To Use Your Gifts Every Day In The Service Of Your Landbase

I was talking with two of my witch friends last night about daily practice and what it's for and how it differs from group ritual. Diane Sylvan says, and I agree, that daily practice is crucial to spiritual growth. Sure, you can be a "festival pagan" or a "Sabbat witch" and there's nothing wrong with that. But for many, that's not enough. And the answer isn't necessarily to work for better and more magical festivals or Sabbats (not that there's anything wrong with that), but to engage in a daily practice.

In an ideal environment, everything that we do, from the moment that we wake up, through getting on the metro and standing in such close proximity with our fellow humans, through doing the work that we do, through eating a meal, through going to the gym, through falling asleep -- everything -- would be a part of our "daily practice." Every step that we took on Mother Earth would be taken consciously, would be taken as a blessing upon the Earth, would be an act of communion with the
Earth.

But, you know, it isn't like that. For me, at least, what prevents life from being like that is my monkey mind, the one that starts chattering a few seconds before I wake up and says, "Shit. I forgot to take the trash out last night and now it's raining, but I have to get the trash out because I've got people coming over for dinner tomorrow and I want the back porch really clean and I also have to stop at the dry cleaners to pick up the tablecloth and I have to get flowers and, oh, shit, I have to go to the bank, I think I have a conference call at 5:00 this evening and that means that the dry cleaners will close before I get home so I have to stop on my way to work and I wonder if I can get all of those memos read so I'll be ready for the conference call; X is going to be on that conference call and, you know, X was pretty shitty to me at work yesterday and I wonder what to do about it, X was shitty to me just the way that my father used to be shitty to me and I remember the time that my father said . . . ." Not too much communion going on with Mother Earth as a listen to my monkey mind while brushing my teeth, feeding the cat, carting the trash out in the rain, and dashing to work.

So daily practice for me is a time to do the sometimes quite difficult work of silencing my monkey mind and focusing on what matters. Of course, one should be able to do that on metro, surrounded by hundreds of morning commuters or while dropping off drycleaning. But I find it helpful to have a separate room with an altar, to light candles and incense for Younger Self, to sit and ground, clear my chakaras, say the Ha prayer, and then meditate. If I want to work some particular magic, this is when I'll do it. If I've promised someone that I'll light incense for them, this is when I'll do it.

But it strikes me that what Jensen is talking about in this clip is also a daily practice. A daily, moment-by-moment being present to what our landbase needs and a commitment to do that. To do whatever it takes. It may take sitting at an altar and doing magic to protect the Earth. It may take walking to work instead of driving. It may take radical change and it may take subtle change. But what we have to do, as Jensen notes, is whatever it takes. Saving the Earth isn't like horseshoes or hand grenades; just trying isn't enough. Using your gifts in the service of your landbase, and doing it every single day, is a daily practice, every bit as much as praying or meditating. Even if, not that this is ideal, you do that with monkey mind chattering madly the whole time.

Jensen's discussion of the difference between hope and commitment is important in this context, as well. You can hope that you'll grow spiritually all day long. You can add it to the list of things that your monkey mind chatters on about and chastises you for not doing. You can hope that you'll find the time and the discipline to keep doing it, but that won't help you to grow spiritually. What will is realizing that, as Jensen says, you have agency, and then putting your butt on the yoga blanket in front of your altar every night, whether you feel like it or not.

The two forms of daily practice aren't mutually exclusive, in fact, they support each other and the better that you get at one, the easier that the other is likely to become. And, vice versa. If you were to spend your life using your gifts to care for your landbase, if you were to do whatever it takes to make sure that the Earth is habitable, what would you do differently every day? Will you start today?