You Only Get What You Give

Is yoga spiritual?  Sure.

So is running.

So is knitting.

So is accounting.

So is any activity, pastime, occupation, whatever.

Where "is" equals "can be."

Why are you doing it?  How are you doing it?  Are you doing it mindfully?  Does it help you engage in the most rigorous possible self-examination?  Does it make you question your every relationship with the world?  Finally, are you prepared to do it for a really, really long time, until such point where it provides the answers to everything, until it encompasses everything?

All of those questions are much more important than what the it is.  In my completely elementary view, those questions, or some more eloquent, comprehensive, and advanced statement of them, are the most important thing with which a person can concern themselves.

Those questions are everything.

So are kittens.

January in Review

Analytics?  Analytics.  This will be a recurring feature in which I hold myself accountable and review how I did the month before, all in an effort to do better in the future

Days Blogged: 31 of 31, for a 100 percent blog rate

Days Missed, January: 0

Days Missed, 2012: 0

Southern Rap Classic Earned?  Oh, indeed.

Most Viewed Post: Her and Me, January 1st

My Favorite Post: How To Change The World, January 28th

Post I Wish I Had To Do Over: The Ice Cube/Yoga post from yesterday.  I'm in the middle of finishing an article submission of my scholarly work, and I was way too fried to take on something that ambitious.

Three Things I Learned

1. Writing about magic does not go over with my initial audience.
2. TWEDP can be a way to highlight the wonderful things that my friends are doing, and those stories seem to connect with readers.
3. Writing every day is something I can manage.

Three Goals for February

1. Clean up one of my yoga pieces and submit to Elephant Journal.
2. Write about the work to which I am contributing for the Alliance for Student Activities.
3. Write every day.

Reader Ratings: Super.  Thanks for your time and your support.

Spacing Out For Fun and Profit

Maybe the most basic magical technique I use on a semi-regular basis is called scrying.  It's easy, it's helpful, you can do it even if you think magic is bs, and it can be a ton of fun.

Sit in front of something nondescript.  I've read you should use a bowl of water or a mirror, but I've done it staring at a wall or into the darkness in bed.  Then, relax your eyes and let your brain go wherever it wants, and trust that everything you are seeing is real.

In my two favorite scrying episodes, I've seen myself as a Gandalf-type figure in white robes and a kick-ass white beard living in a tower of ice, staring down at the pristine, icy landscape with regal disdain.  I've met my spirit animal, the wolf, and I'm not sure he's a particularly friendly fellow.  He tends to chase other creatures away and jealously hoard his kills.  I've also stared into complete and utter nothingness, the darkness behind the dark, and found that it's not that bad.  If that's the afterlife, at least it will be relaxing.

It's what the the shamanic among us might call "having visions."  "Talking to spirits."

Are you freaked out?  Feel the need for a confession and Hail Mary?

Relax.  If nothing else, my "visions" give me an excuse to post up the picture of Three Wolf Moon.

And as you might guess from the quotation marks, I don't think there's anything paranormal or spooky about these "visions."  I am sure that a reader can identify a psychological technique that calls for a subject to let his mind do whatever it wants and analyze the results--free association, maybe?  That's all that's happening here.  

I learned a great deal about myself from these episodes.  I'm a loner.  I like solitude.  I can isolate myself and push people away.  If you had asked me a year ago, I guess I would have said I knew this stuff about myself, but I certainly wouldn't have felt it in my gut and accepted it as true the way I do now.

And I'm a guy who wants healthy relationships, so it's pretty useful to know that I have this streak in me.  It allows me to control how it manifests itself better, I hope.  Maybe I'm a little less quick to blow people off.

The larger point: when I talk about magic, I could really care less about whether the tricks and spells work, although I have no doubt that they do, for skilled magicians under the right circumstances.  The reason I enjoy thinking about, reading about, and, yes, practicing magic is because it frees me to experience things I hadn't even considered before.

I consider myself to be a pretty practical and skeptical guy, and here I am writing about wolves and relationships.  This stuff is FUN, and I've learned a tremendous amount about myself and my world.  My dabblings have broadened my perspective on the world and myself.  Letting the weird into my life has made me more open minded and less afraid.  THAT'S the real value here.

Magic Week: How to Summon Manatees

I love manatees.  On a list of my absolute favorite things, in which I include things like "my parents" and "my friends," manatees are easily in the top 20.

This is the story of how I summoned manatees.

My family has a house on a bay in Southwest Florida, and you can see manatee from our dock maybe once a week.  Last March I was visiting and saw one on my second day down there.  When I told my mom, she told me she hadn't seen one at all that season.  I felt bad for her.  Because manatees are awesome.

Here's where the magic happens.

I spent a good part of my week visiting in a state of deep meditation and contemplation of the aspects of my environment of which we are generally unaware.  In that state, I remember wishing my mom could see a manatee, because it wasn't fair that anyone should not get to appreciate something so gentle and wonderful.

Within maybe two hours a manatee cruised on by.  So did another one two days later.

I will now take questions from the audience


You know people can find anything you put up on the Internet, right?
Yes.  Potential employers and soul mates, I am not insane, nor will I ever attempt to hex you.  Even I knew how, I wouldn't, and it wouldn't work.  Anyway, please finish this entry.  It should dispel any questions about my sanity.

So...you can summon manatees?  Like right now you could summon a manatee?
Right now?  No.  Even if I were in Florida, it's the cold season, when manatees are less active.  I don't know if I could replicate the combination of deep gnosis and sincere unselfishness that was key to my success.  Most importantly, it doesn't work like that, at least in my experience.  Nature is really big and really complex.  Each of us is pretty small.  We don't get to snap our fingers and make nature do tricks at our command.

Could I get myself into the right state of mind in the right time of year and summon them again?  I certainly intend to try when I go down there later this year.  I may succeed, I may not.

If you can't do it again, did it really happen?
Given a million chances, you could never recreate the first events that led to falling in love for the first time.  It took a combination of effort, circumstance, and luck that you could never again replicate.  Magic isn't quite like that.  If I were a more dedicated or capable magician, I probably could get manatees to show up again. The point is that replication is not everything.  Stuff happens all the time that we can't recreate, but that doesn't make it less real.  It still happened.

Ok, so what exactly do you think you did, summoner?
Two things, the first of which is pretty prosaic.  I put myself in a state where I was far more likely to notice any manatee activity.  The type of meditation I was in made the entire world incredibly interesting.  I spent at least an hour just looking at the different flowers and plants in our yard.  I savored the smells of the water.  It's not surprising I was better able to hear when a manatee breached or recognize the ripples in the water they make.

The other thing?  I was in a great mental place.  The universe recognize that and sent out some signals, and the sea cows obliged.  It's magic, fool.  I don't know how it works.  I'll get into some of the justifications better magicians than I give for how it might work in tomorrow's post, but even they are only guessing.  There are forces at work in the universe that we cannot directly perceive or explain,.  But we may, if we're lucky, good, and persistent, be able to tap into them.

Or it was just coincidence.
It certainly doesn't feel that way.  In my heart of hearts, I am completely sure I did something magical that day.  Nothing will ever convince me otherwise.  But you could be right, skeptic.  Maybe it was coincidence.  I can't prove that it wasn't.  Ultimately, it comes down to what you want to believe.

And you really believe this?
Nothing is true.  Everything is permitted.