The other day I was on a walk with an acquaintance and I was telling him how I had turned off my subscriptions to Hulu and Cinemark and Netflix because I decided I wanted to invest my money elsewhere.
“You’ve decided to stop entertaining yourself to death,” was his response.
That response struck me profoundly.
Photo by Debbie Pan: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-standing-near-rock-in-front-of-lake-1365211/
I recently decided to reboot my qi gong practice.
I’ve been practicing qi gong for a few years now and what I have encountered is the inevitable experience where you do something long enough that you start taking what you do for granted, because you know it.
Challenge what you know by discovering what you can learn.
In the midst of all the other moments of truth I’ve been having lately, something which really rang true for me is that I need to start my qi gong practice over again. I decided to do this in two different ways.
One way involves attending a live qi gong class in Eugene and learning it with a group of people. By putting myself in a group of people I don’t know and learning what they’re learning I’m removing myself from what I know and opening myself to discovering what I can learn. And I’m making some friends too.
The other way involves starting the practice of what I know from the beginning, bringing myself back to the basics. And that brings us to this topic, where what I’m doing is standing for a half hour to an hour and just focusing on the sensation of standing, adjusting the alignment of my body and connecting with the qi (internal energy) as well as with the environment around me. It seems real simple, but its also quite profound.
The act of standing is something I think most people take for granted. I certainly have. I stand and if I’m standing I’m usually scrolling through my phone, looking at the latest distraction, when I could be taking in the environment around me and connecting with the deep wells of being within me.
The benefit of standing, with qi gong, is that it lets you feel the areas of tension and start working through them. When I stand, I’ll stand with my knees slightly bent, my pelvis gently seating itself to support the rest of my body. I rock forward from my heels to the bubbling well, where the foot connects with the toes, and then rock back to my heels, loosening up the stress by cycling the qi back and forth from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet, and from the stellar energy of the cosmos to the underworld current of the earth.
When I stand with presence I let go of the everyday tension and discover the depths of the numinous by taking in everything around me and being with it. And all I’m doing is standing.
Well there’s a bit more to it than that.
When I stand I wrap the muscles of my body, grounding myself into the sensation of standing while also stabilizing myself so I can really connect with the world and everything that might come up. I let my thoughts go and become aware, simply being with whatever is there, sinking my qi into the earth and if I do it long enough, I may even start dissolving blockages, turning the icy blockages of shame and guilt and other toxic experiences into water and then space, letting them drift away, relaxing and releasing and in the process going even deeper to the hidden well of my being from which my inner genius makes itself known.
I stand and be…
Everything else can sort itself out.
Book Review: Venus and Aphrodite: History of a Goddess by Bettany Hughes (Affiliate link)
This is a fascinating history and biography of Aphrodite that traces her roots back to prehistoric times and shows how the goddess morphed from Inanna/Ishtar in the East to Aphrodite/Venus. I’d consider this book an essential read if you want to learn more about the mysteries of Aphrodite and develop a closer relationship with the goddess.
Book Review: The Way of Men by Jack Donovan (affiliate link)
This is an interesting book that argues for an approach to masculinity that is focused around the concept of men being in a gang. I didn’t agree with all of the author’s perspectives, but my main take away was the recognition that men do need to bond with each other and men have been taught not to do that as much in the modern era. It’s a thought provoking read about what masculinity is and what it could be.
Book Review: No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert Glover (Affiliate link)
This is a must read book for both men and women. While the book addresses behaviors of so-called nice guys, a lot of the behaviors cross over and show up with anyone who has co-dependency issues. What this book helps a recovering nice guy do is recognize their own value and needs and actually learn how to advocate for them, instead of continuing to give away their sense of power and identity. This is an excellent, must read book that can help anyone who needs to learn how to stop being a nice guy, so they can actually become a person who loves themselves and others in the best possible way.
Book Review: Hearticulations by Jeff Brown (affiliate link)
This is a must read book that provides some deep insights into the nature of the heart, relationships, healing from trauma and so much more. Reading this book helped me on my path to self love and provided me with insights to help me heal and work through some of my deeper baggage. This is a book that anyone would benefit from.
Book Review: Awareness by Anthony De Mello (affiliate link)
This is an eye-opening book that can help you understand how to cultivate genuine awareness in your life and show you how your attachments are getting in the way of that awareness. Reading this book and applying its practices along with my self-love practice has made a significant impact in my life and changed the way I approach and think about situations, love, people, and most importantly myself.
Book Review: Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on it by Kamal Ravikant (Affiliate link)
This book has been a life changer for me. It’s helped me find a way to self-validate through self-love and also release a lot attachments to outcomes and expectations. The practice is simple to apply, but sticking with it is key. It has changed my life in a month for the better and is something I’ll stick with for the rest of my life.
