Finding Balance Between Structure And Sacred Experience

0:26SPEAKER_04:All right. So here's a topic we haven't covered in a while. Religion versus spirituality.

0:32SPEAKER_05:Yay.

0:33SPEAKER_04:Yeah.

0:36SPEAKER_05:Um what what do you consider the difference?

0:39SPEAKER_04:Well, I was gonna say let's start with a couple of definitions. How about that?

0:42SPEAKER_05:All right, all right.

0:44SPEAKER_04:Because definition definitions are always good.

0:46SPEAKER_05:Yay. We love the dictionary.

0:51SPEAKER_04:So religion. Uh it's basically a structured system of beliefs, practices, rituals, community frameworks, um, all that provide the external architecture for spiritual practice. Right. So we're looking at things like liturgies, sacred text, calendar observances, ethical codes, social structures, right? Reliable forms of discipline, right? Yes, uh all the boring stuff of right. Wow, that was a mouthful. The spirituality, yeah. Uh basically the internal dimension of practice, the personal connection to something greater than oneself, the subjective experience of the divine or the sacred.

1:37SPEAKER_04:Uh it's an inner transformation that may or may not align with formal religious structures.

1:43SPEAKER_05:Yay.

1:44SPEAKER_04:Right.

1:45SPEAKER_05:What does that mean to you? Right.

1:51SPEAKER_04:Well, I've often I've often seen religion um more as a it's a means to an end.

1:59SPEAKER_05:Okay.

2:00SPEAKER_04:Spirituality is is internalized, religion is the external expression of that.

2:07SPEAKER_05:Okay. I I I I sort of want to look at it as a plant. The plant is the religion, the product is the spirituality.

2:18SPEAKER_04:Oh, you mean like the oxygen that the plant provides?

2:22SPEAKER_05:No, like a plant, like a manufacturing plant. Oh, okay. Religion is like a manufacturing plant. All right, it's the internal workings. And what's it putting out? Spirituality. Or at least that's what it's supposed to do. Yeah, supposedly. Supposedly. I I could be wrong there. Now normally in temple, when we talk about or I talk about these two forms, is we normally tend to say that religion is more like order or logic. It's more of the mundane world itself.

3:04SPEAKER_05:Where spirituality is more akin to chaos and the spiritual world.

3:12SPEAKER_01:Okay.

3:12SPEAKER_05:How do you how do you relate it to chaos? Well, the reason we relate it to chaos is because again, the closer you get to the spiritual world, the more the concept of that thought follows form versus form following thought. Alright, that makes sense. Because this is what you're trying to weigh out here. While again, spirituality is not pure chaos, it don't have limits. And I'll give you an example here, all right. The spiritual person will be sitting there going, No, I'm gonna do ritual when I'm moved.

3:53SPEAKER_05:All right, where the religious person goes, Tonight is full moon. We need to do our full moon ritual tonight at this time.

4:03SPEAKER_04:Okay.

4:04SPEAKER_05:What's the difference? They're doing it right during the full moon because you're not in the mood, because you're not there yet. Ritual might be a little bit flat. True. If you're if you're more if you're running into full moon at the last minute and you ain't had a chance to decompress any, you're probably more busy thinking about work inside a circle than what you're there for.

4:28SPEAKER_04:Yeah, probably.

4:30SPEAKER_05:I'm not shaming anyone. This is this is human behavior.

4:35SPEAKER_04:Yeah, you and I both have been through that.

4:38SPEAKER_05:Right. I I I have I have left work, come home long enough to perform and do ritual, change clothes, go right back to work.

4:51SPEAKER_02:Yeah.

4:52SPEAKER_05:To me, that ritual is kind of flat because why? I'm still stuck in the mundane, I'm still stuck in the religious.

4:59SPEAKER_04:Well, and and and how many times have have you and I excused ourselves because we weren't in the right frame of mind. Right. For whatever reason, could be a stressful situation going on, could be, you know, just too much on your mind at the moment.

