CraigJustCraig

Tag: personal-growth

  • Needs vs Strategies

    Needs vs Strategies

    Needs vs. Strategies
    Part I: The Problem – Alienation from Ourselves

    Today I want to talk about three books and why they helped me describe a topic I have been extremely passionate about: The Art of Love, Nonviolent Communication, and The Body Keeps the Score. The topic is Needs vs. Strategies.

    What do I mean by that?

    Strategies are requests, desires, wants, and “solutions” to specific actions by specific people. Needs, on the other hand, contain no reference to any particular action; they exist regardless of who or what is available. Some examples of needs are rest, understanding, support, honesty, and meaning.

    This topic is so fundamentally hard to talk about, but it transforms everything. I am going to attempt to codify my understanding through this writing. Why? Because strategies disconnect us from our needs.

    Stop right there. Some of us can’t even name our needs. We live outside ourselves—and by that I mean we live on external directives rather than from our internal knowledge and needs. We become alienated from our natural state.

    All criticism, attack, insults, and judgments are the result of our attention being focused on classifying, analyzing, and determining levels. Our thinking becomes centered on dehumanizing one another with labels and judgments. Judgments, criticisms, diagnoses, and interpretations of others are all alienated expressions of our needs.

    But everything would change if we listened to the feelings and needs behind the message.

    Part II: Trauma, Survival, and Strategies

    We have an estrangement from feelings and get stuck utilizing survival strategies to assert our needs. This is both an inability to connect with our needs and an inability to assume responsibility for our needs. We put all our energy into protecting ourselves, developing whatever survival strategies we can. We may repress our feelings; we may get furious and plot revenge. We may decide to become so powerful and successful that nobody can ever hurt us again.

    Many behaviors that are classified as psychiatric problems—including some obsessions, compulsions, and panic attacks, as well as most self-destructive behaviors—started out as strategies for self-protection.

    Biologically, we need to attach to someone. Whether that is a loving and caring someone or a distant, insensitive, rejecting, or abusive someone, we will develop some way to get our needs met. And when your source of survival is also your source of fear, you are stuck with “fright without solution.”

    In The Body Keeps the Score it says: “It is much more productive to see aggression or depression, arrogance or passivity as learned behaviors: somewhere along the line, the patient came to believe that he or she could survive only if he or she was tough, invisible, or absent, or that it was safer to give up.”

    These adaptations will continue until we feel safe and integrate all the parts of ourselves that are stuck fighting or warding off trauma. Coping takes its toll. For many, it is safer to hate themselves than to risk their relationship by expressing anger or acting out.

    They survive by denying, ignoring, and splitting off large chunks of reality: they forget, they suppress, they numb. They reconfigure their minds to live with the worst. They develop defensive strategies to help them survive.

    What is unknowable causes anxiety. People need the illusion that everything can be known. Even if in this illusion they are the most hated, it feels safer than the chaos of the unknown.

    Part III: Turning Inward – Naming Needs and Affirming Worth

    When we live away from our needs within ourselves, our lives become limited by external and alien perspectives, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on our needs.

    But when we begin to live from within outward—in touch with the power within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us—then we begin to be responsible to ourselves.

    We begin to recognize our deepest feelings. We give up, out of necessity, being satisfied with suffering and self-negation, and with the numbness that so often seems like the only alternative. Our acts against oppression become integral with self, motivated and empowered from within.

    To refuse to be conscious of what we are feeling at any time, however comfortable that might seem, is to deny a large part of the experience and to allow ourselves to be reduced.

    It requires a concern to know not only external reality but also internal reality—the reality of my needs, feelings, aspirations, and motives—so that I am not a stranger or a mystery to myself. The feeling that joy and fulfillment are my natural birthright.

    Part IV: The Affirmations – Owning My Existence

    Once you’re able to say:

    I am not here on earth to live up to someone else’s expectations; my life belongs to me.

    Each person is the owner of his or her life; no one is here on earth to live up to my expectations.

    I have a right to exist.

