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[arethinn]

from a comment I made in a locked post:

I've made the mistake of trying to achieve some kind of nebulous spiritual thing by Buying Shit before. I spend a lot of my life turning my energy (time) into money, so hey, maybe I can work the conversion back the other way: the more of _____ I buy, the more thought I am directing towards it.

Unfortunately that doesn't exactly work, especially when we are talking about initially opening up a current, whether that's to a line of practice or to a specific being. You have to spend the time directly first. You cannot lead off with material gifts. Think how you would feel if someone just randomly approached you and gave you something, even if they had done research to find out what you liked. You'd probably wonder what their motive was, wouldn't you? It would seem a little creepy. You would not be all that inclined to just say hey, sure, we're buds now. After you've spent some time and exchanged some thought and energy, then you can start buying gifts if you like, and it will seem much more sincere.

I've tripped over this multiple times in the past *mumble* years and I think it's only sunk in very recently. I've tried buying "stuff" for various spirit contacts, sometimes as gifts, sometimes as anchors. Doesn't work. Has that same hollow feeling. Gotta sit and have a bunch of rap sessions first, pal. Or in the case of a body of practice, work with its techniques.

It's a funny cycle -- you should start out without too much stuff. Then you can start accumulating stuff as useful tools. Then eventually you start dropping a lot of the stuff again, maybe even all of it, because hey, you and your spirit buddy (/god/tradition/whatever) have spent all this time together now, you no longer need the accoutrements, the venue; you have each other.

Comments

[arethinn]

I think, particularly too, that it's a newbie thing, especially within paganism and magick (in all their flavors).

If so, I'm a perpetual newbie. I was perhaps insulated from this by lack of income in my earliest forays ~12-18 years ago (=junior high and high school), but as I said, I have been falling prey again and again as recently as last year, and I think only just now have i Got just exactly what was the problem in a way that will allow me to go "a-ha! I shouldn't do this, oh no!" at the outset rather than afterwards. ^_-

I still love toys but I am now conscious of my urges (I hope). I know it will not "help" spiritually, most likely. If I still want it because it's shiny, well, that's a different value set, and gives different expectations.

Incidentally, I've known people who swear up and down that the cycle repeats itself--after you've trimmed away the fat, you go through a stuff phase again, more carefully and slowly this time.

Now that you put it this way, I think I can vouch for it. I had a serious stuff phase round about my early 20s. Then I started working RJ Stewart (something I am not up on at the moment) and stuff seriously fell away. TBH a lot of my energy is now focused on Harry Potter fandom and not spiritual things, although I do have a contact which is related to that arena. But now and then I do still pick up a special object. There is "stuff", but it is fewer, smaller, more concentrated. I wonder if this is related to the Cord material RJ has recently published a book about, where the gist is that almost every tool can eventually be reduced to the Cord. I say "reduced" but it's more like... distilled. You can make it serve for more and more things the longer you use it...?

[arethinn]

I have a tendency to collect sticks of various lengths that way. I've tried to narrow the collection down, but it keeps rebuilding itself. I don't even use most of them for anything. They just accumulate.

Cord: yes, a literal cord, although it has a spiritual/astral (in the sense of "stellar template") duplicate. I forget whether the end goal is to finally get rid of the physical cord or not. I've only read The Spirit Cord once and I haven't actually worked any of the material in it.

[elven-ranger.livejournal.com]

It's a funny cycle -- you should start out without too much stuff. Then you can start accumulating stuff as useful tools. Then eventually you start dropping a lot of the stuff again, maybe even all of it, because hey, you and your spirit buddy (/god/tradition/whatever) have spent all this time together now, you no longer need the accoutrements, the venue; you have each other.

this is very very true.