Tuesday 2 July 2013

Looking To The East

Looking To The East
Contacts, isn't it true that we are all divided beings? Don't we all produce family circle conflicts, diverse loyalties, inner contradictions? I produce been brilliant on some of my own, and this is leading me to a new course of action. Manager the last twenty or add-on years, I produce been a adherent of Norse, Celtic and Baltic mythology, both of Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. Uneducated in the USA, I produce lived in Iceland and Lithuania, and both in Japan. I see avail yourself of in the nature-centered spirituality of the Western Pagan traditions, but I am both drawn to the look into for excellent levels of consciousness and a deeper understanding of the nature of the whole story in the Eastern traditions. Sometimes the pendulum swings one way for me, and sometimes it swings the other. Genuine now, the East is trade me.

This is in some measure at the same time as I produce been savor so disenchanted with what I know of American Asatru. I don't mean to stereotype or tap every person voguish the exact pot under the exact lid, but my experiences produce led me to carry that what most--not all, but most--American Asatru attendants are greatest extent anxious and forced about is preserving an idealized exemplar of European ethnic heritage, reaching back to a storybook time similar to, in the Republican Senator Trent Lott's words, "we didn't produce all these struggle" about amount, multiculturalism and the mixing of races. A trustworthy white Viking party, environmental as the provoked flurry in some Germanic belt-tightening exercise you support.

I produce been savor revolting for a fancy time about how this comes way too close to guarantee to the very unfavorable tradition of racism and white warrant. Now I unemotional mandate to get absent from this. It's not what I produce known as Asatru in Iceland or Sweden or with German Heathens that I produce met down in the dumps the way. This is not to say that bestow are no racists in those lands, which would be a deadened news item, but scarcely that in those spaces, I produce met a good capacity of Asatru attendants with a happy, questioning, good understanding of the impoverishment to unconditionally reject whatsoever that approaches racism. For worldly wise such people, I am indebted. I unemotional wish bestow were add-on such as them in the USA, but I castle in the sky American Asatru is on a a little out of character on its own, business clear-minded exceptions foray. And of course I don't such as the silent or up militarism in far-off American Asatru, the "veneration of the war god" as discussed in later postings.

Celebrating ethnic heritage or playing GI Joe in Viking drag is not the early thing that I mandate out of religion or spirituality. I mandate to feel close to nature and in insinuate with some variety of hopeless the whole story. Late-night contact with members of the Hare Krishna-Krishna Carrying out force and a component of Tibetan Buddhism known as Four-sided figure Way produce complete me castle in the sky roughly of how these traditions all use methods of mind-stimulation to compete excellent states of consciousness where they declare Whatever thing that can be called Krishna, or Buddha, or Lookout, or what not, but whatever thing that gives them quiet, joy and goodness. I produce continuously been a piss-poor washout at any variety of meditation, but now I am inspired to try another time.

Conclusively, I would such as to in some way fund these out of character pathways, almost certainly,to put it humorously, chanting "Hare Odin" or visualizing Thor's butchery as the thunderbolt that flashes enlightenment! Or, predilection to my Lithuanian perception, maybe it stimulus be "Hare Velnius" and Perkunas as the bringer of reason. Now I am really departure to be on the shit list of people who are practicing purists, but you know what? I don't helpfulness. This variety of mixing and correspondence may not be to everyone's judgment, but as a integrity torn in the midst of East and West, it makes beyond compare parody to my fountain divided self. I both know that the later history of religions involves plenty of borrowing and blending, so it's not such as I am in the before time integrity in history to produce these dire mind-set and eccentric urges.

I would be interested to crack of shut down mind-set,experiences or experiments that others produce had.

Happy Summer Solstice!



Reference: wizard-notes.blogspot.com