Being Brave

I had a round of errands to run today, so I decided to treat myself to lunch at the House of Bamboo while I was out. Their pad thai is awesome and I love supporting local people. The proprietress showed me to a table and as I sat she pointed to my necklace and said she liked it. I was wearing my Year of the Horse symbol. She said “very brave,” smiled and then left to get me water.

This was a moment of synchronicity since I had just realized how stuck in fear I have become in regards to looking for work. On my way to the restaurant, I passed by several shops. As I looked at clothes, and shoes and art work I thought about how much I liked some of the things I was seeing and how easy it was not to get caught up in materialism now that I am unemployed.

It suddenly occurred to me that—since I got knocked down to bare subsistence living, and then worked my way back to a modest abundance that still teeters on the edge of disaster—I am scared of going back to a larger abundance. I have seen a couple of jobs advertizing large salaries and I come up with all sorts of reasons to not even try for them: I don't want to work for another dysfunctional nonprofit that is struggling financially, administratively challenged, and saddled with enough challenging personalities that all work grinds to a halt. I don’t want to work that hard again and have nothing to show for it in the end. And, besides, I am not really qualified.

In actuality, it isn't any of those things. It is fear of success and fear of failure. I am safe in my new limbo world. I have food and shelter and some beauty and comfort. Why would I give that up for struggle and hard work and a likelihood of failure in a field fraught with fringe crazies and pathetic finances? Right now, no one expects too much from me so anything I do is wonderful. Right now I am only responsible for myself so I can only let myself down. I am scared that if I apply for these jobs I might get one, and then I might fail at it.

Failure is always a possibility. However, true failure is lacking imagination, insight and wisdom to learn from mistakes and losses.

In the past couple of months I have been remembering the picture that I used to draw when I was about five years old—a little troll girl, silently crying and holding a black and wilted flower. I clearly remember thinking the caption was “I kill everything I touch.” I don’t know where the picture or the conviction came from, but it has been with me all of my life—subtext for all of my relationships and career moves.

Now I am asking—what if I got it wrong? What if the message was not about me killing everything, but instead was about a path of compassion? A path of compassion can lead one to be there for many tragedies. A path of compassion can lead one to reach out to those who are most troubled, those who are most struggling, and those most likely to make little or no progress. It would be easy for a five year old to interpret myself as the cause, when really I was just the witness.

My little troll girl can stand as a picture, but I need to reinterpret the message. My heart is strong enough and kind enough to take on hard cases and difficult tasks. I am brave enough to stay open to challenging situations and relationships, and sturdy enough to endure the pain, confusion, fear, and anger in this world. I am tough enough to witness the depths of grief and also the heights of joy and the penetrating warmth of love. For nothing is permanent—not grief, nor anger, nor fear.

The woman at the restaurant had it right. I am very brave. And a few small moments of weakness and doubt and fear will not stop me. Not for long!

Time to go get some job applications in:)

My first day of acting class

For those of you who do not know, I signed up for an acting class. Well, sort of. When I signed up, it was full so I was on the wait list and therefore not technically in the class yet. My friend Tempra told me about the class when she decided to try acting and, after some trepidation, I decided to sign up too.

We walked into a sea of people too young to go to bars. Signs on the walls told us we could not bring food or drink into the room and I had to walk through the middle of the room with my coffee cup in hand because that was the only way to access the seats where Tempra and I could sit together. It was eerily quiet so we “old folk” nervously chatted in near-whispers.

Actually, I was fine until the teacher walked in and said cheerily, “Are you ready to act?”
“Good God, no!” was my inner response. If I had been near the door I might have bolted. As it was, bolting would have first meant walking in front of all those people, so I stayed put. Besides, I wasn’t actually in the class yet, right?

You might be wondering why the hell I would sign up for something that I clearly find terrifying. Well, it all starts with me working my way through the book The Artist’s Way.

