All the Questions, All the Answers

I recently started studying withcraft, as mentioned in some of my other posts. This kind of communing with the divine just makes sense to me, like thinking of the world in terms of energy. I just get it. It feels natural to me, it feels like a puzzle piece sliding home after a lifetime of being lost.

What’s interesting is that it’s so individualized. There are basic general concepts, there are rules for what you do and don’t do morally and ethically as a witch, and there are tips and cautions that are best obeyed even if they aren’t hard and fast religious dogma. I like the freedom, I like the ability to express myself in my own way and do what feels right in my heart.

But this also leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and as such, a lot of room for questions. Along with the witchcraft is my budding ability to sense spirits. I’ve been posting in witchy communities online for help with my questions, but I notice that for many of my questions there are no answers – just more people with the same questions and same issues.

What is interesting to me is that some of them are already turning to me – a beginner, a novice, a newbie, for help and direction even as I myself am asking for the same. At first this irked me and induced a low level of panic – how was I going to know how to handle my own question if nobody could answer it, and how the hell was I going to help these other folks looking to me for leadership and assistance?

But I realized this is as blessing. By helping the others who have the same questions I do, the same issues, we all grow together. We form a bond of community where we’re even more motivated to learn and experiment and find answers because – at least for me – it instills this need to help the others, to take care of them even as I am taking care of myself.

I want them to be ok, just as much as I want to be ok.

I want them to know, just as I want to know.

I think that’s pretty awesome. It leads to mutual growth. It leads to expansion, because the answers I find may be different from the answers they find.

This lesson just shows me more of how fluid and uncertain the universe actually is. In Western culture, with its worship of hard, cold science, we don’t like to admit that sometimes there are no answers – just more questions. And we feel like if we don’t know the answers, then we’re somehow not adults, or we’re not capable, or we’re lacking in some way.

The reality is that there’s just as much magic in the universe as there is science. Maybe more. And it’s not to be feared – just respected. Reality contains far fewer absolutes than we are trained to think in our social programming; life is actually a sliding scale full of potential answers and even more questions.

Little by little, lesson by lesson, I’m learning that this uncertainty, this fluidity in the universe isn’t to be feared or fought. It’s there to teach us, to expand us, to help us and even make us grow.

And to be honest, it keeps things a lot fresher and more exciting if we recognize there isn’t just one answer to every question.