True Power: Speaking the Words of Power

How often do you speak "the words of power?"

I don't know how you answered that question, but my answer is, "Every time I open my mouth...and even when I don't." The words I use to speak and to think are part of my personal power. The way I speak to myself and others is one of the ways I exercise control and influence in the world.

Words have power. Magical practitioners of all ilks have long taught that word choice is important when we're working magically. Whether we're following a complex and detailed magical system with words and phrases used by magicians for centuries, or a less structured, natural form of spell work, the words we choose can affect the outcome, for better or worse.

Interestingly enough, we seem to place a lot of emphasis on the use of words in a magical context but very little on how we use words in all the other moments and events in our lives. And since we spend a lot less time on magical pursuits than on plain old life, that seems backward to me.

Maybe one reason people don't recognize the power of words outside the magical realm is the mistaken notion that magic is something separate, something apart from "ordinary" life. Magic is not a supernatural force. Magic works because it follows natural, universal laws that, even though the scientific world hasn't fully worked out all the details of why and how, work flawlessly. Of course, we don't always work flawlessly in our efforts to create a working partnership with those forces, but study, practice, and open-mindedness allow us to keep moving forward. And the results prove the efficacy of a system based on those universal laws.

Here's the thing: Natural laws don't differentiate between magical and mundane. What we call magic is really nothing more than heightened awareness of those laws and a deliberate effort to work within that framework to achieve a desired result. But the laws are still in place, still working, whether we're thinking about them or not. The law is the law whether we're working deliberately, with awareness and intent, or working unaware and without a plan. To use a tired but effective analogy, the guy who falls off the roof is no less likely to hit the ground than the guy who deliberately jumps. Gravity really doesn't care about awareness, motive, or timing. The jumper, because he is paying attention and working willfully, is more likely to land safely and nearer his intended target. The faller will surely hit the ground but with far less control and less likelihood of being happy with his result.

So...if words have power in a magical context...do they not also have power in our daily lives? Why do we allow ourselves to speak thoughtlessly to ourselves and others, aloud and silently, when we know the power our words carry? Why do we allow hurtful words others have spoken to play back in an endless loop? Universal law allows our words to manifest realities. What realities are we building with our words?

Interestingly enough, most of us are more aware and careful about what we say to others than we are about how we talk to ourselves. I can't think of a better way to rob ourselves of power than to use words that tear down and hold back. We make a mistake and our inner dialog is, "That was stupid!" We do something well and we say, "I got lucky." Even if our conscious mind knows we don't mean it, our subconscious mind probably doesn't.

A dear friend caught me sending myself wrong messages one morning. I responded to her cheerful, "Hey, how ya' doin'?" with, "Fat and sassy!" She immediately said, "Oh, we've got to eliminate that phrase!" I told her that "fat and sassy" was really a good thing, to which she replied, "Does your subconscious know that?" Zap! I knew instantly she was right.

Jung is quoted as saying, "Even a lie is a psychic fact." When we choose words that do not support our position of power, of strength and purpose, what facts are we building in our minds, in our lives? Are we choosing words that will help us manifest the things we want, or are we ignoring the laws of the Universe and expecting them to ignore us in return?

Our daily words, spoken and unspoken, are powerful spell components that make up our lives. Choose carefully to manifest the results you want.

True Power: What do you believe? Part Two

What do you believe about death?

What do you believe about life?

What do you believe about choices people make and their right to make them?

We spend a lot of time out of our lives being angry or upset at other people for choices they make that have little to do with us. The anger or upset usually comes from worrying about them, feeling fear that someone we love will do something that will hurt them, cause them pain and suffering, maybe even kill them.

Love always wants those we love to be happy, healthy, and safe. That's the nature of love, isn't it? We want the best for our loved ones. And when we observe them doing things that aren't in their best interest, we react. We feel fear, sadness, concern, anger. And because we don't have control over our loved ones' lives, these emotions can seem uncontrollable, too. Often, those uncontrollable emotions evolve into anger at those we love for the choices they've made.