One of the first things this book works on is creative blocks. It sets out assignments designed to get us to find all of the people and events that block us from being creative. The book is for all types of artists—writers, painters, musicians, dancers, etc. Since I am a writer, that is the focus I brought to working through the book. Until recently, I have only been thinking of writing-related creative blocks. However, I recently remembered that my oldest aspiration was to be an actor. I remember drawing a picture of me on a stage and my mom writing down that I wanted to be an actor, dancer and singer. (I sort of saw them as all one thing at the time.) A couple of years later when I was reading and writing on my own, I added being a writer, but I continued to put together plays and dance performances for my family up until I was 12 or 13. Eventually I dismissed my acting dreams as a phase all little girls go through—not something to be taken seriously.

Before I decided this, I used to conscript my cousins to my various projects. I would choreograph dance performances and make my mom and Aunt Karen watch (I never understood why they had to be dragged in—my shows were much more entertaining than the endless talking they did!). I used to have this snake puppet that I made out of a sock at some arts and crafts summer program and I spent hours doing duets with the snake, singing along to Barbara Streisand or pop songs I taped off the radio (and, yes, I realize how dorky this was). I made up all sorts of stories to go along with the songs. Once I even wrote a whole musical using taped radio songs. Again, I conscripted the cousins who made a silly mess of my serious story line; no one else seemed able to share my vision!

Lately, I have been thinking it would be nice to have something more to offer the Rogue Theatre (as the only non-theater board member), but have not been able to find a non-acting niche. Early on, they asked me if I was interested in acting, and I told them I sucked at it so, no, I wasn’t interested. Now I am wondering if maybe this has all just been assumptions on my part.

Then I suddenly remembered that I actually was involved in theatre for many years growing up. I went to several acting workshops for kids with a community theatre group in town (I have no idea who, now), and I auditioned for small parts a couple of times. I also took drama in both junior high and high school. But I was never in a play. I have always assumed that meant the teachers could see I had no talent. That might have been the case. It might also have been that I just needed some work to draw me out, and the teachers just weren’t interested in digging. The kids that got cast were always the popular, outgoing kids. I was shy, reserved, quiet. It’s can be hard to see potential in that.

I have two acting memories that—even after all these years—still make me cringe. The first was when we were assigned to do monologues in class. I decided to do a short story that I wrote. The story was typically over-dramatic teenage angst. As a short story it was not too bad. As a monologue, not so much. Halfway through I got nervous and I froze up, completely forgetting the words. I found my place again, but couldn’t keep the emotion going, which might have made the monologue work. Instead it fell flat. So, the performance failed, and I left myself doubly vulnerable because it was my performance and my writing. For an already geeky, awkward and decidedly not popular teen, that certainly didn’t help.

Later that year we did auditions for the musical Oklahoma. I have no memory of actually auditioning but I know I did. Instead of getting a part, the teacher made me the director. At first I thought that was a great honor and opportunity, but she didn’t give me any instruction and she actually did all of the directing. I had to spend my free afternoons sitting around watching her direct the kids in rehearsal, feeling like a fifth wheel. She let me have a say here and there, but by the time the play was opening, I was completely deflated. I decided that she made me director not because she thought I would be good at it but because I was so bad at acting. Looking back now, maybe that was the reason, but maybe not.

I have so much emotional baggage tied to the subject that it is hard to say if I have any real interest in acting or not. But The Artist’s Way is not just about one form of creativity, and it is not about just one form of creative block. I realized that my creative block surrounding acting might be holding me back in all sorts of ways. Too often I am still that shy, reserved, quiet kid waiting to be ridiculed for speaking up, or verbally run over and overshadowed by flashier, more flamboyant folks. Too often I am timid and do not share what would actually be most welcome. This impacts everything I do—my career, my relationships, my social action work, as well as my writing. Maybe I need to work on this creative block before I will truly be able to move forward as a writer. Maybe I need to work on this creative block before I will be able to move forward in my career.

Which is why tonight I had my first acting class since high school. If I didn’t have a friend in the class, I probably wouldn’t go back, even though I made it off the wait list. It’s just too scary! You know how they say that every day you should do one thing that scares you? Well, I think this one might count for several months worth. But, even though I am scared, I am also excited to stretch beyond my current boundaries of Self. And that is a good thing.

No Good, Very Bad Day Zen Style

Today was a no good, very bad day, just like the kids’ book says. Working at Jen’s Daycare—aka, Zen Bootcamp—gave the day a spiritual dimension. Not that this made it better. Or easier. Just more spiritual, for whatever that is worth!

