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Thinking About Metaphysics

/ Bee La Rosa / Leave a comment

I’ve spent the last several years in a variety of online metaphysical communities, sometimes as moderator, and more recently some in-person communities as well. One thing I have noticed is that within these spaces, many metaphysical or spiritual topics are taken for granted as absolutely real or literally true, especially by newcomers or in spaces where philosophy isn’t a familiar topic. In fact, many people do not even realize that a philosophical claim or position is underneath their understanding of a given metaphysical topic. 

In these spaces you’ll often find people asking questions or getting into disagreements about the attributes of say, crystals or energy work, not realizing that their position necessitates the assumption of several premises that are not universally agreed upon. This leads to a lot of fruitless arguments and people missing, in my opinion, opportunities to go deeper with their spiritual practices because they have approached information about spirituality/metaphysics with the same attitude or regard that they may pay towards scientific knowledge. Today I’d like to offer some food for thought on this, with the provided forewarning that I am aware that what I am offering here today is my own set of philosophical suppositions.

What is Metaphysics?

Before I jump in I want to clarify my use of vocabulary within this article. Spirituality, metaphysics, and occultism can often be used interchangeably in the communities I mentioned. Metaphysics specifically, according to Wikipedia, is a branch of philosophy concerning the fundamental nature of reality. The word’s Greek roots literally mean “after or behind or among [the study of] the natural.” Generally speaking, the field of Metaphysics is more than just practicing witchcraft or buying crystals to attune your chakras. It’s about ideas and claims that often are impossible to empirically validate through the scientific method. It’s important to know this because fundamentally at the core of spiritual and occult practices are metaphysical claims about reality, of which there are about as many claims as there are people practicing spiritual or occult paths. 

Unlike the natural sciences, which tend to converge toward consensus as empirically validated evidence accumulates, metaphysical practices and ideas tend to diverge according to the teachings and doctrines inherent to an individual’s culture, faith, and community. I don’t mean to say that metaphysical ideas are inherently false or less valid, but they are often not falsifiable, which makes them untestable hypotheses. Therefore, engaging with metaphysical ideas and practices requires a different kind of approach and way of thinking than we may typically pay towards other kinds of information.

Descriptive vs Prescriptive

The most accessible way I can think of to convey the difference between taking metaphysics for granted and not is by framing it as descriptive versus prescriptive metaphysics. I actually owe Christopher Wallis, who goes by Hareesh, for this, as he frames the western misunderstanding of Indian chakras in this way in his article:

“THE CHAKRA SYSTEMS ARE PRESCRIPTIVE, NOT DESCRIPTIVE. 

This might be the most important point. English sources tend to present the chakra system as an existential fact, using descriptive language (like ‘the mūlādhāra chakra is at the base of the spine and it is red’ and so on). But in most of the original Sanskrit sources, we are not being taught about the way things are, we are being given a specific yogic practice: we are to visualize a subtle object made of colored light, shaped like a lotus or a spinning wheel, at a specific point in the body, and then activate mantric syllables in it, for a specific purpose. … The texts are prescriptive — they tell what you ought to do to achieve a specific goal by mystical means. When the literal Sanskrit reads, in its elliptical fashion, ‘four-petaled red lotus at the base of the body’ we are supposed to understand ‘The yogī ought to visualize a four-petaled lotus . . .’”

I find that this way of framing the way people think about chakras can easily be applied to other metaphysical concepts, like paranormal entities, divination, spellwork, deity worship, and so on. When one treats metaphysical ideas as prescriptive rather than descriptive, practices can be treated like a set of suggestions or steps (or conceptual frameworks) that, if followed, may produce a particular result in your experience. Personally, I find this approach liberating and pragmatic. You know your own direct experience that follows from performing a certain practice or put faith in a particular conceptual framework (such as pantheism), but you cannot necessarily objectively prove that what you experienced is evidence supporting the framework behind the practice. Another way to put it is that there is no way to know with absolute certainty that the results you experience are because your conceptualization of a metaphysical system is real in the way that you conceptualize it, or that your conceptualization is a symbolic representation of the unknowable acting mechanism – and that’s okay. There is still truth in your experience even if the “ultimate truth” of it isn’t able to be articulated or scientifically validated.

