Thinking out loud, part one
Dec. 29th, 2006 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ferineIn ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
waywind's journal, this was recently asked: "What are some of the events or epiphanies that confirmed the reality of your spiritual beliefs for you?"
This question falls nicely into my period of reflection.
To answer this aloud feels like bragging. It feels like saying, look at me, I'm special because this happened. Some things, I think, are meant to be for you, and left unsaid.
Some things are also meant to be shared. The prime influence on me at a very young age was my Dad. Aside from being a musician and raising me with music, he studied philosophy in college, and therefore had many old philosophy books leftover from school. At five I would thumb through his copy of Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces dreamily. I couldn't read, yet the black & white pictures entranced me.
I wasn't raised with religion, but with stories of good deeds and good tenets from Western and Eastern schools of thought. I was left to my own devices to form my own belief system, or, alternately, to chose none.
From the age of five I formulated abstract thoughts of deity, based largely on the images from The Hero With a Thousand Faces. I meshed this with my relationship with my beloved pets and the nature in the backyard (and the many plants inside the house). As I grew, these connections fermented and I was able to read about and research like ideas.
At twelve my faith in my beliefs were firm. My mind and heart were clear and focused. I knew what I wanted in life and pursued it unwaveringly. I studied, researched, and memorized passages from many books on lycanthropy, comparative mythology, animism, animal totemism, paganism, and witchcraft. This was prior to discovering New Age stores, and prior to even the concept of using a computer.
I was content believing I was alone in my beliefs and experiences. Since the age of thirteen I had met various older mentors, what I considered teachers, who expanded my mind with thoughtful questions and, sometimes, with books (one gave me her dog-eared first edition of Starhawk's The Spiral Dance when I was fifteen, which sent me reeling). Though there were these amazing people who appeared in my life for a time and then moved on, I still felt my path was my own, that I was alone on it, even though others had obviously felt similarly in the past.
I met others my age with familiar ideas when I turned 21. It was strange to vocalize my beliefs with others my age, even though I trusted them and the sharing went both ways. Eventually this contact led to my first computer at 23. After teaching myself enough to get on-line and send email, I looked up the word werewolf on the web. One of the few returns was for the usenet newsgroup alt.horror.werewolves. The description appealed to me, yet I had no idea what a "newsgroup" was. It took a week for me to learn, and then I spent a few months observing the group before dipping my digital toes in the water.
This initial foray into the vast internet world expanded my mind further. Suddenly I had new information at my fingertips, and the chance to communicate with those who were physically, and even culturally, distant. The "neat factor" is still with me to this day, though I'm less naïve and tempered by experience.
Alt.horror.werewolves changed me and strengthened me in many ways. It also hurt me, deeply, in the end--a lot like growing up, in a microcosm. I joined the group wide-eyed and utterly new to the 'net. In most ways it was one of the safest, most familial group of individuals to be the first ones on-line to meet and interact with. The friends I made there in 1994 remain close, dear friends, most of whom I've shared time with in person through the years.
It was strange; the more involved I became with the group, the less content I felt being alone with my animalism. I found myself craving the physical company of other animal-people, which is something I had never needed before. That, in itself, saddened me a little. It was as if something in me broke when I met these wonderful animal-people on-line, and I desired to have such connection with other animal folk locally.
Eventually, that did happen.
Then I met a raven from alt.horror.werewolves, and my inner workings shifted. He truly flew between worlds, and my life turned inside out each time we got together in person. From that chaotic internal stripping, I drifted into uncharted territory. With his death I became un-anchored and lost.
I can now honestly say I'm grounded and into my own. I am my own anchor, and my family (I consider my parents, my friends and packmates, and my pets my family) are the links in the chain that connects the anchor to the boat. What's the boat? The world, the universe, the We.
