there's any demand, when I have a large enough group of essays together I'll make a bound edition that people can buy, and that I'll get paid for. But there will still be the collection of essays available for free.

Why? Because sacred texts need to be available .. and regardless of how much it freaks me out, this is a sacred text. And no one and nothing has the right to keep someone from the religion their heart is called to. That includes the copyright police.

Religion does not belong to a solitary person. It belongs to everyone involved. And a religion that demands contributions from its followers (Because, truly, if you're a FlameKeeper, you're contributing somehow) can't then claim to belong this bit to this person, and this bit to that.

This is the gift I give back to my Gods and the Divine. They have given me joy in my heart. I give back to Them a voice.

I doubt anyone's reading this .... ;)

2006-03-28T09:37:00.000-05:00

I hate doubt. It really sucks. It's hard to find things that can't be questioned, and if you follow the train of thought too long, you find yourself staring at a chair trying to see all the empty spaces in it and wondering how it stands. (also, if you're me, you're wondering what the odds are that all its electrons are in Florida at the moment. but I'm strange like that).

That doesn't mean doubt isn't healthy. Lots of things are healthy that we don't like. I'm rather unfond of peas. They're healthy, but y'know what? I don't care. Don't like them. (that does not include sugar snap peas and snow peas, btw. LOOOOOOVE snow peas!) Doubt is sorta like peas. It's good for me. I should eat them. If nothing else, I should try to fool my son into thinking they're tasty if I can. How did I get stuck on peas? (this is Shadow's brain on random).

Questions!

What about doubt scares me the most? Getting paralized there. You start doubting, then you doubt a little more, and the next thing you know you're not entirely certain that "up" is where you left it. Finding my way back out of doubt to solid ground, or being able to accept the doubt and move forward, isn't always easy.

How can I doubt and hold faith at the same time? Well, I go with it. Either I'm crazy and this is all in my head, or it works and is real. Either way, I'm going to do the same thing .. doubt doesn't change my day-to-day life. (although if I was making it up, I would probably not be blogging about it!) But until I think something's changed, I'm going to continue as if it's true, even on those days when I'm not really sure there's any point to it all.

What am I afraid to question? I try not to be afraid of questioning anything, because it's questions that lead to essays and ideas. Also, I don't believe in answers .. or at least not cosmic-level covers-everything answers. I believe that when it comes to religion, it's ALWAYS going to be doing the best we can and falling short of perfection. But I still dislike questioning whether or not this is "True" for fear that it might not be. Or fear I'm going to suddenly find out that I'm going to convert to something else and all this work is going to be useless to me. Even though I know that it's never useless .. even were I to convert tomorrow, I would have gotten there by coming through all the work I've done. But I still don't like to ask. :)

We are all individuals .....

2006-03-24T08:56:00.000-05:00

One of the truest parts of the human condition is that parts of us are always alone. We all have pieces that we don't particularly like and keep squirreled away from the light of day. And in keeping those parts hidden, we feel lonely. So we seek to find people, groups, anything to keep the lonliness at bay.

We so want to belong to things. I know I do: I have spent most of my life seeking connection. And it's hard, very hard for me to reach out in a way that isn't desperate for connection. (and we all know how attractive desperate people are .... as in, not at all!)

That which has made it much easier for me to reach out, not in desperation but as an equal, is finally realizing that we are all of the Divine. I already am connected, I had simply forgotten. And with that connection, I can't ever be truly alone, because I am of everything. That doesn't mean I'm never lonely .. I'm still human! But I can handle it better and move through it faster when I remember that I'm never truly alone. I can reach out from a place of love because I am loved.

What harm does loneliness bring? It destroys, when it goes on long enough. It brings with it self-doubt and a horrible self-loathing .. because, after all, if you were good ENOUGH, you wouldn't be lonely, right? OTHER PEOPLE aren't lonely! (and that is the worst lie that it brings. Because everyone's lonely sometimes .. even in a crowd, even in the middle of a loving family .. always). As far as truth/illusion .. it is always both. Because it's a feeling, and y'know, your feelings ARE your feelings .. you can't have a false feeling! But at the same time, we're never alone because the Divine is always within us. And through that, we can reach out and be with others, if we only try. (individuals will still reject us at times, of course. Not everyone was made to be friends! But an individual rejecting you isn't the same thing as being rejected by everyone).

Why do we form groups? Lots of reasons. One of the easiest: to discuss or deal with items of mutual interest. I'm not going to go to my writing group to talk about parenting, and I'm not going to ask my mother for writing advice; I'm going to talk to the people that share the interest and have some useful things to add to the discussion. I'm also not likely to join, say, a group of wrestling fans, because wrestling doesn't interest me at all and I'd have nothing to talk to or share with them. Doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them, just that there's no reason for me to join that group. Even if we were all in the same room together, the writers and the wrestling fans, there would still be two groups. The important thing to remember is that the people in "my" group aren't somehow inherently better or worse than the people in the "other" group.

