Beginning as a solitary
You can begin as a solitary and pay attention to opportunities for growth. Attend public rituals, take classes, read and study on your own. Many different teachings state that "When the student is ready, the teacher appears," which is often correct. So use your day-to-day life getting ready.
As part of that, accept that solitary practice is of equal value. Many, if not most, people begin practicing the Craft as a solitary, and/or will practice alone at some time during their life. Do not treat solitary practice as if it is just something to do until you can find a teacher or can return to your own coven or teacher. Here are some ideas to help make your practice productive and worthwhile in its own right.
The single most important skill for spiritual growth is developing the self-discipline of a regular practice. If you cannot practice daily, do it at least weekly. The form of the practice matters much less than the intent and focus. If you already have the discipline of a regular practice when you meet the teacher you hope will accept you, you will be a more desirable student and greatly increase your chances of being invited in or being accepted when you apply. Very few teachers will waste much time on a potential student who does not practice regularly.
A teacher invests a huge amount of energy, work, care and focus on a student. Consider what you need to do, and how you need to be, to make that investment worthwhile to a teacher.
Learn to center and ground. Many books and classes are available to teach you this simple but essential skill. Over time you will learn to raise, focus and use more and more energy. Learn how to avoid the dangers first. The rule of thumb is, "Do not raise energy you cannot, or do not, ground."
Experiencing reality
Consider the idea that most of us are in a kind of trance most of the time and do not experience reality. Most of our behavior is a reaction to a mixture of what happens, what we think should be happening, and past experience. The purpose of spiritual growth is to awaken to our own true nature and to the truth of the reality we inhabit. Now, I realize that many people may not agree with me. Everything I say here is my opinion, except when I quote someone or something else directly. If something here is useful to you on your path, use it freely. If it is not, pass it by.
All practices that assist you in waking up and seeing through the story you believe explains reality will open you to your purpose and path in life. Once you realize your purpose, life becomes much simpler and more satisfying, although probably not easier. Spending time reflecting on what your own purpose and path might be is very worthwhile.
A human teacher can assist you in this search and reflection, but so can every moment and every experience in life. Spend time thinking about yourself, as a part of your regular practice. Who are you really? What is your personality like? What do you enjoy? What satisfies you?
Becoming a good student
If you have searched, and have not been able to find or be accepted by a teacher, consider what qualities you may need to develop within yourself to be a desirable student. All too many students approach a teacher believing they already know what they want to learn, what they want to hear, what sort of practice they want to do and what the relationship with the teacher should be like. They are not open to learning because they are blinded by their own mindset, which is "I already know."
If you believe you already know what you need to know, why look for a teacher? If you go to the trouble of seeking out a teacher, why not really listen to what that person says, follow her or his guidance, and see what opens up for you? An attitude of genuinely wanting to learn is very important. Too many students listen to the teacher, evaluate the lesson, decide that half or more of it is not the important or significant part and proceed to do what they want to do their own way _ while still claiming to be the student of the teacher they are revising.
Consider doing what the teacher wants you to do, exactly as the teacher wants you to do it. You will find this extremely difficult to do as your personality, and false self, will feel threatened by giving up that much control. The struggle to actually allow yourself to be taught will teach you an enormous amount about yourself. If you succeed in becoming teachable, it will change your life completely.
Paying attention
Part of the spiritual practice you can do while seeking a teacher is to begin to pay attention to everything. Consider those moments when life seemed perfect, when everything flowed and your body hummed. What were you doing at that moment or just before? Consider the times when you have felt perfect peace and calm within. What were you thinking and doing at that time? What did you do next?
Reflect also on those times that were perfectly awful in your life, when everything went wrong and you felt terrible. What were you thinking and doing then, or just before? How did you react? What did you do next?
All states can teach you a great deal about yourself and about how your belief system constructs the reality you experience moment to moment. After establishing a regular practice, the next skill you must acquire is self-observation. You must learn to see yourself being yourself. This will assist you in discovering who you really are and the true nature of reality.
To further your self-observation, keep a journal. Write down the thoughts that go through your mind. In a short time, you will realize that you are constantly telling yourself a story about what is going on inside and outside yourself. Keep at this practice until you can hear, moment to moment, the internal dialogue with which you construct reality.
You will find that you have a few phrases which you repeat over and over to yourself. They are the filter you experience reality through. You will probably also see that your internal dialogue is mainly critical of yourself and others. You can change how reality appears to you by changing this internal dialogue.
