So You Think You're Special., You sure? Options

I believe, or at least I hope, that i have a reputation here for being pretty patient in general, and being a decent fellow who rarely if ever loses his temper over stuff. I rarely have a reason - after all it's just a forum for all that it represents to me, and hopefully to others here as well; in the end how could I take anything here personally? I'd like to maintain that, and towards that end let me preface this just a bit.

I'm not angry. If anything, I'm amused, perhaps even amused at my own irritation - like when you see something that really gets under your skin, but is funny at the same time, and even funnier when you really lay into it. So, it's all in good humor, and I will continue to maintain an open 'door' policy to anyone who thinks they need help with a werewolf stalker, a thousand year old demon, an ancient evil mage from a past life, or aliens who are exacting a bloody price for the secrets they teach you while you sleep. That said...

...Stop it. Just stop it. It's as simple as that. You all know who you are. I'm tempted to pin this so you'll all see it. If you came here to find out how to best the black magician (who is a year older than you, 17) attacking you during math class, or here to learn the magic words that will give you control over the girl of your dreams, or how to enchant a sword to strike someone down without leaving a wound, or how to uncover your past life memories from when you were a grand high magus of the seventh circle of the super secret occult powers that were-are-and-will-be, press the back button, and go somewhere else. If you absolutely must post about your drama somewhere, go to occult forums. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/evil.gif)

Now, despite the fact that each and every one of you - save those that are actually clinically psychotic, in which case maybe you just don't know better - knows that you're just fantasizing and trying to get us to get involved with it, you are all none-the-less wondering, "Well how do you know? Maybe I am in an eternal conflict with a black witch/mage/sorcerer/werewolf/demon/warlock/darkelf/insert-evil-here! Maybe I am a werewolf and I'm trying to cope with the inherent conflict in my life! Maybe my best friend really can conjure fireballs and won't tell me how!"

I'll tell you how. I was you. I was a crazy teen. Like many of you, I had a broken family, I didn't get the attention I wanted, I had a hard life and wanted an escape, and so I fantasized. Like you, I got my hands on a book 'about magicK' and met a couple of other preteens who were into magicK as well, and before you knew it we were having disco parties on the astral plane and discussing the adventures we had in our past lives. I had a friend who was a werewolf, who insisted that spending the night on a full moon was too dangerous, a friend who was a vampire, who insisted that vampires being unable to endure sunlight was a myth (they were however light sensitive, which is why she wore gaudy black sunglasses everywhere she went, inside or out). And me? Well I was the scion of an ancient order of protectors who were reincarnated over and over into the same role in order to safeguard the very consciousness of humanity. No no, I couldn't possibly get into the details, our lives are very secret, and anyone could be an enemy and NOT EVEN KNOW IT. Including you, my parents, my teachers, and anyone who suggested otherwise.

Like you, my parents didn't pay enough attention, and when they did it was mostly to disapprove of my choice of interests. Like you, all I had mostly were cheap books off the 'occult section' shelves at barnes and noble. Like you my friends reinforced my fantasies by pretending to believe in them as long as i pretended to believe in theirs. Unlike you, I didn't have a forum like this. Unlike you, I didn't stumble into a group of serious, mature occultists who could slap the sense into me. Instead, I had to just grow out of it. Let me tell you something, when you don't have a handful of mature adults who can just forgive you your senseless drama and say "Look, you know your faking it, just let it go and we can move forward, and I won't judge you for it," getting over that crap can take a long time, and be a painful process. Oh I know, I know very well. It becomes painful to let it go. After all, this is who you are, according to your own design. This is literally the freedom to be who you want to be, regardless that you have overshadowed who you really are completely.

Those of you who've been here long enough know this isn't the first time I've had to rant like this. But, we get a few dozen new members every week and the Gods know, we get a regular stream of ridiculous posts in kind. So it can afford to be said again.

