A Survey Meme, with My Beliefs

This meme contains a great deal of information regarding my beliefs, among other things. 30 days, with a question per day.

The Meme:
Day 01 – Introduction
Day 02 – Your first love
Day 03 – Your parents
Day 04 – What you ate today
Day 05 – Your definition of love
Day 06 – Your day
Day 07 – Your best friend
Day 08 – A moment
Day 09 – Your beliefs
Day 10 – Your physical constitution
Day 11 – Your siblings
Day 12 – Something you feel strongly about
Day 13 – This week
Day 14 – Your education
Day 15 – Your dreams
Day 16 – Your first kiss
Day 17 – Your favorite memory
Day 18 – Your favorite birthday
Day 19 – Something you regret
Day 20 – This month
Day 21 – Another moment
Day 22 – Something that upsets you
Day 23 – Something that makes you feel better
Day 24 – Something that makes you cry
Day 25 – A first
Day 26 – Your fears
Day 27 – Your favorite place
Day 28 – Something that you miss
Day 29 – Your aspirations
Day 30 – One last moment

I don’t intend to do this one question per day, but if I don’t get it all done today, I’ll continue to edit this post rather than add more posts.

Day 1 — Introduction

I am a disabled (with bipolar disorder), 49 year old woman who sees working with spirits and helping others do the same as my calling. I am a mystic, a Thelemite, and a lifelong occultist. I was born in Ohio and have lived in my home town a number of separate times, but I’ve lived all over the U.S., including Florida, Georgia, Texas (where I reside today), Oklahoma, and Washington state. I rejected traditional religion while still in high school, but didn’t find my true footing with my own spiritual views until my 30s. In the interim, I studied and practiced various alternative spiritual views and disciplines, ranging from Eckankar in the 80s to New Age to eclectic Wicca to ceremonial magick. I am passionate about the Qabalah, but behind on my studies. For hobbies, I enjoy painting, beading jewelry, movies, and various online pursuits including Subeta, Rending the Veil, and this blog.

Day 2 — Your first love

My first real love for a person of the opposite sex was a guy named Jack Redditt, in Orlando, Florida. He was two years my senior — I was 16 and he was 18. He was a real troublemaker and went to prison for burglary shortly after we got together. Two months with him was like two years in a relationship at my current age.

Day 3 — Your parents

My mother is Rosalie and my father was Jerry. He died in 2002. I had a stepfather from the time I was 13, Jim, who died in 1989. My mother has remarried again, to Del. I don’t consider him any sort of father figure.

Day 4 — What you ate today

So far, a Slim Fast and a banana. I’m gonna have a bowl of chili here in a few, though.

Day 05 — Your definition of love

What a difficult question! Egads. Love, to me, I think, is dedication, tolerance, compassion and regard. It includes basic courtesy and respect, at least as much as you’d show to a friend or a stranger on the street. It includes a willingness to sacrifice, to a reasonable extent, for the happiness of your partner. It includes a willingness to accept a certain measure of independence in your partner, without taking that independence personally or as a signal that you “aren’t enough” for them. It absolutely includes trust, as long as that trust has not been seriously betrayed in the past, and in the event of such a betrayal, there should be a willingness to work through that issue (and other issues) as long as there is mutual effort. It also includes the ability to let go, if that is necessary, to allow the other person to move on without you if that is what will ensure their happiness. Love is not selfish, but it doesn’t require a sacrifice of who you are, either. All of these things should be mutual. Compromise should honor both parties’ limits, and both parties should be willing to stretch their perceived limits as much as possible to allow the relationship to evolve and grow.

Day 06 — Your day

Lessee. Today has been fairly quiet. I had a paid chat, so far. Let me describe the average day. I get up after 7 or so hours sleep, but the time I get up widely varies based on how screwed up my sleep schedule may be. Usually it’s between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. The first thing I do is wash my face and brush my teeth, or shower (shower times also vary widely). I have a Slim Fast and maybe a piece of fruit for breakfast. I get dressed and run whatever errands need to be done, come home and address home chores, if any. Lots of times these chores involve work online or on the computer. I do not have a set schedule whatsoever, so meal times are random, as is everything else. If it’s not a cooking day, we all eat whenever we feel hungry, fending for ourselves. I deal with animals, and my list of things to do is usually long enough that I choose whatever is most pressing at the moment. I am fairly spontaneous, and so it’s very hard to really give a description of what I would “usually” do, because there isn’t any “usually.” But at the end of the day, usually by 10 or 11 o’clock (22 or 23 o’clock), I am in my room settling in with a movie and my iPod. Sometimes I do art, instead. But if I don’t have that alone time at the end of the day, I don’t feel right and my stress level starts to build. So regardless of what I’ve done that day or what time it is, it’s very hard for me to go right to bed without a couple hours to myself first. If I am out socializing or hanging out with friends, I like to be home by 9 (11 at the latest) so I can get that time alone. This makes me a bad choice for accompanying someone to a bar.

