The Spiritual Art of Letting Go

I have been having a few thoughts about letting go on 9/11 of this year. This of all days, on the anniversary of 09/11 – a day that is indelibly etched in the minds of most modern adults. Like when JFK was shot or when Challenger exploded, we can never forget where we were or what the day looked like or how we felt. On that day, 11 years ago, I was with my mother, who was dying of terminal cancer. Less than a month from that date, she would pass to the Beautiful West. That day, I got an email from a gentleman whose YouTube videos I had commented on and was so impressed by that I wrote to his private email address late last month. His production values were very high, and I thought it was a definite standard that I hoped my own work could rise to. I was very interested in talking to him about my documentary project.

Three weeks after I had sent that email, and thinking to myself that that he was probably just too busy to answer, or just not interested, I shrugged and didn’t think any more about it. On Tuesday, 9/11, I received a return email apologising for having not replied sooner but was undergoing treatment for a terminal illness that was making him feel, quite understandably, rather crappy. He went on to ask for forgiveness but should be ready to send me a proper reply in a week or so.

I felt completely chastened and humbled by that email. It made me think about an earlier interview I had seen on Youtube on Karagan Griffith’s ‘Witchtalk’ video blog, where he interviewed John of Monmouth about his involvement with the Royal Windsor Coven and the Regency. Both organisations were very closely connected to Robert Cochrane and later traditions, such as 1734 and Clan of Tubal Cain and others that had evolved from Robert Cochrane’s work. In the interview, there was a definite emphasis toward a “letting go of the artifacts”.

As someone who is Kemetic Orthodox and who has felt the pressure that many reconstrictionists feel that you must find only the authentic bits and ditch all recreations and deviations from what is known and archaeologically or scientifically verified, as well as things gained through unverified personal gnosis or abbreviated simply as UPG. You can definitely do this, and I most certainly did for a number of years. However, what you have is a rote set of rites and a list of “shoulds” or “should nots” and there is very little left that speaks to our greater connection to everyone and everything else.

For myself, I searched for many, many years for some semblance of good, solid ritual the way it was intended for the various Egyptian deities, Sekhmet in specifics. What I found was a whole lot of new age bullshit that somebody channelled. I wanted the real deal, not made up nonsense.

My reason?

Because with over 4,000+ years of residual energy surrounding any deity, I have found that it pays to take at least a little bit of historical context into the equation. If you don’t, you’re just flat out being inaccurate. Those energies, particularly the ones considered as volatile and dangerous, have proscriptions in place for very specific reasons. It pays to at least attempt to figure out what the reasons are. Yes, there is always a bit of UPG involved – and it is good to make that differentiation about what part is based in antiquity, and what is adapted vs. what you pulled out of your own consciousness. In the past, I got extremely enraged over a certain, well-known author, married to another well-known author who wrote about Sekhmet and was essentially selling Priestess initiations for the cost of dropping acid and sleeping with him In all of my years of researching Sekhmet and her worship from the extant writings from antiquity and from other egyptologists, et al, those kinds of requirements were definitely not how things were done. He and I had many extremely heated arguments on this topic over the years. Now, several years after his passing, I have let go to the outcome. All I can do is re-educate those who have had the misfortune of reading the book and thinking that is all that there is.

I find that everyone tends to gets their own version of whatever deity that they find themselves connected to. But of course, we as humans can’t make it just that simple. Even reconstructionists in the attempt to try to get to a place of connection find that the rites that went before are there as a guideline. Wanting to connect with those guidelines should not be considered a disease or dogma. It’s just another form of devotion – of being completely enamoured of a particular Deity, whether it is Jesus or Buddha, Allah, Sekhmet, to care enough to want to find out all that they can. Devotions tend to be highly personal for everyone, and no one should dictate that to another.

Another key point in the interview with Karagan and John of Monmouth was about real power is not just the empty, hollow rituals but the real raising of energy and that can only happen when tuning into and experiencing the Rites that you really go beyond description. Language falls far short, and yet so many of us try. The consciousness of interconnection between Self and all that is, is something which is sought in almost every religion, and yet it seems to be a constant battle for people to keep it all pertinent and real. Such an opening does not tend to happen when relying only on what has been set down by others, or by a list of instructions. Each person is unique and therefore while spiritual experiences are in some way similar to one another, they are not ever going to exactly the same for any two people. Also, some of the experiences in any faith, particularly when you do let go and follow it, go far beyond words. There is that occultist’s adage, “To Know, To Will, To Dare and To Keep Silent.” The bit about “Keeping Silent” isn’t always because it is taboo to discuss these experiences, but rather it can also be taken to mean that it is near to impossible to adequately articulate them to someone else. Certainly they are never going to benefit from the telling as they weren’t there and have no frame of reference. Any attempts to do so, more often times than not, fail miserably. Several have done a pretty good job, but those things are very rare and only touch the surface. Still, it is very difficult to look at the works of someone like Hildegaard of Bingen, whether it is her art, her music or her herbals or the art of Michelangelo, the poetry of Rumi and not feel some sense of each of their having really connected to the Divine and everything else on some deeper level.

When we let go of the push toward the logical mind, the part of the brain that must always maintain control, we open ourselves to things that we never before experienced or even imagined. Getting to that place where you are at peace with yourself, that either comes with practice, or maybe it a matter of time. I would like to think that wisdom can be gained not just by simply getting older.