    I am of high value to myself.

    I have a right to honor my needs and wants, to treat them as important.

    I am lovable.

    I am admirable.

    I will usually be liked and respected by the people I like and respect.

    I should deal with others fairly and justly, and others should deal with me fairly and justly.
    I deserve to be treated courteously and with respect by everyone.

    If people treat me discourteously or disrespectfully, it is a reflection on them, not on me. It is only a reflection on me if I accept their treatment of me as right.

    If someone I like does not return my feeling, it may be disappointing or even painful, but it is not a reflection on my personal worth.

    No other individual or group has the power to determine how I will think and feel about myself.

    I trust my mind.
    I see what I see and know what I know.
    I am better served by knowing what is true than by making myself “right” at the expense of the facts.
    If I persevere, I can understand the things I need to understand.

    The more conscious I am of that which bears on my interests, values, needs, and goals, the better my life will work.

    To remain effective, I need to keep expanding my knowledge; learning needs to be a way of life. The better I know and understand myself, the better the life I can create. Self-examination is an imperative of a fulfilled existence.

    At the most fundamental level, I am for myself.
    At the most fundamental level, I accept myself.

    Part V: Responsibility and Aloneness

    I accept the reality of my thoughts, even when I cannot endorse them and would not choose to act on them; I do not deny or disown them.
    I can accept my feelings and emotions without necessarily liking, approving of, or being controlled by them; I do not deny or disown them.
    I can accept that I have done what I have done, even when I regret or condemn it. I do not deny or disown my behavior.

    I accept that what I think, feel, or do is an expression of myself, at least in the moment it occurs. I am not bound by thoughts, feelings, or actions I cannot sanction, but neither do I evade their reality or pretend they are not mine.

    I accept the reality of my problems, but I am not defined by them. My problems are not my essence. My fear, pain, confusion, or mistakes are not my core.

    Once you own that:

    I am responsible for my existence.

    I am responsible for the achievement of my desires.

    I am responsible for my choices and actions.

    I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to my work and other activities.

    I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to my relationships.

    I am responsible for my behavior with other people—co-workers, associates, customers, spouse, children, friends.

    I am responsible for how I prioritize my time.

    I am responsible for the quality of my communications.

    I am responsible for my personal happiness.

    I am responsible for choosing or accepting the values by which I live.

    I am responsible for raising my self-esteem; no one else can give me self-esteem.

    In the ultimate sense, I accept my aloneness. That is, I accept that no one is coming to make my life right, or save me, or redeem my childhood, or rescue me from the consequences of my choices and actions. In specific issues, people may help me, but no one can take over primary responsibility for my existence. Just as no one else can breathe for me, no one else can take over any of my other basic life functions, such as earning the experience of self-efficacy and self-respect.

    Part VI: Healing, Neuroplasticity, and Self-Care

    In order to play, mate, and nurture , the brain needs to turn off its natural vigilance. We must identify strategies beyond denial or repression for navigating pleasure in relationship to others.

    Drop low-performing strategies and replace them with tested alternatives. Once I could name my needs, I became aware of my strategies—how I cope with the fear of my needs not being met.

    I learned to listen for feelings, to express my needs, to accept answers that I didn’t always want to hear. I learned to grow, to accept, to love, to be fulfilled.

    The most important job of the brain is to ensure our survival, even under the most miserable conditions. Everything else is secondary. Psychological problems occur when our internal signals don’t work, when our maps don’t lead us where we need to go, when we are too paralyzed to move, when our actions do not correspond to our needs, or when our relationships break down.

    The brain is formed in a “use-dependent manner.” This is another way of describing neuroplasticity, the relatively recent discovery that neurons that “fire together, wire together.” This creates the communal, spiritual, and historical contexts that shape our lives.

    As we begin to re-experience a visceral reconnection with the needs of our bodies, there is a brand new capacity to warmly love the self. We experience a new quality of authenticity in our caring, which redirects our attention to our health, our diets, our energy, and our time management. This enhanced care for the self arises spontaneously and naturally, not as a response to a “should.”