In your study of the Craft from books and other sources, notice which goddess and/or god attracts you. Spend time learning about them. Use them as a model for yourself; that is, when faced with a decision, say to yourself, "What would Athena (or the goddess or god who attracts you) do in this situation?"
Try on the idea, and then the behavior, of seeing yourself as a representative of that spiritual energy, and let it guide you for periods of time just to see what happens. If the goddess/god energy does enter you, remember to center and ground over and over during and after the experience. Particularly pay attention to maintaining deep, regular, even breathing. Keep your belly soft and relaxed. Breathe all the way down to the base of your spine. Also, avoid using god/goddess energy as an excuse for irresponsible behavior on your part, for example "Loki did it." Write about it in your journal.
Working with emotions and physical energy
In the books by Carlos Castaneda, Don Juan stated that there are four enemies on the path to knowledge _ fear, clarity, power and exhaustion or old age. Think about these enemies. What frightens you? What angers you? Anger is almost always a substitute emotion we humans use to avoid the feeling state underneath it. If you search, you can discover that feeling state and learn to tolerate it within you.
Avoid allowing your emotional states to make your choices in life. What do you love? What do you hate? What do you believe you know?
Practice moving energy around in your body, as well. Take care of your body. Exercise, practice yoga, dance, eat wholesome food and do the other practices that enable your body to thrive. Your body is your main source of energy and is the first channel you will learn to use for universal energy. It will ground you, always. If you neglect centering and grounding, you increase the likelihood that your body will become ill or injured to force you to ground. Listen to the deep wisdom of your body. Your body is your temple, and while you can grow spiritually while abusing it, you will suffer more in the process.
Accepting pain and imperfection
You cannot avoid pain. We all must accept that pain is a part of life. In fact, it is one of our most important teachers. You, I, everyone will experience pain. Allow yourself to experience pain fully. Resistance to pain is the source of suffering.
Consider that most of the time we humans are lazy, unconscious, selfish, and frightened. Avoid disliking yourself or others for being this way. These are just very common human traits. What and who do you want to be? Which traits do you wish to nurture and feed? Instead of putting energy into trying to root out what you are ashamed or embarrassed about within yourself, put your energy into nurturing what you want to develop. In an interview, Mother Teresa was asked how she became Mother Teresa. She said (this is not an exact quote), "I looked within my heart and saw Mother Teresa there, and saw a dictator there. I chose Mother Teresa."
The following traits and actions will move you along the path of spiritual growth much faster: gratitude towards others and life itself, having fun and playing, seeing the humor in everything, forgiveness of self and others, acceptance and willingness to experience each moment no matter how uncomfortable, gentleness, observing yourself and others, participating in your own life and the life of all communities you find yourself in, making a contribution wherever you are, openness, telling the truth while avoiding using truth as a weapon to hurt, learning to breathe, being coachable, listening, paying attention, taking good care of your body, kindness and generosity, patience, humility and allowing music to teach and tune you.
Dealing with low and high energy states
When you find yourself drifting into an energy sink such as cynicism, despair, resentment, hopelessness.... notice what you are doing and take an action to change your energy state. Even after you learn to change energy with your emotions and your thoughts, never forget that your body is your strongest ally. Physical exercise done to the point of lightly sweating and breathing rapidly will completely change your internal chemical state, and thereby your emotional and mental state. So if you don't like the mood you are in, do something to change it! Take a walk, do situps, call up someone who is having problems and offer them a hand, send them energy. Do not focus your energy on anything you do not wish to create more of in your life.
The idea that you "create" your life is common to many spiritual teachings. Unfortunately, it is often used to blame people for the painful or terrible circumstances of their life. Consider that it may or may not be true that you created whatever truly awful circumstance that has happened _ being abused, illness, tragedy, loneliness _ but that you absolutely have the power to create what you do with whatever circumstances have happened. Another way to say this is, "Play the hand you're holding." Don't waste any energy lamenting or being angry for what you got, or what you did not get. What are you going to do now?
There is no real power in victimhood. If you find yourself a victim, create a ritual to grieve your pain, loss, mistakes, broken trust and anger. Do it over and over as you need to; allow the ritual to evolve. Do it until you are no longer stuck and are able to see whatever responsibility you hold, if any, in whatever happened. Become willing to let what happened go and move on by first saying to yourself, even if you don't believe it at the moment, "I am willing to heal from this. I am willing to open myself to the possibility of moving on. I am willing to let go of my hurt and anger." As you say this to yourself out loud, you will experience the energy that is trapped by what happened beginning to move. Take deep slow breaths, ground and center and release the energy. It may take many, many repetitions to go on from being hurt. Take your time and be gentle with yourself. Allow yourself to heal. There is no real power in victimhood. Avoid putting energy into creating and recreating it.
