Tuesday, June 13, 2017

ADVENTURES IN SPIRITUALITY: You Name It

Oh Hello Friends,

I hope you’re enjoying Adventures in Spirituality so far. Before I launch into the next chapter I just want to make clear that I’m not trying to be all victim-y in telling these stories. I’m also not trying to be “the hero who overcame their demons, clap for me!”

(BTW I didn’t conquer the eating disorder til I was 24 & started having cardioid symptoms. It was a cold turkey, do-or-die, DIY affair. No gods or doctors involved).

I realize most *demons* are conquered over the course of a lifetime—it’s usually not a neat little battle wrapped up with a victory parade. 

My Xtianity Adventure ended on a note of finality, but there have been many other Xtian adventures sprinkled throughout my life & they may be mentioned in upcoming chapters. Be prepared.

In the past year (and under the new administration) there seems to have been a *Xtian Explosion.* Everywhere I go there are chunky gold crucifixes dangling from necks (or dainty diamond ones), praise-the-lord bumper stickers, or Xtian music blaring into my ear canals (esp at the barbershop).  

2010s Xtianity has mutated slightly from the Xtianity I experienced in the 80s.

‘80s Xtianity was all about FEAR. Of death. and homosexuality. and sorrow. and loneliness.

’10s Xtianity seems to be a gilded agenda of HATE. It’s emboldened, it’s militant (not that 80s Xtianity wasn’t militant), but this new brand seems less … benign. Less about trying to do the right thing for fetuses and more about condemning those who made it out of the womb.

Look, I KNOW not all Xtians are bad & hateful people. I KNOW gay & trans people are embracing Xrist at an alarming rate. I’ve been invited to join their churches & politely declined. I even understand the reasons why. If I thought I could handle Godding-it-up for the sake of the community I would surely do it, but my aversion is deeply rooted & y’all gonna have to do it without me. 

I know Jesus loves me as much as he loves Mrs. Chunky-gold-cross with the double-wide stroller full of grandbabies. Right?

I also know not all gay & trans people are shining examples of humility & gratitude. But gay & trans people have been asked to keep themselves hidden in ways that Xtians have not. It’s inhumane to expect people to hide themselves in closets, even if they are not a majority. So forgive us if we come bursting out of that closet too quickly or loudly. We’re all humans trying to live in a severely overpopulated world. It’s madness.



In my Xtianity Adventure I steered clear of mentioning my gender issues. Because gender issues were not allowed—in the 80s, in my family—and I kept them buried deep in my unconscious at that time. The eating disorder wasn’t just a by-product of stress but also an attempt to stave off the wrong puberty.

And now that I’ve started puberty in middle age to become who i always felt I was, it has caused some dissonance in the family I recently reunited with. I won’t say much about it right now, but trust me when I say XTIANITY is at the root of this dissonance. 

This does nothing to help my hostile feelings toward said religion. I understand I have to share this world with lots & lots of people who think I’m…Wrong. Crazy. Delusional. Immoral. Dangerous to children’s fragile little minds.

Probably nothing I say to these people will convey the amount of pain & self-doubt I carried in my own fragile little mind as a child. And that’s the exact thing they’re trying to protect their children from by not allowing them to *see* me.

I’m trying hard not to feel “bad” and “wrong” in this situation. I’ve felt “bad” and “wrong” too many times in my life. I’m not any badder or wronger than any other person who made it out of the womb & lived to tell.

Lately it’s hard for me to hold onto my courage & self esteem on a daily—hourly—basis. And my hope in exploring Spiritual Adventures is that I find my own way to cope with what’s going on in the macrocosmic world as well as my personal microcosm. So bear with me if this gets long & tedious, as it already has.



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All right. Let’s go with—New Age, Wicca, Zen Mastery & other Esoterica

This next chapter of Advent in Spirit may be a little more convoluted — my affair w/ upper-case God was quick and unfulfilling. But my quest for meaning in life, for comfort in a world that is loud, obnoxious & unaware of its own shittiness…well, that’s been a fascinating and fulfilling quest. 

When I turned 14 I started having these lucid dreams that would come true in real life. Of course it freaked me out at first. I was young and had never heard anyone else report their dreams coming true in the real world. 

After it happened a few times, I worked up the courage to tell my mom. I expected her to not believe me & tell me I was imagining things. But she actually seemed interested. And she said she was going to book me an appointment w/ her psychic Tante Venice.

