In Ireland, the “I don’t drink” issue comes up more often than in America. Drinking is part of the Irish national culture. In fact, Ireland ranks #4 in the world for alcohol consumption per capita. (America ranks 43rd. The top three are Uganda (!), Luxembourg, and the Czech Republic.)

Usually, I say “No thanks, I don’t drink,” and that’s that. But this time, I was met with a curious and interested “How come?” from two friends, and the answer turned out to be far more interesting than I expected.

Here’s how the conversation went.

(Notice how my friends mostly played the roles of cardboard cutout dogs.)

I stopped drinking 4 years ago because it felt like a Good Thing To Do.

If that’s the case, then my image of a spiritual role model isn’t really my image at all — it’s hers.

How about I completely ditch that old stale guru image that wasn’t really mine at all. How about I think about my own spiritual path, Pace’s path, the Pace of the present, and see what I feel called to?

And that’s what I did. I threw away my old envisioning of “The Right Way” to do spirituality. I threw away my guru-based “shoulds”. I meditated on what spiritual path I feel called to. I listened to my heart.

This is what my heart said.

“Yo, rest-of-Pace. Here’s the skinny. Our spiritual path is to seek reunion with Source. As for alcohol, it’s kind of a crutch, but at least it gets you out of your head and into me. It’s totally fine for practice, but it isn’t a long-term solution or anything. Also, I love you.”

The next day, I drank a pint of Guinness in an Irish pub and thoroughly enjoyed it. I got surprisingly tipsy; apparently 4 years of no drinking lowers one’s tolerance!

So I guess a more accurate title would have been “A teetotaler changes her mind and drinks a pint of Guinness”, but hey, Irish Guinness is pretty darn good, so I don’t mind the implication. (:

The moral of the story

The simplest way to personal growth is to Ask yourself why.

Don’t count on your two curious friends to ask you why. Ask yourself. Write down your answer, if it helps you to work it out. Question. Examine. Journal.

Simply asking yourself why can get you out of a years-long rut.

Think of one thing you might be doing because of someone else’s reasons, or because of old stale reasons.

Ask yourself why.

Two months ago, I was constantly terrified.

Sometimes I was able to bury it under the surface, but it would rear its head at horrible times. I would fight with Kyeli about personal and business expenses, and I would randomly flip out in terror of what might happen if the Freak Revolution wasn’t profitable enough soon enough.

Would we lose our house?

Would we have to give up all our comfort and fun things?

Would we have to eat nothing but rice and beans?

Would we have to leave Austin?

Would I have to go back to work full-time at my day job?

Today, I’m at peace.

Well, maybe not at peace, but certainly much farther along on my journey toward finding peace. Still some fear, still some worry, but no more abject terror, no more flip-outs, and no more horrible fights about money. Kyeli, back me up in a comment here? (:

What changed?

Two words: Mark Silver.

I’ve been taking the Heart of Money course, and even though I’m only halfway through, it’s already having a profound effect on my relationship with money.

It doesn’t stop there.

In addition to transforming my relationship with money, it’s also affecting me on a deep spiritual level. I’m learning humility.

Isn’t that one of the Seven Signs of the Apocalypse?

I know, I know, I’ve always been pretty egotistical. Empowerment bordering on hubris is a valuable trait for an entrepreneur. It’s like Michelangelo said:

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”

But I’m learning that it’s possible to be empowered while still being completely powerless. To explain how, I’ve first got to talk about three different forms of relationships.

Codependence → Independence → Interdependence

Relationships often move through three phases.

In codependence, you depend on others to the exclusion of yourself. You are not a whole person; you’re completed by someone else.

In independence, you are self-sufficient. You are a whole person, empowered, not relying on others. Many modern cultures, especially Western cultures, idealize this phase.

In interdependence, you are self-sufficient but you choose to engage in healthy interactions with others. You are a whole person, and you trust and depend on other whole people in ways that benefit you both.

It’s easy to mistake codependence for interdependence. Heck, I once made that mistake for three years. They’re both forms of dependence, and they look the same on the surface.

Being the Universe’s bitch vs. being the Universe’s bitch

(a subtle distinction)

What I’m learning from the Heart of Money class is that one’s spirituality, one’s relationship with the Divine (or God, or Goddess, or the Universe, or Source, or what have you) also moves through these three phases.

In codependence, you are God’s bitch. That touchdown you just made? God did that. You deserve no credit. You give up all your power and your responsibility to the Divine, keeping none for yourself. Those negative circumstances you find yourself in? You don’t move a muscle to get yourself out. You tell yourself “It’s God’s will” and accept your lot in life.

In independence, you don’t need God. You don’t need spirituality or religion. You’re an atheist or agnostic. You keep all your power to yourself and take all responsibility for yourself. Those negative circumstances you find yourself in? You take action to change them, on your own.

In interdependence, you are God’s bitch. That touchdown you just made? You couldn’t have done that without your God-given gifts. You recognize that all power comes from the Divine, so you claim no power as your own, but accept the responsibility of stewarding it. Those negative circumstances you find yourself in? You use the power you’re stewarding to change them, but if you cannot change them, you accept them as they are, telling yourself “It’s God’s will”.

