Patreon Topic 95: On Streamlining and Simplifying

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From Cunnian comes this topic:

“Thinking about accretion of action and process and how sometimes streamlining and simplifying are more in order.”

What I find really interesting is that the accretion of action can be, from first blush, ploddingly slow. Sometimes it really is, and there is nothing wrong with that. The accretion of action that I hold, as a Heathen polytheist and animist, is that it must start with right thought. In other words, orthodoxy. Not that you are always accurate, but that the impulses that start the actions you take are right, morally correct, and produce good outcomes. From right thought, orthodoxy, comes right action, orthopraxy, which confirms and is the execution of those right thoughts. Right thought becomes right action becomes assessment and reengaging with the cycle to do better.

The accretion of action is the build up and execution of thought. Sometimes cutting out thought and action that interfere with the end goal, such as connection with the Ginnreginn, means we need to cut things that once provided comfort but are now encumbering us. Where I once did circle castings every time I engaged in ritual, those times are far fewer, though certainly more potent to the working at hand.

The issue with any process, whether by thought or by action, is that it can become a self-reinforcing loop that justifies its existence because that is how we have always done it, or it is what those around us understand and practice. If anyone has taken a look at the early entries in this blog (and if you have not I understand because I have been writing here for fifteen or so years) you will notice a lot of my earlier entries talk about relating to Gods through archetypes. Much of this has fallen away over time, not the least because I took classes and came to understand Jung a bit better. Another factor in my writing at the time was that a lot of the Pagan community, on and offline, used archetypes as a kind of gateway to talk about relating to Gods, and it provided some intellectual distance from coming to understand Them as full Beings unto Themselves, in other words as distinct people. Not as human, which I think some folks still make the mistake of, but as people.

As my issues with understanding my Gods, such as Óðinn, through  archetypes and archetypal language became clearer over time as I dug into the lore and deepened my relationship with Them, it was necessary to streamline the process. To come to a better knowing of my Gods, I set aside the archetypes I associated with Them. Understanding Óðinn as Warrior God, God of Wisdom, or Initiator was useful, to a point, but it stopped short of engaging with Him as Drottinn, Rúnatýr, Yggr, or Óðinn Himself. While I do not doubt there are parts of Him, as with any of my Gods, that I will never fully understand or even grasp, the archetypes stopped being helpful and were proving to be a stopgap, even a block at times, in our relationship.

Sometimes our thinking, understanding, or thought processes about how we understand the Ginnreginn, cosmology, or approach to it all needs streamlining. The accretion of actions that got us to where we are needs streamlining so that we can connect well with Them, undertand the cosmology and ourselves in it, or we need a new way to approach so we are living well. The accretion of action from here gives us better ways to understand, connect, and maintain our relationships with ourselves and the Ginnreginn.

However, there are times when what needs streamlining is how we do a given practice. Years ago my regular spiritual hygiene ritual, in its fullness, took about 20 to 30 minutes to do. It involved prayers to Gods, Ancestors, and Runes, and galdr of those Runes in between. It has been sufficiently long enough that my spiritual hygiene practice has changed quite a bit, involving more breathwork now, and rather than one time during the day I engage with my spiritual hygiene work as I need it. I have a wider variety of spiritual hygiene practices, some involving just breathwork, while the core of what I do for spiritual hygiene is Runework and galdr. Over time some of these practices needed to change because of where I worked, and in some cases the spiritual hygiene I did to start my day could be so cumbersome that it would not get done regularly. While the accretion of action here made it so that the spiritual hygiene ritual I did years ago was quite powerful, it also was like using a cannon instead of a rifle. It could be draining, which is one of the things the ritual was supposed to help with, and while effective, especially on low energy days it would be hard to get up the desire to do it, let alone to do it.

I still feel that more elaborate rituals can be useful, yet context and the need it serves is important. Yes, I was quite clean and ready to do a lot of work, but sometime all I was preparing to do was just go to my night job. It was a lot for just that. Streamlining and giving proper context to what I did not drop made sure I was using my energy in a more useful, productive way while ensuring I was still doing to spiritual hygiene that would set me up for a good work day, and good setup for when I came home. Streamlining here also meant that I was doing smaller less intense forms of spiritual hygiene throughout the day -my bigger one before or at work, a quicker cleansing, grounding, and centering when I came home, and cleansing, grounding, centering, and shielding work as needed throughout the day. By giving myself permission to do more ad hoc spells, rituals, and ceremony, I was able to adapt to my needs. By making that energy more available I was able to be more present when I needed to be, and focus more on the doing of rituals and spellwork when that was the focus.

The danger is that streamlining for its own sake can lead to a kind of extreme minimalism that sacrifices both useful rites and literal things for efficiency and ‘smoothness’. I enjoy my ritual tools, sacred statues, and other things, so when minimalism as a distinct art and lifestyle movement made a resurgence recently, I quickly found it was not for me. There is nothing wrong with realizing that you do not use a ritual tool, or that certain forms of ritual, understanding, and knowledge have fallen out of your practice. Keeping things for their own sake can lead to a kind of extreme maximalism or hoarding of sacred things and ideas that at least gums up what otherwise could be smooth and efficient ideas, processes, or setup of a sacred space, or at worst leads to hoarding things that makes movement, literal and metaphorical, difficult or impossible.

While a balance in the middle may not be the right balance for a given person, practice, or group, I find a lot of folks find their center somewhere between minimalism and maximalism. I have had times in my life where I did not use any ritual tools, and others where ritual tools suffused my life. I have had times where I spent a great deal of my time thinking about the cosmology I was interfacing with, to the point where I was more thinking about thinking and thinking about how I was to be, which got in the way of actually being. Sometimes streamlining and simplifying are more in order than making another stalli or vé, because we need to work with and relate to those places rather than build them. There are so many factors which can make one extreme, another, or somewhere between the two as a spectrum make more sense for a person or a group, and I think that for most of us, over time, we find where our ideal place is. Once we find that ideal place, the accretion of action and process from this is more useful to our spiritual journey, our relationships with Ginnreginn and within our communities, and there is less need for hard corrections because that sweet spot lets us proceed at a pace we can do well without burning ourselves out or boring ourselves to tears. Whether that is the orthodoxy or the orthopraxy of our religions and spiritual lives, we always have places to learn, to grow, and we may have just as many places where we can act, prune, streamline, and simplify.