The Path of the Confused

[Everything]

I'd say I'm a taoist witch, but that's a very specific thing. The two things are in conflict, in some ways. I've had to give up a lot of my spellwork. Witches cast spells to get specific results. They always work with nature, but I believe use more hard control when it comes to magic than taoists do, generally speaking. The unifying concept in both is the idea of balance.

 

Also, with being a witch, a lot of it has to do with whether you were born a witch. And a lot more of it has to do with things you actually do, rather than your belief system. Witches tend to be pretty sketchy and fluid when it comes to religious beliefs, outside of actual wiccans who are rather protective of the title (there's a lineage from the UK and initiation, etc., kind of a silly with a tradition that's only sixty years old). Although being a witch is probably the most fluid religion there is, some general guidelines are: do you celebrate the phases of the moon with ritual and do you cast spells to work magic?

 

Of course coming at it from the other side I know there are witches within the taoist tradition, but I am not knowledgeable enough to comment on those.

OMG! Can you like fly on brooms and stuff? What kind of sorcery are you capable of?

 

Can a male be a witch too or would he be called shaman/necromancer?

Edited September 12, 2011 by Everything

[Marblehead]

Can a male be a witch too or would he be called shaman/necromancer?

 

Yes, a male witch is called a witch. I already asked that question of my witch friends.

[windblown]

I am a witch. I was born a witch. My rituals are always spontaneous and involve no tools. I believe in the law of three. I don't do a lot of spell work and have never been all that interested in that. But I am constantly working with the four elements of wind, earth, water and fire. I also work with the four archangels and Reiki. I am an astral traveller and it is from my dreams that I have made the most leaps in spiritual evolution. I do not like spiritual practices, discipline, rules, patriarchy, levels of spiritual progress, and heirarchies. My temple is the sky...I can divine from watching clouds. I like Eclectic Wicca and Taoism because they are roomy and as an air witch...I need no boundaries. I am meditating daily and I often take classes in qigong, join healing circles to practice my Reiki, journal, create...every day is a new adventure...like the wind I am always changing...and I love this about me. I am not fully on any one pah but I would say Taoist and Wicca leanings. I don't feel crazy anymore...I am perfect just the way I am. I have an incredible imagination and when I enforce discipline on myself I create something from my dreams and manifest it into reality...a novel...a piece of art. This is difficult though. But I don't beat myself over it anymore...I just flow with my nature instead of trying to change it. When I try to perfect myself is when I get into trouble.

 

Thanks for everyone's Insight here on this thread. My cable was out all day yesterday and it is only now that the i pad is working again. Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev was my teacher 8 years ago and I did learn a lot from him. Thankyou and be well Jaggi. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to travel to India and study with him. However, life is much too fascinating and vivid to force myself into doing four hours of yoga a day to the exclusion of my family or other relationships and interests. I do not believe Jaggi is to be worshipped or anyone else on the planet. And I'm not Indian or Chinese...and believe me after you get so far into certain disciplines that are out of your own culture there is a feeling of.....no matter how far I go with this I will never be fully one of them...there is a certain point I got to where I was homesick for my own ancestry...my own roots...Scotland and England...and I am American. So Wicca does pull from many ancient cultures like India, and Egypt but it also reveres the Celtic and Scndinavian cultures and I feel a certain affinity with that.

 

Anyway...thanks to all who have posted here...especially the gentle ones who did not dictate but merely passed on what has worked for them. I admit, my feelings were a little hurt by what old green said...about seeing my judgements and attachments all over my post...but I took it with a grain of salt and realized that I may have triggered him to cut back. I see that the ego is still very healthy here! But I have paid attention and am sifting through each and everyones posts and want to thank you all for joining me on the broomstick ride. Peace and blessed be.

[Jetsun]

"Man has no individual I. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small "I"s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, "I". And each time his I is different. Just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man's name is legion."

 

~ G I Gurdjieff

 

"And He (Jesus) asked him (the man), "What is thy name?" And he answered, saying, "My name is Legion: for we are many"

 

- The Gospel of Mark

 

The aim in the Fourth Way teachings is to get all your personality fragments moving in the same direction as everyone has parts of themselves which don't care in the slightest about self development, enlightenment or becoming in harmony with the Tao. Many parts of you may even sabotage any efforts you make, just like the parts of you which sabotage any diets or fitness attempts you make.

[Marblehead]

I see that the ego is still very healthy here!

 

Hehehe.

 

That, my dear, is an understatement if ever there was one.

[Marblehead]

Hey Jetsun,

 

There are only two of me and each is aware of the other and acknowledges the others existence and they mostly work in unison.

 

But what you were pointing at is true for many of us.

[windblown]

Wow that's over my head Jetson! Oh well. Have a peaceful day!

[Jetsun]

Wow that's over my head Jetson! Oh well. Have a peaceful day!

