I spend the majority of my day carving, painting, or writing Divine names and sigils of our celestial helpers. Sometimes as I’m working a concept will pop into my head that has relevance to my life, or one that brings clarity to a larger concept. It’s one of the ways they teach me. Today I had finished the first coat of paint on several altar plates and was about to go spray on a polyurethane coating to lock the coloring in. I was stopped by the thought that instead I should take the time to first correct any mistakes, specks, blops, etc.

“You should not enshrine your imperfections. Only make permanent that which is perfect. The rest can fall away.” 

A short message, but profound. Taking the time in the “now” to clear out the junk in our lives, to mend our mistakes, and to make wrongs right again is always easier than waiting until later to deal with it. “A stitch in time saves nine” could be another way to look at it. Or think of doing the dishes…yeah there’s gunk baked on the pan, but cleaning it now will be way easier than letting it sit out overnight and trying to scrape off the junk that’s somehow bonded at a molecular level with the pan. 

If we let the debris in our life collect, we are creating a metaphorical monument to it. We are affirming that we want that junk in our lives because we are choosing to carry it with us everywhere we go instead of cleaning it up. We are better off maintaining a clear spiritual body. Sounds like a lot of work, I know. But think of all the things you do daily to maintain your physical body…hygiene, sustenence, medications, sleep….being in a body is already a lot of work. So why not keep a tidy spiritual space within yourself as well? 

Here’s the rest of the message:
“Neither should you enshrine your sorrows, regrets, guilt, shame, hatred, or grief. You aren’t practicing for that. Those things don’t exist where you’re going. Practice joy, gratitude, lovingkindness, peace, and wonder instead. You will be better prepared for what comes next.”

Woah…now THAT’s a beautiful statement. I’m sure you’ve heard of the parable of the two wolves. One is good the other is bad and the winner between them is the one you’ve chosen to feed. Why would we practice holding on to our negative emotions when that’s not a skill we’re going to need? Why would I learn blacksmithing when hardware stores exist? It’s an irrelevant practice, and what we practice is what we are becoming.

I’m a midwesterner who grew up Catholic. I’m very familiar with guilt. It’s one of the things we do well, right behind hot dish. I also have depression and know that holding on to those negative emotions is sometimes easier, and weirdly more comfortable because of its familiarity, than accepting a new paradigm. That’s why it takes practice, and whether we’re practicing joy or sorrow we are enshrining that emotion within ourselves. The longer we do that the more baked on it gets, soon it’s bonded to us and we accept that feeling down is “just the way it is” or “just the way I am.” At that point it’s way harder to separate the shining radiance of our eternal souls from the junk we’ve covered it up with. We start identifying with the junk instead of the Divine. We take our eyes off the prize, and because of this our way becomes more difficult. 

Here’s a song I wrote that sums up some of this concept.