    We are able to experience an immediate and intrinsic pleasure in self-care. The body needs to be restored to a baseline state of safety and relaxation from which it can mobilize to take action in response to real danger. Building up internal resources fosters safe access to sensations and emotions. Feeling the pleasure of taking effective action restores a sense of agency and a sense of being able to actively defend and protect ourselves.

    Part VII: The Call – From Survival to Liberation

    When we don’t know how to directly and clearly express what we need, we make analyses. Criticism and diagnosis get in the way. Pain can get in the way of our ability to hear clearly.

    Translate any message into an expression of a need. Understand the pain.

  • Erase the Word, Reclaim the World

    A recent comment sent me this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBkbyrlUE3M. It reminded me of something I have yet to write—the power of words. Words are sigils. Most people don’t see it. Most people never read past the surface. But words shape thoughts, and thoughts shape reality. Control the words, and you control the world: perception, desire, belief. Words codifies a worldview and erases others. Words are not neutral. They carry beliefs that we inherit.

    Look closer at the words you think. re those words in your own voice? Did you know your internal voice makes no sound? Those words were handed to you with frameworks, definitions, and concepts attached and you never questioned them. Did you think it was weird when you first heard words like grandrising or innerstanding? Did you ignore it? Did you even hear it at all? Why? Was it because it conflicted with your worldview and your automatic response ? Did it even take a second for you to dismiss it? That is because those beliefs are not your own.

    Language doesn’t just label reality—it writes it. God. Nature. Civilization. Progress. Every term carries a judgment, a hierarchy, a worldview. “Nature” became something to dominate, not to inhabit. “Progress” became expansion, conquest, abstraction over community. Words encode assumptions. They carry power. This is how sigils work. It’s structural. it deliberate strategy. Remove the words, and remove entire ways of knowing .

    The more you understand language, the less you need it. Words are metaphors. They point, but they cannot contain. Yet we forget. We adopt terms, concepts, and hand over our power. To think freely, you must first see how your beliefs are scaffolded on words you never chose. Erase the word. Reclaim the concept. Rebuild thought from a place of spiritual clarity, ancestral insight, and conscious choice.

  • On time

    Magick is all about mythoform and mythology—the deep stories we tell that shape how we see and move through the world.

    One of the core myths we’ve inherited?
    That ever-present sinking feeling that we’re “wasting time.”
    I still feel trapped by it. Caught in an antagonistic system that breeds confusion, anxiety, and fear.
    That’s not an accident—it’s a built-in feature.

    “Where do these white people run to every morning? To their workplaces, of course. Why do they have to run to something that is not running away from them? They do not have time.”

    I had to say this word in French because there is no equivalent in the local language. The conversation came to a halt when the elder had to ask what this “time” is.
    (Malidoma Somé, Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community)

    Let that sink in.

    This isn’t just a philosophical take—this is about how myth (yes, even modern, “rational” cultures have them) is silently scripting our lives.
    Because “time” we’re so afraid of wasting—it doesn’t exist the way we were told.

    This is my second time coming across this.

    In Yurugu by Marimba Ani:

    “Time” in this view moves ceaselessly towards some point never reached in the “future.” This sense of telos (Greek for “end,” “purpose,” or “goal”) is an important aspect of European mythology—the stories a culture uses to explain the world, its origins, and the fundamental aspects of human existence.

    It gives meaning to European life.

    Yet the “future” creates more problems than it resolves. Ironically, this “future” is approached by the ever-present line of time through which the European seeks fulfillment, but at the same time assures her/him of never being fulfilled.

    The “future” represents unattainable perfection.
    It is an abstraction that is unreachable and, therefore, unknowable.
    And what is unknowable for the European causes anxiety.

    The European psyche needs the illusion of a rationally ordered universe in which everything can be known.

    A future that never comes.
    A perfection you never reach.
    A loop of anxiety, fear, and shame dressed up in suits, clocks, and productivity.