Book Review: A Lantern in the Dark by Danielle Blackwood (Affiliate link)
When you are going through life’s transitions it can be helpful to have a guide that provides illumination for the path forward, and to help you look back. This book is one such guide and it is an essential one. I wish I had read it in my early 40’s, but even reading it now, I find that it has given me some valuable insights and perspectives on the experiences in my life and it is helping me work with the necessary spiritual forces as I make plans for the rest of my life. I highly recommend this book to anyone as it will provide very helpful information on the crossroads of your life.
Book Review: The Way to Love by Anthony De Mello (Affiliate link)
Another fascinating book by De Mello which explores the nature of love and attachment and how each is different from the other. This was thought-provoking and challenging but gave me a lot to consider. I highly recommend it as a book to read that can change your relationship with love.
Book Review: King, Magician, Warrior, Lover By Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette (affiliate link)
This is a fascinating book that looks at the archetypes of masculinity, both in terms of the immature and mature masculine using the roles of the King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover as the archetypes. Reading this book helped me reflect on these roles in my own life and how I have sometimes embodied the immature masculine as well as the mature masculine. It’s given me ideas on how I can ground into the mature masculine more using the appropriate roles, while also being aware of the shadow aspects and how to work with them better.
Book Review: Wisdom of Love by Laurelei Black (Affiliate link)
The author presents a modern system of divination using Cowrie shells. She does an excellent job of explaining how the system works and how you can become proficient with it. She also provides a few sample readings. I’ve been using it each day and I’m getting accurate readings.
Book Review: The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other by James Hollis (Affiliate link)
This book explores the myth of the magical other, the person that will supposedly complete you and heal all your wounds. The author debunks this myth and shows how we project onto other people what we are looking for, when the healing work we need to be doing is the work within ourselves. By doing this work we can free ourselves of the need for the magical other and have healthier relationships with the people in our lives. This book took the scales off my eyes about my relationships and my role in them and showed me why its essential to let go of the attachment to the magical other.
Book Review: What women want in a man by Bruce Bryans (Affiliate link)
This is an interesting book. There’s some points I agree with and other points I disagree with, but reading it made me think about the relationships I had in the past and consider how I showed up in the relationships and how the women in my life responded to how I showed up. It’s worth reading if you want to take a different look at yourself and how you show up in relationships.
Book Review: What women want when they test men by Bruce Bryans (Affiliate link)
Reading this book was hard, because I initially had some knee jerk reactions but when I really began to consider what the author was sharing I was able to identify the behaviors he spoke of. It helped me understand my past relationships from a different angle and see some of the ways that a man can get tested and not even realize it. It gave me some deep food for thought on how I can be better grounded and aware of myself, and be less of a so-called nice guy.
Book Review: Live Your Truth by Kamal Ravikant (Affiliate link)
Another excellent book which explores why it’s important to live your truth, whatever that is, from a place of genuine honesty and connection. The various insights have helped me with my self-love journey and with bring my life to a different place where I am being honest with myself and what I really want, while also being less attached to all the things that otherwise get in the way.
I’ve never been good at choosing myself.
I’ve never been good at saying yes to myself.
I’ve recently come to realize that because I’m going through this intense transformation in my life, where I’m looking at everything that’s come before and I’m seeing all the patterns that have influenced my choices, whether those choices have been relationships, or jobs or anything else I’ve done and what I’ve come to recognize is how much the choices I’ve made have been about saying yes to other people and no to myself. And pretty much everything I’m saying yes to are old patterns that have kept replicating themselves with new masks, but underneath it all is the same narrative, the same giving away of personal autonomy and sovereignty and the person doing that isn’t anyone else other than me.
I discuss why it can be good to go back to basics and share why I’m doing that right in my spiritual and magical practice as a result of a couple experiences I’ve had this previous week.
In this video I get candid about my experiences with fear and how fear has played and does play a role in my experience of my identity as a man. I also share what I’m doing to develop a healthier relationship with my fear as well as the challenges I’m encountering as I work with fear.
Over the last half year I’ve been engaged in a lot of work around exploring my relationship with my own sense of masculinity, and what it means to be a man, as well as what is sacred about masculinity. My own relationship with my father, my model for the masculine, was never a healthy one, and I found over the years that I’ve sometimes embodied the immature masculine, because I simply didn’t know what else was available. I think this is a problem most men, and boys face and it is becoming more and more complicated because we don’t have good models or the necessary rites of passage that are needed.
The rites of passage that are available in modern society is learning to drive (age 16), voting (age 18) and Drinking legally (age 21). Beyond that there really isn’t a structure in place that explores a coming of age for anyone regardless of what gender they identify with, but for the purposes of this writing I’m speaking in context to the journey of being a man, regardless of how a person comes to identify themselves as male.