I knew my mom had a psychic. When she & my dad were getting divorced & she met this new man she was interested in, I knew she went to a psychic to ask if her exciting new romance was going to blossom & the psychic had said Yes! So my mom loved the psychic and went to her occasionally, when she felt the need.



I didn’t equate my lucid dreaming with someone who predicted romantic bliss until I met Tante Venice. She knew a lot about dreams, and feelings and reincarnation and past lives and spirit guides and angels and Native American culture and even Jesusy Xtian culture. 
There was so much more to the *psychic thing* than foretelling of romance!

After my first visit with her I felt my mind expand exponentially. My head was a big polygon of clarity until 9th grade started & I was surrounded by kids my age again. Then, well…you know what happened—I got an eating disorder & turned to Xtianity!!

It still amazes me that that happened after I had managed to grasp the metaphysical workings of the Unconscious. But…as i would learn over and over, even firm grasps are prey to entropy. The mind needs to wander, the grasp must loosen.

Of course, after my mind wandered into church & back out again, it substantiated my belief in a Spirit World that was not dogmatic & unnatural & scripted in language only men in black skirts could translate for me, a world that existed within the human anatomy, as well as outside of it, in the heavens & the earth.

I would visit Tante Venice every so often throughout my teens & 20s, whenever I felt the need, or was feeling particularly unclear. I met other *psychics* in my life too, and it’s true that for every good and honest one there are dozens of frauds out to make a buck on people who are lost, lonely, desperate for answers they can’t seem to find within themselves. 

Unfortunately there are fraudulent people in every profession. From the Church, to the mental health, medical & legal professions, to the arts. The old adage about money corrupting is so very true, and money combined with ego is even more PROBLEMATIC [my favorite word >: / ].



It was probably around the age of 17 when my ego started corrupting my spiritual world. Once I had knowledge that I was communing with the spirit world, I felt this sense that I was “gifted.”

And once I thought I had a “gift” I attempted to “share” it with others. I tried to be a Tante Venice to kids my age. Kids who weren’t ready to even consider ideas outside the bounds of black & white/good & evil/Sunday school dualities. At first it was cool to have people come to me for “big advice on their big feelings.” But eventually it left me frustrated & angry. People expected permanent, absolute answers from me and weren’t willing to look inside themselves for those same answers. 

I recognized how my own beliefs were morphing simply by trying to share them with others. I lost touch with the comfort and certainty I’d felt before and started feeling doubt and a deepening dislike for people. There were plenty of kids who did NOT like what I said, and who called me a witch and a Satanist or just plain crazy To them there was only one God and he was the Big Daddy they were afraid to disobey.

I went back to exploring spiritual paths on my own. At 19, I found myself in a difficult predicament—a huge unexpected predicament that I had no earthly intellectual resources to handle on my own—and I had an older friend who convinced me to return to Church. Catholic Church.

I attended The Church with him several times and fell into my bizarre pathological relationship with God where I was doubting and questioning more than I was feeling safe and sound. I felt very swept away from my centered unconscious self. It didn’t take long for me to recognize that the Catholic experience wasn’t helping me help myself and I disengaged quickly.

I remained pretty lost and out of touch with my spiritual side from 19—21. The transition from childhood to adulthood can knock anyone from their fulcrum. When I was balanced enough to start searching for a spiritual path again I decided I wanted something that was a strong blend of the nameless Spiritualism I’d learned from Tante Venice and the organized, tangible religions I saw other people practicing.



I decided to see what Wicca was all about. 


Well, I think that’s a good place to stop for now. Next time in The Octopus Diary I’ll share Adventures in Spirituality: Witchcraft! Yay!

1 comment:

  1. VT, I am enjoying your Adventures in Spirituality, It continues to inspire memories of my own experiences. I am amazed how separated by 1200 mile of geography and over ten years we can share so similar experiences, yet so different. Your comment on current Xtianity propensity to hate and exclusivity is spot on. Twenty years ago I thought we as nation and humanity as a whole would have evolved to a more spiritual state of being. Perhaps a large part of humanity has, but far too many have regressed to a barbaric low that must be a push back to the general enlightenment of humanity. Evolution is a pendulum that swings both ways as progress moves forward. As a surviver you are prime component of spiritual evolution and your revelations help the rest of us understand our journey through the past to a more enlightened future. I am looking forward to your Wicca adventures. Peace O Sage of the dangling tentacles!

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