    And the gag is—this was all by design.

    European mythoform—the unconscious structural pattern shaping its worldview—creates an unknown and unknowable future whose only relationship to the past and present is that it determines them, but cannot be determined by them. This antagonistic situation causes emotional confusion, anxiety, and fear for the European.

    Yet this oppressive future cannot be avoided,
    Because the clock moves them toward it at an uncontrollable pace—
    Which seems to move faster and faster.

    All of this is an effect of the limitations of lineal, secular time.
    It is neither phenomenal nor sacred nor spiritual.
    Participants in the culture have only one recourse against the fear: Science (Purchasing of “insurance” a attempt to escape the fear.)

    They seek to relieve their anxiety by gaining control over what controls them. Failing, in the end, to find fulfillment. Because the European conception of science is above all secular, alienating, literate, rationalistic, and linear.

    This abstract and oppressive future continues to threaten, to intimidate, to frighten. They move inexorably toward it, a movement that imparts value (“progress”), and yet the perceived destiny is fear-producing.

    The European worldview doesn’t just teach this logic—
    It hides it beneath the illusion of being “universal.”
    Then turns around and sells that illusion to the rest of the world back to US

    The culture teaches its logic. It hands you its worldview.
    You absorb it, bury it, act on it—and forget it’s not truth, it’s programming.

    “Experts” dig that logic back up, slap a label on it, and sell it as universal truth.

    They present it with such authority—it can only be the only valid way to think.
    But what they’re really pushing is their assumed reality, dressed up as logic and objectivity.

    And because of the way it’s delivered, It gets imposed. Globalized.

    Meanwhile, its roots—Christian morality, Western value systems, white fear, capitalist logic—stay camouflaged under this fake-ass pseudouniversalism.

    It’s clever.
    It’s violent.
    And it keeps us divided.

    In a magickal practice, we don’t work with those stories—we create new ones.
    We bend time.
    Pause it.
    Let it circle back.
    Let it disappear.

    We can reclaim time, redefine time, and name our own rhythms.
    We can create moments that are timeless.
    This is the beauty of the path.

    The further I go, the more I realize this isn’t just about rope, or candles, or chants.
    It’s about epistemology.
    It’s about which stories get believed—and why.
    It’s about what we can do once we stop believing the lies.

    Because the mythoform of the dominant culture is designed to make you chase something you can never catch.
    It tells you time is linear, scarce, and slipping away.
    That if you’re not productive, you’re not valuable.
    That rest is lazy.
    That pleasure is dangerous.

    But we know better.
    This requires deep consideration of all the bullshit that’s been assumed.
    We remember who the fuck we are.
    We strip it.
    Burn it.
    Build Anew.

  • We Forgot How to Be Real

    I’m not trying to be mean. I’m not here to hurt anybody’s feelings. But somebody’s gotta say it — a lot of us aren’t real anymore. Not really.

    We’ve become slogans. Talking points. Hashtags. We’ve wrapped ourselves so tightly in the cloth of ideology that we’ve forgotten how to be people. Not activists, not archetypes, not “representations” — people. I’m not talking about politics here, not really. I’m talking about the erosion of soul in favor of a curated identity.

    I meet someone and instead of Bob or Susan, I’m introduced to a checklist. “I’m a queer, trans, Black, anti-capitalist feminist.” Or “I’m a proud white libertarian Christian.” And that’s it. That’s the intro, the middle, and the end. No room for contradiction, for complexity, for curiosity. Just one long sentence with a period stamped on the end like a warning sign: Do Not Question.

    And when you do try to ask something deeper? You get canned answers, like you triggered the wrong part of a flowchart. Not “let me think about that.” Not “I’m not sure.” Just a regurgitated article, a preloaded defense, or worse — silence followed by distance.

    Where did we go?

    Where’s the part of us that used to hunger for connection and not just agreement? When did winning the conversation become more important than being in it?