So, to those of you just getting here, drop it at the door. I'm going to be a lot more frank and a lot less patient about that from now on. Because I realized, when I thought about it for a while, that patience on that matter wouldn't have done me any good. If I'd had the right person come and slap me around a little, with no patience for my teenage angsty BS, who knows where I'd be now. As it is, I have seen, and felt, and been witness to, fantastic things that make my old teenage fantasies pale and withered in comparison. Because they were real, and I earned them, and they taught me something, made me more whole, rather than simply covering up the incomplete me that I was unsatisfied with. And I was impatient when I started, just like you are now, and I wanted the short path. But the short path turned out to be the long path in disguise.

To those of you who have already spread your angsty drama, yours is a more difficult bit. Now there's no guarantee that those of you that have already posted this nonsense will read this particular post - but if you do: just say it here and now - "I know that was BS, but I'm ready to let that stuff go, because I want something real." I can't speak for everyone here. But as for me, I will not hold it against you, I will not boot you off the forum and I won't let the other mods/admins boot you either - as for me, you get a clean slate. As for others, well, who knows. I'm known to be particularly patient.

There is also a chance you were redirected here from whatever BS post you made. If I don't hear from you - and I'll seek admin approval for this - I'll boot you myself. You're gonna have to learn the long and hard way. Because this is a forum for discussion, exchange, and learning, of experience, theory, belief, and interest, based on the real substance of human curiosity and need for growth. Not a place for you to find faceless people to join you in your narcissistic fantasy brigade. I'm tired of seeing trash fill up the pages of this forum, because this is a respectable place for honest inquiry.

peace

EDIT: PS I'm using Vagrants Post to add this PS...I support his assessment(s) and wish to Thank him for a nicely worded statement. Not wanting to 'mar' his post with another 'reply' I piggybacked (forgive me Vagrant). PAY ATTENTION!
-Bym, Admin

I just had to throw in my lot in this topic. I'm like vagrant dreamer there in that I find myself amuzed at my own reaction to the tripe posted on this site. I'm not really mad or upset at all. And there is no one person I'm aiming this at. However, I don't think this site is "just" a forum. I've put in too much time and contribution to think of this place as just another web site. Its a place where I can come and learn and teach at the same time.

Lately I have avoided this site, mostly because of my own life, but partially because there were simply fewer and fewer topics I felt I could contribute to. To me, when people throw in their teenage fantacy garbage it smears this site and real occultist cannot take it, or the serious members, seriously. It makes us look bad and it makes the mission of this site impossible. It also furthers misconception and myth about real occult studies and practices. If you honestly believe your own delusions, you may want to step back from yourself for a minute and ask yourself if you are truly sane. If the answer is not conclusive or utterly undeniably sane, then you may want to consider getting professional help.

Now if you want to talk about using your plus one adamantine mace and how you can use it to smite a level 13 grasshopper demon, man whatever. But as a mod, I support vagrant on this and I think so does the rest of the staff and other serious members. If you post crap, we're going to come down on you. While I too consider myself patient, trust me when I say you'll vagrant dreamer to get on you, rather than me. I guess what it comes down to is think before you post your topics. Ask yourself basic questions like "does this seem at all rational" or "is there a logical way I can deal with this on my own". Troubleshoot your own questions and you might even answer them without boring the rest of us.

To be fair, I too was once a young preteen wannabe super, ninja, jedi master, sorceror gumba. I remember trying to life objects without touching them. I remember getting into "energy wars" with one of my buddies where we acted like we were actually hurling balls of energy at eachother. I could go on about the nonsense I engaged in. But there comes a time when you grow up and realize that stuff was just pretend. And that pretend stuff simply has no place on this site aside from personal reflection.

I think i will be brave and say a few things of my own. First of all, I am not sure that age has anything to do with it. That certainly diminishes the level of respectability some of the younger members of this site have earned. No. I don't consider myself one of them. I am not nearly skilled enough to speak for myself, but certainly for others there is a great deal of talent and level hardheadedness to be mentioned. And now to defend myself. I still find myself lapsing a lot of the time. Generally speaking, i admit that i have fed into the 'BS' that you referred to. For a while, I considered myself kindred, a sort of dog spirit from an older time. Even then i knew i was completely human. But now i have put it is my past. Still, i am very sensitive about that transition, and in some ways it was important to come to my own realization, and i was finally getting over it. I am sure that i am not alone in feelings.