Eat me like candy.

Codependence and interdependence look awfully similar, don’t they? But really, a more accurate summary of codependence would be that God is your bitch. The Universe is your scapegoat, your ultimate buck-stops-there excuse. Take, for example, this poem by Rumi:

Your prayer should be, “Break the legs of what I want to happen. Humiliate my desire. Eat me like candy. It’s spring, and finally I have no will.”

Sounds like being God’s bitch, right? Sounds like codependence? Nope. Rumi is actually talking about spiritual interdependence. He’s talking about the simultaneous freedom and terror you experience when you realize that the feeling of control you felt in the phase of independence is an illusion.

But this doesn’t mean you’re giving up your power and responsibility, it just means that you’re not claiming them as yours alone. There’s a saying from the Feri tradition:

“Self is God and God is Self and God is a person like myself.”

In “giving up” your power to the Divine, you’re actually bringing it back to yourself in a purified form.

The Heart of Money Transformational Journey

Mark Silver doesn’t actually talk about being God’s bitch in the Heart of Money class. This is my own work that was triggered by the issues we do talk about in class, which cover things like getting in touch with your heart, finding out what spiritual lessons your relationship with money is trying to teach you, learning to face your assets and liabilities, and that sort of thing.

The Heart of Money work is straightforward when you do it, but it causes these deep ripples that change you in tectonic ways.

One thing Mark said that really stuck with me is:

“Imagine you had a partner, and you spent 30 minutes a week kissing her so she wouldn’t leave you, then saying, ‘Sheesh, I’m glad that’s over with.’ That’s not a healthy relationship. It’s not going to grow. But many people have that exact relationship with their bills, and they expect their money to grow. They don’t realize that their financial situation is not going to change unless their relationship with money changes.”

You want to get in on this before July 31.

Mark recently told me that he’s now offering the Heart of Money course as a home study! I’m super excited to share this with you. This has been the single most effective thing I’ve done to change my relationship with money — to stop the fear, the worry, and the flip-outs. Which is in turn changing things in our business, not just for the better, but for the awesomer!

It was hard for me to decide to sign up. I had to push past the very same money-fear issues I wanted to solve in order to buy it. Kinda paradoxical. But I did push through (with oodles of love, support, and persistence from Kyeli), and it was the one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Seriously. It’s been that important for me.

They’re having a sale where the Heart of Money Homestudy is like 50% off or something ridiculous if you pre-order before July 31st. So I encourage you to check it out now before the price goes up. Mark Silver is an amazing human being, and I stand behind him and his work one hundred percent. (He’s even on our sidebar of Revolutionaries!)

Click this link: Heart of Money Home Study

And since I’ve been quoting so many famous people in this post, I’d like to end with a quote from the immortal Martin Whitmore:

“Yes.”

Our new friend Tracy of Fiercely Loved wrote a blog post about how she’s expanding her monkeysphere and her concept of God by exposing herself to people who aren’t like her, listening with an open heart, and seeing the Divine in each of them.

Sounds pretty darn connection paradigm, right? Pretty darn freak-revolutionary? Most definitely. It touched both of us very deeply.

Some of the phrasing she used, however, triggered one of Kyeli’s landmines, which was planted there long ago by some bad experiences with Christianity. The two of us had a conversation about what came up for Kyeli when she read Tracy’s post, and about our different concepts of the Divine.

We recorded it, asked Tracy’s permission to share it with y’all (which she graciously granted), and are posting it here with all its beauty and warts for you to hear. Here goes. *deep breath*

Kyeli and Pace have an emotional conversation about Christians, pagans, and different facets of the Divine. (12:41)

Favorite quote: “It’s like putting funny glasses with a nose and moustache on the face of God. That doesn’t make it Groucho Marx; it’s still God!”

For most people, religion is the only way they get their spirituality and the only way they get their personal growth. I want to open-source spirituality and personal growth. Let’s bust this up and make it available to everyone!

Before I get out the pickaxe, let me explain what exactly I’m talking about.

Religion is a belief system with supporting social systems. For example, Christianity is a religion. It has a belief system, which says things about the nature of the universe (God created it in seven days, etc.) and it also has supporting social systems, like church. It also has rules, like “Thou shalt not kill.”

Spirituality is our connection with the divine, the supernatural, something greater than ourselves.

Personal growth is improving your inner self. Not just acquiring new skills, like learning to play volleyball. It’s learning how to know yourself better, getting in better touch with your emotions, becoming better able to handle difficult situations, learning to love more wholeheartedly. That sort of thing.

Here’s one of the two points I want to make.

You don’t need religion to get spirituality.

In my worldview, spirituality is a very personal, individual experience. It’s amazing when I find people who share similar views and experiences about the divine and have a similar connection with the universe. But at the core it’s something that’s personal and individual. Hmm. That’s actually completely false. It’s not individual at all because it’s all about oneness and connectedness, at least for me. What I was trying to get at is that it’s not something that can be taught. It’s not something that can be learned or dictated. It’s something that must be experienced on your own.

