I became interested more in narrative metaphysics. I allowed myself to write impressionistically, even in a stream-of-consciousness style. I indulged in cultural analysis from what I later read referred to as "standpoint epistemology", or the value of the lived experience. I read mythologies, and (clutch the pearls!) about historical traditions, to practice, traditions, that used to be anathema to me as the candle-snuffer on the living spirit and the light of reason.
It was right for me at the time.
This isn't to say that there wasn't melodrama even among practitioners of "non-fluffy" psionics. I still regret not having been more open to JediKaren's friendship and I was very inconsistently supportive, even behaved disloyally in the interest of getting other perspectives (and because I really was spineless and disloyal, with immature ethic.) From what I understood, there had been a conspiracy to bully her off the core team of Shifted Perspectives...which worked, but couldn't have just been a case of outright telling her, "None of us like you anymore and we don't want you to be part of the new team because it isn't working for us."
But not only was I in the periphery of that (hey, spineless and disloyal here) but from my perspective there was obviously a very clear division of the issue itself. Nobody on that core team liked this person, as a person, for personal reasons...that had nothing to do with the Work, which was psionics. I'm just here for the Work.
When I wandered into neopagan and polytheist, reconstructionist and spiritworker communities...cultural politics was personal and the personal was political (or at least, ahem, politicized). I was on board with that. I liked how the ideas moved around and applied, learning how the collective history of people influences daily life experience. While many "non-fluff" psions stressed that any psionics not purely using the pure mind was...unnecessary, I did still dabble in trinkets and sigils. I liked how the materials and symbols moved my mind, but I liked the idea better that I could give up the habit any time.
It was in exploring narrative metaphysics...really, the discourse of social justice...that I realized that everything in my life had been symbolic all along, and how useful it was to know that, because I could not give those up at any time. My gender presentation. My class privilege markers. My race and ethnic heritage. My disability.
It all mattered.
I wish I had that refining paradigm much sooner. Instead, I didn't stand up for another psion who was Malaysian, when JediKaren irritably asked him why he couldn't speak English properly just once. I felt embarrassed by a very young Filipinx psion whose English was perfect but who was too comfortable having an opinion about reproductive health. My embarrassment came less from because it was a misguided advocacy, and more because it was so stereotypically third-world Theocracy and oh but What Will The Glamorous Educated Westerners Think Of Us. I didn't even catch that as a problem that I had in myself! I thought that was a normal way of feeling the room and trying to fit in.
In a forum about a specific sort of psi constructs, there had been a poll put up just to check in on the demographics: How many members were of what gender? Another member expressed an inordinate amount of shock that there were any girls or women on the forum. When I pointed out that roughly 50% the people in a binary cissexist culture would be designated one of two genders (unless there's a statistical cluster somewhere: apparently Israeli pilots are nine times more likely to bear a daughter than to bear a son, though there isn't a causal link between being of Israeli citizenship or being a pilot that would make a baby with a penis less likely to happen in the following generation), he said that this is a niche interest so he did not expect a typical mix: a whopping 20% of people on the forum being femme was so much more than he could ever have imagined or dreamed and it was soooooo weird.
A lucid dreamer whose video blog I followed, had begun loosening up and showed that his sense of humor was "violating personal boundaries are funny, especially when it's at women" and he would get recordings and post it. Something bothered me about that, but I didn't know what. I thought I should put it aside, because it seemed to be something that he would go off on only when he was comfortable and happy.
So much for "clearing the mind" with meditation. I thought...I needed to clear my mind of biased and prejudiced culture. It began to matter to my practice, this concept of Human Rights, and that some people had it so easy in life only because other people had it so hard. And that when we understand the dynamics of that, then we can make a world that's more fair and more kind of everyone.
I knew it wouldn't be simple. I knew that I would be doing something wrong if it became simple and easy to me. So, I would read aspiring housewives blaming feminists for the difficulty nowadays to simply be the housekeeper, cook, and mother than they wanted to be...and, it was difficult for me to convince the former that feminism is really about supporting each woman's individual choice...when...an actual feminist was capslock chewing her out for wanting a "sexist" life. I later read an anti-capitalist say that people should quit bullying housewives for conforming to heteronormativity, and instead recognize housewives as exploited workers. Something about that bothers me, but it makes sense. It isn't simple.
Unfortunately, the community of online neopagans that I thought understood that it wasn't simple...acted like it was simple. That is toxic. The more prestigious people of that community actively supported hurting people for unreasonable reasons, hurting and silencing the very sorts of people that they claimed to want to protect and give a voice to.
Where were their spirit guides that they claimed to have, to hound them for being so unfair and harmful?
Where was the "discernment" that they claimed to have, to set off internal alarms that they were really throwing their support behind a chronic boundary-violating liar that fakes and weaponizes victimhood?
Where was any of their basic human decency?
I actually have actually suffered actual abuse. This flibbertigibbet nonsense was not okay, and still is not okay by me. (I conjecture that they've probably convinced themselves that it's worth it for some greater cause, and that a designated acceptable target is an acceptable statistical insignificance to their Great Cause instead of an actual person. Or that it was two years ago, so they've forgotten about it.)
The proof of their practice, their thought? Not in the pudding. Don't eat the pudding. Don't drink that insidious, toxic Kool-Aid.
And I'm not a witch, either, anyway. I only thought that I was. If each and every life of those abuse enablers hasn't gotten abysmally worse since they showed their true nature, then my curses do nothing. I'm not a witch.
So what am I doing back here, writing all this?
- It wasn't enough for me to know that the creed of "listen and believe" is not valid, when it's an abuser disguising themself as a victim of abuse. It wasn't enough for me to just go somewhere else when people in a community claim to recognize abuse when they don't, when they claim to protect and support targets of abuse—when they didn't, and don't. They didn't recognize what I recognized, whatever—not my people, then. But I had to know what the actual everyloving what happened there—and I found it, in researching malignant narcissistic personality disorder. (That has to do with the psyche, which is partly what this blog was originally about.)
- I also had the opportunity to study old school psychology on the edge of spirituality, via the writings of Carl Jung. I do believe that Active Imagination and Alchemy pertain to the psyche and the psychic, but with much less reference to established mythology and traditions...those entries would belong here more than they would at my fairy lore narrative metaphysics blog.
- I can't think of a third thing, I just wanted more than two bullet points.
- More than two or three. I'll think of something.
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