How do we find compassion for out-group people? We HAVE to remember that they are Divine as well. There is no easy way to do this. By nature, we cling more to those closer to us and demonize those so far away that we don't see commonality. (or we demonize those that are close but not quite right, because they *might* be right .. and so we must make them wrong). But we are ALL Divine. You can't destroy one person without destroying a piece of the Universe.

all in all, I'm not saying that we're all one big happy mooshy pile of human. We're all individual and should stay that way. And this group is not that group. What I am trying to say is that difference isn't evil .. and that when it comes right down to it, we're all human and we're all part of the Divine. And worthy of love for that. (as hard as it can be to love some people!)

Loving Knowledge

2006-03-23T10:04:00.000-05:00

Knowledge is, to me, very sacred. The contents of our minds, and what we do with them, make us what we are. Plus, I like knowing things. :) I could easily get caught up in researching things and never be seen from again if it wasn't for pesky issues like food.

We discover and invent because it is in our nature to do so. There's a joy to creative thought which makes life so much more beautiful than it could ever otherwise be. When I was younger, I wanted to do research, preferably in medicine, and make many people happy and healthy. Unfortunately for that dream, my skills lie elsewhere. But I still create and I still learn. And I hope I bring people new thoughts and ideas which make them mentally and spiritually happier and healthier.

Why is learning important? Beyond all the obvious reasons (knowing stuff useful!), learning makes us what we are. We come into this world thirsty for knowledge, thirsty for stimulation and wonder. We run to our parents and show them the new thing we've found like it's the greatest thing ever. And that joy of discovery is precious and should be retained. Why isn't learning an absolute good? Both because we need to do other things (pesky food again) but because there are ethics above learning. Just because a question interests us doesn't mean we can trample over people to learn about it.

How we get information .. I think that depends on the person. I love discovering "new" things, even if someone else discovered it before. I hate being told what I'll find in advance, though. I think how we get information best depends on the person. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be willing to look for information in new places or old, regardless of our preferences.

How does knowledge pass between us and the Divine? Easy answer: damned if I know! harder answer .. I do think it happens. We are part of the Divine. What we are is part of It. So what we know is part of It as well.

Love of the Divine

2006-03-22T09:33:00.000-05:00

I wrote here as though feeling the love I feel for the Divine, and the love I feel from it, was something anyone can feel. And I recognize that not everyone feels that love, and most certainly, not everyone feels it like an overwhelming force. I don't think that detracts from my main point, though. We can love the Divine and let it be what it is, or we can try to shove it in a box and contain it and make it safe .. and make it meaningless.

Love is transformative, especially love of gods and the Divine. Since accepting that love, my life has changed. I've learned to accept myself, I even more or less accept this calling. (more or less. it's a terrifying calling). And I've even stopped questioning my sanity on the talks-to-gods issue .. well, mostly. I know that it is my truth and that regardless of whether or not it's "real" to other people, it's real to me. And perhaps more importantly, it brings me joy and love. Given that I can function well enough in society, sanity seems an irrelevant issue.

The Divine isn't what we want it to be. It is what it is, and loving the reality of it means so much more than loving a false image of what we wish existed.

What does faith mean to me? Going forward, whether you doubt or not. Accepting both what you can and what you can't control. Not clinging to the love of the Divine bacause I don't need to cling: the love is there, all I have to do is accept it .. and by accepting it, sharing it. It is a love too large to hold to oneself.

hrm. looks like I answered all the questions there .. because they're all related. Love brings such a change that questions of faith and doubt become very difficult to answer clearly. And doubt .. I don't know that I'm getting it right. I frequently think I'm mad for trying to write everything down and share it with people. But doubting the Divine .. I might as well try to doubt the laptop I'm currently typing on. I can doubt whether or not it is sentient and whether or not it cares. But the Universe exists, and it is full of beauty as well as pain and other less-desirable things. We can add to the beauty and make things better, if we're willing to try. And to me, that's the truest love to give to the Divine. It is the love we give to everyone we love: to care for them enough to want to see them better, happier, more jpyful and more complete.

Relating to Others

2006-03-21T11:29:00.000-05:00

Power, responsibility, and other people. Three inseperable topics. Three very dangerous mineladen topics, as well.

People, in general, like power and fear responsibility. Given that they're inseperable, this clearly doesn't work well, but people do it anyway. Responsibility sucks, after all. It's work, and even if we delegate we're responsible. Power is easy: we do what we want. Responsibility is hard: we have to do it right. When you see only the power side, it looks great. But it never works that way.

