Tag Archives: ecstasy

Divine Embrace

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DivineEmbrace

CnslingBotmBnr2

Divine Embrace

Worship. It’s become a “bad” word. Years of oppression have turned the sweetness of worship into bitter chains. Centuries of censure replaced the ecstasy of divine embrace with a dogma of sadness. But I worship you, who reads this now.

I worship the trees. I worship snow as it falls on my face. I lift my face to the sky to worship it.

And I will not relinquish the joy of lifting my face and heart to worship my Gods.

I rededicate the word “worship.” I free it for anyone who should want it. No one gets to exclusively own it. I free it to be whatever each individual wants it to be. I free it for anyone who wants to give and receive the love and power that can occur in worship.

So mote it be.
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Extraordinary people need extraordinary spiritual guides. Extraordinary people do not hesitate when they find a guide. http://www.outlawbunny.com/pastoral-counseling

Wyrd 2014

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My wyrd New Year’s resolution: Ecstasy and ease.

Sometimes, it is vital to do things the easy way. I work hard on my spirituality. That’s important. But we can get stuck in the idea that growth has to be all work, no play. The resulting experience sucks—I do not want to feel like God’s drone!—and does not always make for the most inner growth or power. So I constantly create fun modalities for inner change, for my students and myself.

Life and growth will not always be easy. When I’m counseling a trauma survivor, we may be in painful tears together. That is a good thing. Hard work, balanced by fun and ease, has been my ongoing approach.

Empowerment can be accomplished through joyful simplicities. Joy nurtures the spirit. For example, I receive commissions for fantasy portraits, which I paint in trance. They affirm the client’s wondrous essence, inner and outer beauty, and power. Below is one I did of myself. Scroll past it for the rest of the blog:

MddleManagment4ChaosGod2012WT

With the Divine, we can grow spiritually, and overcome obstacles, the easy way, sometimes. Heck, not just sometimes, but a lot of the time!

Recently, I asked one of my students to give me a spiritual challenge—whatever she felt I most needed to work on. Oddly enough, it was to do things the easy fun way. Huh? Me, who is already so good at that? I mean, I have a ball in my life. There is mega-laughter in the classes I teach. And my Gods have a great sense of humor, too—we have a blast together.

But you know what? My student was right. There’s always another level to reach toward. I’m forever wanting to achieve more for the community and in my private life. And I am not, right this second, referring to more fun and ease, but to what I want to accomplish overall.

After meditating on the assignment my student gave me, I realized that the progress I envisioned, for both my private life and what I want to accomplish as a community shaman, could only be achieved through a new devotion to fun and ease. Hah, what a great challenge—to have more fun than ever and go easier than ever!

2014 is my year of doing that.

With so many demands on our time and money, streamlining our lives and choosing pleasure may not seem possible. Nor may there seem time to get needed spiritual support. But here are three easy ways to do all that. There’s that word again—”easy!”

1) Ignore new year promotion-hype that sells you a lot of product, which is the same old stuff that never worked before. Stick with the tried-and-true. Sometimes, we blame the tools we have, instead of our use of them. If you’re not using a hammer, it’s not the hammer’s fault that the nail never gets driven in. Revisit one of your basic tools that has supported you in the past. Use it a little.

2) Ignore hyped up approaches that demand more time than any sane productive person has. Instead, take a moment. For example, keep your tarot deck or runes by your bed. When you wake up in the morning, pull one card or rune, as you’re scrambling out of bed to feed the kids. While you go about your morning routine, spend a few moments thinking about the card. I’m not suggesting you go into trance, sit in a lotus position, or have deep thoughts. I’m saying that, if you cannot do a lot, do not be discouraged and forsake all attempts—just do what you can. Giving a tarot card or rune some consideration, even for a few moments, can open us to Divine guidance, inner resolve, or peace, regarding the day ahead. It can really be a benefit.

3) When you finish reading this, keep heart open to fun, easy ways to: Grow, overcome life’s challenges, and have support for your life.

Here is a way to have all three. Enjoy a Spirit Portrait—it is a gentle, organic process of empowerment. And you give me a chance to fulfill my New Year’s resolution. I adore mirroring people’s wondrousness to them; it is truly some of the best fun. My spirit grows a bit with every painting. Together, we make a great 2014. . . . Wow, I love that idea! Providing joyful support, having a great time in the process, and our shared happiness? Yes! Info at http://www.outlawbunny.com/2012/03/16/fantasy-portrait/

May our fey-touched hearts enjoy 2014 to the max!

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Connectivity, Ecstasy, Service

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If we believe in the pantheist or Taoist principle of all things being connected, we walk our talk by serving all things. As an ecstatic, I find heart-rendering joy through service.

We are part of a great weave. Call it the World tree, the dance of life, the Tao—call it Fred. We can be codependent in this weave, or we can have boundaries but still be within it. We can fight it, or we can be fed by. And we can surrender to it.

Surrender can be just a fancy pompous word unless we are of service. There are other ways one must follow through on the notion of surrender for it to actually be surrender, but for now let’s focus on service.

But before we do, I need to add an aside: I am not suggesting we must perfectly attain any of the ideals I set forth here. I would be a hypocrite to suggest I have anywhere near attained these ideals myself. I do cleave to these ideals, and do my best to achieve them (though my best is often poor), and this is all my Gods ask of me.

Okay, back to service. We can serve the weave. My belief and experience is that, if we believe the Taoist or pantheist principle of all things being connected, we walk our talk by serving all things. Serving community, serving Gaia, serving all of life, serving family, serving one’s spiritual tradition(s) and spiritual teacher(s) and spiritual student(s), serving one’s Gods.

