Torre Talks Witchcraft, Advocacy, Problem Solving Part 2

Katrina Mondragon, MS, LPC, LMHC and Special Guest, Torre!!!

Sponsored by Katrina Mondragon, PLLC (Est. 2016)

Join us as Torre Talks Witchcraft, Advocacy, Problem Solving and MORE on this week's episode of I Don't Know, streaming everywhere under the artist name katrinadragon

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Greetings, fellow humans. Katrina here. Quick disclaimer. I'm a professional, not your freshwater, so nothing we're gonna talk about today. Sweeting is medical legal otherwise advice podcasts is purely for education and amusement. That's the disclaimer. And it's called I don't know. So uh I really don't know what we're gonna talk about today.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Do you remember my question? Yeah, about mindfulness. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Um, you mentioned like Eastern stuff and you mentioned Buddhism and having people do that. I was wondering how you incorporate maybe how you incorporate mindfulness and what mindfulness is to you.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Okay, yeah, for sure. And so I I'll come at it twofold because the it's an important duality to how I engage with my own practice and the community around me at large. And so as a pagan interfaith minister, excuse me, a lot of my work has been very like universalized. Something that can say, well, this is where it shares, you know, where witchcraft and paganism and Buddhism and Hermeticism and Christianity have similarities as a belief system, as a colloquial practice in everyone's life. And here's how they're distinct and unique. And so I in that inner faith dialogue, I would probably put an asterisk there and say it's more multi-faith dialogue where I'm trying to get people to connect with how they're unique and what they're bringing to that conversation and dialogue between people, but not blend them or make them feel like there's an appropriation factor because that's a big part of the advocacy I do. So on the Buddhist side to it, one thing I've gotten to gain from a lot of other people, both on a scholarly level, but also within the spiritual community, is the act of mindfulness is an act of presence. It's an act of being be here now. I was just thinking of Eckhart Tole. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's that sort of mentality. But I think where people I think we overthink that as a species, you know, notwithstanding cultural views like the westernized version of Be Here Now, uh, which I think tells people, you know, take action, you know, be engaged, even at a death, even if you're at a deficit, right? Do the job. Uh that's how you get the change. And it feels sort of very much like going against a grain or a cheese grater in the sense of like you have to be here even if you don't want to be. You know, it's forced, yeah. Where I think the eastern view of that, be here now, is more about taking the energies inside of you and being aware of them, cognizant of what you're feeling and what's happening. And you can't you can't do the westernized version if you have all this turmoil and conflicting forces happening internally, right? So the eastern view says engage with that, I accept that turmoil as a part of that experience that all life is very much kind of sucky. It is very hard for all things. Like there, I I did I hear a lot of people talk about how, like, oh, I don't want to work, or I don't want to, I don't want to have to do this. And I have said that many times in my own life. I I stand that for sure. But it it's interesting because naturally speaking, like all things have to do something. And maybe what we we mean is we don't want to do that thing. We want we're okay doing work, we're okay putting effort into the real real world and our endeavors, right? And that's where our energy should be. But the the capitalistic Western view does that opposite thing where it's like, well, if you have that sort of entrepreneurial ship, give it to Walmart or Target or you know, Amran, right? And boost the ladder even higher away from you. And so I think the coming back to my original thought on that is like if you have all this existing conflicting turmoil happening, how are you supposed to be present in a way that you can create that change, that magic and the Tao talks about that all these faith groups mention in their, you know, respectively. And for me, coming back to sort of my own sort of version of it and stepping away from like that very like commercial view of mindfulness from either lens, western or eastern, for me on a magical practitioner, pagan witch level with it all, mindfulness is it is that process. So a big part of my philosophy as a person is looking at the world as, yeah, there probably is a source of some kind. There's a monad, as I as I've heard it called, that I really I like that term for what it represents. And that energy in humanity and us as people, it's divided, it's at duality, right? And a great way that I I I've taught this to a lot of my students is to look at it as there is the logical brain component of being a mammal, and then there is the soul-ridden consciousness that's going to act in contrary to all everything the brain has to say, right? The brain's gonna always, you know, and I I've said this to my sister too, that there's facts and reality, and so the brain it's always feelings and yeah, yeah. But feelings are reality, and so the brain is always pumping out those facts. Well, you should be this, you should do that, should, should, should, should, it should, you know, all these issues, problems, qualifiers. But reality is so much more abstract, and so for me, I teach that that is the duality that comes from our source code, whatever you want to call that source code, be it divine spark and breath, be it a soul, be it the anima, whatever you're gonna call it, right? For me, I I I stick to my Eurocentric roots of calling it a soul. I do also like genus loci as a as a concept on that. But to your point with mindfulness, I think you have to move through the duality spoken on in a lot of these religious traditions. You have to take whatever there is going on in your life and recognize that there is you, the monad, of that that sorts, and then there is the duality being created with that problem. The the promotion at work, the stress of traumas, right? I I I'm a PTSD survivor myself, just for your a your audience's reference thing.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