We are all Divine. Not just the people that we like, unfortunately. I'd be happier if I only had to recognize as Divine people that I agreed with and was able to say other people weren't. But not only is that a lie, it's a very dangerous one. Almost every atrocity we commit, from the everyday horrors of abusing each other to the extreme ones we do in war, come from the segmentation of humanity into those we like and those we don't, and putting the ones we don't into some kind of lesser category. We are ALL Divine. Every last one of us. While we all have the absolute right to dislike each other (thank goodness, there's a lot more people I don't get along with than I do, and quite a few I really don't like at all .. I am NOT a saint!), we have no right to treat each other as anything less than Divine.

It's just, y'know, some people are a particularly annoying piece of the Divine. :) But holy for all that.

ooh, question time .. or really, answer time.

How are we related/how are we separate .. that's one question to me. We're related because we're all part of the Divine. also, we're all human, and we're all dependant on each other. We're separate because we're each individuals. I am not you, but we are both Divine, even though we show that in very different ways.

Why are we responsible for the choices that we take, but not for the ones offered? Because we're only responsible for those things we have power over. If I get stuck with the choice of giving a mugger my purse or getting shot, it's not my fault I got mugged. (it IS my responsibility to minimize chances where I CAN get mugged, because it's really damn stupid to court that sort of thing. But that doesn't ever mean one deserves to be attacked). On the other hand, it's absolutely my responsibility to deal with the results of GETTING mugged once it happens.

Power over ourselves giving us responsibility. I think that's the most important point. If I have the power over myself, I can't blame other people, Satan, or anything else for the choices I make. For the choices I have AVAILABLE, perhaps. But the ones I make, I make of my own will. As a culture we seem to like chipping off bits and pieces of our own power and giving them over to people. Often, oddly, people we hate, because those we hate do seem to end up with a lot of power over us. But we are the only ones with power over ourselves. It IS always our own choice what we do. And when we're held between two very ugly choices, sometimes that's a very hard pill to swallow. Nevertheless, it is our choice. It's never something where we were powerless once there's a place where a choice can be made. We simply need to learn to recognize our own options.

Relating to Ourselves

2006-03-17T08:45:00.001-05:00

This is a hard topic for a lot of people to discuss rationally, myself included. Self-love runs the gamut from vanity to bizarre self-help groups and everything else that one little phrase can mean.

I'm not fond of vanity. It's easy to place our self-worth into things like our looks or our jobs or other transitory things. And while one can GAIN worth from them, it's always struck me as a bad idea to place our entire worth into something that can go away. I see people spending so much money and effort to try and keep themselves looking young not because it makes them happy, but because it's the only thing that gives them self worth, and it makes me sad. People destroy their entire sense of worth by basing it on their fleeing appearance and chasing after it.

As far as bizarre self-help groups .. well, I think bizarre says it all. I've nothing against self-help, and nothing against liking oneself. But liking starts from a sense of worth, not cuddle-piles with strangers and screaming "therapy". There's a lot of good out there in the self-help field, but there's a lot of garbage, and finding the wheat in the chaff can be quite the tricky business.

We are all sacred. We are all parts of the Divine. These are cornerstones not only of my faith but of my life. And yet I suffer routinely with self-doubt that practically paralyzes me sometimes, and have to work to not question the sanity of those that love me. A reasonable sense of worth is almost impossible for me to attain. That doesn't mean it's not worth doing, but it does make it a constant uphill battle.

How do I find love for myself? Some days, I don't even know. But I try to remember the good things I do, the fact that I try to be a good person. And I try to believe that I'm worth love. It's easy to list of things that I have to believe this: my husband, my son, my friends. It's harder to just believe it without the laundry list of people that love me. But I've been getting better about it, hopefully without straying too far into the realm of the weird. :)

Being the center of my Universe: wow that sounds arrogant. True, but arrogant. It's much easier for me to focus on this one impersonally, that other people are center of THEIR Universe. But that's cheating. :) I try to make myself central in my life, and move from that position of strength to dealing with other people. And when I manage it, it is a stronger place, because my base is strong and honest. But the only time I'm truly comfortable being central to myself is when I'm writing fiction .. when the world not only revolves around me, but revolves inside me. Plus, it's lots of fun. :)

How do I see myself, and is it accurate? I know it isn't. My self-image is still very much the pimply overweight girl in high school, and I haven't been her for a long time. I'm frequently startled when I look in a mirror, and flattered all out of proportion (and embarrassed, too!) when people find what I write insightful. And yet, clearly, I'm good at writing, since people are reading it and finding it useful. And I get complements and second looks when I go out, so I must look good. But to truly believe it? I don't know how, and I wish I did. I'm working on it. And, of course, like all things, it's a process. Some days are much better than others.