Synchronicity, or "mere coincidences", if you prefer, confirm the reality of my spiritual beliefs on a daily basis. The confirmation and the reality are entirely personal.
waywind's journal, this was recently asked: "What are some of the events or epiphanies that confirmed the reality of your spiritual beliefs for you?"This question falls nicely into my period of reflection.
To answer this aloud feels like bragging. It feels like saying, look at me, I'm special because this happened. Some things, I think, are meant to be for you, and left unsaid.
Some things are also meant to be shared. The prime influence on me at a very young age was my Dad. Aside from being a musician and raising me with music, he studied philosophy in college, and therefore had many old philosophy books leftover from school. At five I would thumb through his copy of Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces dreamily. I couldn't read, yet the black & white pictures entranced me.
I wasn't raised with religion, but with stories of good deeds and good tenets from Western and Eastern schools of thought. I was left to my own devices to form my own belief system, or, alternately, to chose none.
From the age of five I formulated abstract thoughts of deity, based largely on the images from The Hero With a Thousand Faces. I meshed this with my relationship with my beloved pets and the nature in the backyard (and the many plants inside the house). As I grew, these connections fermented and I was able to read about and research like ideas.
At twelve my faith in my beliefs were firm. My mind and heart were clear and focused. I knew what I wanted in life and pursued it unwaveringly. I studied, researched, and memorized passages from many books on lycanthropy, comparative mythology, animism, animal totemism, paganism, and witchcraft. This was prior to discovering New Age stores, and prior to even the concept of using a computer.
I was content believing I was alone in my beliefs and experiences. Since the age of thirteen I had met various older mentors, what I considered teachers, who expanded my mind with thoughtful questions and, sometimes, with books (one gave me her dog-eared first edition of Starhawk's The Spiral Dance when I was fifteen, which sent me reeling). Though there were these amazing people who appeared in my life for a time and then moved on, I still felt my path was my own, that I was alone on it, even though others had obviously felt similarly in the past.
I met others my age with familiar ideas when I turned 21. It was strange to vocalize my beliefs with others my age, even though I trusted them and the sharing went both ways. Eventually this contact led to my first computer at 23. After teaching myself enough to get on-line and send email, I looked up the word werewolf on the web. One of the few returns was for the usenet newsgroup alt.horror.werewolves. The description appealed to me, yet I had no idea what a "newsgroup" was. It took a week for me to learn, and then I spent a few months observing the group before dipping my digital toes in the water.
This initial foray into the vast internet world expanded my mind further. Suddenly I had new information at my fingertips, and the chance to communicate with those who were physically, and even culturally, distant. The "neat factor" is still with me to this day, though I'm less naïve and tempered by experience.
Alt.horror.werewolves changed me and strengthened me in many ways. It also hurt me, deeply, in the end--a lot like growing up, in a microcosm. I joined the group wide-eyed and utterly new to the 'net. In most ways it was one of the safest, most familial group of individuals to be the first ones on-line to meet and interact with. The friends I made there in 1994 remain close, dear friends, most of whom I've shared time with in person through the years.
It was strange; the more involved I became with the group, the less content I felt being alone with my animalism. I found myself craving the physical company of other animal-people, which is something I had never needed before. That, in itself, saddened me a little. It was as if something in me broke when I met these wonderful animal-people on-line, and I desired to have such connection with other animal folk locally.
Eventually, that did happen.
Then I met a raven from alt.horror.werewolves, and my inner workings shifted. He truly flew between worlds, and my life turned inside out each time we got together in person. From that chaotic internal stripping, I drifted into uncharted territory. With his death I became un-anchored and lost.
I can now honestly say I'm grounded and into my own. I am my own anchor, and my family (I consider my parents, my friends and packmates, and my pets my family) are the links in the chain that connects the anchor to the boat. What's the boat? The world, the universe, the We.
Synchronicity, or "mere coincidences", if you prefer, confirm the reality of my spiritual beliefs on a daily basis. The confirmation and the reality are entirely personal.