Last night was my second night of sleep interrupted by bouts of pain. For the past decade and a half my uterus has picked up this habit of treating me to rounds of faux labor pains with contractions and all. The pain lasts about 20 minutes (although low-grade pain can linger for hours) and the rounds come every 4-6 hours. That means that I woke up in pain twice the last two nights and was up for half an hour each time. The bouts leave me exhausted and the middle of the night interruptions leave me sleep deprived.

I woke up late and by the time I was awake enough to do my morning stretches, another round of pain struck, sucking up all of my morning prep time. I spent my stretches time writhing in pain and panting in the already heavy heat of the day. I didn’t get a shower, coffee, or even have time to wash my face. I just pulled on clothes and loaded myself into my car (still entering from the passenger side and climbing over the stick shift because I can’t afford to fix the broken driver’s side door). When I got to Jen’s I realized that I had forgotten my Bert’s Bees Wax chapstick and my lips were already dry.

I could see that it might be the start of a no good, very bad day. But, I didn’t want to curse myself, so I focused on the idea of a happy day instead.

I was met at the door by loud barking dogs. Not unusual, but they do tend to be less energetically vocal first thing in the morning, so the barrage was an unpleasant morning bonus. The kitchen looked about usual—all the cupboards and drawers in various stages of openness and all of the counters in various stages of dishes and food prep. The floor, however, was in the unusual state of looking somewhat like the barn floor. There had clearly been a mishap in feeding the guinea pigs their hay.

It certainly looked like a no good, very bad day in the making….

I rolled up my sleeves (metaphorically, as I wore a tank top today) and got started. I thought that some good, hard housework might distract me from pain and crankiness. Air conditioning would help too. It was only 9am and the house was stuffy and hot. Since the air conditioning was already on, I just had to close all of the doors and windows. (Closing the doors is easy; keeping them closed is a huge challenge, what with all the two-year olds and ADD!) After 45 minutes of hot sweaty dish washing and counter scrubbing, I realized that the air conditioner was NOT broken, it was just set at 85 degrees. I turned it down to 78 and things got much more comfortable. The hot dishwashing and counter cleaning and floor sweeping continued and I started making some real progress.

Perhaps it wasn’t going to be such a bad day afterall….

But there was a pretty serious lack of food. I could make eggs, but there was no bread for toast. I could make beans but that takes hours. I could make cornbread but that takes an hour or so and it takes a clean kitchen (for my own OCD comfort, not because you really need a tidy kitchen to make cornbread). The kids were saying they were hungry and all I could offer was dried fruit. Desi woke up hungry and I had no idea what to feed her. Jen got out the last of the granola and said to just put milk in it (the yogurt was all gone).

At the same time, lots of other commotion was streaming around me. Jen’s boyfriend Krishnan was running around doing bits and pieces of projects while determined to be cheerful and conversational. I just wanted him to shut up and leave me alone (did I say I was cranky?). Jen’s son Elias (newly turned 18) had texted me to bring him some unscented lotion for his tattoo, which I did. When I gave him the lotion, he showed me his tattoo. I told him that I would have been more impressed if he had gotten on the bus to go work for Jen’s friend for a week. He wrinkled his nose and said he wasn’t interested in doing that. Walking away, I said—to no one in particular—that I would have been more impressed if he had been interested in going to work for Jen’s friend.

On the kid front, it was a whiny, crying, screaming day. Mostly they did not all cry or scream at once, but someone was crying or screaming pretty much non-stop all day. One of the two year olds is teething; the three year old was feeling especially sensitive and cried at the drop of a hat; one of the four year olds has been determined to stay sad and homesick non-stop all day including lots of crying, and the other was delivered in full attachment disorder melt down—I had to sit and hold her in a mommy huddle on the back porch until she was able to make the transition. Fortunately there were two older girls who helped out some with the little ones, but they also wanted to chat my ear off about cell phones and pop music and all I really wanted was them to shut up and go away (again, cranky!).