Material Truth vs Other Truth

Of course, everyone will have their own ideas around what is actually happening when they are engaging with a metaphysical practice – I just think it is wise to recognize that these kinds of ideas do not necessarily say the same kind of things about our world as science does – or at least, say it in the same kind of way. Science, which observes the material world, is able to be used as a relatively reliable method of inquiry into the nature of said material world. However, metaphysics and spirituality are often dealing with immaterial beings and experiences – things that cannot be directly observed and documented objectively. In my opinion, to treat spiritual truth as if it is the same thing as material truth misses the point. Take, for example, many of the claims in Christianity about historical events that have since been refuted – such as the great flood told in the story of Noah’s Ark. Does this mean that there is no truth to be offered through this story? Only if you think the truth needs to be materially true or literal. Taken as a symbolic representation of a kind of human experience, the interpretation of Noah’s Ark is able to yield instead a different kind of truth about the transformative experience of unyielding faith in divine guidance.

I understand this may sound like a devaluation of metaphysics, but it would only seem that way because Western society has a heavy bias towards scientism, which is the belief that the scientific method is the best or only way to provide “genuine knowledge of reality.” I guess what I am ultimately trying to say is that we should be mindful to separate our implicit biases towards scientifically-validated knowledge from spiritual matters so that we can actually approach the realm of Spirit – which is transcendent and therefore immaterial in nature. In short, spiritual experiences do not need empirical validation to be true – they are validated moreso through the resonant feeling or intuitive sense of knowing one receives from the experience. That is why faith is such a powerful and revered concept among religions. Sometimes, objective validation does occur and it is quite awe-some when that happens, but we shouldn’t base the value of spiritual practices on how reliably they can be empirically validated. I believe this bias towards scientism is at least partially, if not significantly, why we have people preoccupied with finding physical evidence to validate their religions. In my view, this is a huge mistake.

When metaphysical teachings are taken for granted as facts about material reality, it can lead to dogma and senseless squabbling over details that often cannot even be directly observed – or, have even been reasonably refuted. Engaging with ideas and practices becomes about who has the answers and the correct information about reality. Whereas, when metaphysical teachings are taken as a set of suggested practices to produce a kind of result, it brings spiritual experiences back into the domain of conscious presence and intuition. I believe this ought to be the ultimate aim of metaphysical teachings – to bring people in relationship with their inner experiences and truth, rather than dependent upon external authority or science to validate their experience of meaning. However, this does necessitate a change in the way we regard bodies of metaphysical knowledge.

Approaching Metaphysics

Again, there is a tendency among newcomers, “baby witches,” etc to treat metaphysics as if it is some unified body of knowledge akin to “hard sciences” like physics or biology (the unity of which is not to be taken for granted as much as one might think). If we are mindful to regard metaphysical teachings as prescriptive practices, then their validity and content become highly contextualized to the culture and even specific lineage or tradition from which they originate. It means that one must exercise due diligence to understand the surrounding context from which these teachings and practices emerged. It’s especially important to keep this in mind when interacting with different practices – especially if you decide you would like to mix and match them, as is common in new age communities.

Basically, a lot of the time a question like, “how do I balance my chakras?” or “how do I interpret my astrological chart?” is going to come down to what tradition or school of thought you operate within or belong to – and the people who answer these questions for you, might not even realize this either. With this being said, there is benefit in following teachers from within established traditions, as there is often a wealth of history and experienced individuals who are able to guide and help one work through challenges, compared to picking a little bit of everything from everywhere and trying to figure out how to synthesize it all together on your own. It is tempting to try to find a way to unify or syncretize different traditions, but I advise against this. I think it is fine to draw from different traditions, but I like to keep my traditions planted within their original framework. When I get acupuncture or practice tai chi, I am working with my qi, but when I am doing yoga and breathwork, I am working with the prana. I might personally believe and even experience qi and prana as the same thing, but I understand that the practices I am using to work with this kind of energy/experience are different – they come from different belief systems and cultures that have different purposes for their practices.

