The Ravens Nest

Heeding Wisdom Can Guide You On The Path You’ve Chosen For Yourself

In addition to being a full advocate for reclaiming your power and authority rather than just willfully or even unwittingly forking it over to the first, second, third or even fourth person to claim secret knowledge of the truth that’s out there, I often get asked if that means to listen to no one else.

My answer is, of course, yes and no.

In my last article, I spoke about how I could be both a minister for one religious organization and be a Heathen as well. Oversimplifying that answer so you wouldn’t have to go back and read it, unless you really want the nuance and true understanding of the decision, I’d recommend you do, it’s that this is part of the path I’ve chosen to make for myself.

It’s not easier, in fact it’s much more difficult but there’s so much more to experience from that. To me, that beats anything academic.

Case in point, I watched a video last night that I’ll post here:

I do recommend watching this video because there are parallels here.

This is about classical thinking.

During The Classical Period, if you were born into a family that were bakers, you then would become a baker yourself. Butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, it didn’t matter. You were clearly born into and were going to stay in that lane. Then the Rennaisance Period comes along and it destroys classicism. Now, if you’re a butcher, baker or candlestick maker and you’re just unhappy, miserable and anxious about your current class, you have the freedom to quit your job and the ability to ascend and climb the ladder of society, to make your own way, if you will.

This was a societal benefit in many ways, rather than top-down dictatorship and rule, now those at the street-level had a voice and the ability to implement it. Some such as (forgive me for going the TMNT route here) Leonardo DaVinci, Michaelangelo Buonarotti, Raffaelo Sanzio di Urbino, and Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi who claimed, in some ways, Divine Inspiration and made significant cultural impacts but they didn’t become that way overnight and they certainly did not do it all on their own.

They had to take thousands of hours in lessons and practice. They took guidance from somewhere. Someone or a group of someones on the respective paths of each of these Rennaisance artists, took inspiration, lessons, guidance and then put that into practice for thousands of hours in order to become what they were and their names are immortalized today.

Bringing it back to the spiritual, even Odin didn’t sit on his throne in Valholl, constantly sipping wine, listening to his ravens, Huginn and Muninn and feeding Geri and Freki, his two wolves throughout his reign. He’s known for wandering all of the Nine Realms in search of wisdom. There are also stories of the work he put into obtaining that wisdom. In one such story, Odin hangs himself from Yggdrasil, the tree that holds The Nine Realms as he gazes down into the Well of Wyrd (alternately The Well of Urd) as a sacrifice of himself to himself for Nine Nights without food or drink until he finally sees The Runes surface, the rope breaks and as Odin put it, “I gathered the runes, screaming.”

The moral of that story is that he made great sacrifices for his wisdom. With The Runes in particular, he was doing whatever it took to learn their secrets and what they were in order to gain that foresight and learn powerful charms that would restore both physical and mental well-being.

In another instance, he sees that Mimir is drinking from a well and, the more Mimir drinks, the more wise he becomes. He approaches Mimir and asks him for a drink from his well and Mimir refuses. You read that right, Mimir told him flat, “No, dude. This is my well, you know…for me to drink from.”

There’s a bit of an exchange before Mimir offers a deal. For one drink from his well, Odin would have to exchange his long sight, which is what Mimir wants. Odin then literally takes out one of his eyes and gives it to Mimir.

I want you to imagine that for a moment. Imagine having to reach in and pluck out your own eye and give it to someone. What would you want that badly and how much pain would you want to go through? Many of us these days wouldn’t want to go through that much pain and pain is a uniquely motivating factor in what we do and how we go through things.

In the past few days, I’ve had this angry, big, red, painful bump on my nose and had to go through quite a bit of pain to finally drain it. We will do most anything to avoid pain until we have a choice to face and it’s will we go through some pain now, which will be temporary, to find the relief we seek or will we continue to try to avoid it until it’s too late and nothing can be done?

In Odin’s case, he wanted that drink, that badly and Mimir, after receiving Odin’s own eye, cast it into the well and offered Odin a drink from his own well. I recommend reading The Poetic Edda by Dr. Jackson Crawford as it is filled with amazing stories and tales of the gods. Even if you don’t want to believe the same as I, the stories in the Eddas and the advice in The Havamal are very relatable and, if you read Dr. Crawford’s translation, you will get to read both in one book.

Every Tom, Richard and Harry is going to be out there to give you advice because, hey, we see you. We see where you want to go and we know that you want to strive for absolute greatness, don’t you? But who should you listen to? What advice should you take?

This is where the destruction of the Classical society did us very well, it turns out. You ask your progenitors, those who came before you and then use your own observations to carefully examine the advice, do your own research and, once you have all the facts in front of you, do the comparison and zoom out, see that bigger picture and ask yourself, “Will this bring me closer to my goal?” The rest is truly up to you. This will mean taking on some responsibility. Those who really see you going places, many will cheer you on, I know I will. Get out there, become the most powerful and responsible version of you but take it from experience that there are people that will try to hinder, sabotage and even full-on stop you because they don’t want you to succeed. Carving out your path to the great things you’d love most to do.

There’s a lot of thought that needs to go into this and I don’t want to weigh you down with all the nitty-gritty on it. I think you, dear reader, have all the tools necessary to make yourself very powerful and wield that power responsibly in a way that raises the tide and the ships together.

If I have any advice to give, that would be all I would or could responsibly give.

So get out there and follow your own path and never forget those who went with experience before you. Listen to their stories and then remember them.

Wisdom often comes with pain, lots of it. It’s because Wisdom comes from Experience and experience can come from very poor judgment. As it’s said, “Those who cannot do, teach.” The best wisdom of all comes from learning from the mistakes of others and that’s the best piece of advice we can all take with us today.