A Spiritual Journey

Religion is a touchy topic for most. I was in a physical fight once when I was a kid over the concept of life on other planets. In case you were wondering, I believe in life on other planets, and I defended my belief with a punch to the chest. The other person’s argument: if life existed on other planets, it would be mentioned in the Bible. As I said, a touchy topic.

I can only speak to my experience with religion because it directly influenced how I turned out and how I live my life now. That is to say, I don’t consider myself religious. Over the years, I have been called many things such as a “dirty Atheist” and a “devil worshiper,” but really I am none of those things. My beliefs are simply different than the average small-town person. That is where it all started…in a small town.

I was born a Southern Baptist. At least, that’s all I remember growing up. My parents weren’t very religious but my dad’s mom, Granny, took me to church every Sunday at a small, country, Baptist church. In that church, I only knew love, acceptance, and understanding. When I was in fourth grade, Granny moved to town, and we started attending the Baptist church near her house. The difference between the country church and the church in town was huge. For example, it wasn’t uncommon in the country for the farmers to wear overalls or dusty jeans to church, but in town, it was frowned upon if you dressed less than your “Sunday best.” I remember the church ladies treated Granny differently because she didn’t wear expensive dresses and was not perfectly made up. I noticed this type of prejudice at a young age as well as other subtle things within the church that were disagreeable to me.

At that young age, I began to question things about the beliefs that no one else around me seemed to question, like life on other planets, as well as the behavior and intolerance for anything different. At the same time, the young people were pressured to seal their beliefs through baptism. Enough was enough. I wanted to believe what I wanted to believe, and not what I was pressured to believe. I wanted to ask the big questions. I wanted to be spiritual in my beliefs and not confined by them.

What does it mean to be spiritual? According to Dr. Maya Spencer, “spirituality involves the recognition of a feeling or sense or belief that there is something greater than myself, something more to being human than sensory experience, and that the greater whole of which we are part is cosmic or divine in nature.”

In other words, I believe there is more to the world than meets the eye, and I am still evolving and exploring my beliefs 28 years later. I was once told that because I was pressured into being baptized, I will always be a Christian and I can’t “take it back,” but the freedom of choice was taken from me in that regard. What I can choose is how I live my life in the here and the now while valuing myself and being open-minded to anything and everything that comes my way. That is the true lesson that I learned growing up in the church: what I did not want to be.

Would I be different if I grew up in a different Christian religion? Maybe. Probably not.

You are probably asking yourself, “what is her religion, again?” I don’t have one. My spirituality is a patchwork of many different beliefs, but I recently took a “What Religion am I?” quiz* (just for fun) and my result was: Mahayana Buddhism.

I want to hear from our readers. Are you spiritual? What does being spiritual mean to you? Let’s continue the conversation on our Facebook Group: MMC Chat.

*You can take the “What Religion am I?” quiz here.

How I Filled My Cup

Filling my cup. What an interesting concept, this metaphor. As an English teacher, I am obsessed with words but what does this metaphor mean? It can be taken in a few ways. I have always thought of myself as a “glass half full” person – an optimist. I might be depleting something, but at least there is something left. Let’s call the “something” in the glass “energy”. Let’s also say that the “cup” in this situation is you, the reader. Is your energy half full or half empty? What are some ways that you can fill your cup with life-sustaining energy without overfilling it?

First, you need to sit back and decide what kind of energy your cup already has in it. Let’s back up. What even is “energy?” If you are not a metaphysical or “meta” person, you might not be fully aware of the energies surrounding us or our life force. In different cultures, the source of life, or life force, takes on different identities such as “Chi” or “Qi” in Chinese culture, and “Mana” in Hawaiian culture. This energy is, of course, different than scientific energy (kinetic, potential, mechanical, etc.). In Chinese culture, there are two types of energy: positive energy and negative energy. I’m going to go a step further and say there are different types of positive and negative energies. It is all in how you present yourself to the world.

A friend of mine has been recently struggling with a negative influence in her life. She asked me why she attracts such negative people. I told her that it was the energy she gives out into the world. In the past, I have called her “friend goals” because everyone wants to be her friend. She is the most positive person I know. Her cup is overflowing with positive energy, and she spreads it freely out into the world. People line up to drink from her “positive cup.” I know this because I have the same problem. I’ve learned to combat it over the years, but I often wondered why I felt so down and drained. It was because I was attracting the same type of people in my life (friends, relationships, family, etc) that wanted a drink of my positive energy.

