Magic in every day life

[Ashrend]

My question is how do you integrate your practices in everyday life that doesn't interfere with your work or other tasks? For me I'm finding I'm going days without meditation and exploring things because I work long hours and have to maintain a sense of professionalism. I can't wear my pentagram and play with energies, I can't carry around a stone of gem to play around with and can't get a quiet 5 minutes alone. So how do you do it? Do you just practice when you are off work or do you have some sneaky ways of doing it without others knowing?

[Shawn Blackwolf]

I have never been in a "broom closet," have never hidden who I am, nor what I believe, and have created my life so I have been able to do so...

When I was an art agent, and working with major corporations, supplying them, and other agencies, including scientific and government, with art, for various projects, or installations, I dressed as I did, wore what medicine pieces, or jewelry I desired, or chose to, and conveyed professionalism, in the process...

As many in the corporate world conveyed to me, in conversation, they envied me, for dressing as I did, including a few heads of their own corporations, while they wore suits and ties, and toed the line, so to speak, I chose to educate them about a sense of power and presence one must hold within, and emanate outward,so "none may say nay..."

One group I learned from, was the very wealthy and successful, who showed total disregard for convention, though those around them were the ones who saw it so important...

Others I took lessons about this from, were a Catholic priest, when I was a teenager, who rode a Harley, and wore leathers, my older cousin, who had hair down to his waist, and graduated high school with seventeen full paid scholarships to universities and colleges, rock musicians, Crowley, the renegade of magical society, and being a teenager in the 1960's Bay Area, in California, during the ending of the Beat society,and the beginning of the Hippie and Yippie era...

I am a firm believer one disempowers oneself, and ultimately devalues the world they live in, if they do not follow their truth, in their private and public daily life...

Live as you know is right for you, and after a period of possible difficult adjustment, the world and universe will see that, catch up, and support you, in your life and growth...

Anything less than being oneself, regardless of what others believe, is a disservice and betrayal...

Just my feelings, and experience...I am still doing it on a daily basis,and I am 62...

[SpiritTalker]

I usually wear a crystal pendant & save my pentacle for ritual occasions, as part of my "power costume" and cleansing rite, or wear it when "off duty". Nigh on 40 years ago I began setting my alarm clock 30 minutes earlier than I "had" to so I could have time for devotional reading before showering. In high school & in college, I meditated between classes, seeking a corner in the lounge. I kept up a journal before bed. When I began working full-time I’d meditated on my lunch hour, in good weather going outside for a walk. Id chant silently on the walks to and from bathroom breaks. Ground & Center while waiting in grocery check out lines. Once in a while on days off, I'd walk over to the park and enjoy the playground swings or drive to the lake for beach walks with no scheduled activity. I can play with rocks while I wait for my dinner to cook, and speaking of dinner, I juice it up with my intent while I prep it. I have never owned a dish washer, and use the mindless time I wash-up to memorize things I want to use. I chant or commune while mowing the lawn or any solo-activity. Meditation is not a loss of consciousness, but the focus of it.

[Wolf]

Sing a mantra while you walk, tip your hat you a tree as you never know who might live there, scribble spells and runes on scrap paper in your free time on a bus ride, take a spare moment to simply look around you and see what the gods have placed before you. Use a sharpie marker to scribble esoteric symbols on your skin under your clothes so nobody but you knows. You don't need grand gesture to play with energy, just feel it coursing through your body.

I'm up every week day at 5am and don't get home until 5pm. At work I chant while I sand and grind, I listen to pagan podcasts on my headphone too. Where there is a Will there is always a Way.

[SnowCat]

I internalize most of mine. I could wear a pentacle if I chose, but I just keep mine quiet.

Snow

[Amethyst Moon]

I wear silver rings with different stones in them so if I feel the need to fiddle with a stone I always have one. I have always kept a quartz or another stone in my pocket. I have many different necklaces that I interchange. One is a tree of life, another is a star. I have some that I have wrapped myself when I have the time to sit and watch a show... coffee breaks became tea breaks and lunch became a time to walk and clear my mind. I would put headphones on and play music that I could meditate to, and walked for an hour, having to eat at my desk after I got back. Meals are natural food, some grown in my own garden but as clean as I can find... if it's raining and you can't go for a walk have a book with you if you must or you feel you need to put a different cover on it so no one knows what your reading. I never cared, but sometimes the people you work with are not the ones you care to know... before bed have a hot bath with salts and candles... most important take at least five minutes for yourself.