For those who don't know if that's post-traumatic stress disorder.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Right. Sorry, yeah. I'm big on acronyms and whatnot, so people are always doing that. So, yes. And for me, I suffer, or I I shouldn't say suffer. I've been diagnosed with complex PTSD. And I've gone through enough counseling in my own personal journey that luckily and grieffully, I've been diagnosed as in remission with my PTSD symptoms. And I liken a lot of that work, not all of it, but a lot of it to the mindfulness around my spiritual practices and approaches, my tools as a person, and really gauging that journey too has done a lot to define mindfulness. But for me, in my own journey, then I could use that as an example and say the duality I have to confront to reach clarity, to reach the present moment, to be engaged mindfully, requires me to engage with those emotions. Perhaps for me, those were my symptoms that I dealt with and resolve them before I could actually reach full mindfulness, before I could reach that. But it is a spectrum, right? I'm a very multiplicative sort of idea, person and soul. And what I mean by that is like I could go from being really sad and in control of my feelings or talking about something really sad and still go do the thing, you know, and I'm okay in that way. Not everyone is, and that's that's fair, it's valid. But for me, that's meant meant that I could sort of create understand that spectrum a little bit better, right? You know, I carry my grief, but I'm also very excited about the things I get to do with nonprofits or with students, you know, or the the community. And so the I think like going back to you know, as a therapist yourself, one thing I know is taught a lot is like, and this is sort of cliche because you hear it a lot in pop culture too, but I do think it's good advice, and that's maybe grief doesn't go away. Maybe some people are rare enough to handle that good on them. But those of us who carry grief, one good true tool, one tried true method is to build joy around it, and not the kind that barricades that grief from your awareness, but to honor it and to also honor it with the power of life, right? How do you keep that the people around you who have departed or the sad grief they've gone through going? You engage, you create that, right? It has to be brought and harbored. And so that's a lot of how I sort of teach mindfulness methodologies is like really confront the duality of what it means to be in your life right now. For me, I'm still a student and I'm still getting up to the this the peak of education, you know, and where I where I'm trying to be, and I'm right there, like 99% stuck loaded. And there's a lot of grief, as you do, as you know, like there's a lot of stress and hardship that comes with going through that, especially trying to work or do professional endeavors. But I accept that stress. I try to move through it with patience and empathy for myself. You know, there I wouldn't look at anything I'm doing and not do it right now just because things are hard. And that's a big part of that mindfulness journey for me is going, well, I can see it for what it is. I see how big it is, see how overwhelming it can get, but I believe in my strengths, my abilities to keep going. And I think at that point, mentally and spiritually and physically, I often can sort of come back to and go, okay, I'm ready to engage with my life again. I'm ready to hit the pavement again in my best self. So that's sort of like a a tall tale on mindfulness for me.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