And then Jen told me she was leaving me alone with Elias while she went grocery shopping—words to strike terror into my heart since there is no guarantee when she will return once she leaves the house. However, she assured me that she had to have the car back by 11:30 to have her brakes fixed, so I would only have to hold down the fort alone for a limited time—an hour and a half, max. The mommy huddle happened while Jen was gone and Elias did a good job of holding down the fort while I was on the back porch. He did, however, disappear back into his room as soon as he helped his mom unload the groceries.

The worst part of the day was Jen’s scatteredness. Or perhaps it was just my cranky, pain-colored perception that made her seem scattered. It seemed to me that she was coming and going all day long, and that when she was in, she wasn’t really there, if you know what I mean. I thought when she came back from grocery shopping that I would feel less alone. Instead, her coming and going and not-being-thereness left me feeling more alone than if she had actually been out doing errands. Like when one of the older girls dropped the glass bottle of water in the middle of lunch and Jen launched in to clean-up mode, but then suddenly disappeared, leaving me to think the job was done, only to find more glass on the floor (which I cleaned up). (This was after the kids asked for more of everything non-stop, over and over again for a steady 15 minutes and I told Jen I was ready to quit. I know she was trying to fix it…) Or, like when I took one of the two-year olds in for a nap only to have him show back up in the pool area with Jen’s daughter Desi (6), a mouth full of chips, and a story from Desi that Jen had fed them and sent them out. When I went into the air-conditioned house (out of the 100 degree heat), Jen was sitting on the couch chatting with a parent and apologized for letting him escape from her.

Was this a no good, very bad day, or did I just have a bad attitude?

My worst moment was when I lost it with Desi. She had an attitude all day—sassy, belligerent, dare I say bitchy? Jen explained that she hadn’t gotten to bed until after eleven because her and Krishnan had had scheduling difficulties in picking up her horse Zena, and therefore Desi did not get enough sleep. I had words with Desi more than once about her behavior towards me, but it didn’t even make a dent. While cleaning up the rest of the glass, the kids at the table were asking for lunch service, Jen was talking to her car mechanic, Andy, and his daughters at the kitchen entrance, and Desi kept asking for more celery. I told her she would have to wait until I finished cleaning up the glass, so she walked off in a huff.

Five minutes after I finished, Jen was still talking to Andy, so in a bid for Jen’s attention Desi waltzed past Jen into the kitchen and announced she wanted more lunch after all. I told her no and asked her to leave the kitchen. She said no. I flicked water at her (I was doing another round of dishes) and when she didn’t budge, I held a dirty plate over her head and told her I would dump food on her head if she didn’t vacate the kitchen. She retreated to the kitchen gate and then yelled that I was mean and then stepped back into the kitchen. When I told her that she could go play or go to her room, she said no again and struck one of those “fuck you” poses she is so good at. I threw the water from my hands directly into her face, but she just came at me saying no. So I scooped her up, took her back to her room, and dropped her on her bed. When she hit, she flailed herself until she fell off the bed onto her head. I just closed the door and walked away. Sometimes you just gotta walk away.

It was pretty much a no good, very bad day.

At 3:15 I remembered that I had to ask Jen if I could get off early for a 4pm church event that I was in charge of. I asked Jen what she thought my chances were of getting off at four. She said three kids were being picked up very soon and that she thought I could go after that. Sure enough, those kids did go, but then the prospective parents who said they would come look at the daycare at 3 showed up at 3:45 and there is no way Jen can show the place without someone minding Desi, so I was there until 4:30 afterall. As I was leaving, one of the infants showed up, but Jen said she could handle it, so I went to my church thing. Only the tech set-up guy had shown up, so that was a wash. We did learn about live streaming capabilities at church though so that was good.

I got home and vented to my house-mate Michael. He told me that his house guests were picking up take out food and he thought there would be enough for me. There wasn’t though, which fit with the day, so I walked down to La Hacienda, had my favorite tostada and a couple of margaritas.

It was a no good, very bad day, but it seems to be ending well:)

Wondering where the Zen twist is? Either the margaritas or that I didn’t kill anyone. Take your pick!

