Meditations are slowly creeping along this week. Beyond the meditation I did in my Beltane/Maitag ritual, I did a few other sitting meditations, but I ended up cutting most of them short, either due to frustration or anxiety. This is probably the opposite of how I should respond (instead I should sit and meditate longer) but there are days when it’s just … ugh. So I give myself credit for making the effort this week, and we’ll move on from there.
I’ve had what I can only call an agnostic sort of week, spiritually. It’s not that I doubt my own experiences (which I always have done, and will probably always do), it’s more than I’m doubting what my motivations are for even seeking out the Gods in the first place. I do my devotions and I did my Beltane ritual, and that all is going well enough. But I just keep getting this nagging feeling that none of it really makes any actual difference regardless. That if something bad happens, nothing – not my relationship with the Gods, not my prayers, not my working to change it – will fix it. It’s half “why am I bothering” and half “do They even care anyway.”
This is probably a symptom of some of the bigger mental health issues I’ve had recently, but it’s made it hard to stay motivated about the DP. I have another virtue essay finished, so that’s a good step, but my next essays are to start working on the Three Kindreds and Personal Religion requirements, and I’m just finding that I don’t have any gas in the tank to tackle them right now.
I am hoping that I can do some focused visualization to reconnect with the experiential side of Druidry and see if that helps out some.
For anyone out there with a better experience of spiritual guidance, I’m open to suggestions. I know Rev. MJD says that belief follows action, so I’m still doing the actions. I’m just a bit discouraged about it all I guess.
Little Druid on the Prairie 
I’m not sure I understand the idea of doing the actions when there is nothing behind them. It almost seems like an insult if you ask me.
Does the idea of having the gods as part of your life make you smile? Do you care about Them? Your friends can’t fix everything that goes wrong either, but that’s not why they’re your friends, is it? Relationships of all kinds make your life a richer and fuller experience.
It goes back to the idea of being orthopraxic rather than orthodoxic. This article is in the members section of the ADF website, but it talks a little bit about it – http://www.adf.org/members/training/dp/articles/wheres-the-belief.html – there’s also this interview with Rev. Dangler http://humanisticpaganism.com/2012/01/22/practice-begets-belief-an-interview-with-rev-michael-j-dangler-druid/ about practice begetting belief.
When I started working with this path, I had no belief at all – only practice. I thought that it was good practice, and honorable, and the right thing to do, but there was no belief behind it really. And in a lot of ways there still isn’t. It’s not insulting to the Gods – I’m not saying “I don’t believe in you so here’s some throwaway thing” – I’m doing the worship that has worked for others, and that will hopefully help to shape my belief.
I think some of what I’m going through is just baggage from previous religions where God is supposed to fix things for the people who believe in him (and thus if God isn’t fixing things, you’re doing something wrong). I am attempting to move toward a relationship model of belief, where the Gods are just other beings who may have more powers, but who are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. But when you’re carrying a lot of anger at your previous belief system, it can be hard to really embrace a new one. It’s something I’m working on though.
I understand there are many people who are orthopraxic. I’m just thinking that if a waiter who serves me tea because it is his job, and only because it is a job, suddenly turns and asks if I care about him personally, I would be confused. I would probably stammer something about having respect for all human beings in a general sense.
If someone invites me into their home for tea and conversation and shares more personal information with me, then yes, I probably would care about them in a more personal sense than the waiter. I would be more open to talking with them as well.
That kind of relationship still takes time to build as we talk more and slowly open up to each other and gain a sense of mutual trust. I might get used to seeing the waiter if he’s there all the time, but we wouldn’t have the same kind of relationship.
I have seen pagans who have burned out because they understood it all to be about The Work and treated it like a job. They start to believe that the gods only care about what they can do for them, and not specifically about them. I see others who think of the gods as an extended family. They do The Work too. It’s not all cake and roses, but the sense of mutual caring makes it a lot easier. They may both do similar things, but the feeling behind it shapes the experience.
