Kemet Online: Followers of The Religion of Ancient Egypt: Being "on Path"

Hotep *bow*

Being on Path (and my mind keeps switching the letters to think I'm reading "being on Ptah" which is a completely different (and more than a little scary) thing

)--most important thing to remember for me is that being on path is a journey, not a destination.

Someone once told me that the thing to remember about Ma'at is that it's a road you travel. In one direction, there's isfet. In the other, there's Ma'at. We often find ourselves traveling towards isfet, and like begets like. The crap starts piling up until we need to pull our boots up to our eyeballs. However, all it takes to get back on the path to Ma'at is simply to turn around to face the other direction. Like the old saying--first thing you do when you find you're in a hole is QUIT DIGGING!

Yet many of us still hold on to our shovels in a death-grip, because we keep thinking we have to shovel the crap out, when what we really need to do is put the shovel down and start walking up the slope.

What we're not used to here in the west is making things right in the spirit world first. We keep thinking that if we have the outer shell (the small stuff) all dusted up nice and shiny, then we can fill it with goodness later on. That ain't the way things work when you're kemetic (or approaching kemetic) - we work closely with the spirit world, and by doing so, we tacitly accept that since we can affect it, that it can also affect us. That means we have to maintain it the way we maintain our outer lives.

It's hard to get out of a downward rut. But making the initial effort doesn't have to be a big thing. It's hard to break the inertia of isfet, but keep in mind that the benefits of doing so are cumulative. I notice that if I get into ruts like this, when I finally get off my franny and start something, even if it's small, other small things start happening to complement it. I perform daily rite and I develop the energy to load the dishwasher twice in one day, thereby letting me go to bed with an empty sink. Which spurs me on the following morning to clean the counters, and with a clean counter on which to set my laptop, I can finally get over the hump of that one scene that's kept my story from progressing. Getting that unstuck then lets me move on to the horizontal filing cabinet that is my dining room table, which gives me a clean space to open up my writing notebooks and start scribbling brainstorming ideas about my next few chapters. That gets me into a good enough mood to take my son out to play at the bookstore or somewhere else that kids can jump around, like our local YMCA. I come back and I'm ready to tackle the living room with all the toys, etc. etc. etc. Pretty soon, I have a house I can live with, my writing is flowing, my kid isn't climbing the walls from boredom, and daily rite is something I look forward to every day.

It doesn't happen overnight. But it does happen. All it takes is that turn around to look towards Ma'at.

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senebty,
Jen Sokoloski, Wab Priest of Ptah
Per AnkhThe Traditional Religion of Ancient Egypt