That about covers everything I wanted to talk about. I know that this might be confusing or come across as nit-picky, but if I didn’t believe this was important then I wouldn’t have written about it. It has made a big difference to me to clarify these points for myself over the years, so I hope this is helpful to others on the spiritual path. Thank you for reading!

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Thank You Spirit: How I Healed my Fear of Something Greater

/ Bee La Rosa / 1 Comment

I wanted to talk about gratitude today and the impact it has had on my spiritual practice. There are many established benefits of practicing gratitude for mental health, which is why I started my gratitude practice. One thing I wasn’t expecting to receive from my practice was an increased willingness to engage in acts of spiritual devotion – something I’ve felt reluctant and even phobic towards until recently.

For years I’ve been scared of engaging in acts of spiritual devotion such as: chanting to specific entities or deities, having statues or imagery of deities in my home (especially on my altar), praying to deities, and especially doing any type of ritual work involving entities or deities. The idea of doing any of this used to terrify me. How do I know entities/deities are real? What if I am deceived and become cursed with some kind of paranormal affliction? What if deities are just trying to use me and will hurt me later down the road? Why should I trust them?

There are a lot of ways to conceptualize deities that elicit big, insoluble philosophical questions I don’t care to explore in this article. For me, I eventually came to a point where it became beneficial for me to explore ways to feel connected and supported by something greater than myself. Some people accomplish this through engaging with community causes, and I turned to spirituality. In order to do that, I knew I needed to understand why I was afraid of connecting to Spirit.

One thing that stood out to me was a fear that I was just going to be projecting unfulfilled desires for loving and supportive parents onto Spirit, and that this would leave me in a state of arrested development. I thought I should be trying to figure out how to depend on myself without any external sources of support or validation. I eventually came to understand this as an attachment issue. That is to say, because I have an insecure attachment style, being in a state of dependence on anyone feels uncomfortable and anxiety-inducing. People with a secure attachment style generally feel safer in the world – they trust that others have their best interests at heart and they experience less challenges related to setting boundaries and resolving conflict in relationships, which promotes a sense of safety and agency. When I thought about my fear of Spirit in this way, it became clear that what I needed were corrective experiences.

Another thing I came to realize was that projection is not an inherently bad or unhealthy phenomenon – on the contrary, it is automatic, unconscious, and happens to everyone. Projection is the psychological mechanism by which the contents of the unconscious become known to us. So, even if I did end up acting out unconscious desires for the parental relationships I didn’t experience as a child, these could become corrective experiences for me and help bring me in touch with the loving and supportive Inner Parent that exists in me.

With that being said, it becomes irrelevant whether or not entities/deities are “real” or imagined, as the spiritual practice itself is therapeutic. So, I found myself taking baby steps to develop a greater relationship to Spirit. One of the first things I did was purchase a small statue of an unnamed, generalized “compassion goddess” who lives on my desk. The fact that she was not any one particular goddess is what helped me take this small step outside my comfort zone. I am particularly wary of any practice resembling “worship” or subordinating oneself to a deity or entity. I did not want to develop any kind of relationship that came with strings attached or ritual obligations. What I wanted at this point was to manifest greater compassion for myself. I had hit a wall, struggling to learn something that I did not have much prior experience with. I called out to something beyond my conscious understanding to assist me in my endeavor.

