Tag: choices

The Power of Words

On By Just StephIn The Word Wizard's BlogLeave a comment

My Words are magic.

My pen is the magician’s wand, focusing the power of imagination

Creating people and worlds.

And painting those worlds with love and hate; with jealousy or passion

Adding highlights of courage or faith.

With the right words I can make you fall into or out of love

With me, with yourself, with the wonder and mystery of life.

With just the right combinations of words I can hide or reveal the truth.

I can change your view of the world around you.

With my choice of words, I can convince you to support a cause or to put your life in danger.

The most powerful words, however are those I whisper to myself in my own mind,

for it is those words that create the reality in which I live

and which, in turn, determines how I will use the gift of the words that I have been given.

-JustSteph

Words are powerful things.

Nearly every ancient culture has traditions telling of “words of power” that were used to focus divine power or harness specific earth energies in order to bring about a desired effect.

For millennia these words were closely guarded secrets. Only those initiated into a specific tradition were allowed to hear or write the word and learn how to direct its use. In fact, some cultures were so protective of their traditions that they forbade writing anything down and instead directed their followers to memorize all of their wisdom in order to prevent any uninitiated person from learning their trade secrets.

For generations, memorization and the oral tradition was the name of the game. Even once cultures became large enough that they needed to use alphabets and numbers to keep track of harvests and seasons and incomes and taxes, many mystery traditions insisted that their adherents only pass their secrets down by word of mouth.

As many mystery traditions began losing followers, either because of encroaching religions or invading armies, their adherents began using the written word to record their closely guarded secrets so that those secrets would not be lost altogether. But it was only with the invention of the printing press that major inroads into information previously passed down strictly through oral tradition began being made.

Today we tend to view the written word with a lot less wonder and amazement then did the people of ancient civilizations. In fact, everywhere you look there seem to be words written down; in books and magazines, on internet sites and online shops, on billboards and newspaper advertisements, on food labels and even the tags on pillows.

In fact, words in general seem to have lost so much of their power and ability to entrance and enchant, that many people find the written word to be boring. I mean, why bother writing down what you are thinking when you can do a quick Tik Tok, Facebook reel or Instagram video instead? But in spite of modern society’s blasé attitude toward words in general and the written word in particular, if you look carefully, you can still see just how much power those words still have over us.

Have you ever been moved to tears when reading a story about a child or an animal who had been abused or abandoned and then been rescued by some loving individual? Have you ever found your heart hurting as you read reports of death and destruction from whatever war or conflict is currently the center of media focus? Have you ever found yourself stirred to a love of your country by reading the transcript of a great leader’s speech, feeling annoyed as a politician recites everything that is wrong with society, or rooting for a specific cause after reading an activist’s plea? The stronger your emotional reaction to what you read, the more skilled you will find the writer of what you are reading.

Social media in particular is very much a public display of the power of words, even in a society to whom words in general are not of much consequence. With just a sharply worded comment you can cut someone down to size, shame them publicly, belittle them, or even goad them into committing suicide.

On the flip side, the right words can uncover the truth, help to bring peace, bolster someone’s self-esteem, encourage others to be their best selves and even save lives. Its all a matter of what we choose to do with the words that we use; whether we choose to use those words to spread fear and anger and intolerance, or to encourage love, peace and inclusion.

So, as you develop your skills as a word wizard, remember that the power of the written word is not something to be taken lightly. In addition to choosing your words carefully as you create worlds and the people who populate them, as you describe a product or a place or recall an event to share you’re your readers, remember to also think carefully before posting that scathing comment, belittling critique or sarcastic response.

Being honest or authentic in our responses does not require us to be cruel. It is quite possible that the words you choose, especially as you become skilled in how to provoke certain emotional responses from your readers, can have as much power as the ancients believed their own special, magical words to have on others and the world around them.

The choice of how you use your words is, of course, always up to you.

The Hive Has You!

On By Just StephIn Metaphysical Mussings1 Comment

Forget the Matrix.  It is the Hive that has you!

Ah, the idealization of bees. What a simple life they live; born with a purpose etched into their very fabric of being, a bee never questions its lot in life (well, not unless it’s a Disney bee, but that’s a whole different breed).  It simple does what it does, devoting its life to the hive and never questioning what it is that it was meant to do.

But when it comes right down to it, it is hard to be a bee. For one it’s a short life.  The lifespan of the average honey bee is only 28-35 days.  That’s it.  That is the lifespan of a worker honey bee. From the time the adult bee emerges from its larval cocoon a bee has roughly a month to live, and what does it do with its life?  It collects nectar which is turned into honey or pollen which is then turned into bee pollen or royal jelly.  The honey is collected to see the hive through the winter; the bee pollen and royal jelly is to feed the young bees that will soon be taking over the jobs of the current crop of workers.