Teamwork

During my evaluation this past week, the board asked me what teamwork meant to me. I answered by giving some examples, which was adequate for the setting, but lacked depth. Then I went home and read more of the book Calling The Circle by Christina Baldwin, and there was a fuller, more intimate account of teamwork: teamwork is everyone giving over a piece of their autonomy to the center and the center is a combination of shared selves and a larger something that enables the group to be more than the sum of its parts. It is this center that everyone is working for and is accountable to. This is where true teamwork is rooted.

To do teamwork, we first and foremost need trust.

First, we have to trust ourselves. We need to have a clear view and acceptance of both our strengths and weaknesses. We need to be able to both praise and acknowledge our skills and talents, but also be able to accept our shortcomings with compassionate understanding. This requires a high level of self-awareness—an attribute not highly valued and, thus, mostly not taught (or learned), in our society. Instead, our culture encourages the extremes of self-effacement and blaming others which leads to a distorted self-view.

Second, we need to trust our teammates. We have to commit to bringing our whole selves to the service of the team. This means bringing the power and gifts of our strengths, and it also means being open and honest about our areas of weakness, enabling the groups shared strengths to make us all stronger, better, and more than we could ever be alone. This means we have to be brave, as we are vulnerable when we make ourselves fully seen. In this society—which believes that if there is a winner then there has to be a loser, and which uses fear as a tool of dominance and division—bringing your full self to the table takes great courage and a strength born of deep convictions.

Third, we need to trust in the process, which means believing that working together is the best way of moving us forward and obtaining our goals. Blocks to the teamwork process include harboring hidden agendas; believing that someone must lose; believing that others are looking to gain at our expense; being critical of others; holding on to pre-set outcomes; and clinging to expectations. When we let go of these blocks and we come together open to the creative possibilities that arise within a gathering of equals, then a synergistic magic can happen. I have seen amazing solutions arise out of such gatherings, solutions that are able to take deep root because they were created together and therefore are holistic.

In this society, we all come to teamwork wounded. We all come with expectations and judgments and fears. We will bring these with us into the circle of teamwork. If we can be honest with ourselves, brave enough to dare vulnerability together, and have faith in the process, amazing things can happen, even with all of our dominant culture baggage.

How Divide and Conquer Keep Winning...

...And what you can do to stop it

There has been a lot in the news lately about how much rich corporations make and how little they pay in taxes. The polls show that the majority favor closing those tax loopholes, and yet the elected officials just voted to keep those loopholes. How can this be? There are way more of us than there are of them! The key here is divide and conquer. While corporate lobbyists stay on target, we get bogged down in division over everything from class to what TV shows we watch. It is NPR listeners versus Monster Truck Rally attendees; working class ghetto culture versus suburban elitists; and Techno-pop versus Country.

There are a lot more of us than them, but we are also much more diverse—they use our diversity against us. Without a unifying set of values to make us cohesive, we turn into a thousand bickering subsets. And while we are kept busy being divided, the mega-rich conquer and run the world.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, I see many signs that things are shifting, and in this I find hope. There is much that we can all do to help move this shift forward. First, we have to become Aware. Without Awareness, nothing can change, because without Awareness, we don’t even know that a problem exists. So, let’s start with Awareness that divide and conquer is being effectively used.

The tools of divide and conquer:

Divided communication. Talk separately to people who have a shared concern (say, the environment). Start with the people who have the most power first, and use a mix of carefully selected events, facts, half-truths, and lies to show them how one or more others in the same group are actually working against them and their values. Keep the communications shrouded in secrecy, but not actually secret—you want others to know that you are talking, but not the details. It is important to keep everyone guessing and walking on eggshells.

Fear as a motivator. Make sure that you make it clear that people’s values are not just threatened, but are in immediate jeopardy. The more specific you can make the threat, the better. You also want to get people into a reactive mode—trigger their anxiety so you can keep them hunkered down and protecting their own job, project, title, etc.

Misdirection. Once misinformation seeds have been planted, keep people pointed away from you and towards the others in the group. You aren’t to blame, you just pointed out the potential disaster—so keep redirecting people to those you have pointed out as being to blame. Because no one is perfect, this works great—you can always find errors and mistakes that can serve as “evidence” of wrongdoing, unworthiness, or underhandedness.