In the Craft, as in many Nature-based spiritual paths, there are several potential explanations of why we're here and why we do the things we do. Common among most of them is that we, like all of nature, are born, die, and are reborn in some manner, over and over again. Perhaps the cycle is endless, but most teaching I've encountered says we continue until we've reached some pinnacle in our development that allows us to escape the cycle. Life presents us opportunities for growth. If we fail to "get it" the first time, life just keeps presenting the lesson until we do. I've seen that pattern play out as truth in my own life more often than I like to admit.

If we truly believe this way, how can we be angry when someone fails a lesson, even repeatedly? Understanding that people learn from experience and in their own time does nothing to lessen the sadness we feel watching them, or the fear for their safety (which is, at its root, fear for our own potential loss). But such understanding can keep us from tipping over into bitter anger that eats at our own spirit.

Anger hinders compassion. It masks the true emotions from which it arises and blocks love. Yet, it is only through love and compassion that we have any hope of helping those we love. By examining what we really believe about living, dying, and the choices we make in the process, we have the opportunity to examine our truest emotions. Looking at what we really feel in each situation lets us take responsibility for our feelings and deal with them appropriately. We learn to sit with our true feelings, to allow them to be without allowing them to consume us.

Anger has its place...but that place is much smaller and less frequent than it may seem. Spend time with yourself and your own beliefs about life, death, and personal choices. Whatever you believe, understanding and owning that belief will help you on your road to peace.

True Power: What do you believe?

Do you know what you believe?

Most people say yes. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most of the people who say yes, when questioned, don't really know what they believe about a whole host of things that affect their lives.

I believe (ah, here's one I know!) that what we believe is the key to how we feel, how we respond, how we live. I also believe (another!) that we can change what we believe; that things we hold as "truths" are more often than not "good guesses" and "cherished assumptions" that we've chosen to embrace; that many of those choices are based on faulty information and misunderstood (or missing) data; and that by changing what we choose to believe, we change how we see the world and how the world sees and treats us. Finally, and maybe most importantly, unless we do the hard and ongoing work of discovering what we believe and holding those beliefs up to the light, we run the risk of letting beliefs that don't serve us rule our actions.

To be in control of our own lives, we need to know what we believe, understand why we believe it, and ask ourselves, always, "Is it true? Does it serve?" Anything that isn't true and doesn't serve should be replaced.

We form beliefs based on things we're told, events we witness, experiences we have...and the way in which we perceive those things, with whatever level of understanding we have at the time, colors and shapes our beliefs. And since so much of what we think we believe about ourselves is based on input we receive and process and use to define ourselves and our roles in the world, we end up with colorful, oddly shaped self images, more akin to fun house mirror images than true reflections. We develop our beliefs about others in much the same way, often complicated and clouded by our ill-formed perceptions of ourselves.

Beyond what we believe about ourselves and others, beliefs about death, life, sex, work, love, learning, relationships...in short, everything that matters...shape our lives in ways we don't always think about. We act on what we believe most of the time, even when don't know or can't articulate those beliefs. At other times, we ignore what we really believe in favor of some false belief we've cooked up to justify doing something pleasureable or avoiding something uncomfortable.

Discovering what we believe isn't always as straightforward as it might seem. In fact, it's much more a sneak-around-the-back process than a front door process. Beliefs can hide, and often we have to examine both action and motive to uncover the belief.

My personal journey into my own beliefs started with a gift. My ex-husband brought me a little book, Celebrate Your Womanhood Therapy, one of a series called "Elf Help Books." It featured charming little drawings of elves and short insightful sayings on each page. I can't quote the page verbatim, but it said, in essence, "True happiness is not found outside yourself. Happiness is a result of your thoughts, your beliefs, and your actions in harmony."