From an individual perspective the bee doesn’t do much with its life at all. But from the hive’s perspective, the life of each individual bee is incredibly important with each bee’s role as a worker vitally important to maintain the life of the hive, and there is nothing that is seemingly more of an anathema to today’s humans than the thought that they might be living the life of a bee; working for the greater good of some larger group purpose and without the benefit of developing an individual identity or having a life to show for all of the hard work that they do.

There have been science fiction movies made about hive mentalities; horror stories where a person is absorbed into a larger consciousness and looses their independence and individuality, becoming a mindless automaton with no thought in their head except to conform to the expectations of their society.

There is just one problem.  We are already there, and most people don’t see it as a horror story at all.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, we have the illusion of freedom and independence and individuality; lots of choices of things to buy and entertainments to pursue and even of religions to follow; but just try doing something outside of the accepted parameters and see just how far you get before you are removed from the hive, or at least banished to the fringes where you don’t have the opportunity to take part in the active life of the community.

But even the thought of a society that has relegated us all to the status of worker bees; locked into our lives and expected to work tirelessly as productive members of society until we drop and are replaced with others; even that is not the true horror. The true horror is that we’ve chosen this. No, we haven’t just chosen it.  We’ve created it.  We wanted it.

We wanted it so badly that we willingly established rules and regulations and political procedures to keep it in place; we’ve created an education system that encourages young people to give up their individuality and creativity in exchange for economically productive jobs that they detest but that will pay the bills.  We’ve encouraged a society where productivity and usefulness is measured by one’s paycheck and one’s purchasing power.

It would be different if, instead of a hive mentality, we had chosen instead to establish a system of community; a society where each individual is accepted and valued for their uniqueness and their contribution to the richness and diversity of the whole.  In that sort of a society working for the good of the whole is not something to be feared; it is not something that will strip you of your energy and your individuality and leave you lying all alone in the mud when your economic usefulness to the society is at an end.  Instead it will encourage and promote individuality and creativity as the building blocks of a truly productive society; one that values all of its members for what they bring to the table, regardless of how large or small of a role they play.

Then again, just because we’ve lived in the hive does not mean that we have to die there.  Maybe it’s time for the bees to leave the square boxes of hives and designated Queens that have been provided for them by societal expectations and to establish the kind of thriving bee community that would make Disney proud.

The Lesson of the Red Rain Boots

On By Just StephIn Metaphysical MussingsLeave a comment

“Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby”

~ Langston Hughes

When my daughters were small, I remember a day when I had taken them out for lunch.  While we were inside eating it started to rain.  This wasn’t just a pleasant summer afternoon rain shower, but a full-on wash-the-skies-clean kind of torrential rain; the kind that leaves everything soggy for hours afterwards; even the air.

It was still raining (though not quite so hard) by the time we left the restaurant and both of my girls were squealing in delight at the sheer number of puddles in the parking lot.  Some of the puddles, I noticed, were as large as small ponds, and probably just as deep.

Pausing to open my umbrella after a warning to both of the girls about keeping their feet dry, I let go of my youngest daughter’s hand for an instant, and a moment later she was knee deep in a puddle, giggling madly and splashing like a duck.  With a cry of warning I snatched her out; wrung out her dress as you would a washcloth and, after admonishing both of them (again) to stay out of the puddles because we had a long ride in the car ahead of us, we slowly made our way to the car; navigating around puddles and trying for the dry spots. Or rather I was trying for the dry spots.  Both of my daughters were angling for the puddles and my shoulders were starting to get sore from pulling them back.

We were about halfway across the parking lot when I noticed a brightly colored figure headed in our direction.  It was a woman; an old woman.  With her pure white nimbus of hair and a face lined in a thousand wrinkles, she looked like one of those dried apple head dolls that the pioneers used to make.  But it wasn’t her age that caught my attention, nor was it her attire (she was dressed in a bright yellow rain slicker, red rain boots, a purple rain hat).  What caught my attention was that she was making a point not to avoid the puddles, but to jump in them.

I stood there – stunned; unable to tear my eyes away, though I could see from the corner of my eye that both of my girls were watching her with absolute awe and rapture.

Finally, when her puddle jumping brought her to within a few feet of where I stood, she realized that there was someone in front of her and paused in her puddle jumping long enough to look up and meet my eye.  The stunned expression on my face must have amused her, because she grinned from ear to ear and then threw her head back and laughed like a loon.