Break trust. The scapegoating that arises out of misdirection and fingerpointing decreases communication and increases fear. No one knows who is talking to whom, or what about, so communications become even more fractured and perhaps stop altogether. Fear triggers a mass-attack of self-defensiveness, which also plays into the fractured or stopped communications; afterall, what I say might be used against me. When people act out of fear, they often say and do things that they don’t mean, and make mistakes they wouldn’t otherwise make. The more the fear increases, the worse this becomes, and out of these broken communications and actions, trust is broken. This is especially true for areas where trust never had a chance to develop in the first place.

End result: Division makes working together cohesively impossible and whatever the group’s concern had been (say, the environment) suffers set-backs at best and major defeats at worst.

Pretty depressing, huh?

Well, it doesn’t have to be this way. Here is an alternative strategy—Unify and Grow:

Holistic communication. Holistic communication is clear, honest, and compassionate communication with self, and with others. There are lots of tools to help us here.

Starting with self communication, Byron Katy’s questions work is an excellent tool: “Is it true? Can I really know it is true?” It is difficult to get derailed by incomplete or inaccurate information when we ask these questions. We either have facts proving truth, or we don’t have the truth—and then we can choose to ask questions to get to the truth. For example, it is easy to make assumptions about someone’s actions. If a person answers the phone and then slams it down without answering us, we can assume that person is rude, angry, mean, etc. But, can we really know this is the truth? No. The only way to know the truth behind that action is to ask the person who answered the phone. It could be that their child just slammed their finger in the door and they had to run for help.

Katy has two final questions: “How does believing that it is true make me think, feel, or act? And, How would I think, feel or act if I did not believe that it is true?” Katy’s questions are deep and worthy tools for holistic communication. I would add these questions or areas of exploration when reviewing a specific action/event: What are the facts that you do know; in other words, what did you, yourself, see, hear, smell, taste, or feel? How do you feel about the action/event? What does that action/event mean to you? What do you want? What do you need?

Taking our insights to the next step, communication has to be unifying. This means that we must talk to the person or people involved directly. If there is a group involved in a particular event or issue, than the whole group needs to make an effort to get together and talk things through. This communication needs to be clear, honest, and compassionate.

Hope as a motivator. Communication with self and with others needs to be rooted in compassion. We non-verbally communicate trust, dislike, empathy, frustration, etc. when we are interacting with someone. If we assume the other person is acting out of greed or malice, then we will communicate this and our thinking will close down avenues of discussion. When we assume the other person is acting with good intensions, then we can listen with compassion and avenues of communication will be opened up. Starting with the assumption of good intentions is acting out of hope. It could be that our hope will not be fulfilled. It may be that the other person is, indeed, acting out of greed or malice. Listening with compassion enables us to live our values even with those who would hurt us (it could be argued that greedy, malicious people need our compassion even more), and avoids shutting down communication and fomenting negative feelings with those who otherwise would have worked with us.

Collective responsibility and problem solving. When everyone acknowledges and honors their responsibilities, including their responsibility for errors and mistakes, then we can all move forward together to effectively problem solve. This accepting of responsibility has to be realistic and balanced—we can only take responsibility for the things we have power over (either given or inherent). Please note: This stage cannot be reached without holistic communication. A lack of facts, assumptions, and strong feelings can all undermine or derail this process of owning up to responsibilities and problem solving.

Build trust. Holistic communication based on compassion; using hope as a motivator; and working together to identify responsibility and do problem solving all build trust. Trust is unifying, not divisive. It is also a lot of hard work, which is why division seems so much more effective—it is fast and easy, so it is ubiquitous. The Unify and Grow strategy is slower and harder, and it is also deeper and more resilient.

Every time you see symptoms of separate communication, fear, misdirection, and broken trust, you might want to ask yourself what is really going on. You might want to ask if holistic communication might be in order, if hope might be better applied, if collective responsibility and problem solving might be a better path to building trust and unity. You might want to ask who stands to gain if we fall apart? And, who stands to gain if we pull together? What might we be willing to risk for unity? Might we be willing to risk asking more questions? Might we be willing to risk assuming good intensions? Might we be willing to risk hoping for something better, and do the work needed to build trust?

