The Spirit Guide: Meditation: Seeking Wisdom

Here is my truth.  I suck at meditation.  I am really good at research.  I am good about reading stuff...I am good at watching YT videos about stuff.  I am not great about actually sitting still and processing what I read.  Part of this blog is to help me actually do that in real time.  I am a writer.  Writing is like meditation.  

When I try to meditate, 99% of the time I just fall asleep.  The deep breathing is relaxing, and the music lifts me away.  I am terrible at conventional meditation.  I don't say "ohm."  Perhaps one of these days, that process and practice will come to me, but, as of right this minute, it's not my tradition.

So, then we doubt ourselves, don't we?  We say, well, I don't do yoga or meditation or use crystals like X so we must not be "doing it" right.  It's your path.  In the hiking world, we say, "Hike Your Own Hike."  This is the same principle.  Do what brings you spiritual value.  There isn't a recipe.  There isn't a right or wrong way.  Even if you belong to a religious practice like Catholicism or Judaism, there are several ways to practice those beliefs.  In Catholicism, you go to Church, you might go to confession, you might say the Rosaey, you might do morning and evening prayer/compline, you might pray 7 times a day.  In that religious practice, there may be one or two things you have to do or things within the tradition (Sacraments) that you must observe, but you know what they are and you choose to do them or not.  You can add to it.  You can say the Rosary each night.  Do the Jesus Prayer over lunch.  Whatever brings YOU closer to God is the right path.  It can change over time.  If the rules of the denomination don't bring you value, seek counsel.  Sometimes it's hard to give up what you've been taught.  That becomes a new path of spiritual awakening.

I was raised in a very conservative spin off of the Anglican church.  I liked to call them the Amish Anglicans.  We were very strict.  I was very involved as a camp counselor, youth leader, camp director.  But, over the years, I saw the paint chipping away.  Nothing really seemed to be about Jesus or faith or conviction.  Things like vestments, property, money and titles seemed the most important.  When I stood back, I didn't see the love of Jesus; I simply saw the greed of men.  So, I walked away.

My internal struggle has been with where to. go.  Should I go to a new church?  Should nature be my church?   Who could I trust to give me right answers?  I never had great answers, and I didn't know about a Spirit Guide.  But, here I am, in the middle of this journey, or maybe, more correctly, at the start of my spiritual journey.  I have to take ownership of what I actually believe in, and then go from there.

I believe in God.  One God.  I think it's possible there are smaller Gods that work for Him.  The Bible doesn't say there aren't other Gods; it says that He is the one true God above all Gods.  So, if Odin exists, then that would be God's prerogative.  If I am meant to know, He would have told me.  But, what He's told me is that He is the one in charge.  So, that's what I believe.  I believe he sent His Son to save us from ourselves.  Jesus was born of a virgin and was crucified, rose from the dead, and now sits on God's right side.  I believe it.  In all of my spiritual wanderings, I've always believed these two concepts and all the tiny concepts within them.

When I think of the life of Jesus, I think of Love.  Jesus could have done any number of things on Earth as the Son of God.  He could have caused another flood.  He could have burned whole continents to the ground.  But, he loved.  He loved the poor.  He loved the outcasts.  He loved sinners.  He got angry at those who abused power and cheapened God's places of worship.  He fed the hungry.  He gave wise counsel.  All that Jesus did, love was at the core.  So, if that's what God wanted his own son to do...I am fairly sure that's what he wants US to do.

Why are there so many bad things happening in our world?  Our world is devoid of love.  We've made love into a commercial trading card, and the truth of love, the unconditional nature of it, has been swept under a rug of media.  We should love without counting costs.  We should love without limits.

Love doesn't mean we need to be foolish.  Jesus wasn't foolish.  Our job is literally to carry torches of light into the dark corners of humanity and provide hope.  By carrying these torches, we can stop the hate and killing.  Will it happen in one day?  No.  Will it happen even in one lifetime?  No.  But, my torch, like those candles at Christmas Eve Mass, will light someone else's torch, and before we know it, there is a world full of torches.

