hi, i hope this comes across the way i intend (sincere curiosity with an appreciation for your perspective rather than combative or argumentative or something) lol. i am wondering if you could share your thoughts on what ways we can interact with the divine in a healthy way (especially externally)? as in, what does this look like in practice. i think part of my failure to imagine this is just because im still a beginner in many ways but also what you seem to be getting at in the maladaptive daydreaming post is just kind of perplexing to me, probably because you are presenting a contrary opinion to much of what pagan spaces are talking about.
i hope that is coherent!! i’m sorry if it is not. my mind works strangely sometimes. i appreciate your blog very much, you are always giving me more things to think deeply about
please know all those disclaimers are not necessary!! I will always do my best to assume questions are in good faith and answer them accordingly, and I think you phrased your question very well. this is not a blog where every question and counterpoint is taken as a personal attack!
I've been meaning to write about this topic, actually, both about how relationships with divinity have radically changed in the last few decades (and not necessarily for the better) and about historic and functional relationships with the divine. I definitely acknowledge - and appreciate your noticing - that my point there (re: a lot of neopagan deity interactions being repackaged maladaptive daydreaming) is in direct opposition with the common neopagan narrative. It's one of quite a handful of things that I think are extremely widespread symptoms of a very dysfunctional socio-religious paradigm, which I guess is what my whole blog is about lmao, so be on the lookout for more detailed opinions on it. At any rate:
for starters, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said "especially externally," because I think that's problem number one. I think a lot of people find their spirituality internally, which isn't a problem per se, but it does become one in a social system like the one we live in, where hyperindividualism and being constantly caught up in your own mind are very pervasive features. I feel confident in stating that most people nowadays exist almost completely in their own mind, and they experience a very harsh boundary between the self and the not-self. my advice to almost any person coming to me for healing would be to come out of yourself rather than draw further inward, and have faith that somewhere along the way you will find experiences as if not more valuable than the ones you had or constructed in your own mind. and I suppose I should add that experiences constructed in your mind can be perceived as being outside of yourself, which is an important mechanism in how those beliefs regarding deities function. one book I highly recommend that really helped me understand how to dissolve this idea that the border of my being lies in my skin was Ecopsychology (ed. Theodore Roszak), especially Roszak's first essay in it called 'Where Psyche Meets Gaia'. I've written down to write a little about how to actually leave your body and enter the world, it's been on my mind recently anyway and I'm currently lacking in terminology a little bit. Moving on:
In the act of coming into the world I think there are a lot of confronting realizations about divinity. One of the most pivotal experiences in my personal religious journey, that I am very grateful for having had so early on, was realizing the fucking scale that the world really exists on. how fucking huge not just this world but the universe at large is, and the actual incomprehensible nature of some of the forces anthropomorphized or metaphorized in traditional pagan literature. with that realization, and many others thereafter, I think the only logical conclusion from an intersectional, historical, and social perspective, is that the gods aren't meant for the function they're forced into by that neopagan narrative. because we are so removed from the world, and so removed from spirituality (cf.: Mundane vs Magic), we are missing a lot of crucial intermediary features of religion in conventional neopaganism. for example: spirits! I think the place the gods are forced into by neopaganism is where spirits should be. there's this attitude in the community towards spirits that paints them as small, fairly insignificant and mostly noncommunicative features of the natural world that have no real bearing on human lives, and it is the gods that are tasked with fulfilling people's desires and doing their bidding, to put it bluntly. in reality, historically, it would have been these close bonds with natural features, powerful local spirits like faery kings and communities of deceased wise women and even just your own house spirit who you would be making quid-pro-quo agreements with and asking for help with your daily life. hell, even the spirits contained within plants you make tea out of, you know?
which I bring up primarily because otherwise my answer to your question would sound like me encouraging more distance between people and their spirituality, which in actuality is something I want to achieve the opposite of. It's just that these maladaptive, generally imagined, close and casual personal bonds that people tout on social media have no replacement. they shouldn't exist. they are nothing but a byproduct of a post-rationalist, post-evangelist pseudoreligion taking a strong cultural foothold in a time period where people are not just viciously lonely, but also deeply removed from their physical environment. people use deities as replacements for more immediate social bonds because they have nobody else, and it is fucking harrowing to witness when you're aware of how these things came to be. so I bring these things up because a healthy relationship with the divine is built on a foundation of a healthy relationship with the world, because the divine resides in the world. people need to have community with other people, they need to feel a connection with the world around them, or it is only natural that they start commodifying deities and reducing them to nothing but a familiar spirit sipping tea in the background while they type on Discord, to resolve their own loneliness. quarantine, when I catch you quarantine.
