by Demi Fox
Do you have trouble committing to and focusing on your spiritual path?
Perhaps you find it difficult to keep to a dedicated practice…
…you keep meaning to do rituals and witchy things but time comes round to it and you just can’t seem to get at it.
… and you feel like you are dealing with so much internal resistance that it doing the basics like meditating every day feels like a freaking miracle, let along getting into the stuff you really want to do?
Me too, mate.
Me fucking too.
It’s not that I don’t love my path – and I know the same goes for you too. It’s not that we aren’t in love with our spirituality, because we are.
We think about it constantly. It’s the thing that keeps us going, keeps us happy, keeps us sane. It’s the lens through which we view the world.
And yet…
… we find it so fucking hard to stick at it as we’d like to.
We have lost count of the number of times we’ve told ourselves, “I’m just going to do this every day for a month” and then something comes up on day 5 and we fill ourselves with shame and resentment.
We figure it must be because we are not enough somehow.
If we really loved our spirituality, if we really were into the Goddess, if we really were a witch, we’d have no trouble getting down to it.
We’d be doing it all the time and it would be easy. We’d be waking up raring to go with our meditation practice every day, feeling excited to plan spells and be dancing under the stars all night on the full moon, witchy as fuck.
Instead of meaning to and never getting round to it and feeling guilty.
We figure it’s because we are not deserving. That we are bad people for failing to live up to our exacting spiritual standards.
And every tiny dissapointment, every time we have meant to do that guided visualisation but accidentally ended up on the phone to our best mate till bedtime, every time we failed to do our morning ritual because we were going to miss the bus, every time we put off planning for a sabbat and ended up doing nothing… all these little pinpricks of failure build up a story in our heads.
That we are not dedicated.
That we don’t care enough.
That we don’t deserve to call ourselves a witch… or a priestess.
Why though?
Why do we keep failing, when we love it so much?
When we are so devoted to our spirituality, why doesn’t it come across?
I have a theory. I think it’s our own internal stories messing us up.
That we are carrying around limiting beliefs that prevent us from really embracing our witchy nature and committing to our paths.
It’s terribly difficult to commit to a daily ritual to the Goddess when your unconscious is screaming:
You are not worthy of this.
You are a terrible witch.
You are not psychic.
You are going to fail at this.
No-one has given you permission to do this.
You do not deserve to be this.
You haven’t done enough work to deserve this.
I’ve only recently come to realise how much by background beliefs have been messing me up. I find it incredibly hard to focus on my spiritual practice, to be consistent, to progress in the way I want to, because a tiny, seductive voice in side me whispers:
You do not deserve to be a Priestess.
If you were a real Priestess, you would be better.
You are not worthy. You are a failure.
The catch 22 is, that to be “worthy”, all I have to do is do the work… but because I feel cripplingly unworthy, I can’t do the work.
FFS, brain.
So. What do we do? How do we fix this?
Well, for a start, we go on the offensive.
Here are my battle strategies for dealing with an insubordinate belief system.
Battle Strategy Number 1:
We write down all our limiting beliefs, the dark lies our mind whispers to us. Everything. Keep going. Get lots.
I cannot be a witch because….
Get those demons in the open.
Next, pick the biggies and turn them around.
Replace them with a positive belief – and find proof that the positive turnaround is just as true, if not more true than your fear is. I find the whole affirmation game only works if the new affirmation has a ring of truth to it.
“I am not worthy of being a witch” becomes, “I am a natural born witch, it’s in my DNA”
“Other people make better priestesses than me” becomes “I have a valuable priestess contribution for the world”
“Spiritual people have to be brave and serious and witchy and I’m just not” becomes “My bubbly personality makes me the perfect spiritual seeker”.
All these turn arounds? True.
Once you have your new affirmations list, put it on your altar and look at it every day; when your brain tries to knock you back with those old shitty thoughts from before, say, “NO brain, nice try, but my bubbly personality makes me the perfect spiritual seeker/I’m a natural born witch, so there.”
What to do with your old beliefs?
Burn ‘em on the waning moon. Tell the universe that you are willing to let these go, tell them to FUCK RIGHT OFF and leave them be. I’ll let your fabulous witchy creativity concoct the perfect ritual.
And, if in a month’s time you need to do it again? No worries. Sometimes our unconscious mind (and our conscious mind!) needs lots of reminding to change. There is no shame in that – it’s just how our brains work. They need to practice letting go.
Battle Strategy Number 2:
Start creating a proof list.
Scratch that. Get a proof mother-fucking book.
This is where you collect evidence for all the things you are afraid you suck at.
I keep a number of proof lists, but for my spiritual and magical purposes one, I write down everything that has happened that is proof I am an innate witch and Priestess, including…
… that time last week I was thinking about Avalon and I came downstairs, turned the TV on and there was a shot of Glastonbury Tor. Witchy!
… when someone said thank you for writing my Mary Magdalene post saying it helped them.
… the time I wrote my 13 moon and Morgana devotionals and I did them and it was good.
… when I realised that my intuition had been so powerfully spot on about my ex boyfriend – even though I didn’t listen to it at the time, woah!
I record my spiritual practice, any intuitions, whenever I feel a change in energy, any full moon stuff or ritual stuff etc. so I have a running list of proof that says I am a Working Witch and an Active Priestess.
It’s actually a really fun thing to keep a tally of! Proof book for the win.
I think a proof book is essential for those of us plagued by those self-doubting brain demons.
That way you can collect evidence that your mind is telling you lies, and you can start to really, practically, 100% get on board with your new beliefs and affirmations ie. The Truth.
Every time you find yourself spiralling into a brain demon funk, you can just get out your proof book and look through and be all – oh. Actually I am a pretty damn spiritual person. Awesome!
I like to keep my proof book by my bed and write in it at the end of the day, cos then I go to bed feeling like a ninja having dipped into my proof book and seen how true my desires and dreams are.
So that’s my battle strategy for overcoming poor spiritual focus and epic internal resistance to embracing your magical, mystical witchy self – kill it at the roots and see how well it survives then.
These strategies have really helped me turn around my fears and resistances and become aware of how much I actually am doing a bloody great job at keeping up a spiritual practice, even when my mind tries to trick me into believing I am not.
I know that the one thing keeping you from being the witchy person you long to be, from seeing how much you already are that spiritual badass, is the useless old stories and lies your brain is telling you about yourself.
Go on. Get those lies out in the open, find a new, equally true but much more magnificent story to replace them, and keep collecting evidence to prove your magnificence…
… until one day, you will be free to see yourself as you always wanted to be.
IN CONCLUSION
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Merken
Merken