Day 7 — Your best friend

This is also a tough one for me. I have many friends, but few are close enough to warrant a “Best Friend” ranking. My friend Mel is the one who knows me the best and whom I’ve known the longest of anyone I’m in regular contact with. He is probably my best friend. Christina is the one I spend the most time with, but she still doesn’t know me nearly as well as he does. For a while I considered Susan my best friend, but I’ve pulled back there as my more bizarre viewpoints (which make up a large part of who I am) aren’t really expressed anymore, due to weirding her out to some degree. So it’s between Mel and Christina, depending on what qualifications one would consider in a best friend.

Day 8 — A moment

Hmm. A moment, eh? That’s a very broad writing prompt. The best moments are those unexpected little moments of gratitude or joy (which, in the end, are two parts of the same emotion), but running a close second are the moments in which we deliberately choose to feel or express gratitude from a sincere place. These moments can lead to bliss easier than any other avenue, in my experience, and I’ve had some serious blissful moments doing this. Genuine gratitude is probably the most positive emotion we can feel. In my humble opinion.

Day 9 — Your beliefs

Now there’s a can of worms of a different color. My beliefs probably have never been stated very succinctly, and I think that’s because they’re complicated and involve a huge amount of nuance. I call myself a Thelemite (that is, a practitioner of Thelema), but that’s to give a convenient label to it; I’m not a member of any Thelemic fraternity or organization, so many “real” Thelemites who are members would argue my right to claim the label. I prescribe to the tenets of True Will, the Abyss, and the Holy Guardian Angel, and I am a passionate proponent of Qabalah, which Thelema employs at length. However, unlike most ceremonial magicians (who comprise the bulk of Thelemites), I am a mystic (and perhaps a shaman) in these ways:

1. I work with spirits, and use this work to the best of my ability to aid others in my community.
    
2. 90% of the work I do is internal or is processing the internal via external means.
    
3. 90% of my current practice is completely self-originated. I am under-read, because I have read very little Crowley to date and don’t study the works of other magicians at any great length. What I do, I learned to do by doing it and via Meridjet’s guidance. I’m not taking someone else’s formula and mimicking it. As they like to say, “The map is not the territory” (a.k.a. “The menu is not the meal”), and I left the map behind a long, long time ago. When I do read books on magick, I frequently recognize things I’ve done on my own that I never would have comprehended upon reading if I’d read the material in advance.
    

Let me continue with my core beliefs. . . using a bullet list, kinda.

• I believe that wherever we are and whatever we’re experiencing, the Universe is always striving to put (and keep) us on the most direct path possible (at any given moment) to our destiny. Destiny, to me, is not as simple as having fate laid out for you. There are nuances to destiny — a higher destiny as well as a mundane one — and we always have a choice. (Meridjet likens this to a river… I’m going to get him to post that instead of me. So watch for it.) Anyway. Obstacles that arise in our lives occur to direct our course, to call our attention to things, and sometimes to issue one hell of a wake up call. They also occur because there are things we need to learn that those experiences teach us — though sometimes we don’t comprehend those lessons until years later. If a lesson happens to be terminal (such as a fatal disease), then I’d surmise that we gain that understanding after death, during our Abyss journey if nothing else.
   
• I believe that synchronicity and deja vu are indicators that we are traveling along an optimal course. When you are making the most beneficial choices, the momentum of the Universe is behind you and things fall into place.
   
• I believe that, therefore, everything happens for a reason. Even trivial little mundane moments, when taken as filling the moments of your day that lead you to the Next Big Thing, have reasons for their occurrence. They provide influence not only on our timing but also on our psyches. We just don’t tend to notice those things until they accumulate enough to call our attention to them, and by then oftentimes the original moment of influence has been lost in a stew of trivial moments and will never be recognized. And by “trivial,” I don’t mean meaningless. I mean they are moments we take for granted and never give a second thought to.
   
