The Inner Skeptic

I spend a lot of time thinking about daily practice, reading about daily practice and (wouldn't you know it) actually engaging in daily practice. 

As an initiate in the Feri Tradition, I have a responsibility to myself and to the Gods to be the most present and effective Witch I can be, and the core practices of Feri (kala, alignment, sitting, and the Pentacles, among others) help me to finely hone my soul into the shining golden being I know it really is. 

Yet sometimes I wake up at 6am, look over at my altar and I just cannot face the idea of sitting before the Gods and honouring them with a daily practice. The black statue of the Star Goddess looks lifeless, the unlit candles uninviting. The meditation bench too hard. 

Why is this? Intellectually I know how vital daily practice is in my soul's development and I can feel the energetic THUNK when I drink in the charged water from my kala glass. After the prayer for alignment I can feel my parts coming into greater concert with each other. When I have sat with myself for twenty minutes I feel so much more prepared for the day ahead. 

I feel like myself. 

Thorn Coyle, whose excellent book "Make Magic of Your Life" I am currently reading, points out that what keeps us from practice is mainly fear. I think this is partially true. Forging the path of knowing yourself is scary stuff. But there is another aspect to it that I am just discovering - my inner skeptic. 

I am naturally skeptical of most things. Given that I am a God-invoking, spell-casting, soul-aligning Witch, it is a bit surprising that I tend not to believe in most things. I need to have experience first before I accept it as gospel. 

Angels? Nah. Reincarnation? Only at a poetic level. Magic? Well, who knows? I am too much a product of science to blindly accept things as truth, and when my practice seems like a waste of time, when it seems that half an hour in bed checking Facebook is a more producing use of my time, my inner skeptic has won. 

Part of my path, then, is allowing my inner skeptic, my inner magician and my inner priestess to all sit down to the dinner table together to have a conversation. To allow room for my skeptic to keep me rightly wary of all the rubbish out there. For my priestess to remind me of my sacred duty. 

And after that, to just practise anyway.