SO NOW THAT I'VE HAD ALL OF THIS PREAMBLE, here are some of my big tips for healthy relationships with the divine.
For one: think about what the divine is, to you and in general. what constitutes divinity, and what makes godhood? if you practice a particular religion there is likely already an established understanding of these things, which is very beneficial to delve into. for example, something that helped me to understand and engage with divinity in heathenry is that divinity is something that is possessed by almost all creatures to some extent, in a sort of neverending increasing scale. it was also extremely helpful for me (both in understanding and in unpacking some of my personal trauma around divinity) that "godhood" is actually not all that relevant of a concept to heathenry, and the "gods" are more a particular group of very great spirits that have a particular social relationship with humanity. "godhood" is an ongoing conversation with a demographic willing to worship. these kinds of learnings helped me unpack my biases and preconceived notions, and helped me to shape my practice in a religion that can be extremely confusing to navigate for how little literature there is on practicing it.
Learn to find the divine in nature. in my opinion, divinity is not a status, it's a verb, a state of being, a perpetual act - conscious or not, stoppable or not. Divinity can be found in a lot of the natural processes of the universe, it can be found in the way everything ties into itself and each other, in the greater forces of the world, in actions and reactions. Question whether a vulture feasting on death and distributing the nutrients back into the earth isn't some kind of god themself, and any answer you take away from that question is a good one, yes or no. I think you can't have a fulfilling relationship with the divine if you feel like you are constantly needing to pursue it, because it really should be constantly palpable that it is running through you, because you are part of nature.
Don't tie your self-worth to perceived responses from the divine. I haven't perfected this myself, I sometimes get into fits of trauma-based fear that my gods have turned on me or forsaken me, and those feelings are okay to have! But it is definitely pivotal to unlearn these things as best as possible and have sincere conversations with yourself about why that's not a functional way to engage with the divine.
Don't take without giving, and don't expect to be given anything without reciprocity and mutuality. this will of course vary from culture to culture and religion to religion, but generally speaking your approach to the divine should not be from a place of commodity or consumption. your relationship with divinity should not hinge on or orient itself around what you expect that relationship can do for you, or how it can be a tool for personal satisfaction. it should be wilful engagement in a social relationship with the world around you.
consider what is actually realistic to ask the divine to do for you, and put effort into filling the gaps they can't or shouldn't yourself. Be an active participant in your own life!
Understand that by the nature of what divinity is, a relationship with it likely is not going to be as simple, straightforward, or easy to interpret as a conversation and relationship with another person would be. there's not going to be easy answers, there's not going to be direct conversation or often very much direct communication at all. we are not what they are, and that's okay! interpreting how they communicate/it communicates is a learning curve and something that people in the past have dedicated their entire lives to understanding, so don't beat yourself up and make peace with it! it makes the gifts, the acknowledgments, the approvals, and the lessons so much more meaningful.
part of dissolving the boundary of self and not-self is also understanding that divinity lives in you, too, and your gods do as well - especially the indweller kinds and the primordial types. being human, or really existing at all, is to take part in the act of divinity and to taste it in highly condensed doses. fury, insanity, poetry and breathing are all ways of embodying Allfather, as one very specific example. when you learn how to balance introspection and looking outward, you'll find that in reality, out will always loop back to in - but in this day and age we HAVE to learn to look out properly first, and not always as far as immediately possible, but also every inch in between.
I also could not emphasize proper sit-down learning enough. as much as I go on about learning through practice, experience and in-the-moment-exploration, I think you cannot use those skills to their fullest potential if you have no theoretical basis to work off of, and no one could be expected to form that basis all on their own. there is a reason tradition exists, and leaning on traditional and historical notions and belief structures, even if you later deviate from them, is pivotal. close and personal relationships with the divine are so unspeakably much more difficult if you don't even understand how they are theorized to exist or function. Cosmology is the backbone of religion!!!!
I think that's all I've got for now, sorry about the genuinely ungodly long response, I really hope it's helpful for you. more questions always welcome, thank you so much for asking anon!!