 

The Armenian mystic called G.I. Gurdjieff basically says that we all have multiple personalities for example there is the work you, the home you, the you around your parents, the you around your friends, the inner child part of you, the you which wants to wake up and become enlightened, etc as well as many other parts of you. This is something modern ego state psychologists also recognise now, that multiple personality disorder is actually just an exaggeration of the normal human state.

 

These different parts of you may want different and sometimes contradicting things, for example part of you wants to diet and the other part wants to eat that big bit of chocolate cake, part of you wants to go to school the other part wants to get drunk and party. What Gurdjieff says is that if you want to develop and get enlightened you have to get all these different parts of you onside and headed in the same direction with the same aim, yet most people don't even recognise that they have these different competing parts and take themselves to already be one unity when in reality we are all divided, like the "Legion" mentioned in the gospels. So if you have recognised this division in yourself your awareness is already above most people, so I think what you describe in your first post is pretty much the normal human state, I know I am certainly like that.

 

Many people fail in their spiritual quest because they fail to get enough parts of their being on their side, so they sabotage their own practice often without ever really knowing why.

Edited September 13, 2011 by Jetsun

[windblown]

I have studied the enneagram quite extensively, but I like your suggestion that we all have many selves...an exaggeration of multiple personality disorder! I am an enneagram type 9 and I know that for nines, we see ourselves in every other type so it is hard to pin down just one type. Plus with a 9's amorophous sense of self...cloudy awareness due to day dreaming and disassociating...it is difficult to integrate into oneself into one wholehuman being! So the practice of creating goals and unifying all aspects of myself to reach that goal integrates positively to type 3...which is the direction I need to go in for development! First I have to have a goal then I have to get enough parts on my side to manifest it. So, I quit smoking cigarrettes yesterday. Yes, I know...how horrid that I smoked. But the only way not to smoke was to drink a few beers..and I did...but then I stopped because it wasn't much fun. I am now on day two with no cigs and the cravings are going away and I do't want to drink but I want chocolate pudding and pretzels and new art supplies to create a new tarot deck, and I feel like a nap too, and maybe a trip to the library, i am sad that my teen relapsed on drugs and have been talking with him this morning to see how I can help and to offer support, ...so all these parts of me are needing something. I think i will go meditate and find out what to do. Thankyou for explaining things to me. That was very kind and I will go get quiet now and perhaps find a goal or not...I'll let ya know!

[windblown]

All I got in my mediation was this...to discover one's true goal...one must first go to the extreme of having no goal at all. In other words, something can't be found until it is truly lost. So back to the original conclusion that I previously arrived at...in attempting to know something I must first have the anti-thsis...which is to be in the black hole of nothingness. Now the cool thing is...when I get into the nothingness...I realize this IS the goal...the very hing I wanted...because I am at peace and everything flows and I flow with it. When I seek no goals, when I let go of worries, when I stop striving...then my life is peaceful, its actually very fulll...because I am just being, instead of doing. I am not there right now. I am worried about my 18 year old who just went on a three day cocaine binge and can barely go to work and is afraid he will get fired. Being in relationships means constant opportunities for growth. Thank you all for being here on this site...I feel like I have new friends. I wish some of us could meet for tea but it seems we are all over the world!

[Marblehead]

All I got in my mediation was this...to discover one's true goal...one must first go to the extreme of having no goal at all. In other words, something can't be found until it is truly lost. So back to the original conclusion that I previously arrived at...in attempting to know something I must first have the anti-thsis...which is to be in the black hole of nothingness. Now the cool thing is...when I get into the nothingness...I realize this IS the goal...the very hing I wanted...because I am at peace and everything flows and I flow with it. When I seek no goals, when I let go of worries, when I stop striving...then my life is peaceful, its actually very fulll...because I am just being, instead of doing.

 

I think you got it!

 

Best Wishes that your son gets his stuff together.

[hagar]

All I got in my mediation was this...to discover one's true goal...one must first go to the extreme of having no goal at all. In other words, something can't be found until it is truly lost. So back to the original conclusion that I previously arrived at...in attempting to know something I must first have the anti-thsis...which is to be in the black hole of nothingness. Now the cool thing is...when I get into the nothingness...I realize this IS the goal...the very hing I wanted...because I am at peace and everything flows and I flow with it. When I seek no goals, when I let go of worries, when I stop striving...then my life is peaceful, its actually very fulll...because I am just being, instead of doing. I am not there right now. I am worried about my 18 year old who just went on a three day cocaine binge and can barely go to work and is afraid he will get fired. Being in relationships means constant opportunities for growth. Thank you all for being here on this site...I feel like I have new friends. I wish some of us could meet for tea but it seems we are all over the world!

 

Just wrote a birthday post about this on my little blog project. Check it out:

http://freeandeasywandering.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/the-art-of-getting-nowhere/

 

h