And you know what? In a few short months I began noticing huge shifts in the way I talked to myself and observed myself. I found it helpful to look at my compassion goddess whenever I felt troubled or dysregulated. During my journaling sessions I found myself experiencing breakthrough insights into my emotional state, effortlessly acknowledging my suffering and feeling…loving towards myself. It felt like the way I feel a strong desire to comfort my dog or a child when they are hurt. In time this kind of way of regarding myself became natural. Can I prove that it was Goddess at work? Of course not, but I keenly feel that it was so. This was my first taste of the kind of corrective experiences I was after. I allowed an effigy of compassion in the shape of a goddess into my life and I did not develop psychosis or become totally disempowered by my relationship to it. Actually, my life began improving and I began to feel greater peace and support. My comfort zone now became a bit more inclusive than it was before; I was willing to take my next small step beyond it.

It didn’t take long for another opportunity to cultivate a corrective experience to show up. I received an offering to participate in a multi-week chanting experience. Each week we learned a new mantra – some were not in service to any particular deity, like the medicine Buddha mantra, but many others were mantras devoted to Hindu deities like Shiva and Ganesha. I was comfortable with this because of my ongoing interest in Vedic astrology and philosophy. Hindu mythology in particular has appealed to me since childhood. I signed up and began participating in my new spiritual community.

I did not expect to love chanting as much as I do. It is now my primary method of meditation that I practice multiple times a week. It feels good to use my voice and rock from side to side while I focus on my mantra. Through weeks of learning different chants, I got to experience that I could connect with spiritual entities without losing my mind or becoming destabilized. In fact, it felt good and brought me deep security and inner peace to practice the chants. Often without knowing the exact meaning of the mantras, I would find them pop into my head during times of stress or emotional turbulence – such as feeling angry and resentful – only to later find out that those specific mantras are used to ameliorate the exact conditions I was suffering from. I felt the most comfortable chanting to Ganesha, especially as I began taking Vedic astrology more seriously and learning about Ganesha’s gentle approachability. I soon found myself searching for a small statue of Ganesha to invite into my home.

When he arrived in the mail I was nervous. This was an especially big step for me – bringing a named deity into my home. I spent a lot of time researching the specific qualities and symbols to look for in a Ganesha statue and where to best place him. I chose an area by my plants, where he looks upon my living room and dwells in his preferred compass direction. Around this time I also crafted my very own mala out of crystal beads and knotting cord. I began to make it a regular ritual to sit in front of my Ganesha statue and chant to him with my mala. Over time I began to include chants to Shiva, Durga, Saraswati, Hanuman, Lakshmi, and the powerful Gayatri. This practice has become very important for keeping me centered and grounded. It has been about a year since I started this practice and I’ve noticed big changes in that time.

One such change was a general overall peacefulness and ability to accept the way things are. I also experienced external events that have brought me to greater opportunities and balance in my life. Whenever I began to feel unsettled or overwhelmed by these shifts, I noticed myself turning to my chanting practice. I also began practicing sincere gratitude for my spiritual team: I started leaving regular offerings of tea on my altar and giving thanks every few days. I’ve had an altar for a handful of years prior to this shift, but it was a general altar for my own growth and acknowledging my ancestors. It’s only in this past year that I have explicitly began using the space on my altar to make offerings and give thanks to Spirit. A small angel figure that was a relic of my late friend’s faith has now become a reminder of the presence of my angels in my life, even archangels such as Michael and Raphael. The lotus charm gifted by a friend is now a symbol of Lakshmi, as well as my owls. One owl in particular – an empty beauty container I picked up at a thrift store – now serves as my God Box where I submit worries and surrender things that are beyond my control. Recently, a small card depicting Ganesha has taken roost beside my angel. These are radical changes from how I was two years ago.