5:17SPEAKER_05:Right. I I I just got I I just got chewed out by my boss before I got off work for something stupid.

5:24SPEAKER_04:Right. And now I'm pissed off.

5:26SPEAKER_05:And now I'm pissed off, and now I have to do ritual in a loving and caring way for everyone else. And that 15-minute drive home was not enough for me to get all that stress out before I pull up into the driveway.

5:44SPEAKER_01:So, yeah.

5:45SPEAKER_05:Let's take a so, but now let's take a moment. All right. Now we've talked about the bad stuff about religion. Let's talk about the spiritual side. On the spiritual side of it, gives us a better connection, makes us feel better, it makes us want to do this stuff. I'm not saying it doesn't, it doesn't come with all these feelings and emotions with it. Right. The only problem is, is if you're still waiting to get into the mood, all right, and Salwin was three weeks ago and you're just now getting into the mood, we have a problem, Houston.

6:16SPEAKER_02:Right.

6:18SPEAKER_05:If you've ever gone to a gatherer or an event and you're sitting there going, okay, they said ritual was going to be at seven, it's now ten o'clock at night. When are we starting ritual? Well, they're still getting it together and they're not in the mood yet, so we might have it at some time before midnight.

6:38SPEAKER_04:Right. What was the purpose?

6:40SPEAKER_05:So, what was the purpose? You know, I I'm sorry, I don't have time to sit here and wait for my high priestess to be in the mood to do ritual. I got kids to feed, jobs to do, and thogs to let out, houses to clean, and other stuff to do.

6:56SPEAKER_02:Right.

6:57SPEAKER_05:So here we have a problem. Now, in most covens, we've actually solved this problem a long time ago. Because we just split the jobs up because you need the spiritual. But you add too much of the mundane and you have the problem. We're gonna have a committee about a committee to see if we need a committee about the problem that we have.

7:16SPEAKER_02:Right.

7:17SPEAKER_05:To see if we need to even do something about the problem. Over-organization rips and sucks the spirituality out of anything.

7:27SPEAKER_04:Yes, it does.

7:28SPEAKER_05:But what most Covens do is we split up the jobs. Priests handle the mundane, they handle the religious aspects. High priestesses, well, they guess what they deal with? They deal with the spiritual matters of the right to make sure we still have that spiritual, emotional connection to what we're doing, but we can still do it in a reasonable time for everybody to enjoy it.

7:54SPEAKER_02:Right.

7:55SPEAKER_05:Why in the world we sit there and tell you, okay, if you're coming to full moon, you might want to show up at least 15 minutes early so you got time to sit, meditate, get yourself into the right headspace before going into ritual. Right. Because that's us reintroducing that spiritual spirituality. We we want you to have time to get rid of the mundane, to to push it away.

8:20SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm.

8:20SPEAKER_05:Or at least be able to set it aside for at least the next 15 to 20 minutes. I mean Right. So, and this is how we do it. I'm not sure I you've been in more churches than I have. I've seen churches do this and they bring in the religion so much, what's the point?

8:38SPEAKER_02:Right.

8:39SPEAKER_05:It's gone. They're dead inside, and I I don't get it. Without that spirituality, what's the point? But if you have too much of it, do you ever actually get anything done?

8:49SPEAKER_04:No, you don't.

8:51SPEAKER_05:Then sitting there and again, like I said, you've been in churches and stuff. How do you think we do handle this in temple compared to other religions?

8:59SPEAKER_04:Well, I think it I think it works. Um when you when you separate the two like that, I think it helps bring the it brings a balance. Right. So it's it's always about checks and balances inside of a coven, right?

9:13unknown:Right.

9:13SPEAKER_04:You don't want too much of one, too little, too little of the other in either situation. And I think that by doing that, you know, say we're focusing too much on the religious side of things or on the mundane side of things. Priestess will come up and basically slap us in the face and say, All right, you need to pull back a little bit.