    We have brought identity politics into everything we do, and while yes, identity matters — we forgot that people are more than their politics. More than their trauma. More than their aesthetics. And when we make identity the only lens, we stop listening. We stop seeing. We stop being curious. It’s like we’re all standing on podiums yelling bullet points at each other instead of sitting down and learning how to live with one another.

    And I get it. The world is terrifying and messy. Simplicity feels safe. Certainty feels like safety. But what we’re calling safety is just a padded cell of groupthink. No questions allowed. No nuance allowed. No discomfort allowed. No realness allowed.

    Some of us are so out of touch with ourselves that we can’t even ask ourselves questions. That’s the saddest part. If you can’t turn inward and say, “Do I still believe this?” or “What am I afraid of?” or even just “What do I need today?” — you’re not free. You’re not awake. You’re following a script and pretending it’s a personality.

    And we’re losing everything because of it.

    We lost love — because love requires vulnerability and contradiction.
    We lost spirituality — because that requires surrender and wonder, not certainty.
    We lost homes — because everything is politicized, even our doorways.
    We lost family — because nuance died, and with it, compassion.
    We lost community — because listening was replaced with sorting: “You’re in. You’re out.”
    We lost self — because if you are only what you believe, what happens when your beliefs shift?

    And we are still losing more.

    We’ve mistaken performance for purpose we see it with faceless accounts online. We’ve mistaken being right for being real. And in doing so, we’ve made ourselves emotionally, socially, spiritually homeless.

    And yes — the media feeds this. The internet thrives on digestible characters and simplified stories. It encourages this flattening. It wants you to say, “I read the first paragraph, I know all I need to know.” It wants you to scroll, not sit. Swipe, not see.

    But we don’t have to keep playing the game.

    You can step back. You can stop reading your identity like a resume. You can stop policing every word for alignment with your brand. You can be messy. You can be wrong. You can be real. You can say, “I don’t know.” You can say, “That hurts.” You can say, “I changed.” You can be more than the talking points.

    Because if we don’t reclaim our humanness, we are going to lose everything that makes life worth living. The joy. The mystery. The awkwardness. The tension. The moments where you look someone in the eyes and realize, Oh. You’re a whole world.

    So this is your invitation — to be a whole world again.

    Not a headline.
    Not a hashtag.
    Not a symbol.

    Just you. Messy, contradictory, curious, breathing you.

    Let’s bring that back. Before it’s too late.

  • Sometimes Leaders Make It Worse

    the ones meant to protect—end up causing even more damage.

    So let’s talk about it.

    Let’s talk about the fact that, in a lot of cases, it’s not random community members who are fumbling the ball—it’s the leaders. And when they fumble, it’s not a dropped ball. It’s people’s lives.

    We’ve all heard it before: “Listen to the victim.”
    Sounds good. Feels right. But what happens when the people we’re supposed to turn to were never trained to hold those stories? What happens when leadership is built on logistics, not care? When someone can throw a good party, but can’t hold space for someone’s pain?

    most leaders didn’t sign up to be therapists, mediators, or emergency responders. They signed up to run events. To teach classes. To build spaces. And over time, the community starts expecting them to do more , make decisions, take sides.

    But many of them aren’t ready. when someone unprepared tries to carry something that heavy, people get crushed underneath.

    Right now, we’ve got “leaders” who don’t listen. Who jump to conclusions before even sitting down with the people involved.

    Who ban folks from learning or growing. Who confuse neutrality with silence, and silence with safety. Who perform justice publicly, not to repair, but to prove something—to their peers, their audiences, or their egos.

    Some of it’s ignorance. Some of it’s pressure. Some of it is absolutely intentional.

    Being an event host doesn’t make you qualified to handle trauma.
    It means you had the time and energy to plan something. That’s it. That’s not a credential. That’s not a qualification.

    But because people don’t know where else to go, they go to the ones with the mic or the clipboard. And when those people aren’t trained or supported, they end up hurting the very people they claim to care about.

    Worse—some leaders are scared.
    Scared of being sued. Scared of losing clout. Scared of losing access to their favorite violators. And so they scramble. They cover their asses. They ignore the problem or slap a band-aid on a bullet wound.

