Balancing Habits of Thought With Openess

An illustration on the story of Taliesin as found in a late version the ancient Welsh book of tales called the Mabinogion. The original Mabinogion seems to have been written around the time of the Black Death of 1350 as a way to preserve then existing valued Welsh/Norman stories. Later other tales like Taliesin were added to it (which seems to be the combination of two earlier separate stories). The earliest manuscripts are the White Book of Rhydderch or Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch, written circa 1350, and the Red Book of Hergest or Llyfr Coch Hergest, written about 1382–1410, though texts or fragments of some of the tales have been preserved in earlier 13th century and later manuscripts.
The story of Taliesin at Sacred Texts comes from the translation done by Lady Charlotte Guest in 1877. The story of Taliesin is the story of how the magical Bard of the Welsh gained his magical wisdom and music from drinking a potion of Awen and going through a series of transformations. The Greeks also had such a Bardic archetype going by the name of Orpheus who became the center of his own mystery cult.
Stories based up such fantastic ancient tales are great learning tools to expand the mind. The Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids uses the story of Taliesin in its introductory course work.Image from Sacred Texts Archivee online at: https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/mab/mab32.htm

Balancing Emotional/Spiritual Channel Habits With Emotional Openess

(July 7, 2022) Spirituality requires exercise just like the body because the desired emotional/spiritual channels need to be kept open and undesired ones closed. Things happens with open channels in a phenomena known as synchronicity.

As a group, Nature Pagans tend to be the most creative people around because they have imagination and are not afraid to use it. Nature Pagans tend to keep their childhood imagination whereas most adults tend to lose it. This allows Pagans to go beyond asking the question "why" into asking the question "why not." As physicists like to say: "One good question is worth a thousand facts."

So we need to collect life experiences to find our various likes and dislikes. We have to occasionally get out of our habitual routines and push our comfort level from time to time.

Experiencing mind expanding artistic creations is a must. This ranges from reading insightful fiction and poetry, to viewing insightful art, movies and TV shows, to attending plays and dance performances, to listening to music. All these things are collectively known as "culture" and this is different from those events which only pander to our preconceived notions or to our more primal instincts and potential addictions.

Aphorisms are short wise sayings tend to open up a emotion channels. A good spiritual exercise is to read one each day and reflect upon it.

Learning About Other People's Emotional/Spiritual Channels

We tend to assume people feel and value things just like us. This is not the case. Learning what other people have felt or might feel allows us to understand ourselves and others. This can range from study of psychology and neuroscience to reading insightful fiction and biographies.

The study of mythology holds a special place because mythological characters and themes often reflect emotional archetypes. These are genetically defined emotions common to all humans.