The next question becomes: How do I feel?
Well, the answer to that is complicated in the way it is complicated for anyone on a spiritual path in that any worthwhile spiritual path causes you to constantly and consistently invest in your personal evolution. My only issue with more mainstream religions is they tend to be so dogmatic that applying their rules to your life becomes about denying our nature. Religion is a system of control and organized mainstream religions are less about spiritual truth than they are about control. Now let me be clear that I know and have friends who are Christians and that doesn’t make them bad people. The reason I can call them friends and they can call me friend is because they have found a spiritual path through Christ that means they don’t need to be a dick about it. We can look at each other and talk religion and both understand that we feel the other is missing something important about the truth and yet still agree to disagree. Putting all mainstreamers in the same box is as dangerous and apoplectic as putting all Pagan’s in the same box. I call myself a Pagan and yet I consider myself a warrior to the point that I train with various weapons, design (and hopefully build) armor and prepare myself for the potential of immediate violence at nearly any moment. However, there are many Pagan’s who are diametrically opposed to violence in any form. That doesn’t make them any more right than I am. My own observation of Nature itself leads me to believe that Nature is a violent place and if we are to accept our nature, it must be a reflection of what we see in the world. The general mistake that I believe makes most mainstream religion incorrect is not simply the dogma, but the belief that we (humans) are the world. This concept that the entire earth and in some cases the universe was made simply for us to exist is an unfathomable level of hubris in my estimation and one I cannot accept. I believe that, like the gods of our ancestors, we are beings on a specific plane of consciousness and are as much the faces of nature as the gods we call to in times of happiness and trouble. This is far from what I consider to be the troubling and misleading concepts behind Anton LeVey’s narcissistically focused modern “Satanism” which posits that we created the gods and therefore we are gods ourselves. To me, the term gods simply refers to beings on a higher plane of consciousness than ourselves. As a metaphor, they are simply on a higher place on the mountain than we are and have a different and more encompassing view of the terrain than we do. Occasionally, we can call up to them and they may or may not choose to respond and tell us what they see that we cannot.
I have yet to hear the gods as some voice from the sky. What I do see and hear are the constant mumblings of voices without words; The wind through the trees, the murmuring of water over the rocks in the creek, the call of a crow over the evergreens. I hear these things and I realize that I am a part of nature and that nature is a part of me. Watching nature reminds me how out of balance I am in my own life and makes me aspire towards that goal. Balance however, is not a state of being, it is a constant act of subtle shifting over a fulcrum. We can see this when we look at something as simple as the ecology that exists outside of our doors. I consider the Warrior to be an agent of balance and as someone who is on the path of the warrior, I accept that in order to become a warrior I must find balance first within myself so that I may project it into the world around me. The hurdles I have are all personal ones but I have made a commitment to reach the end of this quest whether those hurdles trip me up or not.
So what this blog will be about is my path. How I see things, how I envision our future should be. Perhaps there will be some nuggets of wisdom for those of you who read this, perhaps not…such is the blogosphere…
I called this blog “The Silver Spear” because I have always been drawn to silver as a protective metal. It is the symbol of the moon. The spear itself is an offensive, not a defensive weapon. Carried by soldiers, hunters and warriors since the dawn of our species, it is the first tool that we developed in which we could protect ourselves from the beasts that hunted us by going on the offensive and hunting them instead. Here, I will hunt for truth and wisdom as it pertains to my life and perhaps to other lives as well. It will certainly take several casts of the Silver Spear to do so…
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