Something that’s hard when it comes to magick, manifesting, mayhem, and mystery is this – shame that comes with not doing it wrong.

On the tin – the concept is simple.

Your thoughts create (your slice of) reality.

(And depending on which rabbit holes you want to take, they create your ENTIRE reality, but that’s a tangent for another day, dear Magickal Wilderness Ranger.)

Thoughts creating reality is SIMPLE.

But that doesn’t mean it’s EASY.

There’s a LOT of things that can get in the way with that – your body, it’s traumas, your history, your culture.

And a LOT of spiritual spaces can get really SHAME-Y about how it’s really easy and you’re just not doing it right.

I spent the majority in my life in a plus size body, and “shame” was a big part of that experience.

Being shamed with “well it’s YOUR fault for being fat because you’re not disciplined enough” – didn’t actually HELP me lose any weight, it helped me develop complexes that I later worked through.

(Ah, that spiritual path life – the shit that sucks is actually the shit that leads you to your own greater healing and then healing and helping others. Ain’t that just a BITCH.)

Now, I’m primarily focused on loving my body and nourishing her and listening to her needs and honing in on my intuition and healing my nervous system – and the BODY repair, is definitely newer area.

Previously, I focused WAY more time on “mind management” – a process that helped me EMBRACE my body instead of shaming her.

I spent a lot of my life understanding what’s been going on in my brain – and it turns out, I just had a lot of “apps” (well worn thought patterns) pre-installed based on culture and society.

Plus some flavor-of-undignosed-neurodivergency-misdiagnosed-as-other-things.

As I delete those “thought” apps and install new thoughts, my life seems to get better and better.

Using the “Magick Glasses” as a framework has especially helped me delete unnecessary, pre-installed “thought-apps”

Even if it’s just because I can start to think my way to the brain chemicals I tend to need. (Still a work in progress in that area, but some astounding advances.)

Now look – if there’s an itty, .000000001% bitty chance that “the weird end of the spiritual stuff leads to some cool physical miracles” – as a researcher into the Wyrd and Weird, I have to find out (cue that Mulder “I WANT TO BELIEVE” gif) and see how far I can go in finding it.

That’s how I do this whole Witch thing in my way. (And fyi, I want you to witch YOUR unique way too.)

That being said – shaming people into “well you’re not just trying hard enough to heal your own body through spirituality” DOESN’T ACCOMPLISH SHIT.

Like, here’s a mind blowing thought I had earlier.

Part of why it’s hard to get on board with “Thoughts create your reality” train is because – well-

The pre-installed, well worn thought of “my thoughts don’t create my reality” – is….

Get this.

Creating a reality – where you always see evidence – that your thoughts don’t create reality.

SERIOUSLY. HOW WAS SOMEONE SUPPOSED TO GET AROUND THAT LITTLE BUG IN THE SYSTEM, HRM!?!?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?

My own “leg up” of “thoughts create reality” is a product of my own privilege of access to a giant library of books on the subject, and a “2nd generation” POV that evolved from a mom who left the church.

Not a super “hell and damnation’ church – but from a family already coming from a “New Thought” type church that was also steeped in it’s own, similar-if-not-the-same “thoughts create reality” ideas, but dressed up in positivity and optimistic thinking.

BUT – I got to grow up with family teaching vaguely disguised ideas of “positive thinking making life better” type realities.

My mom’s made the “Addam’s Family” branch of our family, so I got to grow up without a lot of shame around believing that the world was magick, that I was magick, and that I could shift my reality through spells.

Being a 2nd generation into the weird and wyrd witchy ways is such a unique POV.

Many people who I interact with are the first witchy types in their families, navigating a new reality, teaching their kids the best of what they know and raising new 2nd gen witches.

Some are 3rd generation plus witches with years of rich history and traditions from which to draw.

And I arrive somewhere between growing up with Wicca, The Craft, and Silver Ravenwolf’s “Teen Witch” phase of 90s witchcraft.

“Are you going to turn me into a frog?” was a common refrain from the kids as I read my book at school.

This… was a step up from the “”ding-dong-sing-Jesus-loves-me-to-the-heathen” I experienced growing up in my neighborhood. 😬

The frog joke got even less funny when those same kids got REAL big into “The Secret” and Law of Attraction as adults. “I WAS TELLING YOU ABOUT THIS WHEN I WAS THIRTEEEEEENNN” I cry into the void of nothing…

While the world outside shamed me for being INTO witchy things, or my weight not being deemed appropriate…

At home with my mom – I was allowed to be weird, wyrd, and witchy to my heart’s delight.

I was allowed to believe that I could craft spells that would work. 

Because of the blessing of having to dig deep into the inner workings of my mind, I got to piece together HOW to EFFICIENTLY work magick, (both my own and how to help others efficiently work THEIR own as well.)

And it starts with that underlying theory – “your thoughts create reality.”

A magickal framework makes “installing” new thoughts and “deleting” old thoughts way more efficient. (Why I created the “Magick Glasses” tbh.) 

That’s not to say there isn’t underlying spiritual stuff underneath – trust me the rabbit hole GOES DEEPER.

I just find double-dutching with spirituality and skepticism to be my jam, and to take me even further into magickal workings.

When it comes to spirituality and magick – shaming someone for “not doing it right” or “not trying hard enough” (especially when not considering the roles of the nervous system or systemic injustice in shaping the pre-installed thoughts and nervous system twitches)…

DOESN’T HELP SOMEONE SUDDENLY FLIP THAT SWITCH TO HELP THEM MAKE THEIR LIFE EASIER.

What does help is understanding that your journey to fully grokking the concept that “your thoughts shape reality” isn’t going to look like every single other person’s journey.

And TBH, I think is that understanding stuff like your astrology natal chart, understanding how to interpret divination like tarot and oracle cards, and how to craft spells – all help you understand and RESHAPE how your particular set of thoughts work. 

Next post: how spirituality is made difficult because of language being imperfect symbolic representations.

Aka, “WHAT THE FRICK DOES JUST VIBE HIGHER ACTUALLY FREAKING MEAN?!”