Three years ago, I decided that I needed to make a major life change, and I continued to do so as I shed physical weight and the mental weight of the unrealistic expectations of toxic people. The more I did these things, the more I realized that I had a lifetime of negativity fighting for my positivity and that included negative expectations I had of myself. The first thing I did was quit my job and then I moved to a new town. I thought that physically distancing myself from all the toxic energy would help, and it did for a while, but I had to do more than that. My cup was drained of positive energy.  The negative people in my life were suddenly making themselves known, and my cup began to fill with their negative energy. I started doing things in my life that I wouldn’t normally do, such as calling in sick to work and spending money carelessly.

A year and a half ago, after my ex-husband and I separated, I started on a journey of self-reflection. There were still so many wrong things in my life that I needed to change physically and mentally. My cup began to fill again with positive energy, and it attracted positive people in my life once again. I reconnected with old friends and family that I hadn’t seen for years. I even started doing the things that I loved again, which led me to write this blog and start a podcast with my friends.

Things I did to fill my cup with positivity and bring my life back into balance:

• I started writing again: Writing is my favorite pastime over anything else. I started writing (and reading) at a young age. When I was in sixth grade, I wrote my first book. I published my first poem when I was 17 years old. Last year, Christen convinced me to start creative journaling, and it went from there. Now I have truly adopted a concept I teach in my classroom, which is to write every day.

• I tried new things: When I started writing again, I started exploring the area near my house (amid the pandemic, of course) and I began ordering from new restaurants that I wouldn’t normally have tried. I also started writing restaurant reviews on Instagram. When restrictions eased up, I started trying new coffee shops, and I began to develop a small following. In January, I implemented a “22 coffee moments in 2022” challenge on my Instagram Ms.Garvin.Writes.

• I reconnected with my spirituality: In 2014, my mom had a series of strokes, and I gave up my job and everything I knew to move in with her and take care of her. Until my marriage separation, I had become a caretaker of others and not for myself. Aside from writing, I also put my spiritual pursuits on the backburner. Recently, I started studying them again. I had never lost my spirituality and my interest in the metaphysical, but it had become dormant as I began to live my life for other people.

• I unpacked: I moved to my current place last summer. As I was moving, I realized that I hadn’t opened any of the boxes since I moved in with my mom in early 2015. I hadn’t seen my things in six years. I had moved so much in that time that I started to leave things in boxes and never unpacked. I decided that I was going to unpack ALL of my boxes. That was cathartic. I laughed and I cried at all of the memories I had missed.

• I got rid of the excess: After I unpacked every single box that I had carried with me from place to place, I began to declutter. I had so many things that I didn’t need or want, such as kitchen gadgets I would never use or books I would never read. I had boxes of mail from years before. If you have never decluttered before, it is the most uplifting feeling.

• I started self-care routines: I have written before about losing weight and losing clothes to mold damage. As I replaced my damaged and oversized wardrobe, I began to buy clothes that fit properly. In addition to my new body confidence, I started a skincare routine, and I started wearing makeup that interested me.

• I started counseling: This was a big turning point for me because I hadn’t fully worked through the death of my parents. When I began the divorce process, the stress in my life came to a peak, and I began to have almost daily panic attacks. I had used the excuse in the past that mental healthcare was unaffordable and that I didn’t need it. I suddenly realized that my cup was empty. I needed to talk to somebody about the things that had been going on in my life. Someone that didn’t know and wouldn't judge me. We all need that sometimes. 

All life has to have balance. In a perfect world, your cup would be filled with an adequate amount of everything you need, and it would have the right balance of positive and negative energy. We have to actively work to keep that balance, or we spiral out of control. It is an everyday struggle for me not to give in to the negative influences that drain my cup. The best advice I can give is to find the things that make you happy and work for them. Fill your cup with that. If something is draining your cup, detox it from your life.
I want to hear from my readers: What has been draining your cup lately? Comment here or continue the conversation in our Facebook group, MMC Chat.

Hocus Pocus or Bogus... You Decide

Hi everyone, Christen here. Earlier this week on the blog and yesterday on the podcast we discussed bargain shopping where we touched on common household items and quality vs price. I wanted to chat about something a little different today. I'm still discussing shopping, but I want to dive a little deeper.

I was at a holistic-wellness fair over the past weekend, which showcased many booths offering crystals, lotions, art, oracle cards, and jewelry. I noticed that many vendors are offering items made from resin too. Resin is a versatile material, it comes in a clear liquid state and can be poured into molds to create an innumerable amount of goods in varying shapes and colors. The neat thing about it is that you can put things in it, like glitter, color, charms, and even printed images. After many hours, the resin sets into a hard plastic. I have seen resin items cropping up in the metaphysical shops around town, too. Sometimes they are in the form of a “polished stone” but most of the items I have noticed were in a pyramid shape, typically two to three inches in height. I always wondered how and why those stores were “getting away” with selling resin and hoped that buyers were aware that they were paying for plastic-like material, albeit very beautiful. I hope that people are not buying them thinking they are actual stones or crystals! I wanted to know more about these pyramids I kept seeing everywhere! 