The statement rang true to me and since I was anything but happy at the time, I started thinking about my beliefs, my thoughts, and my actions. What I discovered, to my surprise, is this:

my actions were based on what I felt;
my feelings were based on what I thought;
my thoughts were based on what I believed;
my beliefs were based on... what?

That's where I got stumped. I reasoned that if I didn't know what my beliefs were based on, then I didn't know why I believed as I did, And if I didn't have a clue why I believed it, how the heck did I know it was true?

For me, discovery started with discomfort. I wasn't happy; if happiness was, as the book suggested, the result of harmony, then places where I felt most unhappy were places to look for what was discordant. Once I started to look, I discovered just what a mess I was! Things I claimed to believe, beliefs I claimed to hold dear, were nowhere evident in my life. Some things I thought I believed, or maybe thought I wanted to believe, I really didn't believe at all; I thought I was supposed to believe them, so I said I did and went on. But my life was telling another tale and the discord and chaos were pretty damning evidence. One discovery led to another, like dominoes falling. It was and is a slow process, one that continues today.

I don't even know where to begin to tell you what I learned and am still learning. The biggest lesson of all,I guess, is that I am not powerless over my thoughts and emotions. When I feel discomfort - anger, disappointment, fear, sadness, betrayal - I am not "stuck" with that emotion. I can dig deeper, look for the underlying belief that causes me to think the thoughts that cause the emotion. When I find it, I can examine the belief, look for its roots, discern its truth. Often, I find that the "belief" I hold so dear is really an assumption, a creative filling of gaps between facts based on some deeper, bigger belief that I wasn't aware I held.

I also learned, in the absence of irrefutible facts, to choose to believe the explanation that brings peace. So much of the time, we fill in motives when all we have observed is behavior. Most behavior (and there are exceptions, of course) doesn't really affect us all that much. It's the motives for the behavior that cause us the most misery. If someone steps on my toe, it hurts for a little while. If I believe she stepped on my toe purposefully, that hurts a lot longer. And if I don't know for a fact that the step was dileberate, I choose to believe it wasn't. It hurts less that way.

Examining my life, I learned that anytime I was acting in a way that was not aligned with what my intuitive, knowing self knew and recognized as the path of honor and wisdom, my life was chaotic and discordant. Let me tell you, that little nugget of wisdom, as obvious as it seems now, was a long time in coming. I wasn't listening to my inner voice. But that inner voice is the voice of our truest, deepest beliefs. It's the one that tells us we're ok, even when we're surrounded by the echoes of other voices telling us we're not ok. It's the one that knows what we love and where we're gifted and our highest purpose in this life. It's the one that tells us when we're about to act foolishly and do something selfish, arrogant, stupid, unsafe, unethical, or unwise...the same one we ignore for so many ill-conceived reasons. I got married twice when my inner voice was saying, "NO! This is not right for you!" because I didn't know how to back out of the relationship and wanted to avoid the discomfort of dealing with it. Talk about trading up! There's discomfort, and there's discomfort! And I put myself through hell and contributed to my partners' hellish experience because I didn't pay attention to what I knew, what I believed.

So I ask you again...what do you believe? There is tremendous power in listening, asking, digging, and finding our beliefs, questioning them, discovering their sources. There is even more power in having the courage to change beliefs that don't hold up to scrutiny. One of my favorite Bible verses (yes, I have favorite Bible verses!), John 8:32 (World English Bible), says it well: "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." The power to cause change to occur in our lives in conformity with our will is magic of the highest order.

The True Power of a Witch - Introduction

I am a witch. A lot of different images and thoughts may come to mind when you read that, depending on your perspective. There have been a million and one (give or take a few) essays, articles, and books about what a witch is or isn't, and I'm not going to write another. Rather than providing yet another definition, I'm going to focus on what is, in my opinion, the single greatest tool and power a witch - or anyone - can work with.

