Spiritual History
What follows is a record of the major spiritual cusps I have gone through. I am putting them in chronological order, for lack of a better way to organize them.
My first real spiritual experience was when I was six or seven years old. My father brought me out to an abandoned schoolyard, which was slowly turning into a more manicured park by the nearby residents. It was fall, with a full moon, around 8 at night. My dad stood me in a circle on the basketball court, where we had a clear view of a nearby hospital. He started guiding me through creating a sacred space within that circle, then he asked me to choose a window from the hospital where I felt that someone needed the most help. He guided me in forming the sacred place into a cone, and extending it to the full moon. We drew energy from the moon down to us, then moved the cone to go into hospital room that I selected.
I don’t know who was in the room at the time, or what happened to them. I found out later that the floor I selected was where the intensive care unit was, because nearly ten years later, that same room that I selected was the room my grandfather was placed in after major neck surgery. (He was in hospitals after that surgery for six months straight, then would go in intermittently for the next five years until his death a year and a half ago.) I have tried to remind my dad of that night, but he denies remembering it. I have other clues that my father was a closet pagan, such as when he explained that witches were people in a different religion, who were just as good as any Christian. Though my dad denies remembering that night, and has not confirmed ever having been pagan, he has never denied that the events of that night could have happened, nor has he denied being pagan.
This taught me what my heritage is.
About ten years later, when I was 17, I performed a spiritual experiment. I’ve already written about it in the post, More Hard Questions, so I won’t go into too much detail here. At this time, I had been an active member of the LDS church for about five years, and I was starting to get restless, wanting to understand more about spirituality. I created a pantheon of gods, which gained a life of their own the more that I gave them details and personalities.
This taught me the subjectivity of our spirituality, the power of creation, and it was good practice for speaking directly with spiritual beings.
Afterwards, I went on to become a Wiccan… This was also when I joined the Army. I’ve never had a steady group of people to learn from, either because there were none around who had the time/energy to teach me, because there were none who I felt comfortable with, or a myriad of other reasons. I studied alone and over the Internet for the most part, and practiced very little for myself, mostly only for dire needs. I learned how to help other people at great distances, though. I learned how to appeal to those who needed their egos fed without them attaching themselves to me. I learned how to get people to help themselves, though I actually did very little other than identify meanings for symbols, manipulate energy, and use intuitive divination to help them.
I did have one cusp, though… Though parts of the story goes back a long ways, it effected me during the time where I was practicing Wicca in the Army.
While I was growing up, my father would take a weekend every once in a while to walk through the deserts around Phoenix, AZ, where I had grown up. While I was an infant, or just before I was born, he was taking a hike around the base of a small mountain, and he started to feel compelled to walk to a certain point. As he walked, he came to a small valley, where people had dumped a lot of their garbage… Old tires, mattresses, and the like. Among the garbage were two large stones, one red and one black. My father explained that by this time, he only had the barest hint of conscious control over his choices. He felt compelled to pick up the stones (about 50 pounds each) and start carrying them up the mountain… About three quarters of the way up, he found an outcropping of stone that formed a very shallow recess, just large enough for these two stones to sit comfortably. He placed the red one first, and returned with the black one. As he was carrying each stone, he felt as if he were carrying a living being, first its body in the red stone, then its soul in the black one. As he placed the black stone in its spot, a small piece fell off, about the size of two fists knuckle to knuckle, and my father was filled with an overwhelming sense of gratitude. He was allowed to take the piece of black stone with him, as a gift… The stones where a Kachina, the literal spirit of that mountain.
I retold that story one night in a chat room for pagans, and when I finished it, I felt the weight of that mountain around me, and the Kachina told me that the gratitude and gift that was given to my father also extends to me… A man who follows Shinto, Japanese ‘paganism,’ was also in that chat room, and sensed the change in me… He clarified to me that I had a gift to speak with spirits.
September 11th, 2001, also served as a major cusp in my life, as it did for many people.
After that point, I stopped following Wicca primarily, and I became more of a Universalist. I became an ordained minister and helped the people who didn’t have an organized religion to support them, such as the various groups of pagans, or those who were far from their religion’s “church.” After leaving the Army, I moved to a region where the people who were not members of the dominant Christian sect were very well hidden, so my opportunities to minister were few and far between.
Identifying my life purpose was a very important cusp, though it wasn’t based on spirituality. It did, however, lead to another very spiritual cusp.
This one comes from Jeff Lilly. He was also facing a cusp, after visiting the native American tribes of South Dakota, as he had a vision where he couldn’t figure out the symbolism. At the time, I was just starting to apply my life purpose, and I was changing my blog (which was hosted at askTrina.com at the time) from a place to answer random questions (such as why the sky is blue, why printers jam, etc.) to one of personal development and peace. Jeff asked me for help in figuring out the symbolism, so I did what I could. As Jeff was driving home from work that day, he realized the meaning of the symbols, and found my reply email waiting for him with the same explanation.
Jeff’s vision of the Sioux tribe related to his relation with the chief and his wife, and the interpretation showed that, while he loved the wife and the chief, as he wasn’t part of the tribe, the love could extend only so far. Please read both of his articles, as they are among his best.
It was a cusp for me as well, because of the knowledge that I gained from helping. As Jeff points out with the interpretation, the Native American traditions are one of reverence for their ancestry… If I’m to follow their path in any way, I must do it by following the path of my heritage. The same goes for Eastern religions, whose traditions are also those of reverence for their ancestry. In fact, there are very few religions that do not have reverence for their ancestry as one of their principles…
I seem to be at another cusp now… I’m a Universalist; I revere all religions, and even the lack of religion. I feel, though, that I have just seen the surface of each religion, and as long as I keep my distance, I can not experience their depths… If I were to take a cue from Jeff and use a language analogy, it would be as though I have compiled a catalog of the world’s languages, and only identified the most common nouns and verbs. I can communicate with all of them, but I’m not fluent with any. I may always have an ‘accent’ when it comes to religion, but I think it is time to learn one and know it to its depths.
Looking back at the cusps that have lead to this one, I see that my heritage clearly is in European shamanism, especially paganism, and even if I choose a religion that is not my heritage, it would point me back to paganism. I have learned that my strengths are in communication, intuition, and creation. I also have spiritual allies, including an America mountain, a European elf, and an Asian spirit.
The question is, which branch of paganism do I choose? I am done with Wicca, and I have ideas for others to pursue…
Before I make my decision, though, I have one issue to resolve. I must know if I was right or wrong… My issue will appear in my next post.
No comments yet.