I will admit I almost bought one when I was at the fair; it really spoke to the sci-fi girl in me. The resin pyramid had a base of small crystals and suspended in the middle was a perfectly polished crystal or mineral, that looked like a planet hovering over a disc with a metallic or engraved Metatron's Cube. It was very beautiful, but I knew it was resin, and I did not know what the purpose was, so as I had done in the past, I moved on to look at other products. Later in the day though, I came to yet another booth with these pyramids for sale. This vendor actually took a moment to explain what it was! She asked if I had heard of Orgonite. I explained that I had seen the pyramids, but had no clue!
She informed me that Orgonite is a special substance of organic material (the resin is supposed to be organic) that is combined with metals and crystals. The combination creates a tower that “attracts negative energies”. So the curiosity in me has not put this subject down ever since. I wanted to know who coined the term “Orgonite”, and what the scientific evidence was behind it. Keep in mind, I took geology in college, and never heard of Orgonite, so I was already looking at this lady with one eyebrow raised in disbelief. I am a believer in many things that are unseen by the eye, but I am not a blind believer; I need more facts. My findings so far have been all over the place, so I will just bullet point it out rather than regurgitate word for word what I have researched so far.

• Orgone is labeled as pseudoscience and fringe medicine and science (according to Wikipedia).
• It is a term created by Wilhelm Reich, an Austrian Psychoanalysis from the 1930’s
• Orgone is esoteric energy, life energy, spiritual energy; it can be more commonly called Chi/Qi, vibe, vibration, aura, light, or simply just energy, to name a few.
• Wilhelm Reich created an Orgone Accumulator that was a large wooden box which had specific layers to it. The subject would sit inside and the energy around and within would (in theory) be transmuted.
• Orgonite reportedly absorbs negative Orgone energy flow (DOR - Deadly Orgone Radiation) and transmutes it into POR (Positive Orgone) and releases it back into the atmosphere.
• DOR is said to be harmful to your mind and body.
• Resin is an electrical insulation material - remember I said it was versatile!
• Resin is not plastic, although it is similar, it can actually be made from vegetable oils. Here is a cool site where you can get all your questions answered about resin. 
• The resin pyramids are called Orgonite or Orgone Accumulators because they follow the same principle as Wilhelm Reich’s original Orgone Accumulator.
• According to some, a proper Orgonite, or Orgone Accumulator will have a resin outer shell, a quartz stone, metal shavings and/or a metal coil. These parts aid the mechanics of the device.

So what did I learn? I learned a lot about resin, that's for sure, I legit thought it was plastic! I also learned that there is a whole subtopic within holistic health that I did not know was even there. Let's call it a can of worms that I opened, which I now cannot shut. I will continue my research into Orgonite, as I am intrigued. The more I read about the concept, the research that has been done, and the theories behind them, the more interested I am. I believe that there is a lot in our world that is yet to be seen, and although I am skeptical, I am also open to the possibilities. I believe in the human aura, and always have, and I am also a firm believer that what you believe in is your reality. So if you believe that the Orgonite pyramid is cleansing the energy around you, then by all means it must be. What’s to say that it isn’t, it is only considered pseudoscience now because no one has been able to actually provide strong evidence either way. We all know that trees convert carbon dioxide, even though we cannot see the process happening. I‘m not against owning an Orgonite pyramid now. Actually, I am more inclined to purchase one now that I have done some research. I mean, what’s the harm in trying it, right? I was actually just thinking that it would be nice to have one on my desk.

I keep the motto “Quality over Quantity” in my foremind when it comes to shopping for my altar or my homeopathic and holistic uses. The main reason is that unnatural substances are not as powerful, or do not have the same effect, and of course, I also appreciate the hand crafted aspect of things, especially when it comes to metaphysical products. I could go on about sourcing, ethics etc., but let's circle back to that another time. To ensure that you are buying something hand-crafted I encourage you to ask the vendors where they acquire their products and materials. Ask if their products are hand crafted, manufactured etc., and if they are handcrafted, who made them. Oftentimes, vendors at booth fairs fall into one of the two categories: artisans selling their hand crafted items, and stores, who are selling their stock of mass produced items and consignment all mixed together.

I might be over generalizing on many things, and if I glazed over something or misinterpreted the science, I apologize. This was a lot to wrap my mind around. If I mentioned something incorrectly, please let me know in the comments! I would love to know if you have used or own an Orgonite product and what you believe! Do you think it is Hocus Pocus or Bogus?