9:36SPEAKER_05:Right.

9:37SPEAKER_04:We got we got too much junk going on here. Right. We don't have enough of the spirituality. So you you need to let me step in and balance that out. And I think that's where that's the benefit that we have that others don't. When I say we, I just mean you know, as a coven.

10:00SPEAKER_05:As a tradition, coven and craft, yes.

10:03SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and I and I think that's I think that's the benefit that traditionalists have.

10:08SPEAKER_05:By us sitting here admitting that both is needed and having jobs in both, we're also admitting that each individual has these two things inside them. All right. All we're really saying is that, yes, we believe women tend to be a little bit better at the spirituality than men. And I'm not getting into why and what and all that, all right. But it's that understanding because you can see it in me and the high priestess, because you see it in your priest and your high priestess, you can start seeing it in yourself.

10:41SPEAKER_05:Right. And you can actually start regulating it yourself by seeing an external form of this going on. I think. I think it sort of teaches us how to internalize this as an individual to be able to keep that spiritual and that that wonder, that awe that religion needs and that religious side of it going. I understand why in the world we always do our Sabbath on the weekend closest to it. Because we're there to enjoy our company. It is the communal part of it that is part of this.

11:17SPEAKER_04:Exactly, yeah. It gives people time to enjoy the spiritual side of things. So we're not rushed to get through ritual, we're not rushed to get out afterwards and everything. So, yeah, it's the community, it's the it's the bonding, it's it's everything.

11:33SPEAKER_05:Well, I mean, I don't know about anybody else. I know in our house, when it's ritual, when it's a ritual night, when we're doing a Sabbath, I tend to want to take it easy at home.

11:44SPEAKER_04:Yeah.

11:45SPEAKER_05:I I mean, I'm I'm not being mean or anything like that. I try my best to limit what news I watch. I try my best to limit what in the world's going on in the world and be more entertained during the day or do more spiritual works or something that day because I want to be in that frame of mind.

12:01SPEAKER_02:Right.

12:02SPEAKER_05:And because it's a weekend and stuff like that, it's easier to get away from it. Instead of your daily week of in your routines that you have to keep. Okay, it's six o'clock, I need to watch some news, I need to cook dinner. So, I mean, and there's the reason behind it. Again, it it it reintroduces that spiritual aspect to what we need in our lives. So, yeah, I'm gonna sit there and say, Hey, if it's grander or lesser, plan an easy day. At least that morning until up to ritual.

12:31SPEAKER_05:Right. That way you know you got plenty of time to get there, you're not stressing. I'm gonna leave 15, 20 minutes early just in case there's traffic. I do not want to be stressed. That's why that's one of the reasons we do it. That's one of the reasons I like to do them on the weekends. Now, again, no, not everybody gets the weekends off and all this, and I understand that, but for the majority, working on the weekends is not quite as stressful as working during the week because all your bosses are not there.

13:02SPEAKER_04:Well, no, it's not. And, you know, when you know, when when the boss is gone, it is a little less stressful.

13:11SPEAKER_05:It is. You don't have that person breathing down your neck. So again, I I I still understand taking a few, at least trying to get off or rearrange your schedule where you got a little bit of time before ritual to kind of depress. Right. But yeah, I mean in our household, yeah, on Sabbaths, on the grands and lessers, yeah. I try my best to take it easy. The only thing I'll fuss about is if I gotta cook something.

13:36SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Or stop and pick something up on the way because we forgot to do it beforehand.

13:42SPEAKER_05:Or whatever we need for ritual that I'm supposed to bring as the high priest, I'll go ahead and put it together and set off to the side. Right. That way it's ready to go and I can grab it. I don't have to think about it later and do that. Oh, oops. No, I need to go back home and go get that. Right. Which has happened. It does.

14:03SPEAKER_04:So, but I do have a question for you. There do you think that um do you think that that a separation has occurred? In like in the majority of the community? And if so, what's caused that separation?