In the Druid tradition, one that predates Christianity, we believe that the world is a footpath.  Our job is to walk our path but it isn't to judge the path of others.  Our job is to shine light on our own path and help others on their own path without hurting others or the natural world.  

I don't belong to any of the major Druid organizations where you, too, can be a card carrying Druid for 450 USD, but I've used some their materials from time to time to help prepare my own celebrations of the eightfold wheel.  I am a little skeptical of these super sites. I don't judge them even though, truth be told, I think some of it is outright kooky.  I am not saying they are wrong, and there is no harm in how they practice or believe, but, for me, I can't adhere to something we know so little about.  Druids, like Native Indigenous Americans, used an oral system.  They didn't write things down.  They didn't write down their stories.  To be a Druid, you had to go through like 12-14 years of schooling and it was all oral.  What little was written down was destroyed when Christian invaders came.  It was only in places like Iona (Scotland) where Druids and Christians lived together peacefully and traditions were combined.  But, even in the larger world, so many pagan/Druid traditions still exist...the Easter Bunny...colored eggs...do your own research here, but the similarities for almost all our major Christian holidays borrow from pagans and Druids.

There are religious Druids.  I am not one of them.  My religion in Christianity.  Just as there are other major world philosophies that aren't religious, for my practice, Druidry is not religious.  It's spiritual, for sure, but it's not my religion.  Druidry is tied directly to nature, the natural world, and a respect for the cycles of the sun and moon. In a religion, there is one agreed upon set of rules and practices.  Druidry doesn't have that.  Druidry also doesn't have a scared text or official ceremonies.  So, those who make Druidry religious are doing that on their own, and that's absolutely OK.  I don't do that because I already have a religion - Christianity.  Druidry and Christianity are not in opposition to one another.  There is nothing in the Druid practice that says I have to accept and worship Pagan gods. 

I want to say, and I will say this 50,000 more times...I am not a witch.  I am not a Wiccan.  Wicca is a religion.  I know nothing about it.  As a religion, I respect it and those who practice it.  The danger of lumping all spiritual practices together under one umbrella is that you truly miss each practice for what it is.  I don't know a single thing about witchcraft.  I don't believe in magic, and I don't believe I can cast spells.  I have no idea if spells rely on magic.  Why?  Because I am not a witch.  Do I fear witches or hate them?  No.  That's their path.  That's their belief system.  It's not up to me to judge that path.  I shine my light of love and love transcends our individual or collective paths.  I don't need to accept or validate their path, and I need not send negative energy or darkness to it.  

In the middle of this post, a hiker came to me.  He actually came to town a few days ago, had been directed to me, but I was not home and wasn't taking hikers that night.  He left the next day to climb the Gap.  He had to turn around; he was having a heat stroke or was dehydrated.  He is an expert hiker having been hiking since FL and for one solid year.  This wasn't a case of him not being an expert hiker.  there just "happened" to be an EMT on trail hiking up as he was trying to navigate his way down in a foggy confused state.  Coincidence?  No.

He has been staying at the local bunk house, but another trail angel reached out to me, and asked about him.  She had heard that he wasn't well.  She gave me his number and I reached out to him.  He was still in town three days later.  I spoke to him, and told him to come by the yard.  Within minutes, we discovered that he is into crystals and cards and all the divination tools I use.  He gave up his crystals and cards in Harper's Ferry.

I took everything out to him, helped him learn his Spirit Guide's name, and then my spirit guide told me to leave him be with all the resources and let him have peace to use them without an audience.

This morning, I asked my Spirit Guide if I should go out into nature.  I am little held back from an injury, and it was destined to be hot as Hades today.  Spirit Guide said no.  Stay home.  Focus on home.  And, because I listened, I was here to help this hiker who needed to make a connection to his Spirit Guide.  We say the trail provides, and I think it does, but I often wonder if it's just a place where our Spirit Guides can be heard more clearly.

So, in this meditation, in the cards I read before had, it told me to seek wisdom and share it.  Within this day, within this post, I've done both.  With Love.  From Love. Spreading Love.  It's not a tribute to any skill I possess; all goodness comes from God's love.  This was the work He wanted done, and, for at least today, I wasn't blocking it.

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