“Aw sweetie,” she said to me finally – a grin still in her voice – it’s not as bad as all that.  Really, I’ve been waiting all my life to do this!  You’ll see.  One day you’ll jump in the puddles too.”  And then, with another grin for me and a wave for the girls, she had passed us, and life went back to normal. Well, almost normal.  I didn’t have the heart to keep the girls out of the puddles after that, and it was a long and soggy trip home.

But even now, years later I can’t get that woman and her bright red rain boots out of my mind, for how far do most of us go to avoid what we perceive as the negative things in our lives?

Honestly, I know that dealing with negative people and negative situations is unpleasant – and something most of us will avoid like the plague if given the chance, but how do we know that those puddles of negativity haven’t been put in our way for a reason? How do we know that we aren’t supposed to go through them instead of around them?

Who knows, those puddles might not even have been put in our way for our own experience.  Maybe, just maybe, someone on the other side of the parking lot is watching us; someone who has been avoiding negative situations of their own because they don’t have the courage to face them.

And maybe, just maybe, when they see you splashing through those problems in your red rain boots and laughing like a loon, they’ll find the courage to do something that they’ve never thought possible.

The Abyss

On By Just StephIn Metaphysical Mussings2 Comments

You! Yes you, there, the one standing on the edge of the abyss!

No, don’t look over your shoulder, I’m not standing behind you. How could I be? There’s a sheer cliff face behind you.

No, it doesn’t matter where I am – would you knock it off? It doesn’t matter who I am, it really doesn’t. I just need you to be quiet for a minute and listen to me.

Why? Did you actually ask me why? Oh please! You’re the one standing on the edge of an abyss, a sheer cliff at your back, and nothing but bottomless emptiness in front of you, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, not a clue as to what to do next and you’re asking a disembodied voice that’s trying to help you as to why you should listen to it?

You know what I should do? I should just leave, right now. Leave you to your contemplations of the horrors that may or may not lie in wait for you should you jump or fall or be pushed off your precarious perch, how dreadfully dangerous the winds that are buffeting you are and how you’re afraid that you may loose your grip accidentally, or how hopeless your situation is since the cliff face is sheer, offering no toe-holds to climb back up, and you haven’t been able to get the attention of anyone at the top of the cliff who could help you.

But I’m not going to leave, even though it aggravates me to see you trembling there in indecision when it is perfectly clear what’s going to happen. But I forget, you are so wrapped up in clinging to your ledge that you’re not taking time to see the big picture. I understand how being on a ledge as you are would be distracting. But what I can’t understand is why it is you actually seem to be enjoying your predicament.

Well, you certainly talk about it enough, how scared you are, how nervous you are about what comes next, all the things that influenced you to this point, how uncomfortable you are, how much your cuts and scrapes hurt, how you managed to end up here….ah, that one is the worst! I mean, look at you! It’s obvious how you got here. You left your normal, everyday life, picked up your backpack of hopes and dreams and struck off up the mountain of possibilities and followed your spiritual path until it led you here.

Yes, you heard me right. The path you chose to follow led you here. You and no one else, is responsible for where you’re standing right now. I don’t care how many maps you consulted. I don’t care how many other people you asked for directions, or how many people you followed or how many detours you took to get here. And don’t moan and groan about how it must be the path’s fault that you are in this precarious position. You are the one who was walking it. You’re the one who took that final step – the step that sent you over the edge.

You still remember it, don’t you, the moment when the path crumbled in front of you and you felt yourself falling over the edge of the cliff. But then you caught yourself, just barely caught yourself, a bare toe-hold here on this last ledge of sanity.

And so, here you stand, your back pressed against solid rock, the reality of what you’ve experienced so far, what you’ve encountered, as unarguably real as the stone beneath your fingers. In front of you the abyss awaits, its unknown depths holding unknown joys – or horrors, and the winds of change and circumstance keep threatening to loosen your hold on this last shred of reality. What’s worse, your hands are starting to sweat with nervousness (or is it excitement?) and you find your grip slipping by centimeters.

I bet you’d give anything for a rope right now, wouldn’t you?

And who knows, maybe if you wait long enough you’ll be able to get someone’s attention and they’ll send down a rope to help you up. Of course you might be waiting for a very long time.

And even if they did, where would you be? All the paths lead to this abyss – there’s no way to go further up without crossing it. You are to be commended actually, for having made it this far. So many people only follow the path until they find a comfortable place and then leave it to take up permanent residence.

You could, provided you are offered that rope, go back up to the top of the cliff and retrace your steps back down the mountain, or at least far enough down it so that you feel safe; undoing all the work of months, or years of searching. Or you could stay there at the top of the cliff, within view of the abyss. You could stay there and invent a nice reality for yourself, something that sounds probable, about how this is really the top of the mountain, or at least as far as we can expect to go in this lifetime.