14:18SPEAKER_05:I think, well, first of all, we got a problem in the pagan community where everybody pretty much ejects any authority or structure or anything to begin with. Right. Hence the reason why in the world a lot of pagans have thrown the whole religious part out. They don't want the structure, or they think they don't want the structure. Because again, a lot of these people were raised Christians, where in the world that structure already leaned to the religious side.

14:47SPEAKER_05:Right. And that's all they saw. So I can understand the read the knee-jerk reaction, but in the same way Christians are doing that by doing pure spirituality, it's not helpful either. Because it all it is is chaos all over the place. It's it's everybody's personal correspondences, and everybody's talking about and getting mad when they realize your your personal correspondence are not universal. Right. Your beliefs are not as universal as you think they are.

15:22SPEAKER_05:And people get mad and they get upset, and they're like, but, but I feel this. Well, the problem is and is that we actually need both. You need religion and spirituality. This is a wonderful concept in paganism or in the occult or witchcraft that you think is that we learn better under tension. And these are our two pivot points around this tension point. Because they're pulling it in opposite directions, but they're actually connected together. I think that's where the problem is.

15:59SPEAKER_05:I think too many pagans have thrown the baby out with the bath water. All right. And they're rejection. Right. Their thoughts or whatever, their traumas. I'm just saying, it this is why they're throwing this out. But again, throwing out the whole entire framework doesn't actually fix anything. It makes the problem worse, I think.

16:25SPEAKER_04:So okay, so that's perfect because I'm also wondering can we talk about what happens when you do more of one than the other? Like if you focus too much on the religious side, what happens when you lose the spirituality?

16:40SPEAKER_05:Right. Well, if you do too much of the religious side, you become too rigid. It's too much about the rules and how everything functions, and very little freedom of expression because it has to be this way. The mundane, the religious side of this, thought follows form. In other words, a tree will never be anything else, and we have to use it like it is, it don't suddenly become something else.

17:06SPEAKER_02:Right.

17:07SPEAKER_05:But yet, when we go over to the spiritual side where it's more exciting and there's a little bit more energy and upbeat there, you have a problem. This is where we're starting to get into this realm of form following thought. In this world, it don't work that way. In the mundane, it don't. And when the two collide, it don't work quite as well as you think it does.

17:28SPEAKER_04:Can we look at it? And this is kind of interesting, but I'm I'm just curious. Can we look at it as like with meditation? Let's say grounding, a required grounding after meditation. That's your religious side.

17:43SPEAKER_05:Yes.

17:44SPEAKER_04:Meditation. Meditation is the spiritual side.

17:48SPEAKER_05:Yes.

17:49SPEAKER_04:If you meditate too much and you don't ground, you walk around with your head in the clouds, you walk around like a dit, you're just not paying attention.

18:00SPEAKER_05:Right. You bump into things, you yeah, you could hurt yourself because you're just these are the people that walk again, these are the people that walk out into the middle of traffic and not really paying attention to where they're going.

18:12SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it's like being high all the time.

18:14SPEAKER_05:Uh or it's walking around with your face inside your cell phone before you fall into the fountain.

18:19SPEAKER_04:That too. So that's that's uh I think that's a good example of too much spirituality without structure.

18:31SPEAKER_05:Right, because again, if you completely ground yourself, you don't get none of the spirituality either.

18:36SPEAKER_04:Right, you get none of the benefits of the spiritual side.

18:39SPEAKER_05:Nope, you're just the I'm here. Right. No, no, this is a perfect example. I love this example. It's the same, it's sort of the same thing. There's nothing wrong with drinking, it's over-drinking that's the problem. Right. Notice we're we seem to be back to this whole entire concept of gnosis and of balance. You're not supposed to overeat, you're not supposed to under-eat. You need to eat what you need to for you. Moderation, it's still the moderation is again, moderation, moderation, moderation, moderation.

