Hawk’s Cry

Spiritual Seeking and Promiscuity

Everyone who changes their religion goes through a period of spiritual seeking. It is a time of discovery and experimentation to see which spiritual tradition speaks most to their calling. There is a dark aspect to this, though, which is quite prevalent in the Pagan community—Spiritual Promiscuity.

Ian, over at Dreaming the Future Closer, wrote a great post relating the philosophical writings of Simone Weil to Paganism that helped me clear some of my thinking about this subject.

Nearly all followers of Paganism came to the religion from that which they were born. As a result, there is a large emphasis on choice. There is a choice to “consent to the engagement which has been formed within us in spite of ourselves,” as Weil wrote in Gravity and Grace. There is also a choice of which spiritual tradition speaks to that engagement most for the person.

Ian wrote that people tend to spend a period of time “flirting” with many varieties of Paganism, choosing them as one would choose a date for the evening. This is an important part of the process of finding your spiritual source when your birth religion is not the right source for you.

This process of seeking devolves into spiritual promiscuity when someone does not take the process seriously as a step in their spiritual evolution. I have known many people who are perpetually seekers. They keep bouncing from group to group and religion to religion without really reflecting on each one to see how it fits with their calling.

Your spiritual journey is a calling, not a road trip. You don’t choose it, it chooses you. The choice you have is whether you are going to follow the calling or ignore it.

I will illustrate with my own journey as a seeker. When I first started in Witchcraft, I wanted to follow in the tradition of my biological ancestors, the Finnish tradition. After about a year, though, I was called to the Hellenic mystery traditions by my intuition, my spirit guides and the Gods. I don’t feel bad for working with the Finnish tradition and I still respect it greatly, but I found that it is not what I am called to. It did not fill my soul as deeply as Hellenic Alexandrian did.

Sometimes this can take a lot of experimenting with different religions to find which you are called to, so I can’t say there is a specific timeline or number of religions that differentiates seeking with promiscuity. To me, the difference is in method and motive.

The Seeker vs. The Promiscuous

A seeker will visit a religion, either through books, friends or a group, with the intent of learning about it and determining if they are called to it. They reflect on how the spiritual energy and focus match with what they are seeking. If they find that it is not what they are called to, they admit it, thank those who helped them, and move on.

Someone who is spiritually promiscuous may visit a religion and base their decision on whether to stay on how happy and comfortable they feel with it. They may stay or go because of the personalities of the other members. Some might stay because the tradition is not challenging or demanding of them and they prefer that to the hard work and growing pains that comes from following their calling.

There are two dangers associated with spiritual promiscuity. The person may miss out on the religion that answers their calling. Such a person may leave or not try out a group because they heard some negative gossip about them, or they don’t “mesh” with the other people’s personalities. The group may be their calling, but they ignore it and leave for such petty reasons.

The other danger is the person may get too deep in a religion that is not their calling. The danger with this is they may take oaths and initiations that are contrary to their calling. At some point, they will be expected to behave in a manner contrary to their calling, or their calling can change as a result of their oaths and initiations.

This is one reason religious groups and churches have a period where all new people are simply visitors and guests before they can become actual members. Most groups also require classes, or some other type of instruction, to prospective members to ensure that the person knows what the religion and group are about and can decide if they are called to it.

How to know your calling

Ian had a great description about how to know your calling:

“We know we are in the presence of our calling when we can 1) produce many good and sensible reasons for taking up the calling and 2) feel that there remains something above and beyond those reasons that motivates us, a spiritual presence that we cannot reduce to our human conceptions.”

It is the second reason that indicates the divine connection with your calling. It is also the most difficult part of finding your calling, because there is no specific set of instructions that everyone can follow to find it. The most common way is through ritual, but the rituals vary by religion, tradition and even person.

The seeker will be consciously asking their intuition and their heart if what they are doing has that spiritual presence in it and will use that as their guide. The spiritually promiscuous person will instead ask only their mind if the rational reasons are good, or they will ask their heart how happy or comfortable they feel.

Everyone who changes religions during their life goes through the period of seeking. It is an important time of experimentation, similar to the experimentation done during one’s teenage years. It is also dangerous, like the teenage years, because of the allure of spiritual promiscuity. One can slip from being a seeker to just being promiscuous without noticing.

But there is hope for those who find themselves being spiritually promiscuous. Making the decision to work diligently to find their calling and basing their decisions on that measure, rather than simply on their changing emotions, will transform them back to the seeker. Then, when they find their calling, they are transformed again from a seeker to one who lives their calling and is fulfilled by it.