[Bychan Wulf]

-Meditation is something I can't really schedule or remember to do either. I mean the proper/regular meditation. I am known for being dreamy so, when I get a quiet moment in a class or in the bus, my mind wanders where I want it to. Nobody can know if you think which TV series you're going to watch or you picture your shield and roots growing all around you.
-Playing with energies is also something that I do in public. I only need to close my eyes and be left alone for a few minutes; there is no need to do it the way they show it in movies. If the energy is there, it will make its presence felt.
-my chit chats with the Goddess, but mostly with my spirit animal are done before going to sleep. Switching the lights off reminds me that I need protection.
-keeping a diary helps keeping track on dreams, spells, experiences amd everything. I don't have much privacy, so I started an online BoS. If anyone can find it, that person deserves to read it because he migh be a witch too.
-wearing a pentacle is not as hard as I thought it would be. Older people think it's David's Star or just a Star and the younger just accept it. With only a few exceptions, nobody really seemed bothered by it; some even got interested in the subject.

[corvidus]

-Playing with energies is also something that I do in public. I only need to close my eyes and be left alone for a few minutes; there is no need to do it the way they show it in movies. If the energy is there, it will make its presence felt.

This can open you up to negative energy, or negative entities.

"Negative" meaning not interested in your best interest.

[RyukaAscendant]

-Playing with energies is also something that I do in public. I only need to close my eyes and be left alone for a few minutes; there is no need to do it the way they show it in movies. If the energy is there, it will make its presence felt.

This can open you up to negative energy, or negative entities.

"Negative" meaning not interested in your best interest.

I had a chant I began using that was something to the effect of;

"I cancel all contracts I may have unknowingly or unconsciously made"

I did this a long time ago when spirits started bugging me, in a couple cases asaulting me.

[Tutmosis]

I wear a pentacle of Solomon. It's kind of like my little secret, as a magi I am supposed to be quiet about my practices

[corvidus]

I wear a pentacle of Solomon. It's kind of like my little secret, as a magi I am supposed to be quiet about my practices

Haha, and now everyone knows your secret

[TwilightDancer]

I manage a restaurant so I'm on my feet all day. I'm always in a hurry to get things done so I don't get alot of witchy things done in a day unless they're on my day off. On days that I work the most I can do is wear my clear quartz necklace and some tumbled bracelets and try to ground myself when rush starts.

One thing I have made time for in my day is a magical shower. I always put some herbal salts in the bottom of the shower so the hot water will help dissolve them and fill the bathroom with their scents. I use really good natural herbal shampoo/ conditioner/ body wash. Then after brushing my hair I spray a mixture of sea salt, water and lavender essential oil onto my hair. (It's great for frizz and smells great!)

[Bychan Wulf]

This can open you up to negative energy, or negative entities.

"Negative" meaning not interested in your best interest.

Thank you for the heads up!
I wear a shield that keeps my energies in and the negative ones out. The only ones that can come and go through the shield are those necessary for communication. And I might have not made it sound very clear. I don't use that energy in public. Just raise and ground it; it is only used when I need to repair the shield.
I also have the enchanted pentacle that keeps entities and negative energies away, together with my spirit wolf.
I never thought these could not be enough. I am not exactly willing to deal with low energies :- D

[Tutmosis]

I wear a pentacle of Solomon. It's kind of like my little secret, as a magi I am supposed to be quiet about my practices

Haha, and now everyone knows your secret

Lmao. Well you guys are an exception!

[Kassandra]

My question is how do you integrate your practices in everyday life that doesn't interfere with your work or other tasks? For me I'm finding I'm going days without meditation and exploring things because I work long hours and have to maintain a sense of professionalism. I can't wear my pentagram and play with energies, I can't carry around a stone or gem to play around with and can't get a quiet 5 minutes alone. So how do you do it? Do you just practice when you are off work or do you have some sneaky ways of doing it without others knowing?

I pondered your questions, and here are a few of my thoughts on them...


The Hoodoo That I Doo

Rather than interfere with everyday life, I look to my practices as a means of augmenting the meaning and understanding, as well as the joy of daily life. I try to bring a magical awareness to mundane activities; in fact, I think that is the aim. I, personally, couldn't do it any other way, wouldn't bother with magic/witchcraft otherwise. Even when I wasn't a practitioner, outward symbols and nick-nacks in general haven't meant much to me. I guess that still applies today, and like being a plain clothes cop I'm naturally an undercover practitioner, not because I care to hide things, but because I never felt compelled to display my beliefs, got nothin' to "show" anyone.

