I like how magick, specifically witchcraft, is referred to as the crooked path. I look at how my life has taken so many strange twists and turns, how I have met so many interesting and amazing people, and how I have changed so much. Looking back, the lesson that I am working on the most is vulnerability.
Vulnerability has never been my strong suit. I was raised in a household where any negative emotion was ignored or repressed. Take that, along with what the toxic paradigm that men should not show emotions, and the result is that I forged a set of emotional and psychic armor that stood in the way of being authentic and seeing and feeling the world for what it is. To look at it further, this set of armor also prevented me from being able to be sensitive to other people’s emotions and resulted in an inability to see my own impact. I was very emotionally and spiritually numb, and to feel anything I went to extremes that took me down a truly destructive path.
Now that I have been in therapy for a number of years, and done more personal and shadow work, I can see the impact of my actions as I slowly take off my psychic armor so I can truly feel alive and part of the world. I wish I could apologize to all the people I have hurt and been emotionally careless with. I think the best I can do is move on from here, do my best to be a better person, and teach what I have learned by following this path of self-discovery and healing.
Vulnerability, for me, is not just about being in touch with my emotions and those of the people around me but being open to the energies of life, how the people are around me, and being able to get in touch with more subtle spiritual energies and the gods. I need to be open to Life in order to be a part of it and feel my place in the great dance of Life. As many teachers say, “you cannot heal, if you do not feel”, and like many on the Path, I still have a lot of healing to do.
In magick, we are dealing with subtle energies all the time and the inability to be sensitive to them makes the difference between magick being effective or failing. As I make myself more vulnerable to the World around me, I do see that my work is more potent and I feel more alive. On the the other side of this, I am learning how to have better boundaries. I can choose when and where to be vulnerable. For example, if I protect and shield myself energetically, I am not using a set of psychic armor all the time- I am screening the energy that I take in so I can make more deliberate and discerning choices. Vulnerability and boundaries are two sides of the coin of conscious choices and deliberate action. I can only take the leap of faith that vulnerability is what will help me down my path of not only magickal development, but of the evolution of the core of who I am.