    I’ve seen leaders spread misinformation.
    I’ve seen them silence people.
    I’ve seen them protect abusers, ostracize victims, escalate situations, and weaponize their influence like a damn sword.

    They say they care, but what they really care about is control.

    They call it safety.
    But it’s safety for them, not for the people who are hurting.

    Let’s be real. Not all leaders are built the same.

    Some want the title. Some want the power.
    But some actually want to be of service—and they’ve done the work.

    leaders ask questions. They pause.
    They know that gossip is not truth.
    They understand that harm and healing are complex.
    They’re not scared to admit when they’re wrong.
    They make space—for the victim, for the context, for the process.

    They don’t just punish.
    They repair.
    They educate.
    They act with care, not spectacle.

    They don’t need to blast everything on the internet to prove they’re “doing something.” They do the work in quiet ways, and the community feels the difference. In those spaces, people aren’t walking on eggshells. They’re walking toward something better.

    Not Everyone Is Built like that

    that’s okay. Not everyone should be mediating conflicts.
    This isn’t about forcing people into roles they’re not built for.
    But if you’re not built for it—say that. Be honest.

    Don’t pretend you’ve got it covered while secretly ducking behind a wall of favoritism, silence, or shame.

    Most leaders are volunteers.
    And a lot of y’all are trying your best with no support and no backup. I get that.

    But that means we need to stop pretending that all leaders are qualified.
    We need to stop handing our deepest wounds to people just because they made a event.

    Questions to Sit With

    If you’re in leadership right now, ask yourself:

    • Who do you actually trust to hold your truth?
    • If someone disclosed harm to you tomorrow, would you know what to do?
    • Have you trained for that?
    • Do you have support for that?
    • Are you willing to hold that weight, or are you just hoping it never lands on your lap?

    And for the rest of us:

    • Are we vetting our leaders like we vet our play partners?
    • Are we asking the right questions?
    • Are we just assuming safety, or are we building it?

    This isn’t about blame. This is about maturity. About integrity.
    About knowing when to lead—and when to step aside.

    If this made you uncomfortable, that’s good. Sit with it. That discomfort might be the door to something

    Let’s stop letting fear dictate our leadership.

    Let’s stop mistaking silence for neutrality, and spectacle for justice.

    Let’s stop acting like harm is something we can ignore, manage, or gossip our way around.

    And let’s start asking the harder questions.

  • Judged by Their Shadows…

    You ever notice how folks size you up through a lens that ain’t yours?

    You could be walking clean, kind at your core, trying to show up with grace—and still, someone finds a reason to flinch, pull away, throw shade. It’s wild. You extend a hand and they recoil like you hid a blade in your palm. They’re not seeing you—they’re reacting to a ghost in their own story. Their shadow.

    Even in circles where trust should hold steady, where truth is currency and connection is sacred—someone will still project their wound onto your skin like it’s your fault they’re bleeding.

    But here’s the hard part: it ain’t really about you.

    People carry weight—generational, personal, ancestral. Trauma distorts the eye. Old wounds warp perception. What they reject in you is often what they’ve denied in themselves. Guilt. Shame. Desire. Power. Vulnerability. Most folks hurl blame when they don’t know how to sit with their own shadow. Instead, they wrap it in judgment, throw it at the nearest light.

    You ever been there? Showing up soft, heart-forward, only to get met with suspicion? You give, and they twist it. You care, and they mock it. And somewhere in the quiet after, you start asking yourself—am I the problem?

    Nah. You’re just reflecting something they’re not ready to name.

    Truth is, people criticize most harshly the very things they secretly struggle with. They’ll use shame, ridicule, guilt, and blame like tools to carve the world into a shape that lets them avoid their own mirror. It’s not malice—it’s survival. A desperate attempt to outrun their own demons

    Still hurts though.

    And if you’ve been wounded before—if misjudgment’s an old song—you might brace for the next blow before it even lands. You start hesitating. Silencing your kindness. Dimming your light so they don’t mistake it for a threat.