We must also serve self, self is part of the weave. Sometimes, we best serve by serving self alone. For example, when we are ill or need to build courage to serve others. Or when we simply need time alone to enjoy ourselves.

Ultimately, to be part of the weave, we serve in surrender. I often forget that. In other words, when my Gods ask me to do something, I often try to set about doing it my way instead of Theirs. But to really do that which my Gods ask me, I must also implement it the way They ask. (Oh, my, in this essay, surrender becomes service becomes surrender.)

When we serve, we align ourselves within the weave, we start flowing with it. We start being fed by it in ways that we cannot otherwise. There is healing and empowerment not otherwise available.

What’s more, we experience connectivity so sublime that it is orgasmic. Literally orgasmic. I have great orgasms because I am of service.

I painted this blessing banner quite a while ago, but post it here bc it is in the spirit of my prayer.

I painted this blessing banner quite a while ago, but post it here bc it is in the spirit of my prayer.

Being of service is truly pagan, it’s not a wimpy trait, it is part of ecstasy. Not only ecstasy between the sheets but also an ecstatic way of life—being joyfully within the weave whether it’s with your family, your coworkers, a beautiful summer day, or the stars in the sky.

I am blessed to feel connected to every star in the universe and know the thrill of all starlight radiating around me, with me, through me. I know this weave because I am blessed to be of service.

My prayer: Gods, I know that serving is a blessing to me, because all things come from you—my breath, my ability to rise in the morning, my joy, my serving. Everything of me is from you. So do not let me think that my service to others makes me superior. Getting the chance to serve others makes me very very lucky! It is to you I must turn if I want to serve: I pray, please bless me with the power to serve—including the willingness to serve. And bless me with the humility to serve in surrender—when You set me a task, help me implement it the way You ask.

CnslingBotmBnr

The Ecstatic Path, Serving Community, & False Ego

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The Ecstatic Path, Community Service, and Arrogance

A few thoughts, May Day, 2012
Updated May, 2022

Detail from Root Woman, painting by Francesca De Grandis

Detail, Root Woman, Digital Art, Francesca De Grandis .

The occult shop I worked in during the 80s had lockers out back, behind the building. Our customers would buy candles, which we would dress (for example, anoint with magical oils), bless, and then burn in the lockers. Some customers requested candles for prosperity blessings. Some asked for healing candles. The variety of magical candles covered every imaginable situation from justice to romance.

By some standards, it was such an odd priesthood, if not utterly dismissed and invalidated. The bunch of grungy lockers with wax dripping all over them was part of something many would consider hokey, outright ridiculous. But it was the real deal—powerful magic that was of service to community.

Priesthood (ministry, service, call it what you will) takes many sincere forms. Some have more prestige than others. But whether one receives a lot of acclaim or none at all, the Gods know when the heart is filled with juicy desire to serve. This desire fuels our joy constantly. And the Gods bless such a heart with peace and happiness.

The ecstatic path I walk includes a commitment to serve.

The Gods also know when the heart is heavily burdened, made sad by a self-deceiving ego-drive to be at the top of the heap. And the Gods bless this heart, too. This compassion is sorely needed for individuals who don’t understand that service fueled by the desire for prestige and ego-feed will only get them snared by false ego, which twists their magic in knots so it works against them. Goddess help them. They can end up on a hard road! I know this because I had to learn it through personal experience.

Decades back, I went into media to serve my Gods. I’m a shy and reclusive person who did not want to be in media, I just wanted to remain in oral tradition, but my Gods insisted I also enter the media. And sometimes, working in the media, my thoughts dwelt on fame or ego. When they did, it hurt me, what a mess! Luckily, my overall reason for being in media was service, so I was able to spot my arrogance and move past it. … Well, I still am arrogant to some degree, but I imagine all humans are. As long as I remain aware of when my false ego is leading the way, and I make ongoing attempts to stop that, I think I am OK.

I am amazed at the amount of serenity to which I have become accustomed. I have noted that, when my arrogance comes alive, my serenity does not remain at the level that’s become typical of me. When serving my Gods in sincerity, Their peace flows through me to empower my work. I can have a reasonable degree of serenity and, therefore, my health is good, my abundance continues, and from my peace emerges ecstasy. So mote it be.

As to the aforementioned ego drive to be at the top of the heap, ha! There is no heap. There is only the joyous dance of life and the chance to serve within it. May all we humans learn at deeper and deeper levels to dive into life fully, not mistaking titles and pomp for ecstasy and caring. And may we always know that ecstasy and caring go hand in hand, like lovers.

Root Woman, painting by Francesca De Grandis

Root Woman, painting by Francesca De Grandis. If you’d like a limited first edition-print of this art, email me at outlawbunny at outlawbunny.com

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With its relaunch in 2012, this site was split between three servers. (I know there are other options, it’s a long and grassroots story.)

http://www.stardrenched.com is mostly for the site’s blog, events announcements, and new additions to the site’s Grimoire.

The site’s original domain remains https://people.well.com/user/zthirdrd/. Among other things, it has online Grimoire entries prior to 2012.

Way back, there wasn’t space for everything I wanted on the well.com site (my site there is ancient, started back when they were very few women on the web, and site storage space was minuscule), so some side pages got put on feri.com.

This old blog explains it a bit more.

I continue to blog at my other site, www.outlawbunny.com. Two separate blogs.