Shining Spirituality

Posted on by A Solitary Pagan

Things ARE working for you right now. What’s in your heart, mind, and spirit must manifest. The timing of it is perfect as it is. Don’t judge yourself when you don’t see instant results. Don’t compare your results to others. Your inner world is so unique to you. Be consistent right now. Keep the visualizations going. Keep the affirmations going. Keep being positive about everything. Every moment counts. Don’t judge yourself or even judge the timing of everything. Enter a state of gratitude, celebration, and completion of your manifestations. Everything is already yours. What you think about belongs to you. What you feel is making its way towards you. What you want wants you. What you give your energy to grows and amplifies in your awareness. Stay focused on purpose. Let what goes, go. Let what comes, enter. Just keep speaking, thinking, and feeling power over your life. Nothing is complicated when you learn to just breathe, believe, and trust that everything is already happening for you. You just need to keep shinning from within and being patient with yourself. Be loving to yourself. You are very special and you being here right now shows that your life means so much more than what you can understand sometimes. Start noticing the beauty about existence. The small things like your aliveness and your energy. Your mind. Your abilities. The billion things happening every second for you that doesn’t require your conscious attention. You are being supported so feel light today. Feel warmth and love. Feel energized to be your greatest through recognizing it and allowing it now. Keep going.

What It Means To Be A Spiritual Person Vs. A Religious Person

Posted on by A Solitary Pagan

What It Means To Be A Spiritual Person Vs. A Religious Person
Knowing the difference will let you discover your truth…

Are you a spiritual person or a religious person? People are inclined to think that these two lifestyles are the same, and on the surface they are.

What they both have in common is connecting to something larger than themselves. And knowing the difference between spirituality and religion will help anyone decide which path they should take to discover their truth.

Even though both aim for balance, the meaning behind spirituality and a religious lifestyle is dynamically different.

Being spiritual doesn’t mean you have the responsibility of worshiping a God. Instead, spirituality helps others focus not just on their own well-being, but for others, nature, or any sacred being. It focuses on the art of understanding the way of life, change, and living in a sacred manner.

Being religious is a personal system in which one follows spiritual guidelines, beliefs, practices, and worship of God or Gods.

Both of these are routes to discovering the divine truth. While religion looks to God for purpose, spirituality looks within life’s foundation.

Whether religious or spiritual, it’s vital that both are used for balance and not for selfish desires. Even though the connection shares a major common ground, spirituality and religion differ in more ways than one.

Here are some examples of the differences between the two.

1. Religion focuses on groups, spirituality focuses on individuality.
Religious people lean on gathering with others, to reach a unison connection with God, but spirituality develops their own belief system. Spiritual people tend to be more individual and less dependent on others to seek a stronger connection.

Sunday services and disciple groups help religious people study the Bible together to understand scripture. Religion is the belief of another man’s experience written down in sacred scripture, but spirituality is the belief of one’s own experience.

2. Religion has rules, spirituality has privacy.
Religion has a set of rules that followers must obey in order to stay “pure” and “holy.” Those rules encourage them to develop discipline to grow closer to God. These rules are public so others draw near, all in order for a church to increase their congregation.

Spirituality is more personal. While religion has various rules that others may or may not agree with, spirituality focuses on an individual’s aspect of a belief.

Spirituality offers an endless amount of potential benefits, while with religion it offers punishments or rewards. Spiritual people listen to their hearts and their own conscious mind in order to do what is right for their unique self.

3. Religion is tradition, spirituality tends to change as we grow.
As a spiritual person grows in life, so will their perception and beliefs. Through experience and self-reflection, a spiritual person will express a different aspect to reveal their version of the truth.

Religion is an ideology that holds ancient traditions that have kept communities together. If a change was to occur in religion, it would be a slow process. For example, churches are slowly accepting LGBTQ acceptance into their congregation, which before was unheard of.

If you notice, others abuse religion to inflict fear into another’s mind. It has caused wars and major conflict between ecocentric groups and countries.

Spirituality focuses on spreading love and selfless acts. It focuses only on good energy to allow people to be the best version of themselves.

4. Religion defines the truth, spiritual people decide their own truth.
Religion includes a preacher or religious leader who defines what the truth is to their congregation. They believe in sacred scriptures and expressing their own translation.

Spirituality seeks its own truth and translates it based on one’s experience. While one truth is being defined, the other is being discovered.

5. Religion intends to please a God or Gods, spirituality focuses on relationships.
Spirituality is a part of humanity that’s seeking a purpose in life. Being religious has a more connotative reaction from others.

It’s common to abuse religious power to degrade others for their lack of “purity.” But spirituality doesn’t aim to please a specific God; rather, it focuses on interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships.

6. Religion can be exclusive, spirituality is inclusive.
Religion is based upon traditional beliefs and teachings that may impose very strict interpretations and limitations, often excluding people of certain communities. Their worldview can isolate people who don’t see it that way.

Spirituality doesn’t make distinctions of that sort. The foundation of spirituality is a pure spirit of unifying force. That is, nobody is left out, behind, or forgotten.