So if you should unearth this generalized, humiliating fact, when policing others back to reality...just know that it does not encourage friendly cooperation and understanding, but the exact opposite. I am hurt by your post. I understand that the idea is a motion of "cruel to be kind" but its a little harsh for a rebuke. After all, you admitted it yourself. You were allowed to come to your own realization in your own time. It is not wrong that you want your forum to be clean of delusions; but really, isn't it all a matter of interpretation anyway? After all, my catholic grandparents think the idea of magic is a delusion.

I do not disagree with your desire to clear clutter out of the forum. It is good that you are drawing a line, and i suppose as the site's administrators you have a right to do just that. I just feel that your posts are grouping a lot of people together unfairly.

With that said, i am sorry for being 'one of those'.

I sympathize, even empathize, with you about that sensitivity. The first time that I really decided I just didn't want to play pretend anymore, that it had just gotten out of hand, and I said as much to my friends, they stopped being my friends. It made me want to go back to it, and for years afterwards I was very sensitive to any mention of that aspect of my past, especially when I dropped everything but my magical study and practice. And I almost quit that because it was so associated with the BS. I had tied it all into the reason I had to 'learn' magick.

Some of it, I learned later, with a bit of education and a dash of experiential wisdom, was likely manifestations of other things that were valid spiritual aspects of my being. Among my little circle, I was a 'shifter' - which is kind of like a person with a half-animal soul; most self proclaimed shifters don't even have a good definition for it. They don't shift physically, although in their circles there is a 'legendary' physical shift story most people know from a friend of a friend, etc. I was a panther shifter.

Many years later, I began studying shamanism, and while I have since focused on a more eccelectic hermetic path, I learned about medicine animals, and then learned about invocation, and realized that shifting when it is reflective of something that's actually happening - I'd wager more than 2/3 of that population are just bi-polar or manic and interpret their periodic psychosis as this metaphysical specialness - when something is actually happening it could just be a natural inclination for invocation combined with a sympathy for the animal spirit in question. That I had, and do still have, panther medicine is beyond doubt in my mind; panther's lessons have always been my own, since I was a child. I declared myself a shifter before I was familiar with the nature of animal guides, etc., but on some level I knew what it was; consciously it became something else.

Now, other things did not reflect actual phenomenon - I was not being hunted by the antithesis of my private crusade of world-saving mages, I was not present at a coodinated astral attack on those same 'people', the list, is long.

What I'm saying by all of this is that its important to look at the material, and try to understand the substance. That process of reflection once initiated is an opportunity for growth and 'wisening' that can turn what will likely one day be an embarassing bit of backstory into an important experience that made you who you are today. That's all that we're trying to help this forum be a catalyst for - since we get a fair chunk of population engaged in these games. To me, while I also want this place to be a respectable forum for the discussion of all things spiritual or occult, that catalytic function is just as important, for the reasons I already mentioned.

And while I do wish that it wasn't hurtful to hear, understand that its going to be painful for anyone of any degree of 'in it' or 'past it' to hear it. It reminds we that went through that period how foolish we were, and calls into question whether we still are or not. But that's just an ego thing. It lessens the sting to simply say, "I was just a kid. Kids play pretend, and they can be crazy. Now I am an adult." I still play pretend, but I know it's pretend, and I make a distinction between it and my life path. Now we call it LARPing. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

The problem is that we have three choices. We can ignore those people that come to the forum with their BS, which makes them feel unwelcome and maybe drives them off - or at worst, attracts only those people sypathetic to their BS who are going to play into it with their own, which creates a subdivision of utter BS in the forum itself; we can play into it ourselves, and give them the 'benefit of the doubt' with their obviously crazy stories, which encourages them almost as badly as the other option because some of us are adults and nothing validates like the support of adults, whether you're a child yourself or an adult; or we can call them out and give them the ultimatum "either get real or get out."

If you think about it, there really is only one logical option to take. It may ruffle some feathers, but in the long run it's the best thing to do, maybe the only thing we can do towards those ends. Anything we reach, we always reach on our own. Those who help us along are just catalysts, and there are those who are helped, but don't get there.

Thanks for having something to say here. If we all came to admit the ridiculousness of our past, maybe it would be easier for others to lay down the BS themselves.

peace