19:16SPEAKER_04:Everything in moderation is good.

19:19SPEAKER_05:All right. It is the I I'm beginning to think it's my motto. I need a shirt that just says everything in moderation. Funny how in the world we always keep on falling back onto our same theories and stuff over and over again. I know. Who would have fucked? But this is where in the world this leads. Again, it's the same process going on throughout all of craft. We grow in tension spots where we are taking two opposite forces and sitting in between them.

20:00SPEAKER_05:So with that balance point.

20:02SPEAKER_04:So, with that said, how can we give advice to people on how to restore that balance to develop both sides, especially if especially if people are stuck in one aspect over the other?

20:19SPEAKER_05:Well, I'm gonna sit here and say, hey, if you're a guy and you're do and you're doing your own private religion or you're doing your own private rituals, get a woman involved. Just get her involved inside the circle. You play high priest, she plays high priestess. See what happens. Get a woman and go here. I just want you to do nothing but for the whole entire day to delve into your spirituality, meditate, whatever, then me and you're gonna do ritual.

20:52SPEAKER_02:Right.

20:53SPEAKER_05:As the guy, I'm gonna cast circle. Why? Because I want you to stay in this state. Then try it, see what happens. This is the most extreme form of doing this, all right? You're literally trying to push one person to completely in the spirituality while you're completely doing religion and work it together and see what happens. Right, bringing it together in one space. In one space. Sort of sort of basically trying to concentrate both the ideas and then put them all, then put them both in the same room and see which animal survives.

21:30SPEAKER_04:Well, and and back to the meditation thing, it's not really advisable, but I mean you could theoretically, especially if you've got other people around you who can kind of watch over you for a little bit. Maybe do a meditation and don't really ground afterwards. Right. See what happens. Then do a meditation ground before your meditation and see how that affects things.

21:58SPEAKER_01:Go figure.

21:59SPEAKER_04:You know a little less extreme, but still not advisable.

22:04SPEAKER_05:But I'm not gonna sit no, no, that's not completely true. I'm gonna sit here and say, because we teach the ground before you meditate.

22:13SPEAKER_04:Well, no, I mean I meant like ground and then ground afterwards and oh where you've got that excessive grounding going on, you know.

22:22SPEAKER_05:Oh god, yeah.

22:23SPEAKER_04:Yeah, try that and see what happens.

22:25SPEAKER_05:Yeah, yeah. Go out, go outside throughout the day, about two or three times a day. Put your hands on the ground and try to push all your energy into it, see what you do, what your day's like for the rest of the day. Right. Do that a multiple times. See what happens. You'll be you yeah. Trust me. You definitely have a weird attitude by the time you get home.

22:48SPEAKER_04:Anything else about this we need to uh no, I'd uh I think that's it. Just you know, if you're gonna experiment with uh kind of extremes in doing that, just be very careful. Make sure you've got some precautions in place.

23:02SPEAKER_01:And yep.

23:04SPEAKER_04:Um please do document. Document everything. Yes. We're back to that journal that we love.

23:13SPEAKER_05:And and if you do do the experiment where you can find a woman that will completely meditate for like a day or something before doing a ritual and do that whole pure spirituality while you do the hey, let us know how that works out for y'all.

23:26SPEAKER_04:Yeah, absolutely.

23:27SPEAKER_05:Let me know how how bad or good that ritual goes. Just ask it.

23:32SPEAKER_04:Yeah, we'd love to hear it.

23:33SPEAKER_05:Or friend.

23:34SPEAKER_04:For a friend. All right, friend, let's go get some coffee. Thanks for listening. Join us next week for another episode. Peg and Coffee Talk is brought to you by Life Temple and Seminary. Please visit us at life templeseminary.org for more information, as well as links to our social media. Facebook, Discord, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit.

24:02SPEAKER_00:We travel down as well. Just hold my hand as we fight by the lazy.