Mystery?

 

image from Stencil

Sometimes, I start thinking about a blog knowing exactly what I want for the topic, even if I didn't already see the details. I didn't this week. While there is much I could write about regarding our culture and what direction will best govern its future, I already said the immediate and now, I want to see more of how it plays out since voters in some states have spoken. Let's see the results before more about it.

What is on my mind is more personal. Given my age, 82, I am definitely nearer to death than younger folks-- or so we would expect. I have no reason to think mine is imminent, but then whoever knows.

The topic for today isn't though unique to being this age. I've thought about spirituality and death all of my life. In my mid-50s, I got curious about reincarnation. Reading a lot about it didn't answer my questions; so I spent a summer doing meditative regressions, where you follow instructions from a tape to take yourself back down steps to maybe your own past lives.

Being a writer, always thinking of stories, I had some concern for the stories I had gathered with that method. There were 6 or so of them, but none with being a queen or celebrity. All had sad endings. At the end of that summer, I worked with a hypnotherapist to get the same stories with one more. She asked a salient question when I brought up my concern. Did you cry when you come up with earlier stories for books. I know that some writers do, but I don't. But with the past live meditations, I did. 

For my personal exploring, that was more or less all I did-- leaving the answers of the beyond to mystery. Although, when I lost my beloved cat at too early an age, I did ask for a dream about reincarnation. I did have a very specific dream (not about the cat) that led to my paranormal/fantasy series.

Recently, on YouTube, I watched a podcast where the host was asking questions of a doctor, who does such research on near death experiences, which are death except the people come back. I found it of interest and wanted to share the link here with readers for others to think about.

All Souls Day Episode.

It turned out the host was wrong, not on All Souls Day, but at the time of year for such questions to arise with Samhain. This is a very spiritual time of the year for many religions.  A good time to consider what might be beyond what we see.

Spiritual Places -- What if...

 Mural, one of many painted on Tucson walls. Photo ours as are the rest below.

Editing is a large portion of a writer's life, like it or not. Recently, for me, that began with a book I had edited multiple times. The need for this edit was wanting information for the manuscript that I had abandoned when Covid hit. Rereading and considering where it went next, I discovered I needed more information about characters that would inhabit it-- those of spirit and earthly natures. 

So, back to the book ahead of it, which was much longer than I intended the new one to be. They are all part of a series, which I call Mystic Shadows because of its a mix of mysticism, romance along with darkness. 

There are two earlier ones in that series, which are not telling the stories of the Hemstreet/Cordova families. All Mystic Shadows stories go into the personalities on both sides of the spiritual divide.  I enjoy writing those kinds of books, using my imagination for what might be-- or not be.

The Hemstreet series idea came from the time I drove with Ranch Boss through Barrio Viejo again (we'd been through there years earlier, when it was in much different condition). On one of our times, in 1965, it wasn't as safe. It was though very interesting as we'd see older folks, many of diverse races, sitting in doorways smoking or drinking. I have to say that back then, it had its own level of interest. With many of the doors wide open, there likely wasn't much air conditioning back then. The smells of food cooking made their way to the street.

In 2015, it had changed. I saw the potential for characters and a series involving modern witches. The homes in that barrio had been modernized and yet kept the historic nature. Younger, professional people do things like that. 

Two other things, for me, that always had added to the neighborhood's charm, are shrines, one with a history, El Teradito, and one with some spiritual figures in the altar (years earlier it had had a madonna sculpture. (Unfortunately, I can't remember its name). The shrines add to the mystique of that barrio. Do they have power for believers? Some believe so, as el Teradito also is known as the Wishing Shrine. The desert Southwest has a lot of those kinds of places, often tucked into hillsides with no names, and where you'd only see them if you knew to look for them. 

So, this neighborhood of mysticism, history, and modernization seemed a perfect setting for my imaginary witches to live, work, and find love. They are like ordinary people only born with magical powers. Their goal always is to right wrongs for the benefit of a culture that rejects them. 

Finding where these books fit in the novel, genre world has been a challenge. You can give your own books their genre, but others may not agree. What I have found with my current research is my view of spirituality is out there, but not necessarily in fiction books. More, of it, comes from those who share their culture's own spiritual truths. 

My thinking for these books came also from what I grew up thinking as a little girl living at the end of a gravel road on a hill that abutted wilderness. Lots of space for imagination to grow... or to see more than I might have if I had been busy in a town. Mystical thinking yes, but not part of a total fantasy world, rather our world with secrets most of us are not privy to-- unless we go seeking.

Should we seek? There can be risks, I think, depending on motivations. But, if you have a curious mind, you already may have looked various places to understand the mysteries of life. Perhaps you found an answer or answers that suited you and you quit right there. Or maybe you are a spiritual seeker. If so, you might like my Mystic Shadows series that combines place, spirits, families, romance, adventure, purpose, with questions of what might be here, IF we looked. 

More coming on these books. If such explorations, which will be in the blogs, makes you uneasy, you, you might drop mine for a while, as I delve into our world and that of the spirit-- not one of any particular religion, but maybe a mix of many. Everyone should do what suits best for their lives. Is there one answer for us all? Maybe... or maybe that truth goes beyond an answer to something bigger. Maybe...

 

Spirit-filled living & Terraphilia

 

 

A Year of Spiritual Thinking from Practicing Terraphilia 

by Susan J. Tweit

I am embarking on an experiment that both terrifies me and exhilarates me: I am beginning a Year of Spiritual Thinking. For the next year, I am going to give myself permission to radically shift my perspective and experience everything—my writing, my re-storying work, my daily routine and relationships, my routines and rituals and habits; my house and even my truck, all of my experiences, and the world around me—through a primarily spiritual lens.

This year of spiritual thinking is most determinedly not religious. The word spiritual, says my dictionary, means “relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.” It is deeply rooted in that connection to the ephemeral and essential, arising from the Latin spiritus, which means both “breath” and “spirit,” and itself comes from the verb spirare, “to breathe.” So to consider the spiritual is to consider the mystery of our essential selves, and also the way we inspire the formless, colorless, odorless gas—oxygen—we require to live.

In this year of spiritual thinking, I hope to explore the essence of breath and spirit, both of which are basically inexpressible in words, and the wisdom gained from that essence.

My main intent here is to shift the balance of my life from striving to a deeper level of being in love with this world and we who share the planet.

By striving I mean attempting to achieve something, whether that is some kind of goal in my writing or an award for one of my books, or a review in a particular place, a certain level of income, writing an article for a particularly prestigious journal—that kind of outward focused striving for power, recognition, money, or material things.

My aim in taking this year of spiritual retreat at home within ordinary life is to simply shift my focus from striving, as I have done all of my adult life, to reflecting, to considering what this life means, and sharing that wisdom, whatever it may be. Hard-earned as it may be, and in my case, it usually is hard-earned because I tend to learn by smacking my forehead into some obstacle, not by thinking about it.

 From Striving to Engaging in Relationship with the Living World

 I simply want to change the tenor of my life from the years of working toward something—“some thing”—material or career-focused or whatever, to being. To taking part of this life in a deeper and richer way, to being engaged in this existence in a deeper and richer way, to practicing my terraphilia* not for something, but to be part of something.

To be in relationship, to deepen my relationship with this living world and we who share the planet in a way that I am most concerned with the richness of relationship, not richness in the material or social or cultural sense.

I have no program or framework for the year ahead. I am not going to study with a particular teacher. I have no goals or expectations in mind. I am not going to go anywhere or attempt to “escape” my ordinary life in order to find enlightenment. I want to learn what I can learn through the minutia and wonder of everyday life.

There is a Buddhist saying that the fastest way to enlightenment is not through retreating to some sacred community, but by living our everyday lives. Nor does reaching enlightenment change our lives, only how we live them. The other Buddhist saying that comes to mind is from mindfulness meditation teacher Jack Kornfield, “After the ecstasy, the laundry.”

 Recognizing the Sacred in Everyday Life

I want to shift the moments that comprise my life to the spiritual. To, for instance, make my morning breakfast cereal in a more mindful way, to take time to thank the oats, the blue corn ground into meal, and the flax. The grapevines that grew the fruits dried into raisins, the blueberry bushes that flowered and were pollinated to swell into blueberries. The clean water the cereal soaks in, the cinnamon trees whose bark produced the cinnamon, the ginger root dried and ground into ginger.

I want to remember to be part of this life in its most quotidian moments in a way that I see and value the richness and the spiritual depth and the connection to all others with whom we share this planet. That’s what this year of spiritual thinking is all about.

I have no expectation of how it will go or what I will learn. To have expectations is to doom any possibility of change and transformation. Because to have expectations is to already have made a box to fit into. And that negates the idea of reaching within and without and learning more deeply how I belong in this world and how I can love this world.

And that combination of terror and exhilaration? It comes from, as the philosopher L.A. Paul writes in her book Transformative Experience, “[Knowing] that undergoing the experience will change what it is like for [me] to live [my] life, and perhaps even change what it is like to be [me], deeply and fundamentally.” link to L.A. Paul’s book: https://academic.oup.com/book/7934

We can’t and don’t know how life will transform us. But we can learn from it.

 *Terraphilia: n. The intrinsic affection for and connection to the earth and the planet’s web of lives we all carry in our cells. When we don’t tend this bond, we become lonely, hungry for something we often cannot articulate; we are less than whole. My late husband and I borrowed and re-defined the word to explain what motivated our work, his abstract sculpture bringing local rocks into our everyday lives as “ambassadors of the earth,” and my writing that explores the bond between humans and the rest of this living earth.

My weekly newsletter, Practicing Terraphilia aims to help us explore, grow and strengthen a reciprocal relationship with this numinous planet. We’ll consider whether our daily actions and behaviors are aligned with loving this earth and our fellow passengers on the planet. We’ll look at ways to be the best humans we can be, whatever the challenges and times. And ways to love ourselves—just as we are—in the doing.

Blessings! Susan

Links:

Practicing Terraphilia: https://practicingterraphilia.substack.com/  (If you have trouble signing up, email me with your name and email, and I’ll add you to the list manually. info@susanjtweit.com)

Bless the Birds: https://bookshop.org/p/books/bless-the-birds-living-with-love-in-a-time-of-dying-susan-j-tweit/14982089?ean=9781647420369

Walking Nature Home: https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477309346/walking-nature-home/

My other books on my website: http://susanjtweit.com/books/