It’s taken a lot for me to be able to trust that something bigger than myself will not hurt or punish me for making mistakes; is understanding, supportive, and ready to reflect to me the love I practice. Over time those little offerings and gratitude prayers have accumulated into a paradigm shift within me in how I relate to Spirit. One day something clicked for me: I felt such sincerely deep gratitude for the presence of Spirit in my life that I wanted to do something nice in return. I wanted to keep leaving offerings and using my chanting practice to put my focus on Spirit of my own volition, the way I tend to and care for the people in my life who have shown me kindness and fidelity. I suddenly understood how people can feel deep love for the guides and deities in their life. I also understood this in reference to my astrological studies – the 5th house, the house of children, devotion, and one’s heart desire, is also the house of spiritual practice and mantra. In the 5th house we freely devote ourselves to our children, loving them immensely, and that same relationship is reflected in how we relate to Spirit.

Yes, this reinforced my previous notions about the relationship between attachment, projection, parents, and Spirit – but it also gave it new meaning. As I keep learning in my astrological studies, when one has been separated or forsaken by their biological parents this creates an opportunity for one to connect with a transpersonal parent. One who can embody the traits we needed from our parents, who were limited by their humanity. A transpersonal parent need not be Spirit, but connecting with Spirit is absolutely a respectable, tried-and-true tradition of doing so. Through this relationship one can internalize a new parental figure and reparent themselves, bringing healing to old traumas and attachment wounds. It takes courage to do it and have faith in the process, but the outcome is so worth it.

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Clear Guidance from Tarot: Reveal Choices, not Answers

/ Bee La Rosa / Leave a comment

A common mistake to make when approaching a system of divination like tarot is approaching it with the intention of having it give you answers for what decisions you should make.

I will preface this article by admitting that I am incredibly guilty of trying to use tarot to make decisions for me, particularly when I am feeling my most vulnerable. Everyone goes through challenges where they wish someone or something would tell them irrefutably what action they should take or what choice will bring them the deepest sense of security and contentment. It’s easy to project this kind of authority onto systems of divination, or even onto friends, family, spiritual mentors or Spirit itself. It is tempting to seek the comfort of absolute certainty about our choices and curtail any risk of failure or setback, but we need to resist this temptation as much as possible.

The ability to make a choice of action is one of the few things in life we have any control over. When you look to external sources to give you answers and tell you what choices to make, you disempower yourself and perpetuate a fear-based cycle of doubting your own authority to know what is best for you. There are many reasons why someone can end up in this cycle – a history of interpersonal trauma, such as gaslighting or attachment injury, is a big one. The message you send to yourself when you disregard your own agency is that you are not trustworthy or able to be relied upon to make sound decisions – and if you grew up in a dysfunctional household, then you may very well just be repeating the pattern you felt towards your own guardians when they failed to be reliable and trustworthy towards you. I know all too well what this feels like, and it can absolutely be terrifying to depend on yourself as an adult if you never experienced what it is like to be in the presence of a safe and trustworthy adult. However, part of healing this means we have to make choices and live with whatever results from them, and sometimes it’s really difficult to bear. The lived experience of making choices – whether for good or for worse – is critical in developing confidence about your identity and needs, as well as learning to trust yourself. How else do you discover what you like, dislike, want, need, or desire if all your choices are made for you? You are depriving yourself of the opportunity to connect to your natural-born intuition when you outsource your agency to external figures or systems.

Receiving answers or revealing choices?

In terms of tarot and divination, asking for answers usually looks like coming to a reader or busting out a deck with a question along the lines of “What should I do about my situation?” Especially questions like, “Should I end my relationship?” or “Should I leave my job?” You’ll notice these questions all have “should” in them – which is a great indicator that these questions are asking an external source to confirm or make a decision that is not theirs to make.