Of course you could choose to remain where you are, teetering on the edge of sanity, worrying yourself to death about what is going to happen when the inevitable happens and you loose your grip and go plummeting into the depths.

Or, you can jump.

You can let go of your desperate finger hold on reality and step off into the unknown, trusting that the universe knows what it is doing or it wouldn’t have brought you here.

I guess what it all boils down to is one question:

How badly do you want it?

How badly do you want to know what lies at the summit?

How badly do you want to see the view from the top?

How badly do you want to remain trembling here on the brink, clinging to your last shreds of sanity and wondering what comes next?

So, you can wait for help.

Wait to fall.

Or jump.

The Choice is Yours

On By Just StephIn Metaphysical MussingsLeave a comment

 

We can talk about spirituality until we’re blue in the face, but until we do something about it, until we can find a way to incorporate it into our daily lives, all the knowledge that we have does us absolutely no good.  But how does one go about creating a spiritual life?

Let’s get one thing straight here – when I talk about creating a spiritual life, I’m not talking about getting religion, or channeling messages, or giving up on reality in order to pursue some idealistic goal of utopia.

When I talk about creating a spiritual life, I’m talking about blazing a way; creating and adhering to an inner path that will enable you to discover the very deepest essence of yourself and live a completely authentic life.  There’s just one problem, there is only one way for this to work, and that is if you integrate your spirituality into every aspect of your being.

You can’t just dabble in spirituality whenever it feels good.  In order for it to truly work you have to LIVE it, 24/7. Does that mean that you can no longer have fun and get the giggles and just kick back and enjoy life?  Of course not!  But in order for it to work you have to be committed 100%.  The aspect of integrating your spirituality with your daily life has to be your top priority, and most importantly, it needs to be YOUR spirituality and YOU have to want it.

It can’t be done for someone else; as a reaction to someone putting pressure for you; not if it is going to work for you.

It can’t be someone else’s definition of what is right for you; it has to be what speaks to you and feeds your soul.

If you are truly interested in creating a spiritual life for yourself, then you have to stop dabbling and immerse yourself in your chosen method of spirituality, and when it comes to deciding which is right for you there are, quite frankly, only three options available for you to choose from at this point in time; either you will find your way by adhering to a tradition that is already laid out, or you will choose to blaze your own way to your destination, or you will choose to stay exactly where you are and be content with the level of spirituality that you now have.

Option #1:  Some may find their way in a time-honored tradition; the rites and sacred writings of a particular religious path may speak to them on a deep fundamental level, and that is good. Better than good actually, because you have generations – centuries even of people who have gone before, who have asked the hard questions and have offered up their wisdom to share with you on adhering to this particular path.  They will still encounter great difficulties as they travel their path, as they discover things about themselves and face up to some difficult decisions, but they will have the comfort of knowing that others have tread this path before them; and others are treading it now; that they are not alone.

Option #2:  Others, however, may need to blaze their own trail; create their own path.  Their road will be much more difficult for them, for while there have been plenty who have made their own paths, it is most likely that no one has ever gone quite the same way before.  They are alone; their only companions being those others who have also decided on being their own pathfinders and who, for however brief a period, find themselves keeping company together.  The one who blazes their own trail does not ‘dabble’ in spirituality, but instead moves ever forward, letting each topic lead them to the next and adding to their own tradition as they grow and learn and become.

Option #3:  Yes, choosing not to choose is a viable option.  You can elect to stay exactly where you are, to not pursue a spiritual life but to simply accept what is given to you, and that is okay too.  It is understandable that you may have found your equilibrium; the point at which you feel that you are balanced and which works for you.  If so, I applaud you.  Very few people ever reach that point in their lives.  But if you are staying where you are out of fear of the unknown; out of the fear of not stepping outside of your comfort zone, then you are, in fact, electing to remain ignorant of your true depth and potential.  Even if you elect to stay, know that you always have the option of moving on, of pursuing a course of study later, when you are ready.

Regardless of whether you choose a traditional or non-traditional path, know that it is going to take dedication and commitment.  There are going to be days when you feel like just curling up in a ball and not thinking about anything but some crazy show on TV and how good your hot chocolate tastes, and there’s going to be days when you just want to get silly and have fun and not think about anything serious, and that’s fine.  But committing yourself to a spiritual path; choosing to live a spiritual life; choosing to live an authentic life is not something you can turn on and off at will; something that you do when you feel like it, for once you have started down your road, you begin to change.

In fact, over time it becomes who you ARE, and you have to be prepared for the fact that it is going to turn your entire world inside out and upside down.  Chances are your life is never going to be the same again.

The Road Less Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

~~Robert Frost ~~