My Journey - Part Four

So what conclusions have I drawn in this journey? Some time over the last few years I decided to get honest with myself. Anyone who has spent any time around me knows how skeptically I view prayer. People pray for things to happen (or for hurricanes to pass them by) and sometimes things turn out as prayed for and sometimes they don't. People who believe in prayer tend to magnify the times when "prayer works" and ignore or explain away the times that it doesn't turn out according to their prayers. What about magic? What about spells? Witches and pagans perform various rituals in order to get things to turn out the way that they want. Moon magic, astrology, candles etc. But don't witches and pagans do the same thing that Christians do when it comes to prayer? Don't they tend to magnify the positive results and ignore or rationalize the negative? And do you know what? What I think are rationalizations could very well be the "correct" answer. Maybe the gods are capricious, maybe you just didn't do the ritual correctly, maybe it was the wrong phase of the moon. Who knows? I'm reminded of something I've heard said about moon magic more than once. If you need to receive something in your life, do the ritual during the waxing moon. But what if it's the waning moon and you can't wait? Easy! Just do a ritual to remove whatever it is that's preventing you from receiving what you need? To me that thinking sounds a bit ridiculous, in this scenario the phase of the moon is irrelevant as long as you phrase your intention correctly.

So do I believe that there is any reason to do rituals, burn candles, read tarot cards, etc? I do, but mainly as a way to focus the mind and to stir natural intuition. I think that, to a certain extent we can see the future. Not in a science fiction way. The future, from our point of view, hasn't happened yet, but we can ascertain patterns in the present, assemble possible paths based on the current trends and come up with a personal path to reach the desired result. Might there be supernatural intervention involved in this exercise? Perhaps, but it doesn't require supernatural intervention.

What about the existence of gods? Are they real? I guess it depends on your definition of "real". One of my spiritual practices involves meditation through shamanic journeying. The short version of what this is, is that I get into a state of altered consciousness, usually through the use of rhythmic drumming and see things in what feels like a waking dream state. Are the things that I see "merely" dreams, or do they have an objective reality? Are they parts of my subconscious that I am accessing? My contention is that it makes no difference. Since I'm not going to go out and try to fly from a high building, or murder someone because I'm "hearing voices", it doesn't really matter. One thing that I am clear about is that the various gods and goddesses, if they exist objectively and independently, do not account for natural phenomena. The god of storms doesn't make it rain, the goddess of the harvest doesn't cause the crops to grow. I look at the pantheon as personifications of natural forces, not individuals who are actively controlling their "areas of responsibility".

Although in some ways I act like an atheist, in that I do not make decisions based on what I think spiritual forces want me to do, and I think that natural events are just that: natural, I haven't ruled out the existence of spirits, I just don't see much evidence that they are very reliable.