I discuss my journey to sacred masculinity and share why I’ve started exploring it and how it is helping me with my overall spiritual path as well as healing the wounds I’ve experienced around being male. I also discuss the epic of Gilgamesh and my relationship with Inanna/Ishtar/Aphrodite and why that relationship is central to the sacred masculinity work I am doing…as well as a discussion of Saturn’s role in all of this work.
I discuss the power of gratitude, muse on my recent Thanksgiving and share why its so important to honor, respect and love yourself. I also discuss my plans for 2023 in terms of books and classes.
Just as we can apply awareness to our lives and relationship and practical magic work, we can also apply that awareness to our work with spirits. I discuss why it can be useful to apply awareness to spirit work and how it can help you develop deeper and more meaningful relationships with the spirits.
One of the books I’m reading lately is King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert Moore and Doug Gillette. It’s a fascinating book that explores the archetypes of the mature and sacred masculine. This is currently part of the spiritual work that I’m engaged in as I explore my own relationship with masculinity and heal the ancestoral and contemporary wounds that I’m becoming aware of as it relates to how masculinity is treated and perceived in modern times.
One of the aspects I’m exploring in particular is related to sacred kingship and the land. I am in the process of exploring the new city and surrounding areas that I live in. While I’ve lived here for a year, I didn’t have much opportunity until recently to really begin exploring the area and developing a relationship with the land. I find it fitting and useful that part of the process has also involved cultivating a relationship with the land, particularly on the basis of the relationship has with their home and how that relationship plays out in sacromagical work one does in connecting with the land.
I discuss how to apply awareness to your magical practice in order to get better results, but also put together better magical workings. I discuss why awareness can help us with the process of letting go of the lust for results so that we can focus on the magical work we need to do.
One of the books I’m lately reading is Awareness: the Perils and Opportunities of Reality by Anthony De Mello. It is a book about cultivating awareness but what I find fascinating is that it really brings up a fundamental question of what awareness is, which I think is something we can take for granted. Is awareness being conscious or is it something else? It’s a question I’ve been pondering as I’ve read the book and considered the various insights that it offers.
I can’t say I’ve always been or am the most aware person. I work at being aware, but like anyone else I have my distractions and attachments and other things which get in the way of awareness. A metaphor I’ve seen used elsewhere is the metaphor of red dirt in the water. If you let the dirt settle, it goes to the bottom of the class and the water can seem to be clear (Aware), but if you stir the water the red dirt kicks up and the water becomes muddy. Sometimes I think I got awareness down and then the right circumstance comes up and I see that I ‘ve got attachments and those attachments are showing that I’m not so aware.
Attachments come in the form of ideals, concepts, categories and all the other ways we try to define the world and ourselves. If we want to cultivate awareness we need to recognize how our attachments actually get in the way of genuine connection. In this video I discuss how to cultivate awareness and let go of attachment.
What role do we play in our lives? We don’t necessarily have control of everything or everyone around us, but what we do have is control over the role we play. I share a technique I’ve been using in the last couple months that has helped me change my perception about the role I am in and allowed me to flip the script on the situations I’m in.
In this final installment, I cover the importance of mundane actions around wealth magic and share why the mundane choices you make play a powerful role in the wealth magic you do. I also share why your mundane actions will always be the foundation that either supports or sabotages your wealth magic.
In the last few months I have had a great opportunity present itself to me. I have come face to face with my neediness and co-dependent behavior and I’m going through this process to recognize and release the neediness in order to discover what I truly need. That probably sounds a little contradictory until you consider that the root issue of neediness is based in fear. When we feel needy, we often feel that way because we are afraid to discover ourselves and what we truly need.
This journey of mine has involved me learning even more about my relationship with fear. I already knew a lot about it, but I’ve come to recognize how fear is the root of neediness. When I feel needy or clingy, what is operating at the root of that needy clinginess is the fear I feel. Part of what has helped in doing this work is connecting with Saturn, because in a very real sense Saturn is an embodiment of fear.
In this third installment we explore the application of magic to wealth, building off the foundation of need and discipline that presents us with an informed awareness about wealth in our lives. I share why its important to apply short and long term perspectives to your magical approach and discuss the benefits of working with spirits or doing wealth magic through practical magic, as well as when to blend the efforts together.
In part 2 I discuss the power of discipline and how it applies to wealth and wealth magic. I explore why discipline can help you get further with manifesting wealth and share some examples of how to apply discipline to wealth magic as a principle that helps you get focused.
I discuss the power of need in relationship to wealth magic and why need trumps want when it comes to creating effective wealth magic. I also share my definition of wealth and explain why magic isn’t always the best path to wealth.