Most witches practice some form or forms of magic. This is not stage magic for entertainment, but serious, concious effort to affect change using natural laws and forces. Aleister Crowley provided a definition of magic that I like, claiming magic to be "the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will." Indeed, being a witch is all about change, and nowhere is that more applicable than within ourselves.

As a follower of a nature-centered spiritual path, my personal walk also involves an attempt to live in harmony with nature. Mention "nature" and most minds turn immediately to the physical earthly environment. We've seen how important living in harmony with our environment is and the damage we've caused by not doing so. But the nature I refer to also includes me...I am every bit as much a part of the natural world as the rivers and trees. Part of my walk as a witch is to learn to live in harmony with myself and others.

For all the effort, mundane or magical, we put into changing things outside ourselves, we can expect only so much in return. Why? Because we are not the only actors and we are not in control. We have influence in the world, influence that can be increased with knowledge, skill, and applied will and intent, but we have control over only one thing. We control only ourselves - our behavior, our thoughts, and our emotions.

Through the power of personal choice, we have control over more of our lives than most of us know or acknowledge. The power to choose what we do, what we say, what we think and believe and, to a large extent, what we feel is inherent. It cannot be taken away from us. Circumstances can create limited or difficult choices, for sure. Yet even when the choices come down to "do or die," that is still a choice. Understanding, claiming, and using the power of personal choice is the power to create inner harmony.

One of the seven Hermetic Principles, The Princople of Vibration, comes into play here. I have not put in the time and study to call myself a serious student of Hermetics, but I have come to understand the Principles as universal laws. Like other universal laws, one need not ba a student to witness them in action. The Law of Vibration states: "Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates." Students of Hermetics seek to control their own vibration and, through that control, to influence the vibration of others. Of this law, it has been said, "He who understands thePrinciple of Vibration, has grasped the sceptre of power." Even without trying, we see evidence that the state in which we find ourselves, our vibration, if you will, influences the people and events around us.

I cannot count the times in the last five years or so that someone has said to me, "You have the most peaceful aura about you," or, "I feel calmer just being around you." Why would that be? Perhaps, despite all odds, I've been able to reach a vibratory state that is calm, confident, safe, and peaceful. Maybe...just maybe...I have found the center of my own personal power, and while I'm not perfectly in control all the time, I'm aware of and in touch with the choices I make about what I think, what I believe, and how I feel about and react to what happens to and around me.

My life was not always so, and while the steps I took and continue to take to reach this state were abundantly simple, it would be a boldfaced lie to say they were easy. Simple and easy are not synonymous.

It would also be a lie to say that I have it all figured out and nailed down in some sort of plug-and-play process. I don't. No one does. I've hestiated to broach this subject for so long precisely because it's impossible to tell someone, "Do this and you'll be happy." It's a very personal journey, one that requires a lot of intimate time with yourself, painful honesty, and constant catching of yourself in cherished lie after cherished lie. It's hard work...and the results are worth every single uncomfortable, foundation-shaking, long-look-in-the-mirror moment. Reclaiming power over your own life is dirty work with a huge payday. The kicker is that, in this sense, we live from payday to payday; the work of staying in touch with our own power never ends.

In a series of posts, I'm going to talk about my personal experience in reclaiming my personal power in my life. My experience is not unique, I'm sure, nor is anything I will share here groundbreaking news. We all have the same power, always have and always will. We give up that power and put ourselves into positions of victim or pawn, moved and controlled by forces inside or outside ourselves, forgetting that we are the source of most of those forces.

These posts will talk about how we can take back that control through:

What we believe
What we choose to think (and think about)
How we behave
How we feel and why we feel that way
Why the words, "I can't help it; it's just the way I am," should be wiped from your vocabulary
Why we create our own prisons and lock our own doors
Why then, no matter how bad it was, is not as important as now

I hope anyone reading will feel free to join in the conversation. I believe it to be one of the most important conversations we can ever have.

Sources:

http://www.muhammadfarms.com/hermetic_principles.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magick_(Aleister_Crowley)