    But you can’t shrink your spirit to fit inside someone else’s fear.

    Stay rooted. Stay true. Don’t get dragged into their chaos. Let their shadow be theirs. You don’t need to fix their lens—you only need to keep standing in your own light. Even if no one claps. Even if they never see you clearly.

    Because It’s about alignment not applause.

    And one day, you’ll look back and realize: you held steady. You walked through their fog without letting it swallow you. You didn’t twist to fit their projections—you stayed whole.

    That’s real power.

  • The Three Steps to Effective Conversation

    1.Lead with presence.

    2.Come from curiosity and care.

    3.Focus on what matters.

    The First Foundation: Presence

    Effective communication requires presence.

    •Given the complexity of communication, transformation occurs most readily through small shifts sustained over time.

    •Presence lays the ground for connection.

    •Lead with presence; begin conversation with awareness, return to and strive to maintain that awareness, and be honest with oneself about what’s happening.

    •The more aware we are, the more choice we have.

    •Leading with presence includes mutuality, seeing the other person as an autonomous individual, and uncertainty, acknowledging and accepting the unknown, both of which create new possibilities in dialogue.

    The Second Foundation: Intention

    Intention determines direction.

    •Our intentions, views, and experiences reinforce each other: views determine intentions, intentions shape experiences, and experiences confirm our views. Shifting our view therefore can change our intentions and our experience.

    •Being aware of our habitual conflict styles allows us to transform the underlying beliefs and emotions that hold them in place and to make different choices.

    •The less blame and criticism, the easier it is for others to hear us.

    •Everything we do, we do to meet a need.

    •People are more likely to listen when they feel heard. To build understanding, reflect before you respond.

    The Third Foundation: Attention

    Attention shapes experience.

    •The more we are able to differentiate between our strategies and needs, the more clarity and choice we have.

    •The more we understand one another, the easier it is to find solutions that work for everyone. Therefore, establish as much mutual understanding as possible before problem solving.

    •Being aware of our emotions supports our ability to choose consciously how we participate in a conversation.

    •The more we take responsibility for our feelings, connecting them to our own needs rather than to others’ actions, the easier it is for others to hear us.

    •The more we hear others’ feelings as a reflection of their needs, the easier it is to understand them without hearing blame, needing to agree, or feeling responsible for their emotions.

    •Having empathy for ourselves increases our capacity to listen to others, whether or not they have the space to listen to us.

    •Stating clearly what happened, without judgment or evaluation, makes it easier for someone to hear us and to work toward a solution.

    •Translating judgments into observations, feelings, and needs can yield valuable information about what is and isn’t working and provide clues for how to move forward.

    •When giving feedback, be specific about what is and isn’t working and why, which makes it easier to learn.

    •The clearer we are about what we want and why, the more creative we can be about how to make it happen.

    •Have ideas for strategies that meet as many needs as possible, which invites others to look for creative solutions.

    •Stating how a conversation can contribute to both of us helps create buy-in and willingness.

    •Whenever possible, check if the other person feels understood before moving on to a new topic or shifting the center of attention to your own experience.

    •We have more clarity and power when we use fewer words with more sincerity. Speaking in short, succinct chunks makes it easier for others to understand us.

    •Attending to our own reactivity, noticing the rise of activation and supporting the calm of deactivation, can help us make wiser choices about what to say and when.

    •When in conflict, if we aim to listen to the other person first it increases the chances that they will be willing to listen to us.

  • On time

    Magick is all about mythoform and mythology—the deep stories we tell that shape how we see and move through the world.

    One of the core myths we’ve inherited?
    That ever-present sinking feeling that we’re “wasting time.”
    I still feel trapped by it. Caught in an antagonistic system that breeds confusion, anxiety, and fear.
    That’s not an accident—it’s a built-in feature.

    “Where do these white people run to every morning? To their workplaces, of course. Why do they have to run to something that is not running away from them? They do not have time.”