I also do not adhere to guidelines that are popular in many witchcraft circles today, like not "affecting" others, etc. I think that's kind of, I don't know, naive? unrealistic? superficial? to believe that what you do just doesn't affect anyone around you. I just couldn't buy that, so I never subscribed to it. I see energy, and just an angry thought a person in a room is thinking, for example, creates ripples in the energetic fabric of that room, and affects others. I could see it. A witch could recite "harm none" but get into her car and proficiently curse out someone cutting her off in traffic, lol ("curse words," think about that). I could see the energy of that directed at the other driver, and hit that person like a slimy ball of mud. Doesn't that harm? Following redes and whatnot never seemed realistic to me, though I fully respect other peoples' decision to do so. It's just not for me. So, I am not bound by them in my practices.

Therefore, that opens up a lot of behind the scenes things I could do in the course of my practice. It's too much to describe in this post, but roughly-speaking, there are wards that could be placed in locations to affect their energy flow, washes and powders that could be placed on clothes and other objects (including your own) for any number of purposes (your car could be enchanted for safety, for instance), spells that could be done to facilitate good communication between yourself and other individuals, mojo bags and other charms could be worn that function as little "energy generators" shooting forth energy "molded" by will in order to bring about a certain outcome to a situation or endeavor. Everything I do, pretty much, is behind the scenes. It's the very nature of the practice because in times past, practitioners of the same would be corporally punished if discovered. So, the very heart and survival of the practice became 100% integrated into daily life, invisibly and seamlessly.


Time Management

I find it's not a matter of the mundane world interfering in some way with my doing these things (magic/witchcraft, meditation, exploring things, etc.) I find it's a matter of whether or not I am taking the initiative in my daily life to consistently schedule time for these activities. We make sacrifices for work, or for relationships we consider important; why wouldn't we have the same approach to our spiritual practices? I have to "block out" time like I would for any other activity. If there were a ceremony I needed to attend for a loved one, I would make sacrifices to attend it, and inconvenience myself in some way. That is the "trade off" for doing what I consider important.

Be willing to make sacrifices, take something away from here in order to add something important there, etc. Spirit Talker gives some good examples of this in her post, such as how she set her alarm 30 minutes earlier than she would normally have preferred to, just to have a little extra devotional time before showering. It was a sacrifice --who wouldn't want to stay in bed until he or she absolutely had to get up?

It helps to write out a weekly schedule, and block out time for doing what's spiritually important. I find that giving each activity a name gives it more salience, tangibility, just as we name our mundane activities ("dentist appointment," "PTA meeting," etc.). So on your phone calendar, block out "Meditation Session," "Ritual Time," "Exploration Time," etc. Keep those appointments as though your life depended on it.



Perspective Tinkering

Sometimes I have to challenge myself mentally and re-define my approach to spiritual activities. I think a pervasive attitude in the mundane world is with spiritual activities we don't "get something," there's no dollar amount or material gain, so it's more difficult for us (perhaps subconsciously) to schedule time to do them. I work with this instead of against it, play games with the "time is money" mantra of the mundane world and use it to my advantage. For instance, in order motivate myself to sit and meditate I might actually say to myself, "Look, if someone were standing next to this meditation cushion right now, holding a hundred dollar bill and saying, 'If you meditate on this cushion for 20 minutes, this $100 is yours,' then wouldn't I happily meditate? Then pretend this is happening, imagine that 100 bill in your hand, and just meditate."

Playing silly mind games with myself like this has actually worked well in my spiritual life. After a while I don't need these mental crutches. The practices become habitual, and I will just make time to do them, without struggles.

Other times, I have used a "quantity over quality" approach. For instance, instead of allowing myself to be attached to the goal of having some "great" meditation session, euphorically transported to phenomenally great spiritual heights and dreamily lofty insights, blah, blah, blah, I might just tell myself, "OK. Sit on this cushion. Take ten, long, slow breaths --count them out on your fingers if you have to, so you don't get distracted. Then, get up and get on with your day. Got it?" haha Seriously though, this works. I have learned that spiritual perfectionism, and spiritual satisfaction, are two very different things, and dialing down any perfectionistic ideals I may have allowed to seep into my spiritual practices, does wonders. Keep it simple; it's surprising how much gets accomplished.





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