I am not offering any quick fixes here. What I am offering is good, honest, hardwork, and the chance to grow a better future together.

The Psychology of Magic

We live at a time when the economy, energy and the environment are all giving us clear reminders that we live on a finite planet, with finite resources. Our economy is based on a model of continuous growth which is clearly unsustainable—just think of a cancer cell. Our energy is overwhelmingly based on petroleum which is a non-renewable energy source that is nearing if not surpassing peak production. And our environment is showing great signs of stress and injury as we pursue both endless economic growth and oil energy.

Change is upon us. Whether we like it or not, we will have to live with the physical consequences that our current system has created. We can continue with the status quo—denying anything is wrong and continuing to live resource intensively. Or we can start the work of transforming our society into an integrated, holistic, sustainable whole. I believe this is the challenge of our time.

And I believe that magic—in the pagan, witchcraft sense—has much to offer for helping us achieve this transformation. Because the principles of magic are rooted in psychology and are in tune with the findings of neuroscience and physics, they can provide valuable tools for both the inner transformation and community transformation needed to successfully transition to a healthier world.

Much of my understanding of Magic and Witchcraft comes from the writings of Starhawk, and from her book The Spiral Dance in particular. When I first read this book I was surprised. I had read many spirituality books, and all of them had some great little nuggets of wisdom or information, but all of them also had parts that I could not agree with. Starhawk’s book was different. In reading a book on magic, I had expected to hear arguments about why I should believe in the Goddess and Magic, but instead she presents the idea of manifest deity:

“People often ask me if I believe in the Goddess. I reply, “Do you believe in rocks?”… In the Craft we do not believe in the Goddess—we connect with Her; through the moon, the stars, the ocean, the earth, through trees, animals, through other human beings, through ourselves. She is here. She is within us all. She is the full circle: earth, air, fire, water, and essence—body, mind, spirit, emotions, change” (91-92).

Basically, she is saying that the word “Goddess” is just a short cut way of describing everything that we can see and touch and feel and hear. I may not be comfortable with the specific words used, but this concept fit with both my spiritual sensibilities and with my scientific mind.

I had also expected to be told what to do and how to do it. Instead, Starhawk presents suggestions for rituals and spells, but specifically says that what is really important is finding what works for me. In talking about the tools of Magic, Starhawk says, “The mind works magic, and no elaborately forged knife or elegant wand can do any more than augment the power of a trained mind. The tools are simply aids in communicating with Younger Self, who responds much better to tangibles than to abstracts” (75).

Which leads me to where Magic and Psychology intersect. Starhawk says, “Learning to work magic is a process of neurological repatterning, of changing the way we use our brains…” (123). This fits in exactly with information from the different fields of brain research. I love reading about brains. It is fascinating to learn how the different parts of the brain work, the role that biochemistry plays, and how the environment impacts our brains.

One of my favorite brain books is My Stroke of Insight by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor. This book describes her experience of having a stroke and how she fully recovered. Because of her work as a neuroanatomist, she knew the exact science of what was happening in her brain as the stroke was occurring. However, the actual experience gave her huge insights into how our brains really function and just what they are capable of.

Jill’s stroke was in the left hemisphere, which is the half of the brain responsible for linear, logical, linguistic thinking. The right side of our brains is nonlinear, holistic and visuo-spatially oriented. On the morning of the stroke, Jill’s left brain stopped and started working over and over again. When it was working, she knew that she was having a stroke, and knew that she needed help. When her left brain shut down, she could no longer track her experience or make a plan. Because of this, it took her several hours to successfully call for help.

Jill says, “I remember that first day of the stroke with terrific bitter-sweetness. In the absence of the normal functioning of my left orientation association area, my perception of my physical boundaries was no longer limited to where my skin met air. I felt like a genie liberated from its bottle. The energy of my spirit seemed to flow like a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria” (67).

With her left brain silenced, Jill was able to experience a oneness with the universe, a sense of detachment to the things of the ego, and an all encompassing peace and compassion. One of the main points in her book is that, in this society, we spend too much time in our left brain, and not enough time in our right, and that the world would be a much more peaceful place if we balanced this out.