Shezep – To continue your metaphor, I’ve opened my home, done my best to make a special place for them, poured the tea repeatedly (quite literally! I have a practice of having tea with the kindreds at my altar), given ample opportunities to show that I care and that I’m looking for a relationship, done service and acts in my life that reflect my devotion, written brief notes daily, and made sure they knew they were welcome at the seasonal holidays as well.
In return, I haven’t gotten much of anything. No warm fuzzy feelings, no signs or symbols, no flashes of inspiration. One brief contact that I now doubt even happened, that I have convinced myself I made up. That’s why it feels like work.
If I did all that for someone else, a human someone, for six months consistently, and their response when I asked if they cared about me was to say “well I care about all of humanity of a sort”? I’d not be interested in a relationship anymore.
In short, I’m being told to keep doing the work, that it’ll come in time. And I’m starting to think that’s not going to happen.
(Reply to further down)
If you have already done all that and it really isn’t working, then yes, it’s time to check your options.
Sometimes, for me at least, it’s a matter of just keeping going. Everyone hits fallow periods sometimes, when it’s hard to believe in anything – yourself or anything outside of you – but keeping up your practice can carry you through.
I think the idea that belief comes from practice is based in practice creating experiences and those experiences shaping our beliefs. Is your struggle coming from feeling that you aren’t having experiences with what you’re doing or that the experiences you do have are hard to hold on to/believe in?
Grace –
It’s a little bit of both really. I haven’t had a lot of definitive experiences (really only one) and it was both sudden and as yet unrepeated, so I’m finding myself doubting it now. Maybe I’m expecting too much, but I feel like I’ve put in a lot of work for what seems like no real progress on the spiritual front.
I know the feeling. A lot of the truly exciting experiences tend to be just like that – sudden, unplanned, and a bit like a shooting star outside of meteor season. It gets your heart beating and your eyes sparkling – and then when all you see is dark sky after, you start to wonder if you just saw a plane going by.
There’s no easy way through but to keep going. I’ve been a practicing pagan for almost two decades, and it’s only in the last couple of years that I feel like I’ve really started to have more than those fleeting moments. What worked for me was first, cherishing the moments that happened, even when I wasn’t sure I *believed* in them, and second, finally finding a way to work daily devotions and meditations into my schedule. Not everyone needs to be that regular, but for me it was a matter of constant reinforcement. Pouring water in the well, and lighting the fire… some days that’s as much as you can do, and that’s all right. I sometimes think it’s a matter of just walking back and forth until you wear a path in the grass…
Grace – I think the shooting star metaphor fits perfectly. What an apt description!
I’m not really new to paganism – I’ve been practicing since at least 2006 (it’s hard to say when I really *started* as I kind of eased into it), but this is the first real nitty gritty work I’ve had to do without the support of an in-person group or teacher to guide me, and I think I’m feeling that lack. I’m new to ADF (ish, been doing the DP since October), and it was quite a cosmology shift for me coming from other forms of Neopaganism. I think a lot of it is that I have established daily (or mostly-daily) rituals that I do at home and at work, so I really am trying to integrate it into my life. I don’t have time to do a full CoOR ritual more than every once in awhile though, and I don’t think that’s unrealistic. I just wish I felt like I was getting more out of the work I am doing. Aside from those (very few) shooting star moments, it’s just been work.
A technical point about meditation, from the eastern schools. Part of your difficulty is that you are judging the meditation. This is a good meditation, because, usually, it’s easy. This is a bad meditation, because, it’s hard or doesn’t go the way I want. It doesn’t measure up to some yardstick for meditation that you have in your mind. Judging your meditation like that is the most common self sabotage of any practice. The best advice for writing or meditating is to apply butt to seat and do it. If you worry about how’s it going as you’re doing it, you’ve already lost.
Kenneth – Yeah, you’re right. Part of why I’m doing so in this particular instance is that I’m specifically journaling my meditation experiences in light of progressing towards a specific goal (in this case, a religious goal). This is different than, say, the mindfulness meditation that I try to practice as part of my therapy for mental illness, where you’re absolutely right. Butt. Seat. Etc. Sometimes I don’t do a good job of keeping the two separate.
I like your idea of having tea with the gods – I think I’m going to try that at my own altar. I hope you soon start to see the results you want from the DP.