• I believe that living consciously and mindfully should be a goal of every living person, so that we strive to be aware of our effect on other people and ourselves, and also strive to fill our waking moments with something more than automatic pilot. This is a difficult thing to do, rather like trying to maintain a meditative state throughout your entire active day. We must do our best to remind ourselves until it becomes a habit of living without habits or automatic responses. Have you ever walked into a dark room when the power was out, and flipped on the light switch expecting it to work? Most of our actions are of this nature. If we could feel as foolish every time we chose automatically, as we do when flipping that light switch without thinking, it would teach us to be more mindful.
   
• I believe in coyotes and time as an abstract. . . oh wait. (I can’t get the song out of my head since I started this answer.) I believe to “Know thyself” is profoundly important and that most people don’t. See above. Lives lived completely based upon superficial concerns are a tragedy.
   
• I believe the rational mind is both a blessing and a curse. I believe that this world’s emphasis on facts (while calling them “truths”) and rationalism is unbalanced and therefore crippling, but without rational thought we would learn much, much more slowly. Abstract concepts are powerful things (and include true gnosis) and should always be included in any balanced person, but it’s not until an idea swims around in our deeper selves a while then percolates up into thought and realization via the intellect that we gain knowledge and understanding beyond instinctive response. Yet our skeptical insistence (and oh, I’m a skeptic) upon things being rational keeps us from understanding worlds that don’t fit that very firm mold. We are indeed crippled when it comes to astral projection to any world other than this one, and we insist on defining things that are beyond our experience. For instance, any thought of parallel universes usually results in a person thinking of them as nearly identical to this one, if not in appearance or geography, at least in terms of the most basic things: Breathing, food, water, belongings, other creatures, etc. Any thought of a spirit world, conversely, usually involves the person visualizing an endless expanse of gray fog through which featureless and ethereal spirits float about. BOR-ing!
   
• I believe that conventional religion is a means of control, offering the congregation (is there a better word?) salvation if they toe the line and give away their money, and offering the congregation true knowledge not at all.
   
• I believe that politicians should be accountable for deception and any type of malicious manipulation of the people or their resources. I believe that corporations should be regulated and held accountable, particularly when acting out of greed at the expense of the environment, their workers, or the public. I believe in socialist medicine. I believe this world has a long way to go and that we just might not survive as a species long enough to put away the war machine for good.
   
• I believe in compassion, empathy, and honesty. I believe in cultivating gratitude and optimism. I try to practice them consciously. I’m not perfect, by any means, but I try.
   

Day 10 — Your physical constitution

Well, I’m short — 5’3″. I was always very thin until my late 20s when I put on weight and haven’t been truly thin since. I am getting older, so my body is gradually falling apart. I have a tendency to headaches and gastrointestinal issues, such as Crohn’s disease and GERD, as well as general digestive problems. I had my gallbladder taken out 10 years ago. But as a general rule I resist colds and flu well, and other viruses. I am pretty strong, but my endurance is terrible.

Day 11 — Your siblings

I have a brother, five years younger, named David. He’s very private, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t go into more detail.

Day 12 — Something you feel strongly about

Well, given the recent activity on my blog (see entry for November 12), I’m going to have to say that I feel strongly about my ability to express myself. Sometimes that comes up inappropriately, but on my blog I think it’s a safe bet. My post on Otherkin was me trying to gain understanding of thoughts and feelings that occurred to me during a very painful time, and I don’t know about you but when I try to understand my pain, I have to look at the things inside me that it’s stimulating, and what seems related or overlapping. Gaining that understanding is going to involve looking at extremes, even if I know in the deepest place of my being that I have certain . . . principles that are an intrinsic part of who I am. That idealism is one of those principles, and so my mission is to find a way to retain that while still remaining rational, and fair to other people. I’m sorry if expressing these things seems simple or weak or like I’m giving up. I won’t (and it’s not). But it’s a process of understanding — not the resolution. Kthxbi.

Day 13 — This week

Wow. Any other week and I’ve had given you a list of basic events. This week, though, has been all about realization. For more info, see the post mentioned in #12.

Day 14 — Your education

Day 15 — Your dreams

Day 16 — Your first kiss

Day 17 — Your favorite memory

Day 18 — Your favorite birthday

Day 19 — Something you regret

Day 20 — This month

Day 21 — Another moment

Day 22 — Something that upsets you

Day 23 — Something that makes you feel better

Day 24 — Something that makes you cry

Day 25 — A first

Day 26 — Your fears

Day 27 — Your favorite place

Day 28 — Something that you miss

Day 29 — Your aspirations

Day 30 — One last moment