It’s OK to be Selfish

You read that right.  Read it again, just to be sure.  Yes, you read that title correctly.  Now, repeat after me:

It’s OK to be selfish.

Read once more.  Say it out loud.  Get the flavor of those words in your mouth and embedded in your mind.  It’s OK to be selfish.

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This is a hard lesson for many people to learn.  We’re told so often that we should think of others, that we should stop being selfish, that what we do or say helps no one but ourselves.

You know what?  Sometimes, it really is OK to be selfish.

This is important not only for mundane life, but for magical practice as well.  In everyday life, most of us are surrounded by people: on our commute, at our jobs, at home with family, etc.  And how many times have you heard “Stop being so selfish” or “you shouldn’t be selfish, you should share,” or any other variation?  My guess is, most of us have heard it many times over the years, and usually when someone wanted something from us, whether that something was our time, our attention, our services, or our toys.  (And don’t even get me started on sharing books . . . that’s another topic entirely.)

It is ingrained into us early on.  Selfishness is bad.  Selfishness on any level is bad.  Being selfish is horrible and negative and ugly.

After 26 years of life, my response is a big “screw that.”  Because I have finally learned it’s OK to be selfish.  It’s OK to take time for myself.  It’s OK to not waste my time and energy helping other people solve their problems when they don’t really want to solve their problems in the first place.  It’s perfectly alright to say no to someone’s request or demand.  It’s OK to not want to share certain things, especially if they’re special to me.  It’s acceptable to be selfish and place my wants and needs first.

Now, I’m not saying we should all turn into selfish brats that never share, never consider other people, and never place others’ needs first.

I am saying that there is a balance.  But first and foremost, you must take care of yourself first.  Otherwise, how can you possibly help anyone else?  If people are asking too much of you and you feel run-down and drained, it’s OK to step back and say you’re not going to help anyone else for a while until you’re back on your own two stable feet.  If people want money from you, but you have bills to pay, it’s OK to say that you have to pay your bills first and don’t have money to spare right now, but that maybe later on you would be able to help.  If people are invading your space and you’re trying to concentrate/study/sleep/relax, it’s OK to request that they leave or quiet down.

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It’s easy to overextend yourself, especially if that’s already in your basic nature.  I used to give so much of myself away to other people without even thinking about what that meant for me.  Then I would feel exhausted and drained and wonder why.  Eventually I figured it out: I was spending so much time and energy focused on others that I had stopped caring about myself.  And that’s when I discovered how pernicious and corrosive the never-be-selfish mindset truly is.

Magically speaking, I think it’s almost necessary to be somewhat selfish.  You have to make sure you’re not too drained, for example, so that you have enough energy to do whatever working or spell you want to do.  Protection spells are all over the place, but some people (myself included) never think to work one even when they need it.  Why?  Because you aren’t necessarily thinking about yourself first, you’re thinking about the other person or people who has posed the threat.  And in much of Paganism, the path is what you make it.  The right path for you is what feels right for you.  No one else.  If that’s not selfish, then what is?  You have to place your feelings and your intuition at the forefront of your mind, because that is what tells you if something is wrong or right.  Someone else could say such-and-such ritual is practiced all the time or so-and-so is a widely respected individual in the community, but if something doesn’t feel right to you, then for you it’s not right.  This idea of going with whatever works best or feels right for the individual is often spoken of in the wider Pagan community, but has anyone stopped to consider how selfish that notion really is?  It’s selfish in that in order for it to be true, each person must put themselves and their feelings first in their world.  And that’s perfectly OK.  You have to know what it is you want for your life in order to go after it, and what you want likely will not mesh with what other people want, or want for you.

It’s OK to put yourself first.  It’s OK to be selfish.  Just don’t get a big head about it!

Casting on Other People

The subject has come up recently, both in the last PSU meeting and in life, of what it means to cast spells on or manipulate the energy of other people.  In PSU, it was a friendly debate and sharing of opinions.  In life, I just had someone try to change my energy.

I did not like it.

In fact, it rather made me angry.  Sure, he meant well, but I had just met this person.  He knew nothing more than my name and face.  I knew the same, except when he introduced himself to the group I had gone to with my mother, he said he was an intuitive healer.  Fine, I can deal with that, I met a handful of such people while I was out in Arizona.  They were very nice ladies, and I felt no qualms about allowing them to muck with my energy field because they: 1) asked permission, and 2) explained exactly what they were doing, both before and as they worked.

This guy didn’t.  He asked me to sit down and work with him–and if that’s his way of asking permission, it is nowhere near adequate.  Then he tried to rid me of problematic past lives, told me my grounding sucked, and told my mom to keep me coming back because I need a lot of work.

Now, sure, it’s possible the last two might be true.  I know already my grounding needs improvement, and I’m already doing the work to improve myself.  My problem comes in when he didn’t explain what he was trying to do until afterward and barely asked permission, and then he attempted to muck with my past lives.  I’m not even sure if the latter is possible, but regardless of possibility, my past lives are my own business, thank you, and I certainly did not invite him to do anything about that.

The point with this, besides telling a story, is that he may have had good intentions, but the ethics of his actions are very grey.  I believe that if I had allowed him to make what changes he was trying to make, those changes would be made–but because I was on guard and resistant to what he was doing, I blocked his efforts.  And then when I left I grounded and undid everything he might have done.

