Full title: "Otherworldly Awareness, And How I Get By With Very Little Of It"
I have a confession. I call myself a pagan, but have little contact and discourse with spirits. I know they're there -- I've read too many true accounts to say otherwise -- and sometimes I feel like I've brushed past a...something, but I cannot say I've shared a meal with a land spirit or joked around with a god. I'm honestly not that sensitive. Nor do I want to be, because from the sound of it, it can be...unpleasant and distracting. One of my former coworkers once told me how she went to a series of plays (theater was her thing) in a building that was on the site of bad Native American and European interactions. The atmosphere was so hostile that she and her sensitive friend had to run outside every intermission and catch their breath. A close friend of mine is an empath. I seem to have a talent for finding and befriending pagan-leaning people. (And GLBT people; the two often go together. I suppose that's another story.) I can do this, but I couldn't tell you if I have a guardian spirit or not. It is a limitation I find incredibly frustrating -- yet I am afraid of trying to climb that wall, because of the scary and dangerous crap that may happen on the other side. This is a common theme in my life.
Perhaps I should explain a little. I was an acutely anxious child. Pretty much anything new was terrifying just because it was unknown. And then depression crept in at puberty. Real life just hurt too much. So what did I do? I wove a dense cocoon of not-feeling around myself and retreated inward, into subworlds I created. Those, at least, were mostly under my control. It took incessant needling from a friend (Byakko) to poke a hole in that cocoon, then tear it open. She urged me to have opinions, where before I had none. This was a good thing, in the end, but gods, it hurt. Her influence, going away to college, and the people I met there helped me shrug off the heaviest of the threads. (And Celexa. Let's not forget the correct antidepressants.) But while I was within...Well, if you ever find a version of Tolkien's Mirkwood while astral-walking that features a red-haired elf-guard, let me know. Even at the time I realized it was an elaborate metaphor for my own depression and/or my entire mindscape, but I sunk almost four years of my life into that place. It wouldn't surprise me if it's still around somewhere besides my own mind (and Byakko's to a degree). I'll elaborate on this in another post...possibly under M for Muses.
I emerged from that experience incredibly soul-tired, and bitter. I realized I could not live entirely in my own head anymore. Either I could have internal awareness, or external awareness -- not both at once. And I opted for the latter. So maybe you can understand why I am reluctant to make an effort to, in a way, throw open that door again.
So how do I practice? I keep an eye out for coincidences that may actually be more than
that, and follow my hunches. I balance this awareness with common sense.
For instance, I see crows every day. This does not mean that The
Morrigan is trying to contact me. I might think so if they did something
unusual, and, say, in a group of three. And I'd follow it up with good
old-fashioned research, to see if anything else stood out. The gods/spirits can still reach me. They just have to be louder about it. For example, I was intrigued by Hekate, but figured she'd want nothing to do with me, or that I had no reason to petition her for anything. It took a piece of art, some moths flying like cinders under a lamp, and a thunderstorm all in one day to convince me otherwise. :)
Maybe I'll have a breakthrough someday. Until then, I'll just muddle along, same as always.
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