the quest for spiritual well-being

I attended two fires this Beltane eve. At the first small ceremony we offered up those things we wanted to destroy in ourselves; bad habits, old loves, social and financial insecurities, routine fears. Small symbolic prayers to break with the old and create that space for something new to possess us. Afterwards I left the eagles’ château for the witch’s farm, where a larger fire raged, and handfuls of seeds were being tossed to the winds in celebration of change and new growth. As I leaped over the flames I wondered, just what am I intending to become?

Earlier I had tea with Z, and we got into a lengthy discussion about Spirituality. She asked why some people feel a need to find something larger than themselves to believe in or "communicate" with, extreme experiences that really reaffirm their existences; when other people are perfectly content relying on themselves and daily life around them. I joked that the reason for me is mostly entertainment. I was raised to believe in belief, and having rejected that only found that I really am a part of something much larger. Even if you wanted to put that in the terms of all of us being on this earth or in this galaxy together, or that atomic, social, and galactic structures (and a lot of things between) seem to display some surprisingly self-similar features. Without religion the universe can still be pretty mystifying, and that boggles me and makes me very curious to see what it has to offer. It certainly excites me more than television, or drinking all the time. Especially that liminal zone of spirituality where our perceptions of reality seem to be able to alter the reality we perceive. I’ve seen some things that have changed my whole world, and wonder if they could be cultivated in order to have a more reliable control over creating real changes in ourselves and our lives.

Of course at this point all the talk of government and military psionics tests comes out and we’re faced with that age old of question of ‘do we really want to mess with this?’ Where is that line between responsibility and power, and do we want to cross it? Is there even a line there at all, and not some jagged fractaling coastline of confusion where each situation demands the ability to be responsive in some new and challenging way? I don’t know, but it worries me that there’s been a renewed governmental interest in the use of psychotropics and on its citizens and military. Should not the people also be informed of the dangers and benefits of the extreme states potentially at their disposal? I don’t know that either, most of this has been occult and occluded for a really long time and maybe that was a good thing. But I suspect we still have to deal with the collective potential of belief one way or another, and hopefully in a manner that heals the environment and all its inhabitants, if such a thing is possible.

After the stars came out and the fire died down a little, G and I started talking about the upcoming meeting of the Street Health Empowerment Network, which sounds like it will attempt to be a community health group and emergency response network for our local radical/arts community. We don’t trust the corporate care systems and seek a greater level of autonomy over the methods with which we can keep ourselves physically, mentally, and emotionally well. I know I wouldn’t want to bring a lot of my ‘beliefs’ to a therapeutic situation with standardized prescriptions of reality, when even being homeless or distrusting the government could get you locked up or on medication. The name of the group comes from Traditional Chinese Medicine, as an acronym of shen, the Chinese word for soul or spirit, that must be balanced along with the emotions, energies, elements and bodily fluids in order to stay healthy. The question of course that comes to my mind is, just what is ‘spiritual health’, and how can we maintain it in our selves and our communities?

And that’s a big question that could take life times to answer. The quick answer that comes to mind is having a life that is meaningful and exciting and fulfilling. Not in some grossly materialistic way as the current paradigm rests, but a level of existential comfort and joy and wonder in being. That at least for me is symptomatic of my spiritual health, though I’m still not sure just how to achieve or manage it regularly, much less help others in finding their own. Hell, there are likely whole traditions of spiritual healing at my electronic fingertips that I just don’t know of yet. Even TCM itself takes a dynamic, interconnected systems approach in which our health is effected by our environments (and assumably the other way around), already taking more into account than western medicine.

Perhaps this points to the Work for Others I need to balance my intense inner Work for Selfie. Talk about new growth…