Jow just blogged about how he used the fifth element and some Buddhist ideas to work through a migraine. Now, as a writer (and now a fellow blogger due to his bad judgement in asking me to come here!), I have a lot of opinions about people's thoughts and how they are presented and what does it say to the audience, etc.
It doesn't make you as popular as you would initially think.
So I've learned, that unless I am (a) directly asked my opinion or (b) it's a stranger who accepts comments in their blog from the likes of me, I keep my damn mouth shut. This is not something intrinsic to my nature, so it can be kindly called a work in progress.
But Jow sometimes can't help himself and has the masochistic urge to inquire into my habitrail like brain where all the magic lives.
So, my queries to his thesis statement about using the fifth element/Buddhist thought went something like this:
a. While I could see it working in a sudden intense experience (piercing, tattooing, a sudden migraine, etc.), what if it's something you live with every day?
b. To address the first point, space, if it is a chronic condition such as fibromyalgia, the condition has already bossily commandeered space in your body and on a good day, it makes a mess in its cubicle, on an okay day it just made you a lasagna in your kitchen and split, and on a bad day it's been living in your house like the worst gamer boy you can think of for the last two weeks and then took off. If pain is a constant, I have yet to be able to constantly will enough space for this shitty roommate because it never goes home. I am not to a point where I can constantly will anything - I need to work at my job, make dinner, get into pointless arguments, craft and watch Bones until I die. I do what I am "supposed" to do mundanely for my condition - watch my stress, diet, work a shorter job, exercise (ish), take a cocktail of pills that works for me, etc., etc. So what should I be doing here magically?
c. Yes, I need to make another mojo bag, and I do pray, but surely from a magical standpoint I could do more.
d. For a later to be expanded on entry, meditation does not work for me. I have generalized anxiety and likely will for the rest of my life. That + real, empty your noggin meditation = awful for me. I also have been a good pony in the mundane world and done my time on the couch, take appropriate medications, and come to terms with living with it.
e. The aspect of Buddhism wherein I am supposed to be a far better person than I am capable of being while in a major flare up is lost to me. Thinking about how someone is starving, someone is going through childbirth, or someone is going through chemo, does not alleviate my pain. I feel sorry for them, I feel bad for them, I wish they weren't suffering in such great ways, but it does not alleviate my own suffering.
Jow didn't really have an answer for me off the top of his head (nor did I expect him to!). And we talked a little bit about it and I said I'm more than willing to be a guinia pig and it's something to think about. Yes, it's outside of his personal experience which can make a non medical doctor/less experienced spirtual worker nervous, but that's a big part of being a spiritual worker/hearth woman/root doctor/pick a term that doesn't make you uncomfortable. And if we want to sell more than just items at Trevia, we need to be able to answer questions and to make mojo bags, spirit bottles, whatever other things we connoct for people outside our life experience and I think it's also okay to flat out say, this is something I haven't dealt with (as Jow did!) and to brainstorm some ideas for the client.
So if anyone would like to use me as a guinia pig in the name of occultism (. . .science), please feel free to drop me a line about it!
Personally, right now to better educate myself I'm going through Mme. Yronwode's book alphabetically which is strangely soothing.