This fits with what Starhawk says about magic. She says that rituals and spell casting are just ways of tapping into and evoking our right brain—the part she calls “Younger Self.” She says that we put on flowing capes and light candles and dance to drum music not because there is something inherently magical about those things, but because our right brain responds to play and fun and pleasure. This is why she says that you have to find rituals and tools that work for you—what is play for me might not be play for you. My right brain may respond well to moonlight dancing, while yours might respond best to biking through the park. Because our right brains are holistic, the best way to tap into them is by tapping into our senses—what we see, hear, taste, touch and smell.

Which brings us back to manifest deity—Goddess, God, the Great Mystery—is all found in things that we directly experience. It is not found in logical, left brain abstractions, but in our right brain experience of wholeness and interconnection. I believe that it is a balance between these two halves of our brain that enables us to be fully human.

I want to talk a little about physics now. I have little formal education in the hard sciences, but I greatly enjoy reading about the different hard science fields. I have been told that there is no way to give a truly precise explanation of physics without mathematics. Most of us don’t speak mathematics, so we have to settle for the less precise explanations found in words. So here is what I understand of quantum mechanics: All things are made up of both matter and energy. Energy is always moving, and is not contained by matter. I like the explanation that mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme gives in his book The Universe is a Green Dragon. In this book he translates his knowledge of cosmology and physics into a poetically accessible story. Here is how he explains this concept:

“When you look at the moon, you are absorbing the moon just as the ocean absorbs minerals.

In terms of quantum mechanics, you as an individual body are represented by a particular quantum state. This includes the interactions of all the elementary particles of your body. Now imagine a patterned wave of light flowing into you. Some of the photons of this light wave interact with your own elementary particles, and through this interaction your quantum state is changed… Your particles are new in the sense that they have absorbed something from the photons and entered a new state of being.

This means that when you stand in the presence of the moon, you become a new creation. The photon’s interactions have entered into the quantum state of your entire ensemble and you are, through these interactions, a moon-person… The elementary particles of your body have absorbed an influence and in that sense they—and you—are brand, spanking new, a human being resonating everywhere with moonlight.”

Research on the transfer of energy between humans—which is a given in quantum physics—is still relatively new, but it fits with the experiences most of us have had in our own lives. Haven’t you ever been around someone who drained your energy? Or haven’t you felt disproportionately energized after being around a particularly optomistic friend? The work of Jan Fowler and Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University in 2008 reveals that happiness might be contagious. This aspect of physics—that we are constantly interchanging energy with the world around us—supports the idea that we can affect the world beyond our own skin by affecting the energy flowing through us and between us.

Which brings me back to Magic. One of the definitions of magic is “the art of changing consciousness at will.” Starhawk says, “Magic requires first the development and then the integration of right-hemisphere, spatial, intuitive, holistic, patterning awareness. It opens the gates between the unconscious and the conscious minds.”

In other words, you cast a spell to align your mind, body and spirit with your will, and through your will, you work to obtain what you desire. So, if you need a job, you cast a spell for a job in order to align your mind, body and spirit with the idea of a manifesting a new job. And then you go out and do some serious job hunting—search the want ads, fill out applications, send in resumes and so on. Magic in our world is not the instant gratification Harry Potter magic. It is not enough to wish that something were so—you have to do both inner work and outer work.

Why not skip the spell and just do the job hunting? There is scientific research that shows that doing both increases your chances of being successful. For example, in 2010, one of the scientific projects reported in the publication The Week showed that people who had a lucky charm and who believed in that lucky charm set higher goals and felt more confident.

You can say that this is the placebo affect, but I think the placebo affect proves just how incredibly powerful our minds are. Think about it—you take a sugar pill and, by the power of your mind alone, you make yourself heal. That’s pretty powerful. Witchcraft believes in the power of our minds and works to harness that power to our benefit and the benefit of our world.

This is why I say that Magic has much to offer us in the challenges we face today—with our economy, energy, and environment all showing signs of crashing up against the realities of physical limitations—we need to develop a clear and strong vision of a healthier, happier, sustainable world. And then we need to engage our senses, tap into Younger Self with pleasure and play in order to harness our own inner energies and align our wills with our vision in order to manifest that vision.

Blessed Be.