    I had to say this word in French because there is no equivalent in the local language. The conversation came to a halt when the elder had to ask what this “time” is.
    (Malidoma Somé, Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community)

    Let that sink in.

    This isn’t just a philosophical take—this is about how myth (yes, even modern, “rational” cultures have them) is silently scripting our lives.
    Because “time” we’re so afraid of wasting—it doesn’t exist the way we were told.

    This is my second time coming across this.

    In Yurugu by Marimba Ani:

    “Time” in this view moves ceaselessly towards some point never reached in the “future.” This sense of telos (Greek for “end,” “purpose,” or “goal”) is an important aspect of European mythology—the stories a culture uses to explain the world, its origins, and the fundamental aspects of human existence.

    It gives meaning to European life.

    Yet the “future” creates more problems than it resolves. Ironically, this “future” is approached by the ever-present line of time through which the European seeks fulfillment, but at the same time assures her/him of never being fulfilled.

    The “future” represents unattainable perfection.
    It is an abstraction that is unreachable and, therefore, unknowable.
    And what is unknowable for the European causes anxiety.

    The European psyche needs the illusion of a rationally ordered universe in which everything can be known.

    A future that never comes.
    A perfection you never reach.
    A loop of anxiety, fear, and shame dressed up in suits, clocks, and productivity.

    And the gag is—this was all by design.

    European mythoform—the unconscious structural pattern shaping its worldview—creates an unknown and unknowable future whose only relationship to the past and present is that it determines them, but cannot be determined by them. This antagonistic situation causes emotional confusion, anxiety, and fear for the European.

    Yet this oppressive future cannot be avoided,
    Because the clock moves them toward it at an uncontrollable pace—
    Which seems to move faster and faster.

    All of this is an effect of the limitations of lineal, secular time.
    It is neither phenomenal nor sacred nor spiritual.
    Participants in the culture have only one recourse against the fear: Science (Purchasing of “insurance” a attempt to escape the fear.)

    They seek to relieve their anxiety by gaining control over what controls them. Failing, in the end, to find fulfillment. Because the European conception of science is above all secular, alienating, literate, rationalistic, and linear.

    This abstract and oppressive future continues to threaten, to intimidate, to frighten. They move inexorably toward it, a movement that imparts value (“progress”), and yet the perceived destiny is fear-producing.

    The European worldview doesn’t just teach this logic—
    It hides it beneath the illusion of being “universal.”
    Then turns around and sells that illusion to the rest of the world back to US

    The culture teaches its logic. It hands you its worldview.
    You absorb it, bury it, act on it—and forget it’s not truth, it’s programming.

    “Experts” dig that logic back up, slap a label on it, and sell it as universal truth.

    They present it with such authority—it can only be the only valid way to think.
    But what they’re really pushing is their assumed reality, dressed up as logic and objectivity.

    And because of the way it’s delivered, It gets imposed. Globalized.

    Meanwhile, its roots—Christian morality, Western value systems, white fear, capitalist logic—stay camouflaged under this fake-ass pseudouniversalism.

    It’s clever.
    It’s violent.
    And it keeps us divided.

    In a magickal practice, we don’t work with those stories—we create new ones.
    We bend time.
    Pause it.
    Let it circle back.
    Let it disappear.

    We can reclaim time, redefine time, and name our own rhythms.
    We can create moments that are timeless.
    This is the beauty of the path.

    The further I go, the more I realize this isn’t just about rope, or candles, or chants.
    It’s about epistemology.
    It’s about which stories get believed—and why.
    It’s about what we can do once we stop believing the lies.

    Because the mythoform of the dominant culture is designed to make you chase something you can never catch.
    It tells you time is linear, scarce, and slipping away.
    That if you’re not productive, you’re not valuable.
    That rest is lazy.
    That pleasure is dangerous.

    But we know better.
    This requires deep consideration of all the bullshit that’s been assumed.
    We remember who the fuck we are.
    We strip it.
    Burn it.
    Build Anew.