A stray cat recently appeared on our back porch. This particular cat, black and white with a long-haired coat, was dirty and scared with that panicky feel to it that strays often exhibit. The first time I opened our sliding glass door, it immediately bolted and slipped under our fence, running for its idea of some place safe. When it showed up a second time, I went out, making comforting clicking noises with my tongue and knelt down, extending my hand to the terrified creature. The cat wasn’t sure what to do. You could see it wanted to reach out to the love that was being offered to it, but it’s instincts told it to run.
The cat’s heart won out in the end.
So it came to me, still scared, shrugging away from my hand whenever I would shift my weight as I knelt, petting it, only to return, needing to feel the physical affection it so desperately craved. But it was more than just a loving touch that I was offering to the creature. I was feeling for its bones, seeing how much body fat it had lost, trying to determine if it was a stray or simply belonged to a new family in our neighborhood. As I ran my fingers through its dirty fur, I could feel its ribs and shoulder blades, its body a fuzzy sack pulled tightly over a bag of rocks. Definitely a stray.
I went inside for the spare bowls I keep for just such an occasion, one for food, one for water. Long ago, a bulletin was posted in the animal kingdom, announcing that if you’re lost and hungry, just head for Jeffrey’s back porch. He’s good for a meal and a warm, dry place to sleep. Our visitors from the four-legged world never stay for more than a night or two. The only exception was a poor, de-clawed, half-starved cat that came to us and stayed to the end, knowing that it was going to die and wanting to be loved as it counted down its days.
While I was inside, gathering the bowls for food and water, our cat, Carmel, went up to the window to see what all of the commotion was about. As soon as the stray saw our well-loved feline, it arched it’s back, hissing and making threatening, howling sounds.
Carmel, to his credit, simply sat there, inches away from the other cat, nothing more than a pane of glass between the two of them. As I approached the sliding glass door with bowls of food and water, Carmel looked up at me as if to say, “Why is the newcomer reacting like that? Doesn’t it know that you love everyone, even stray animals?”
It was one of the moments when life seems to slow to a halt and the moment is framed in stillness, as if to say, “Pay attention. There’s a lesson here for you to learn if you’re willing.” Nose-to-nose sat two examples of the same species, separated only by a transparent boundary of glass. One arched its back, howling horribly, ready to fight. The other sat completely content and serene, not reacting in the slightest.
The key difference between the two?
One of the two experienced a life filled with love.
One Moment, Two Experiences
Sure there was the issue of food, but that was on its way. The two cats weren’t fighting over a meal. There was no threat display being put on by Carmel for the other cat to react to. In fact, our cat simply sat there quietly, occasionally moving his nose closer to the glass in that feline way of saying, “I think you’re okay and would like to know you a little better.”
The stray, however, lived in a world of fear. He was young enough that the threat of other stray animals and outdoor domestic cats was very real as most of them could hurt or seriously injure him in a fight. We have skunks, opossums and raccoons that run wild in our neighborhood as well. Our stray was dirty, meaning he hadn’t known peace or a quiet place where he felt safe to clean himself. And he was very thin, indicating that food was a struggle and a constant nagging ache in his empty belly.
Carmel, on the other hand, is well-loved. A little on the chunky side, he’s never known what it’s like to go without food, whether its a regularly scheduled meal or a stray piece of cheese (which Carmel dearly loves.) Safe and secure, he will roll over on his back whenever someone approaches, exposing his most vulnerable parts in the hope of being petted. He sleeps with my son, Bear, and his biggest concern seems to be if the adhesive decals the kids put on the sliding glass door are too high for him to jump up and knock down.
Their experiences and the life they’ve been exposed to are as different as night and day. And when faced with the same opportunity, the two cats reacted in entirely different ways, based solely on their past and the lessons they’ve learned. After all, just like us, their experiences created them. They are what they experienced, what they learned. Carmel has learned that there is only love in his world. The stray has learned there is only fear. And when faced with the same situation, they both reacted from their lessons, not the energy that was presented to them.
Think about it this way. Carmel was being presented by a threat. The stray was putting on as much of an intimidating display as it could muster. The stray, however, was being presented with acceptance as Carmel sat quietly, leaning forward to touch noses with the stranger. But rather than responding to the energy that was presented to them, each of the cats responded from its past, from the lessons it had learned through it’s experiences.
We, as human beings, spiritually grow and evolve in much the same way. Not only do our experiences mold who we are, but the challenges and drama in our world will often so completely define how we see things that we will react to energy that isn’t there.
Like the stray cat howling at Carmel’s offer of friendship.
Or the way the newcomer skittered away when I would shift my weight, even though it desperately longed for me to give it love and affection.
One of the key elements of shamanism, which typically holds true to other pagan paths as well, is that without the benefits of a text to rely on for spiritual direction, we look to the world around us as mirror of our lessons, seeing our challenges and opportunities for growth reflected in the weave around us. This can be through an emotional response within us, through a reading in a tarot spread, or through an event in the natural world - such as the different reactions of two cats to a single situation.
If you allow yourself to approach such lessons with an open mind devoid of preconceived ideas or expectations, one lesson comes through clearly.
It’s all about love.
A Single Source
When I began my path over twenty years ago, that was not the answer that I expected to find. As I began to work magick and see tangible results from my rites, I was certain that there were secrets to be uncovered, a new technique that would open a hidden doorway, an ancient text or incantation that would illuminate the path, that would offer true wisdom, knowledge, and power.
What I discovered was that there was a single source behind everything. Not something so defined as a single deity or a concept of the divine. No matter how inclusive we weave that idea, we end up leaving something out. A goddess leaves out the masculine experience. A duality leaves out the experience of someone drawn to a solitary path. A persona leaves out the nature spirits we work with. But there was something there. It had to be a concept that included everything, that accepted everything. A mother could love us, but would, by the very nature of the qualities of her love, exclude those things that would cause us pain. A warrior would protect us, but by its very nature, would exclude those things that we fear, that challenge or threaten us. The need for a deity to watch over us speaks of a youthful soul, one that still longs for a parent’s touch. It speaks of one that has known too much pain and has yet to process that ache, needing the security, serenity, and safety it would find in the arms of a protective deity.
But we’re witches. We stand up for ourselves and step out on our own. We blaze trails, rather than follow them. We leave the spiritual paths of our parents, willing to strike out into the wilderness of life and find our own way.
And from the perspective of one who is willing to stand on their own, who has blazed those trails with an open mind, what we find when we seek the divine is love.
Love embraces the concepts of the warrior, the mother, the goddess, for each of them exhibit love in different ways. It equally validates the wonder we see in the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone, for we are drawn to their love in the various stages of our lives, not outgrowing one and moving on, but learning to love ourselves as that aspect of the Goddess is reflected in us.
A Teacher’s Love for His Student
There’s a beautiful story of a Tibetan Lama who had retreated into the wilderness to deepen his path, attended by a single, valued student. One of the Lama’s followers left a large amount of silver at the Lama’s hermitage, so the Lama and his student could purchase provisions to see them through the harsh, Tibetan winter.
Overcome with greed, the student stabbed his teacher, stole the silver, and fled.
Another of the Lama’s disciples came for his regular lesson and found the Lama laying motionless on the floor of his hut. Reviving the Lama, who was near death, the student stood to his feet, ready to hurry and get help, but the Lama stopped him.
“Don’t get help,” the Lama instructed him. “If you do, the townspeople will want vengeance. They will track down my student and kill him in retaliation. But if you leave me here to die, my student will go free. Perhaps, one day, he will choose to return to the path. I do not want to be responsible for standing in the way of his growth. Please go, but don’t tell anyone how you found me. I’m in terrible pain, but as long as I meditate, it’s bearable.”
When we learn to live in love, our focus shifts off ourselves, our own needs, our own pain, and begins to place itself on what we can give of ourselves and how our actions impact other people’s paths. While we typically focus on the fact that the Lama had been stabbed and left to die by his most trusted student, we miss the fact that he did not feel betrayal. He did not feel anger. Through meditation, he could even move himself beyond the specter of physical pain. Because of the love he felt and manifested in his own path, he had complete intentional control over his energy and how he experienced reality.
Isn’t that what we’re trying to do as pagans? We work magick to exert control, especially over states of energy and the reality that they manifest. There are entire schools of thought over which types of spellwork are ethical and which are not, based solely on the energy we will create in our world if we participate in certain magickal workings. There are rites we engage in and those we wouldn’t participate in on the threat of death for exactly the same reason. We carefully adhere to concepts like The Wiccan Rede or The Threefold Law in order to exert a certain levels of control over the energy that manifests in our world.
Love and Fear
It’s been said that there are only two forces in this world - love and fear. Love encompasses everything beautiful in life, from compassion to kindness, from laughter to passion to joy. We react and lash out, not because we’re hurt, but because we’re afraid. We’re afraid of the pain. We’re afraid of what allowing ourselves to be hurt says about ourselves, as if the other person’s actions define who we are. When fear deepens, takes root, and grows, it becomes hatred. Fear and hatred simply cannot exist in the face of love, meaning that love is all that exists and that fear is simply our need to experience love manifesting in our world. Which is better, to learn to respond to something negative in a certain way, or to complete erase the concept of negative from our world, so that we simply experience the positive?
There’s a simple, spiritual law that begins, “As above, so below.” It’s an encompassing concept, usually relied upon in magick to draw parallels between the symbolism in our rites and the outcome that we’re seeking to manifest. However, it also speaks to another process - that if we manifest love in our own lives, we will become like the source of love.
In other words, we’ll wield all of the power that we associate with divinity.
The Power of Love
There have been a handful of spiritual teachers throughout recorded history that have been able to do this on a scale that we deem miraculous. However, more commonly, there are many of us who are taking the first steps in this process and discovering not only freedom, but a significant measure of power. The number of truly mystical experiences I’ve had on my own path has exponentially increased with each step that I draw closer to this concept.
The principle is pretty simple to grasp. The power to manifest is the power to create, or, by extension, the power of creation. There are endless back roads toward this process, anomalies in the laws of this incarnation that allow us to affect the weave of reality. For instance, ritualistic spellwork can manifest a certain outcome, although we have very little control over the specifics of how that result manifests. This process is similar to rubbing our hands together to create friction and, by extension, heat, or using a prism to refract light. Neither of these processes fundamentally changes the elements they are interacting with. Both are a temporary solution.
Anyone who has engaged in spellwork knows that the spell itself is also a temporary solution. Whatever forces are in play remain in play, whether or not the spell is worked. The only way to transform a situation is to actually put in the work and deal with the issues behind that situation. If the only force is love, then we’re back to where we started, needing to learn to manifest love in order to truly transform a situation.
What’s more is that we all know that like attracts like, the very concept behind sympathetic magick. If we seek to manifest love in ourselves, we’ll attract love to us. While this idea is prevalent in many forms of philosophy, it has a specific application in magick and shamanism.
Shamanism, in particular, relies a great deal on interaction with the spirit world in the workings of the shaman’s path. Spirits are attracted to specific types of energy; in almost every scenario, they’re attracted to energy that resonates closely with their own. From a shaman’s perspective, if you manifest love, you’re going to attract spirits that are the embodiment of love. While this has some obvious implications for our personal and emotional growth and maturity, there’s also a more mystical bent to this approach.
For example, there are hierarchal Traditions who closely guard their secrets. Progression through these magickal systems is achieved through hard work and adhering to certain expectations within that Tradition. On the other hand, there are teachers who freely give of themselves and their paths, openly teaching all they know, holding back only when they feel that the student can’t grasp the intricacies or depth of a certain concept. When we manifest love in our lives and our paths, we attract this second category of spirit to ourselves and find that doorways suddenly open to us and that additional, advanced concepts are also made available. What’s more is that loving spirits tend to enjoy working side-by-side with those they’re drawn to, meaning that you suddenly have a helping hand in your practice and spiritual guidance that is looking out for your best interests.
I Love You More Than You
The kids and I were walking home from school one day when Sparrow said, “Dad, I love you more than all of the trees in the forest.”
I replied, “I love you more than all of the stars in the sky.”
Sparrow countered with, “I love you more than all of the galaxies in the universe.”
At which point Bear spoke up and said, “I love you more than you.”
Before we can truly love others, we have to be able to love ourselves. The key is that we live in a world where learning to love is made easy by the fact that others already love us. They may be reactionary to our love, but that’s simply their own fear speaking to them. In the end, if we were to sit them down and truly speak to their heart, each of them loves us even more than we love ourselves. This goes not only for the people in our world, but for all of reality, the spirit world, and the very concept of the divine.
As you go through your world, as you begin to manifest love, don’t simply look at yourself and your short-comings. Look at the people who have chosen to share this lifetime with you. Realize that they not only love you despite what you perceive as flaws, but in many cases they love you because of them. We’re all human. We all have our weaknesses and it’s those weaknesses and flaws that give others the opportunity to demonstrate their love for us. When we have difficulty loving ourselves, we can look to our friends, family members, and loved ones and see their love for us, not only as a mirror, but as a part of a web of sacredness and love of which we are an integral strand. As we accept this web of love, we realize that its strands radiate from a single source and that we are not only connected to the divine, but we are divine with all of the freedom, love, and power that implies.
If you’re in a situation where your world is challenging, where you can’t see the light or feel the love that surrounds you, realize that for you to read these words that someone out there cared enough to put them before you. Maybe you’re a reader of Old Ways and this is just part of what you normally receive from me. After all, I do give this freely to you, as a gift, simply because you’re worth it. Maybe a friend forwarded it to you, thinking enough of you that they not only took the time to send it your way, but that they love you and this article made them think of you. Or maybe you found this on your own, allowing either your higher self or those that guide you to stumble upon these words.
Whatever the case, I think Bear said it best.
“I love you more than you.”
It’s a wonderful place to start.