Illness, suffering, loss, pain _ these are powerful teachers. If you are willing to embrace them, you will learn very quickly. All adversity and all adversaries are teachers. It is useless to attempt to avoid them. Welcoming them will reduce the suffering you will experience while learning from them.
Forgiving yourself and others will release bound and stuck energy very quickly. Forgiveness of self and others is one of the most powerful tools for growth that exists.
On the other hand, success is just as destabilizing as anger, pain, sadness or any other powerful state. When you have had a really big win, and the energy is pouring through you, enjoy it fully while realizing that it is not a stable state and can be very intoxicating. Power and money effect your spiritual state like drugs affect your body.
Working with feedback loops
Everything in your body works through feedback loops. For example, when your blood sugar rises, this signals the pancreas to release insulin, which causes glucose to be stored within the cells, which causes your blood sugar to fall. When it gets low enough, you experience hunger, you eat, your blood sugar rises, and so on. Drugs override the feedback loops and your body can no longer reliably tell when it needs food, water, sleep, and safety. That is why drugs are dangerous. If you are addicted to a drug, for example nicotine, very close observation of how it affects your body when you are using it will assist you in making the decision to quit and not go back.
Spiritual growth also requires feedback, from other people and the world. Some of this feedback is unpleasant; for example, people stop being our friends when we behave dishonorably toward them, and we get fired when we don't go to work. Other feedback is great! People want to be with us; we get a raise; people thank us for our help and friendship. It is easy to begin to believe we know everything when we are surrounded by people who adore us.
Money is a form of power, so are position and status. Wealthy and powerful people don't get honest feedback. How often do you tell your boss what you really think, even if he or she asks you? Don't put yourself in a position where you can ignore it if people tell you unpleasant things about yourself. Instead, keep yourself in a position where you have to pay attention to what other people think and feel about your life. If you allow money, power or status to override the social feedback you need, you will make many more mistakes and real intimacy with other will be much more difficult to find. Your truest friends are those who risk holding a mirror up to your behavior. Teachers do this. Learn to be able to tolerate it.
Interacting with and as a teacher
Too many people study for a year or two and then believe they are able to teach. The temptation to begin accepting students yourself when you have some ability to focus energy but are not ready to be responsible for grounding the energy of others can be overwhelming. It is usually a mistake to do so. We humans tend to worship people who have more energy than we do. We fantasize that they are perfect. We don't tolerate their mistakes or human weaknesses. Then we hate them for disappointing us. Just because people ask you to accept them as students, don't decide on your own whether or not you are ready. Work for a few years with a more experienced teacher before you accept this level of responsibility.
Sexual attraction between student and teacher is usual. When we open our hearts to a teacher, this also opens us to our sexual energy. It is almost always a very bad idea to have a sexual relationship with your teacher, or with someone who has accepted you as their teacher. Consult the elders and listen to what they say.
As you grow spiritually, you will have more and more power and energy, and other people will want to be with you and want you to like them. This can be incredibly dangerous to your personal growth if you indulge your ego with it and come to believe that you are special, that the rules don't apply to you, or don't apply in this particular instance. To avoid this danger, use the "Front Page" rule: How would you feel about any specific behavior if you read on the front page of the paper that someone else was doing it? With power and knowledge comes responsibility. If you do not act responsibly at whatever level you are, you can be sure that the irresponsibility you send around will come back around.
There is no end to learning. You will never arrive and be able to sit back, rest on your laurels and know all there is to know. The scale is not linear. As soon as you believe you understand all you need to understand, you will probably fall on your face. Life humbles us all.
To paraphrase an old article in the CoEvolution Quarterly, there is no such thing as an enlightened being per se; there are only enlightened acts, and the choice can only be made by each individual, moment to moment, to either act in an enlightened manner or not.
The question in every situation is: What would honor the Great Mother?
Many teachers say there are only two energy states, love and fear. I agree. Open yourself to love, to life, and to all beings and nonbeings, and you will experience love and growth. Every moment will become your teacher, and any teacher you meet will accept you as a student. Close down, and you will experience fear in its many guises. You choose.
The study and practice of magick is a way to awaken to your true nature, and be of use to the energies of aliveness. The goddesses and gods will assist you if you approach them sincerely; the elements will support you; and even the fey might do you favors. May you find purpose, meaning, and satisfaction on your path.
Blessed be....
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