While it is perfectly normal and acceptable to seek guidance and advice on issues that face us, there is a subtle difference between seeking guidance to gather data and explore a situation and seeking guidance to have a decision made on one’s behalf. Typically, we turn to external sources to make decisions for us when we are scared, confused, and unsure – which will inevitably be reflected back to us. With tarot and oracles in particular, my experience has been that the cards really function to reflect what I already know back to me – in messages and symbols that are arranged in such a way that I either perceive additional insight and confirmation into my situation, or experience further confusion and doubt. If I am confused, scared, and doubtful about the decision I have to make, I always pull cards that state this plainly, and often in my fearful state I take these cards to mean that I am making a bad choice. No matter what the situation is, every option will seem scary or incorrect if you approach it with this state of mind. This is why the way you frame a question and ask for guidance can make such a huge difference in how much clarity you gain from a reading.

I believe tarot and other divination systems can be incredibly useful for processing and organizing how we are experiencing a situation, leading to new perspectives or revealing ways to think about a situation that bring about clear, confident solutions. Tarot – or astrology, runes, or whatever other divination system you prefer – is best used to reveal choices, not provide answers. However, in order to make the most out of tarot you have to be conscious of the mindset with which you approach it.

An example situation might be that someone is burnt out on their job, though they feel a lot of affection for their colleagues and the work that they do. In spite of this, this person is struggling to make ends meet and feels incredibly stressed about the situation. They start drawing tarot cards over and over, asking, “Should I leave my job?” In my experience, time and again, this type of approach leads to confusing messages – cards that simply don’t make sense, or trigger fearful reactions. This person just wants to be told what will make them the most happy – what is the correct way to act? But the mindset in this approach is inherently powerless – they do not trust their own ability to know what would make them happy, and it shows in the cards. They need to reorient their mindset to an empowered one before they can receive empowering messages.

Shifting Mindsets

What would an empowering mindset look like? If you relate to feeling confused, unsure, or like you strongly fear making the wrong choice, try imagining this instead: what would it feel like if you trusted yourself to know what you really want, so long as you have access to enough information? Furthermore, what if you know that you possess what you need to obtain enough information to make a satisfying decision? What if you could always create a solution to any challenge or setback you experience?

Launching from the previous example, it’s likely a person in such a situation, deep down, already knows whether they want to stay at their job or find something else – the problem really is that being able to access this inner knowing is easily blocked when someone is experiencing doubt and fear. Someone can live in this state 24/7 – as I have experienced in my past. There are many exercises and tools you can use to recover your connection to your inner knowing if you think this applies to you. In my previous article on ambivalence, I outline steps you can take to access the part of you that already knows what you need.

The person from the previous example may be passionate about what they are doing and feel incredible kinship towards their colleagues. With a fear-based mindset, this person will notice the burnout and the financial struggle and become worried that they may have to leave their job in spite of loving it, so they begin asking “Should I leave my job?” with the desire to be told what to do to save themselves. In a secure mindset, where the person is aware of what they want out of the situation, the question with which they approach the cards may look drastically different: “How can I improve my job?” or “How can I make more money?” Notice how these are open-ended questions, which create space for the cards to paint a picture of your situation and reveal solutions. When you approach your queries this way, you are claiming your agency and empowering yourself to create solutions, rather than resigning yourself to being a passive participant in the unfolding of your own life. This is really the essence of The Magician, by the way.

The impact of your mindset extends to pick-a-card readings on YouTube or selecting a reader too – when you approach your query from a mindset that is grounded, confident, and curious, you may find yourself drawn to different readers or piles than you would have selected when you were perceiving yourself as powerless, vulnerable, and lacking judgment. At least, that has been my experience.

I know that it is hard to channel this mindset if it does not come naturally to you. I hope that by explaining the issue with using tarot for answer-seeking, that you can notice when you are doing this yourself and utilize the tools I linked earlier to re-center and re-approach your queries with an empowered mindset. It becomes easier over time to catch yourself and reorient your thoughts. Try it out and let me know how it works for you! Since I started approaching tarot this way, I feel more confidence in my decisions even if they don’t always yield the best results. I know now that I possess the ability to create solutions to any challenge that meets me in life, because I trust in my own authority to know what is best for me, and I want others to feel the same way.