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I have *never* been able to understand
why folk who worship the ground I walk on perceive spiritual evolution
as something which requires that we move on (read move away from this
plane of existence). If we accept all of nature as the divine expression
of love found in our Lady's and Lord's carnal Dance (which I most certainly
do), then isn't it contrary a Witch's religion to seek escape from it?
I believe that physical incarnation of the spirit is simply one of the
dualities of existence. Much as light is both a particle and a wave, we
are good and evil... pleasure and pain... spiritual and physical. I don't
believe we exist without the continual shifting between the physical bodies
of an incarnation here and our spiritual sabbaticals in the Summerlands.
Most Pagans have no trouble with the concept that sitting on a cloud,
playing a harp, and singing (along with a number of tone-deaf souls) the
praises of Yahweh for eternity would be infinitely boring. I find there
to be no difference in any release from incarnation... whether to Nirvana,
Valhalla, or what have you. And ANY final destination which requires me
to forgo food, drink and {GASP!!!} sex due to lack of a physical body
is simply not paradise in my book. To step permanently out of physical
creation would be just as boring as going to heaven.
It seems to me that all of these ideas mirror, in a diluted (perhaps unconscious,
perhaps simply not well thought out) form the rejection by patriarchal
religions of the physical as sacred. Such a dualistic split is at the
root of (most) Western humans' inability to perceive holistically. It
is the primal act of reductionistic thought which leads to ideas such
as that Nature is ours to subdue and conquer. Our Lady and Lord Themselves
are not, IMO, outside of the physical, though much of them is *beyond*
it. And if the options of being permanently away from the physical are
so manifest, I have to wonder why our Lady and Lord gave birth to it all,
and infused it all with Themselves in the first place.
I'm different from most (at least I get lots of argument when I state
this belief) with regard to what comes after death. I do anticipate time
in the Summerlands (which I experience as a place that always was, always
is and always will be - a place where I in all my incarnations may be
spiritually united with our Lady and Lord, as well as with all those significant
to me during all my incarnations) before a return to the Wheel for another
round. Where I depart from what seems to be the prevailing Wiccan belief
most is in my LACK of acceptance that the purpose of riding the Wheel,
of joining the Dance, is to better myself until it is no longer necessary.
I find life as polar, just as I find everything else. One pole physical,
one spiritual. And I believe we return to the Dance for the sheer joy
of it. Any idea of an eternal paradise I find boring... when faced with
the opportunity to always return to the physical and learn more about
what's going on here now. Don't get me wrong, I do believe that we learn
and advance (hopefully) with each life... I just don't see the point of
all of this being that we should be seeking escape from this wonderful
existance the Gods have given us.
Some people see separation from the mundane as a spiritual path. This
perception is harbored in both the systems which lead one to an eternal
paradise after a single incarnation (Christian Heaven, Islamic Paradise,
Norse Valhala) and those which lead one to an eternal release after learning
the lessons of many incarnations (Hindi Sartori, Buddhist Nirvana). I
see unification with the physical as a spiritual path; however, I do not
find the physical to be mundane. As the conceived, labored and born child
of our Lady and our Lord - the physical universe is rather the very essence
of the sacred. Seeking permanent release from the physical for an incarnated
spirit is rather like seeking permanent release from it's particulate
properties for a photon, so that it may become a pure wave. Doesn't happen...
the light is both wave and particle. And we are both physical and spiritual.
The Gods gave us this gift, and my path is a quest for ultimate fulfillment
of both, not a rejection of one for the other.
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