I like it. It actually reminded me when you were talking about duality of the concept of two opposing truths being true, two opposing things being true. The sun can be shining and it can be raining, somebody can love you and not like you right now, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Yeah, yeah. And oh, my voice is going. I had water here for my last meeting somewhere. I'll find it. But yeah, I I was recently reminded of that because I had forgotten it along my own healing journey with my symptoms that I was going through therapeutically. And my counselor, she kept stopping me, not it in a in the best of ways. She would stop me and go, Tori, you're saying yes, but you're you're you're giving ultimatums, you're thinking in a binary way. And that was eye-opening. I was like, oh wait, where why would it why does that hit me? It's because of my theories and my beliefs around duality. You know, I had instead of engaging with my duality and moving through it and say recognizing that I can when we're in a dualistic moment, we're at odds with something in our lives, whatever that is. There's us and an unknown that's antagonizing us, right? It could be health concerns, it could be family dynamics, it could be opportunity, et cetera, et cetera. But it often works against our our our narrative, our point of reference for our outlook, because it tells us, yeah, well, what if? And what if that what if, right? And it keeps going until it turns into an ugly monster in the back of our minds that we can't reach. Add the what if, what if it goes well. Exactly, the reframing of it. And that's a part of you know, moving through the dual the dualism of it, right? You can't help that your mind sees problems, you can't help that as a creature, you're designed in a way to look at the speculation of concern, and that unfortunately means insecurity or heartache or suffering or stress for us as people. But what you can do is accept it and channel it. And when you channel it like the lightning rod, you can then maneuver that energy to something more productive. And so that's I I tell people it's the monad, the duality, and then the trinity. Because what happens, and this is a lot of sacred geometry teachings and wizard stuff I'll put out there on your radar, which is that we we see the the construction of life as a three-dimensional thing. So, what does that tell us poetically about being a creature in that three, you know, three-dimensional structure? Well, it means everything happens in the big three, right? There's you, there's the circumstance, and there's the outcome. Birth, life, death, right? The the sun is born in December, it's at a zenith, and then it dies in December, right? And it's this process that happens. Yeah, and it's a repetitive cycle, usually narrowed down to about three within almost all cultures. Uh, we see that, you know, in the the Trinity or the the triple godhead, right? Of the goddess. And we see that really, I think it probably originates within the moon cycles, right? The the new moon, the full moon, uh and and uh the the the waning moon or the growing moon and or the dark moon, and again, other motifs. But I I think the way that life and change and transformation tends to happen is in a power of three sort of things. There's who we are right now, there's the duality of the change we must go through, and then there's the outcome of that transformation, you know, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly type thing. And and so for me, I sort of live by that that motif. Like whatever I'm doing, I'll I'll try to identify myself in those, that, that, those elements at any circumstance, right? There's who I am when I started school, which was uh a while ago, and then there's who I am today, the duality phase, and then there's who I'm gonna be at the end of that. And so that that process becomes a very mindful journey where again I'm not along for the ride anymore, which is a very westernized sort of structure to put yourself in, where you know you gotta work, and then you gotta survive, and you gotta work even harder, and then you're gonna have probably health issues, and you gotta work through those health, you know, and it's a never-ending spiral in Western ideals of that sort of practice. And so for me, that's that's again, yeah, the overarching thing there was mindfulness and how to engage for me, and like that that's sort of my my secret bread and butter, as I think. You like it.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

I think that's a good place to wrap up so you can save your voice. Any last words for folks?

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Yeah, take whatever you're very concerned about, and whatever you carry, whether it's an external problem or an internal problem, and one, try to run it through that that that secret formula and see if it helps you or not. I would I think that'd be so interesting to know as a thought experiment. But then also just know I I love to leave on this note with people is that we suffer a lot from thinking the world is already made in stone, that there is no change that can happen. There's so many problems and we're just here to bear them. But if you actually look through history and you actually look through the progression of the collective consciousness of society and how we've gotten to a place where we can be so cognizant of so many people's needs on a diverse level, what it really tells me as a person who's 30 years old, who cares a lot about other people, is that the world is not done being made. And that you get you get to be a part of writing that story still. And if you think like, oh, well, there's these you know ignorant A-holes here, there's these people who need this or that, whatever your your outlook is, engage with it from that view and recognize that there's a huge component of people who may not know what your your message is, who may not know that that's a problem or a need in the world around you. And so the first way to make change happen is to find your community, reach out, be honest and genuine and sincere and fair about how you see those problems in the world.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

Awesome. All right, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Absolutely.