7. Religion leans on faith, spirituality leans on experience.
Religion is faith. There’s no scientific evidence to corroborate its existence.

It’s a blind belief in something with unconditional acceptance of its teachings. There’s no questioning it. It’s believing without having it proven to you.

Spirituality leans heavily on the personal experience of one’s soul. The practices of spirituality, like meditation and yoga, gives people the chance to make “conscious contact” with expanded states of consciousness. This allows those who practice the teachings to experientially validate them.

8. Religion focuses on the future, spirituality deals with the present.
Spirituality focuses heavily on the now. It deals with being fully present and living as it happens. Spirituality embraces everything good, bad, and neutral as it happens without worrying about a future reward.

Religion requires one to worship so they will be rewarded later on. Some religions have a reward that comes after death, like getting into heaven.

Can you be both religious and spiritual?
Yes, someone can be both spiritual and religious.

Spiritual people can feel a stronger connection when their beliefs are intertwined with religion. For example, they may believe in God while asking for positive energy through their journey of self-discovering.

A way to practice both in a healthy manner will take some adjustment. A person will tend to lean on one side instead of balancing both. For example, if a person is more religious, they run the risk of becoming socially dependent on their church peers.

Being too spiritual may also cause long-term separation from loved ones or more concern for their own issues, instead of trusting a higher being for tomorrow’s worry.

Make sure that whatever path you choose to follow you bring a healthy balance to your lifestyle

Evoking Invisible Forces

Posted on by A Solitary Pagan

There are still many witches out there that believe that you can only perform spells, & magic by commanding or evoking invisible forces to which only come to you by performing secret incantations or ceremonies, maybe even speaking in Latin and dressing up in dark robes under a full moon in the middle of some dark and dingy woods while freezing your nipples off, to which only your high priest or priestess has access to via a very old and sacred Grimoire or Book of Shadows which has been passed down for generations.

True witches do not, we believe that you should just be yourself, dress as you like and do as you wish without fear of reprisal in the comfort of your own home, you may call upon the elements, demons or spirits and ask for their assistance in aiding you with your spell at anytime you like, but ask is the operative word here, remember that you do not command or demand anything. The more you give to nature the more nature returns its favours. Balance!

Spiritual Forgiveness

Posted on by A Solitary Pagan

It could be an idea, that for those who are at the beginning of a spiritual path,  the first step is not to attempt to be of service to others.

It may be better, to first take the steps, to know and love the self.

To come into communion with the self, so that one becomes to oneself, the individual that others are to themselves.

It is often the self which criticizes the self the most harshly.

The self has an internal voice, that pulls, and tears at one’s feeling of self-worth.

These negative voices, from within need to be reckoned with.

These voices are speaking to you of pain.

This pain must be investigated and all involved forgiven.

Most of the forgiveness, that is needed at the beginning of the spiritual search, is the forgiveness of the self.

For one may at times forgive others far more easily than one forgives the self.

It may be important to forgive,  love, and care for the self, in a nurturing manner in order that one, may love one’s neighbor as oneself/

After all.

How can service to others be performed, by those who do not love the self?

Earth-Centered Spirituality

Posted on by A Solitary Pagan

A long time ago in the ancient days of our ancestors, when human communities were more a less tribal and before the introduction of any religion, there were earth-centered practices.

Unlike religion, which surfaced much later, there were no dogmatic regulations, ceremonies or human make-believe figureheads as all that existed was nature.

The first spiritual impulses were born of a people who lived close to the land and who relied on it for survival.

They knew the ways of the seasons: the annual promise of the warming days, the long period of growth that followed, the importance of harvest, and the seasons of frost and death.

Women knew the ways of the moon, of healing and childbirth.

Men knew the movement of the herd animals and the secret ways of the hunter and the hunted.

There were no holy books or official spiritual doctrines.

The divine did not exist in some inaccessible realm.

It lived among and through the people.

It sang in bird songs, it formed the ocean’s waves, and it filled the human body, plants, and animals with life.

Spirituality had its birthplace right here—in the dirt, in the soil, in the struggles and triumphs of everyday life.

It emerged from human laughter and fear. It was something that pervaded one’s eating, sleeping, eliminating, and reproducing.

It governed family and community life, the coming of age, marriages, births, and deaths.

Spirituality had little to do with lofty philosophical notions—the things that emerge from thinking—it centered on the hard facts of life.

The soft facts of life must have played their part too. Love, tenderness, and compassion are universal human emotions that have long quickened the heart and informed the spirit.

These are the ancient, indigenous roots of the spiritual system that we today call Witchcraft.

In considering Witchcraft’s earthy spiritual roots, most likely it will come as no surprise that getting started on this path requires you to settle down into the metaphorical dirt—the experiences of the world itself—and get your hands and feet muddy.

You’ll need to taste, touch, smell, hear, see, and experience life and the spiritual energy that infuses all.

Go outside.

Find a green patch of grass, a dark, rich, root-buckled swath of earth, a stone formation, or a tree, and touch it.

Rub your hands across it

. Sit down and feel the weight of your body on the land.

Breathe deeply and allow the earth to hold you.