To Find Your Path You Must First Know the Past: History Introduction

The best way to go about historical information is to start as far back as we can and bridge that back to modern applications. That is the goal of this History Introduction.

This section of the Pathworking series is not going to be for the faint of heart. As I have said before, there is a lot of use of buzzwords in spiritual communities. These buzzwords take away credence from the word or practice that it pertains to. In some instances, the buzzwords are used to outright hinder the growth of others. To dispel that I am going to be as explicit as I can with the following posts. 

I’m not saying these posts are meant to break you, I am saying these posts are meant to break the illusion of control that people are trying to exert over you and others with their use of buzzwords. I feel there are a lot of people who are scared to say some of the things that I am about to be writing about. As far as I am concerned, I can handle my own and I decided to reject those fears. I choose to live my life on the path I was chosen for freely without having to worry about whose toes I may step on. If they don’t want their toes to get stepped on then my advice to them is get off my path and get on your own. 

Let’s quickly unpack something I said. “...the path I was chosen for…” I stated that specifically that way because we don’t choose our paths. That’s why my “Pathworking” series is not going into all the different practices and what they each do yada yada. Pathworking is about self-discovery and learning what your innate abilities are and how to best utilize them. You will never do that if you focus on the labels of all the different practices out there. Even if you choose one label you then have to worry about classifying yourself under the sub-labels, then categories, down to sub-categories, to correspondences, etc. etc. That kind of “Pathworking” is a waste of time. Instead, learn how you work with energy, understand how different practices emerged or evolved, and then just experiment and have fun with it. The more creative you get the more powerful YOUR path and practice becomes. Remember, Personal Gnosis is more viable than Verifiable Gnosis because it is better to have authority over yourself rather than relinquish authority to someone else.

And the history section is all about how screwed up things have become SPECIFICALLY FROM the relinquishing of personal authority and autonomy to other people. 

A great intro piece to discuss for this is something from the Auric Field post. Community. But wait, I just said autonomy. The truest aspect or version of community SUPPORTS the autonomy of individuals. A community is composed of individuals who have a common interest or ideal. The LGBT community, as an example, is a group of individuals who share the same ideas about love, sexuality, expression, etc. They don’t all get along all the time. They don’t even agree on how to obtain the freedoms and rights they want. But they do agree on what they want. That is how a community operates. 

In smaller communities, such as friend circles, each person has an individual role to play. Instead of anyone looking down on a member of the group, they celebrate the strengths of those individuals. Through this, there exists a flow and rhythm allowing the community to find ways to overcome things thrown against them. 

Funnily enough, a great example of this comes from the Disney cartoon series Recess. The main characters each have a particular strength that the rest of the group recognizes and celebrates. Spinelli was the “guardian” archetype, Gretchen the “knowledge keeper”, Mikey the “nurturer”, Vince the “warrior”, and Gus the “wise counselor.” People would assume TJ to be the “leader” but he was more the “empath” or “caretaker” of the group. His wild ideas often were followed by the group but in every instance SOMEONE in the group was made stronger by TJ’s ideas. Each of his ideas allowed the expression of one or more individuals in the group to be displayed. TJ was the voice that may have prompted the adventure but he was almost always the background to the rest of the group. In this way, he was the vital piece of their little community which held it together. Without him, they would not have gotten along. This was even shown in a few episodes where he was removed from the group. But after some bickering, they were able to come together to bring TJ back in. These episodes were a great way of showing that each member had a purpose because without these episodes it would have just been TJ pushing the spotlight on everyone else every time.

In the last post, I talked about a “cult” being a type of community where everyone is too similar and one suddenly rises to power over the rest. The Ashley’s in Recess are a great example of this. This came to a head in the episode where Spinelli’s first name is discovered to be Ashley as well. The rest of the Ashley’s pressure Spinelli into being with them because she has to. The main group helps Spinelli to overcome this and remember that she can be whoever she wants not what others want her to be simply because of her name. I miss cartoons like that which had so many teachable moments in them.

As we traverse these posts about history and social dynamics, community will be at the core of each. Because what has happened could not have happened if a community had not formed to create the changes. And this goes for both the good and the bad throughout history. 

Why is this going to test you? Because we are going to be covering heavy topics from cultural origins, forced conversion, what is and is not appropriation, the rise of religion, why myths are wrong, etc. 

There is so much to cover here and yes this will begin to talk a bit about some of the multitudes of practices out there, but more on the origins of them rather than the “how to practice” them. And honestly, I think most of the “problems” or “concerns” people raise in spiritual communities about the different practices can be alleviated with this information.  I am all for experimenting and mixing and matching or the “alchemy of practices.” But to be successful it needs to be done with both respect and understanding. Learning from the past helps to improve that information and build better practices for the future. Which is what we should be striving for. Not just, “I want to bring abundance to MY life.” I want to bring abundance to my life and share that with others.

There’s no better place to start this journey than before civilization was even invented. We are going to go back before the ancients to our primordial roots and ancestry. 

Thank you for reading this part. It may be a scary topic to start reading about but again it is better to be armed with knowledge than a subject to the wielders of it. No knowledge is secret and should be freely shared with any who asks for it. The people who say, “secret knowledge should remain secret,” are not so secretly using their “knowledge” as a way to control others. The more knowledge is freely given the less power others can have over you. 

Until next time, I hope you have a pleasant day. May your quality of community be one of uplifting and support.