The following is taken from "An Open Letter on Paganism" by Wicasta Lovelace of The Pagan Tea House. If you can understand what he is saying here, you'll be well on your way to understaning my belief system.

Pagans acknowledge that there is so much we could learn about the world and ourselves if we would just sit down and shut up occasionally.

Walk out into a forest alone, find a rock or a stump, and sit down. Clear your mind. Sit and listen. Don't think. Don't let your normal ingrained patterns of analysis and calculation run amok. Be silent. Sit. Listen. The wind blows softly through the trees caressing quietly rustling leaves. Somewhere, far in the distance, a hawk calls out. But this is only the surface. Be still. You're still thinking. Stop it. Don't analyze. Just be. Just sit there. And exist. You're not a person anymore. You are a camera. You are a microphone. You observe and record. You do not analyze. The world is alive. You hear the soft rustle of leaves as a squirrel scurries across the forest floor. Crickets chirp near you. You didn't hear them before. A lizard bolts silently from a nearby leaf and races up a tree. Your eyes follow it. Recording. And you see, stretched between two limbs, the fragile web of a spider. She busily repairs her damaged web. Near her, a captured moth struggles in its silk cocoon. Your eyes wander farther up the tree. The branches sway ever so softly in the gentle breeze. The leaves dance upon it. Thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands. The forest canopy is alive with movement. The wind reaches down and caresses you, tickles your hair. It brings to your nose the earthy scent of pine. And musk. The sweet hint of new leaves. Life. All around you are minute sounds. Movement; the frenzied life of hundreds of thousands of insects.

This is what the world is like when you are not there. This is what the real world is like. The real world, without human beings, without human intervention, without human precepts and will, without human prejudice and arrogance. The world simply is. Just as you now simply are. And the magick of this life is all around you. It's in you. You feel it. Breathe it. Your blood pumps it. You are it. It's a tangible thing almost. Something you could just about reach out and touch. And if you open up, listen, breathe, feel ... if you can be quiet ... for just a moment ... the wind seems to whisper. Something deep within you belongs here. Just like this. And when you leave here, you will never be the same again. Wherever you go, the frenzied living peace of the forest will remain within your soul.

The Earth has given you something that can never be taken away. And in return, you leave a part of yourself behind. The exchange can never be reversed. You are linked. On some subconscious and spiritual level, you have become the Earth. And the Earth has become you. And perhaps for the first time in your life, you belong.

B e quiet. And just be. Be yourself. Be alive. Within your heart the wind is blowing through the trees. And this is all you really want.

Taken with permission from
"An open letter on Paganism"
By Wicasta Lovelace
The Pagan Tea House

I t didn't happen for me exactly as Wicasta describes here, but near enough. And it happens again regularly now. And not just in the rain forest, but in other places that, at first glance, would seem unlikely. For instance, at work when I'm surrounded by giant machines, I still feel that overwhelming sense of "connectedness". It really is all part of "Who I Am".