I come from the belief that it’s important to ask permission and explain your actions before attempting to manipulate others’ energy or being.  While whatever you do probably won’t work if the other person is resistant to your efforts or truly does not want to change, you are still attempting to somehow change someone else.  You would be wasting your tie and energy on someone who doesn’t want your help, and what’s the point of that?

This relates to spells in the example of a healing spell.  You may have the best intentions in the world of, say, healing your sick granny–but you would be doing her no favors by not asking her permission before casting your spell and her soul wants to move on.  There are now two sides to this debate (that I’m aware of) those who say that if she truly wants to move on and not be affected by anything else, she will move on and your spell has no effect; and those who say that you can heal the body even if she wants to go.

Either way, why would you want to take the chance?

And this applies to any healing, or really any spell.  You don’t know what the other person truly wants or needs unless you ask, and even then, they themselves may not know.  By not asking, you are making an assumption about another person’s state of being.  You don’t know what the other person is supposed to be learning from their disease or misfortune or heart break or accident, and curing or fixing it for them means they learn nothing.

I think it’s wisest to always ask permission before casting on or trying to influence other people.  Even if you have good intentions and think you know what they want or need, basing magickal actions on assumptions is usually a bad idea.  It’s like not doing your homework before turning it in and only handing in a blank sheet of paper.  You’re unprepared and it could backfire.

The Toxicity of ‘Try’

Most people would, I think, agree that there is power in words.  Otherwise, why speak?  Why sing?  Why use words when we cast a spell instead of stay silent?  Words give an extra oomph to things, and ephemeral, untouchable words can wound just as deeply as any physical weapon.

But there are some words that you just don’t want in your vocabulary because they are so negative, or hurtful, or just plain toxic.  For example, I can’t say the “N” word (think racism) because it feels, to me, like such a horrible, ugly word.  I can barely think it without shuddering and quickly moving on.

There are some words that are subtly toxic.  The word “try” is one of those.  As Yoda said (in his much-quoted admonishment to Luke), “Do, or do not. There is no try.”  We should all be thinking like Yoda here.  “Try” is a toxic word.

Now you’re probably asking why and wondering where I’m going with this.  We use this word all the time, after all, and it has no horrible connotations or denotations, no associations with racism or discrimination, no obvious negativity.  Yet it is negative.  It is terribly negative, and many of us use this word all the time without realizing what it does.

By saying you will try to do something, you basically set yourself up for failure.  You leave yourself open to the possibility of failure or non-accomplishment, and that’s what ends up tripping you up.  I’ve been saying for months that I’m trying to lose weight and eat healthier.  What I didn’t realize then was that by using “try” I was sabotaging myself.  By using “try” I was leaving wiggle room to fudge my eating habits and my exercise routine, and guess what, I failed in my goal.  All because of that insidious little word “try.”

“Try” makes you think that you have made a commitment when you haven’t.  “Try” makes you think you’re accomplishing something when in reality you haven’t.  “Try” leaves open the possibility for failure and by using it, more often than not you do set yourself up for failure because you have not fully committed to the action in question.  No one says “I’ll try to marry you,” they say “I will marry you.”  That’s just an example, but it’s a good one.  “Try” is a cop-out, a halfway waiting place in the mind, an insidious and underhanded attempt to commit to something but still be able to pull out if you don’t feel like doing it.  It is a lazy use of language that has become a common excuse for not doing things we have committed to.  How many times have you heard someone say “I tried to do X, but . . .” or “I’ll try to be there, but . . .”  This word is almost always followed by some kind of excuse or reason for not doing the action involved.  Now think of how many times you yourself have used this word to get out of something with a half-commitment. . .

In magick, we don’t want our spells to only go halfway.  We want our spells to go all the way, to do what we’ve intended them to do.  We don’t use “try” in our spells, so why do we use it in our everyday language?  By instinct, we know that “try” sabotages our spellwork, yet we apparently haven’t figured out that “try” sabotages the rest of our lives as well.  If we don’t use this word in magickal vocabulary, why in the world would we consider it acceptable in mundane vocabulary?

String Magic

While looking through a bunch of printouts from the Internet from a LONG time ago, I came across a few spells that used thread.  I’d never tried them before but I was intrigued.  I decided to try one.  Has anyone else used string as the staple ingredient in a spell?  This spell, simply entitled “Manifesting Knot”, seems to work along the same lines as the law of attraction; visualize what you wish manifest, tie a knot in the string, and keep the string somewhere safe until the want/need has manifested.  Sort of the law of attraction with a physical representation.  Anyway, the color of the string represents the need: red for romance/love/passion, green for money or wealth, blue for healing, yellow for happiness, all the usual color associations.

Well, I decided to try this spell.  I could see, after thinking about all the angles of the spell, nothing wrong in the principle of it.  The only problem I came across was what to do with the string once the need has manifested–do  untie the knot, or burn it, or just throw it away?  I decided burning would be best, since untying would be hard and throwing it out seemed like the wrong thing to do.  I tried the spell and visualized my need, asking for the solution to my need to manifest, but no word yet on the manifestation–but then there isn’t a time limit to this spell either.

Has anyone else heard of or used string magic?  I tried looking up more information but couldn’t find very much that seemed reliable.