So, when a religion says “Your only connection with the powers greater than yourself is through me,” I bristle. It’s a heavy-handed control paradigm tactic. The religion takes away your power, your birthright to be connected to the divine, and tells you that you aren’t qualified to do that on your own. That you need an intermediary.

That’s all bullshit. No one owns your spirituality.

Sit down in a quiet place, close your eyes, and look inward. Or outward. Look all sorts of ways and feel your connection to the divine. It’s there, just waiting for you to pay attention to it and open yourself to it.

And here’s the other point I want to make:

You don’t need religion or spirituality to get personal growth.

I’m pagan. A Reclaiming-ish neopagan, to be precise. I don’t worship Satan (I don’t even believe in Satan, in fact), I don’t sacrifice goats, and I’m not anti-Christian. In fact, I think Jesus sounds like a pretty swell guy, and I think the world would be a better place if more people (including Christians) paid attention to what he said.

Paganism is a religion. (Actually, multiple religions. Just like there are denominations of Christianity, like Catholic and Lutheran, there are denominations of paganism, like Wicca and Reclaiming.) It has a belief system (there are many gods, the earth is sacred, etc.) it has supporting social systems and traditions (shared rituals at the turning of the seasons, etc.) and it has rules, like “An ye harm none, do what thou wilt.”

But that’s not really important to me.

The reason I’m pagan isn’t because of the religion. It’s because of the spirituality and the personal growth. Paganism attracts people whose spiritual paths are similar to mine, and provides me with lots of yummy spiritual soul food. Also, it provides me with useful tools for personal growth, tools that can help me get in touch with my emotions, let go of stale patterns that no longer serve me, feel more at peace in a stressful situation, help me realize new things about myself, etc. Paganism couches these tools in the language of its own religion and its own spirituality, but that’s not important.

You can change the metaphor, and it still works.

In paganism, you practice magick. (The extra k is to distinguish it from stage magic.) You perform a certain ritual in a certain way, you chant, you sing, you breathe, you move energy. You connect with the gods.

In Christianity, you pray. You perform a certain ritual in a certain way, you chant, you sing, you kneel, you stand, you worship. You connect with God.

In therapy, you process. You talk, you roleplay, you lie down on the couch, you fingerpaint, you let out a primal scream, you get in touch with your inner child, you introspect. You connect with yourself.

It doesn’t matter what wrapper you wrap around it.

There are fundamental truths of the universe, and different people, different religions, and different spiritualities each interpret these truths differently. It’s like switching window managers but keeping the same kernel. You can use whatever metaphor works for you.

If you’re a pagan listening to a Christian talk about God, try interpreting what they say by substituting your own concept of the divine. When they talk about praying, substitute “focusing energy”. If you’re a rationalist listening to a spiritualist talk about the divine, try interpreting what they say psychologically instead of spiritually. Think about their spiritual experiences as interesting insights into psychology and useful tools for introspection and personal growth.

Magick is science. God is the universe.

Next Friday, we’re going to start posting about a spiritual experience we had that spurred a lot of epiphanies and personal growth. Remember that if our metaphors don’t work for you, you are empowered to substitute your own.

It’s all the same underneath.

My friend Hayden Tompkins recently posted about a topic that’s been on my mind a lot lately: communicating with your in-laws. But her post got me thinking about it from a different perspective. It got me thinking about my spiritual path and my internal tension between inner work and outer work.

I believe strongly in personal and spiritual growth, and I also believe strongly in making the world a better place. I’ve struggled with this tension for many years and I’ve eventually come to the conclusion that my spiritual path is not an ascetic or solipsistic one. It’s not one that focuses on a hereafter or any sort of supernatural or otherworldly concerns. As B, my path focuses on this world, the one we live in.

I believe that we are all one — here and now. Not that our souls, now separate, will eventually join together in some other place. I believe that we are all one in this world. My path is to share this awareness with others.

However, no one can do self-work for you. No one can introspect for you. No one can do spiritual growth on your behalf. It has to come from within and can’t be forced down your throat. So running around and telling people “We are all one!” isn’t going to do a lot of good, because most people aren’t in a place to listen.

So my path is to pave the way for others to follow their own spiritual paths. To do this, I do my best to be a model, to be the change I want to see. I’m also working on making the world a better place, so that others will be free to pursue their own paths of personal and spiritual growth. People stuck in the ghettos aren’t free to do that. People caught up in hate, war, and racism aren’t free to do that. People stuck in the control paradigm aren’t free to do that.

I’m not doing anything about war or the ghettos, although I support those who are. Instead I’m focusing on bringing about a paradigm shift, from a control paradigm to a connection paradigm. For instance, I’m teaching communication skills, to help people connect with each other (and themselves!) more authentically. In the connection paradigm, people are free to pursue their own paths of personal and spiritual growth. And that sounds like a pretty awesome paradigm to me. (: