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Now that I'm home, well rested, and otherwise able to think again, here's my horrifically long reply to the wonderful input folks were giving while I was away:
Incognito:
your response to what has happened here seems, to me, to be completely lacking in humility. And gratitude, for that matter.
Well, I have fairly high self-esteem and a very strong sense of self, and see nothing wrong with that. If the gods have a problem with that, why did They call me? Why not call on the countless people around me who have low self-esteem and difficulty with their sense of self?
But the gods have made it more than clear that this is something They like about me, and want me to keep, and moreover, They want me to figure out how to teach other people how to find themselves.
Since here I am only describing a very specific, negative event, you're not seeing all the stuff I'm grateful for, or any of the positive interactions I have with the gods I work with.
You're also not seeing the part where I establish a willingness to not recieve if They cannot treat me respectfully. I'm willing to discuss, negotiate, whatever you want to call it, to develop a better understanding of what works and what doesn't between us, but I don't believe working with the gods entails treating Them however They please and letting Them treat me however They please, with no say at all in what I find harmful.
This isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. That seems very lacking in shades of grey much less color.
I thought the Powers I was working with were fallible just like humans, I wouldn't go near them
Um... have you read Norse Mythology of any kind? The gods are definitely fallible. I work with Them for the same reasons I work with people who have knowledges and skills I lack - They can do things I cannot do. From what They tell us, we can do things They can't do, too, which is why They bother with us at all.
its a bit like throwing a party in someone else's house for you and your mates, and then being miffed that they, the owner of the gaff, turn up unannounced and start drinking all the booze.
To my perspective it's a bit more like holding a support group in His neighbor's house, and then being miffed when He shows up to hit me with a stick because somebody in the group used my cell phone to call Him.
EvKG:
I'm troubled by how much of this discussion takes Odin, his existence, and his omnipotence and goodwill for granted.
Well, I take His existence for... er, not per se granted, but as clearly proven to my personal satisfaction. His omnipotence is not in question - He isn't. But He is considerably more powerful than me. His goodwill certainly IS in question, and is in fact half of what I'm wrestling with.
The other half has not a damned thing to do with Odin, it's just that He happens to have been the being who caused me to become aware of it. That's the issue of dealing with the loss of control itself.
Mordant:
Some people seem to be saying that she should yield or trust in the ultimate benevolence of that entity.
Are people really arguing that?
That was my understanding of several people's arguments, anyway. Not yours. Sort of xk's (with the conditional if I'm doing such work at all), and definitely Incognito's.
My experience suggests that sometimes Their take on what is going on with us is just radically skewed by time and the vast changes in culture between now and their day.
True. I've had a very strong sense that the gods are putting specific cross-sections of humans through similar paces so They can figure out how we've changed after all this time. Not like guinea pigs or anything, but the same way one offers many options of food to a baby, to figure out what the baby likes to eat so you can care for your child properly. It doesn't always work to just ask if the question isn't something a child would understand, or has sufficient experience to answer.
This particular occasion doesn't strike me as being directly related to that, though. I've already mentioned (since you posted this comment) what gave me the impression that it wasn't a mistake on His part. Then, also, Odin seems to have stayed up-to-date in ways that others haven't. It seems likely, if not downright obvious to me that He has kept His presence in the world by poking at various writers and storytellers to make Him a character in their stories. He is the most current of that pantheon, and consistantly behaves accordingly in my experience.
Sin:
The immediate thoughts that come into my head, in that particular cosmology, are Fenrir. Having said that i feel like a prick for even bringing it up
i think it depends on how your seeing this interaction, in the context of a spirit relationship or an archetype/information way
I deal with this practice specifically in the context of spirits/individuals rather than an archetypes/informations, but I believe both apply. I've dealt with Fenris before in an involuntary posession context, and no, I wouldn't choose to work with Him directly that way. (I was not the unwilling horse. I was one of several people working to solve the problem. The poor guy had had WAY too much to drink and was having his head flipped around between himself, his own wolf fetch aspect, and Fenris. I have no idea how Fenris got into that mix.)
The battle to me, and this is my own translation, reads like a dark night of the soul
That makes sense.
They can bend them alittle but they are caught in a sense in there own stories, much like we are in the stories we tell ourselves.
Which is very much a part of my experience. For example, Odin is so constantly preparing for Ragnarok, He often seems to be stuck in the mode of training anyone and everyone to the hardships of a warrior.
The problem with that is that I avoid the military and whatnot for the exact same reason - I don't deal well with that style of training.
Id:
Asking a God that you do trust for a second opinion could be helpful, but I don't understand Divine politics - could some Gods be swayed by fear of another?
Sure, I suppose. The gods I might ask are more likely to be swayed by love, however. Freya and Frigga are both awfully fond of The Old Man.
In the absence of a Divine code of conduct somewhere or an absolute authority above Odin that we could appeal to for a decision, it seems to me that we can't make a real decision as to whether Odin objectively behaved wrongly here. There's simply no such thing.
Oy! That I don't know what to do with that, but it's a good point. How do we handle it between humans when the humans can't agree on a single "objective" source for that code? How should Christians treat Buddists? I'm used to the answer being that both parties negotiate for the rules they can agree on, and there must be some form of consequence to the agreed-upon rules being broken.
But... how can I possibly arrange for consequences that Odin will mind?
If you, from a space of clarity and reflection, decide that for you this was harmful, then maybe that is the lesson.
This is just very, very useful. Thank you.
If there is a message for you in this, I think you're more likely to get at it by sitting with that feeling and experiencing it and not judging it for being wrong or useless - and not judging, if it's possible for you in that space, the experience or the entity that brought it to you - than you are by subjecting the experience to analysis.
THAT. That right there. I cannot believe I had to be told that from the outside. That's exactly what Freyr is always poking me to remind people, and to remind myself.
I think I must have gotten into a headspace around this where I shut out ALL the gods' input, not just Odin's. Perhaps Freya and Freyr would be helping me more if I was letting Them.
Thank you so much for that!
xk:
you're having a stroll down the Hero's Path at the moment and not the Priest's.
Ah! Oh hell, that makes a lot of sense. Especially when I pair it with recent realizations about how I work. It's taken me so long to figure out why what I am compelled to say isn't necessarily what I see or hear, but I finally figured it out. When I give a Tarot reading each card is it's own little story, and they connect in larger stories, and the whole reading tells a story. The story is quite pertinent to the querant's life, and I don't always know how.
When I'm in the chair for Seidh, what I see, what I hear, that's all setting the scene, and I do describe what I can. But ultimately, what comes out my mouth is the story.
but They know you need to be responsible for earning the treasure on your own.
And I respond very strongly to this idea consistantly. You've nailed it on the head right there.
What if you were in a scene and deep in subspace, and the dom you trusted brought in another dom you hadn't agreed to? Or a bigger dom came in, and the dom you trusted was somehow not alpha enough to stop them?
I'm pretty sure your God didn't wuss out on you just because Odin wanted a turn.
I meant the humans involved, actually, not Freya and Freyr.
Did your Gods and human guides never mention that Others might show up or you might be lent out?
Not in that manner. I'm aware that projects and messages get dropped in my lap by all kinds of different gods, regardless of pantheon, much less personal preference. But that's a very different question, to my understanding, than that of being ridden in this manner without consultation or consent.
I would be seeing if our relationship was evolved enough for them to know I was there watching over them. Or by placing them before the terror of the Unknown to see if they could become aware of how they didn't trust me or themselves.
Again it is the difference between a bottom and a submissive.
That keeps getting me... because even if it is a submissive, doesn't the submissive initially have to give informed consent that they're not just a bottom? Is it okay for someone who has agreed to bottom to have their top suddenly switch to full-out domming?
While I agree that many modern folk have these negative associations with an unequal power dynamic I feel there is a reasonable need to explore it as we are sourcing older traditions that have it embedded in the practice. I'm not saying it isn't renegotiable or changeable at all. Yet I do believe it is inherent in the inherited dynamics.
That's about where I've been, I guess. I know it's there from the old practice, but I expect renegotiation to work. Oddly, my being polyamorous may also make my expectations unrealistic. My romantic relationships are subject to active negotiation at all times. There are very few base assumptions, and even those are confirmed before being accepted again. So the old husband model doesn't do a damned thing for me.
And my parents learned long ago that I am my own person. We deal with eachother on terms that look a great deal more like equals than most folks are used to seeing between generations. So the idea of parenthood only helps a little.
She then experienced a greater loss of control than she expected to and was surprised when Someone she did not expect rolled through. ... This moment generated fear and concern as her expected boundaries where not functioning and not acknowledged as present. This is a moment of true terror...
YES. That exactly.
But you're a bit off in a couple other points. Two of them I will try to clarify. I think I already clarified the other.
I'm cranky about an ethical problem I see with your community not giving you the training to do this work with full disclosure and then not really stepping up to help you with the aftermath.
Okay, my community educated me to the best of their knowledge, experience, and ability, which is quite a bit. But in a way it's almost a disadvantage to have so many specific points to convey. Both their knowledge and my own understanding of it could have lead us to realize this possibility, but when you've got 100 things you've accounted for, the 101st thing that you haven't seen examples of, and thus missed, isn't exactly a huge transgression. It's a human mistake.
I don't blame the humans involved because they put in everything they could to account for all the possibilities they were aware of, and they simply happened to miss this one because it hasn't caused a problem before. In retrospect it's bloody obvious that this possibility existed, and several related possibilities were specifically told to me.
NOW we know that we need to put an external checkpoint in the process, so that the human Guide can provide the opportunity for consent that a properly tranced-out Seer has otherwise suppressed.
It's also not true that my community didn't attempt to step and help me with the aftermath.
Part of the problem is that many of them work so closely with Odin they can't really understand why I would have a problem with Him sitting on my head in the first place. A lot of them have an underlying blanket statement that is more blinding than it is useful that I simply have Odin Issues, and that's just me. In light of those Issues, they understand on a surface level that I therefore wouldn't like to have Odin sitting on my head without permission, but their assumptions about my Odin Issues prevent them from seeing what the problem actually is.
But I have been working with my Seidh group to figure out how we, as a group, should handle things in the future. And I have been working on a more personal basis with a couple of specific people, including my lover who stood chair for me, to figure out what I, personally, should do next. Most folks seem to be at a loss to tell me, but are quite willing to let me process at them. I think either I have too much difficulty articulating what the problem is, or else it's simply so personal there's nothing anybody can really do for me.
I hope I did not give the impression that this board is my only resource in this situation. Far from it! But it's a fresh view that does not hold the specific personal biases that cannot help but be part of the view of those involved.
--Ember-- |
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