I would say that I'm doing fairly well in most things, actually, in relating to myself. But there are some very easy ways to punch huge holes in that self-confidence, because it's built on shaky foundations. At least the things that I do value in myself are, as far as I can tell, true, and I'm not built up on false beliefs. True things are accentuated over time, so I should become only more stable.

An overview of FlameKeeping

2006-03-16T13:41:00.000-05:00

This essay is an overview of FlameKeeping. It's pretty much a list of beliefs without much of anything to hang it together. I go into detail later.

The important aspects, to me, are those of self-sufficiency and interdependance. We are both individual and part of a group, and focusing on one to the detriment of the other never fails to screw us up.

So I'll answer my questions.

What are my flaws? oh dear .. there isn't enough space. :D My biggest flaw is the problem I have with people that I feel are acting stupid and know better. When I see people doing things I think are dumb .. I don't react well. I don't react well when I see myself acting stupidly, either .. I'm very egalitarian in my hatred of stupidity. This disgust of what I see as stupidity leads me to a horrible about of anti-socialness .. I like being a hermit. And the more I close myself off, the more I like the freedom of mind being by myself brings me and the more I want to close myself off more. I work on it.

My virtues? I think I'm a very good writer. I work very hard to be able to get my points across well to people, and I like to think I do that well. I work hard to be an honest person. Although that could also be lazier .. it's easier to be honest. Then you don't need to remember what you said. :) But I do think that truth is a virtue in and of itself, and I try to live up to that.

Which is harder? Definitely my virtues. I don't like talking about myself that way .. it feels odd.

What feeds my Flame? Well .. talking about it. :D My family and friends nurture me. My religious obligations in helping others as I can. And I try to court things that feed my Flame.

What stifles me? My self doubt is the worst problem. I fear that I'm just dealing with my ego sometimes, and that what I think is Divine revelation to share is actually just the nattering of my own mind. And I fear that someone will use my words in a way that I find morally reprehensible. Self-doubt really makes it hard to work sometimes.

As far as nurturing other people's Flames .. well, I'm writing the religion AND this blog, aren't I? ;) I can't really give specifics, because I don't know. And I probably should, but .. I don't. I hope that my essays nurture people. I hope that I'll get my novels published and they'll nurture people through entertainment.

And I try, very hard, to be fair to other people. I'm not saying nice, although I try to be nice as well, but fair. Because nice is good, but only goes so far. I try to be courteous and honest, and tell people what I really think. But honesty is integral to respect, and I try to respect people.

I try to create a nurturing environment.

Why I'm a FlameKeeper

2006-03-15T16:45:00.000-05:00

Hi, I'm HeartShadow, and I'm a FlameKeeper. (Hi, Shadow!)

I became a FlameKeeper because I believe in humanity. I couldn't find any religion out there that had the same viewpoint I did regarding humans themselves as part of the Divine and sacred, so I began to write down what I believed, and it's rather taken off from there.

That's not to say I see humans as more sacred than anything else; I don't. At least, not exactly. But I am human, and there's a certain egocentrism that says we're important because we're here to say it. Also, I've never yet been able to advise or educate a cat, but I can influence other people. So there's a rather obvious focus there.

I try very hard to live in a way that celebrates our sacred nature. (I'm not always great at it .. I must confess, I have an abrasive personality. (if you know me, you already know this)). It's not always easy to do. However, not easy and not worth doing are two very different things. I live in hope that I'll be able to, someday, see every person as sacred first and my other impressions of them second. Usually I tend to remember they're sacred later. It's a work in progress, and I rather doubt I'll ever be happy with it, because I am not a saint.

I started writing this and sharing it because I feel I have a valuable view, and to hold it to myself would be selfish. Also, I feel that much of this is inspired both directly by the Divine and indirectly by Apollo, and He wants me to write it down as opposed to just thinking about it. So I do. It would be easier to keep it all to myself, certainly, but it's also a cheat. Knowledge kept close to the heart and unshared that could be shared strikes me as robbing the people around me. Our minds are sacred, as is the knowledge we share. Hoarding the sacred feels not just greedy, but blasphemous.

Basically, I have been given a gift of both the ability to word things in ways that make sense to others, and knowledge that needs sharing. Both this blog and the other one, then, exist to do that. And this is how I try to improve the Universe around me, by sharing my gifts freely. Join me as I explore the essays I've written and are written by others and discuss what they mean in real life.

New Blog new blog la la la laaaa la

2006-03-15T14:33:00.000-05:00

Here I'm going to have my personal thoughts about the essays posted at flamekeeping.blogspot.com. I'm going to answer questions I pose, talk about what I was thinking when I wrote it, that sort of thing. these posts are open content ONLY insofar as when they are linked to the essay in question. You're welcome to use my words to understand the essay better; but these posts are not for copying randomly.

I hope that these comments will help give the essays better context. And, of course, I hope it's interesting! :)