The Art of Recording Your Experience

Source: Book of Shadows, Charmed Wiki.

In recent days I've been going back more and more to my Book of Shadows, striking out things that are no longer part of my believes, and also adding anotations from the practice I am doing. Nothing fancy, just usual comfy-witch-doing-stuff kind of things.

The funny thing about my Book of Shadows, is that I see it as a dynamic, changing thing. I started keeping one ages ago, first in a spiral bound book and then moved to a large hard bound book a friend gave me. This had some lettering, some structure and some uncertainty. In it I sought to embrace the witch in me without going against my believes of the time, which was difficult, because the consensus of my believe frame went against my nature and my very own believes.

Slowly I grew, and learned to shed the frames imposed by third parties and reach out in a direct connection to my believes and the world around me, and so some things in my Book of Shadows became obsolete, so I have started striking out what no longer works for me. I'm also taking up again some studying I wanted to do during my Year-and-a-Day period, but yeah, that didn't quite happened. That is also recorded in there.

I've a new book - leather bound, handmade pages, and much smaller than my current one - and I've been thinking about moving into it, with the anotations better organized and curated to my current system of believes. Now, my Book of Shadows is personal, not a public record nor a book for public consultation. It can hold all my tries and errors, and nothing happens. However, as I was revising yesterday, I was thinking how different it is from my journals, which I don't go back to correct. I do have similar feelings for both of them, both are personal books, but while one adapts to my current needs, the other remains fixed.

This got me thinking about some things we do. Sometimes we are tempted to go over our past and past decisions and fix them. We want to go back and erase them, or tell them differently, in the light of what we have learned later on. We don't want to admit that we had a crush on that person that turned out to be so embarrassing, and we don't want to admit that we didn't do something or didn't get to be picked for something we really wanted. I've met people who had lied about the score they've got to enter a beloved university, claiming they didn't get into this or that career because "back then they decided against it". The truth? Back then their results came below the required score. -- Yes, I had back then the means to check on their allegations.

The point is not that people lie - people always lie and it's not always a bad thing - but the issue here is the revisionst attitude to one's own past. Why do we feel the need to do so? Because, at the same time, most people are perfectly fine rewriting their past, but do nothing to fix their future and improve those perceived flaws. We want to change what we can't change (our past), but ignore what we actually can change (our attitudes and actions in the present).

If it bothers you that you couldn't enter to your beloved career, instead of lying about why it didn't happen, why don't you try to enter now? It's never too late to study. Or was it that you let go the love of your life? Hey, unless they are dead, you can still pick up the phone and drop them a message. And if they are dead - I know, that's my case - you can always dedicate them some time to write or paint ot think about them.

Honor your past, learn from it. You don't need to share if it makes you feel uncomfortable, but embrace it, observe it, draw out lessons and apply them to your present. See it this way: if you want to change something you did in the past, or that happened to you, what could you do now to correct its effects?

I keep a journal for my past, to remember the things I did, I said, I thought and those I witnessed. I keep a Book of Shadows for my spiritual practice. My personal past and my personal present. Life is also separated in two books for all of us (or more). Use them wisely.