The Apprentice

I hate the BBC TV programme The Apprentice. There – I’ve said it and I feel quite alone is saying so! I feel alone as it’s one of the UK’s most popular TV programmes, gaining plaudits, awards and millions of viewers and it is peddled as very much the programme to watch – but I really don’t like it. I actually find it disturbing and worrying. I’d go as far as to say that it actually offends me.

The Apprentice is one of the ever increasing number of reality television shows to hit our screens. In this programme people are set tasks by Sir Alan Sugar to test various aspects of their business acumen. Each week, the candidates are divided into two teams and Sir Alan briefs them on the new task. The team appoints a project manager and this person is responsible for leading the task. After each show, the candidate who has impressed Sir Alan the least is ‘fired’ and usually in rather humiliating fashion. The goal for each candidate is to make it through all the various tasks in order to win a six figure salary as Sir Alan’s Apprentice.

Why don’t I like the programme? Because it has the affect of bringing to the surface all the aspects of the human personality that I really struggle with. Those aspects that I feel that as spiritual beings we should be moving away from. The candidates all appear to be prepared to sell their own Grandmothers if this would secure victory. Everything within the programme plays to their own ego and their inflated opinions of themselves. When they feel they’re in trouble; that is, when they feel they are in danger of being fired, the venom that spews from their mouths and the pure hatred that is sometimes evident in their body language in order to denigrate the others is nothing short of scary. Perhaps it reminds me too much of the office politics that all too often surrounds my working day.

Yet, I watch it each week. I think I watch it to convince myself that what I don’t like about it is really what I don’t like about it! Perhaps I want to see it improve; perhaps I want to see someone actually look out for someone else. Perhaps I want to see someone demonstrate a degree of understanding of another person, perhaps I want to see someone demonstrate empathy, put someone else first, recognise another for who and what they are as opposed to seeing each and every other candidate as nothing other than a back to stab and a carcass to climb over in order to get what it is they want for themselves. They feign teamwork, but in the end the single motive is about self. In other words, there is no authenticity, no transparency, everything is false.

I guess the reason I struggle is because everything about this programme challenges my own values. Some people have labelled me as naïve because of the values I hold, but I refuse to believe that other people exist merely as a means to my own gain. It is fellowship that is important, not what someone else can do for me to make me look or feel better. We should be celebrating each other, not denigrating each other.

The Apprentice appears to further popularise the misconception that we should use force to obtain our goals, that the means justify the end result. Conflict, it would appear, is fine as it brings about selfish ends, whereas what is truly important is purification, a stripping away of all the former, in order to bring about a deeper and fuller manifestation of ones Higher Self and therefore selflessness. It’s about a laying down, which, ironically, once we fully move into this arena, brings far more worth and value than one could have ever initially realised.

Domination is a theme that runs through The Apprentice, and of course this programme simply reflects where we are as a society. It’s all about survival, it’s all about profit and gain, whereas the magickal being is called to lay down and surrender, not control and dominate. Magickal power is birthed in sacrifice.

This is what Dion Fortune refers to as the death of the personality and increasingly I am beginning to understand what it is she actually means. I don’t pretend to have arrived at this point but I see more clearly than ever just what it is that is required of me in this moment in time.

Where it will lead . . . well, that has to be another story!

Liberation

I treated myself to another day in Glastonbury today. People will think that I was crazy, spending so much of my leave in the one place, but I truly love the place and its energy and am just so happy chilling there. I've also spent far too much money, but hey ho.

I can't believe that I was lying on the Tor in wonderful sunshine this morning! It's pouring heavy rain now, but this morning the skies were blue and the sun was terrific and I was looking at amazing views like this (not my photo):



Meditating at the Tor, and at the Chalice Well Wellhead later I heard Goddess say "At the centre is you". This confused me for a while, because in my mind I have always thought that at the centre is Goddess - is Spirit, but the more I meditated on these words the more I came to realise that at the centre is me, because I too, am Spirit. I am Spirit choosing to live in this body in the here and now. I am Spirit and I am of Spirit, and Goddess is also at the centre, because She is in me and of me, and I am in her, and of her, and in that sense there again is the sacred Oneness, the interconnectedness, the sacred unity, the sacred relationship. I am bound to Her, yet also free, because she brings freedom.

I saw that my path is a journey, and this journey is a journey to the real me - the free me. I saw myself walking the labyrinth of life, and at the centre of the labyrinth was me.



again, this confused me, because I expected to find Goddess at the centre of the labyrinth, and indeed have done when I have made this journey before, but this time, it was me, in a place of freedom and release, a place, it felt, with Higher Self manifested, a place of initiation.

I worry about parapsychology and I have never wanted my path to be some kind of spiritualised psychology, because one can know oneself without any spiritual intervention. I have had counselling and I have trained and qualified as a counsellor, but this journey showed me something far more powerful that any kind of self awareness or self actualisation of the psychological kind. This was about seeing me in Spirit. Having a glimpse of myself as seen by the Lord and Lady, in that place of true freedom.

I know myself well, and sometimes my level of self awareness, and intuition generally, scares me, but this was something else - I was seeing myself as no one else ever has, because all the defences, those things we need to survive this life, were all gone. I was welcoming the light, not hiding, not pretending, not putting on a show, just free and able to be me. It was a special place and a place I want to be able to access again.

In bringing something of this into my everyday reality I think it's about starting to respect how I talk of myself and to myself. How often do I say things like "idiot" or "stupid" or treat myself with frustration and anger, when in reality, in doing this, I am denying my birthright and who I truly am. This is about a deeper sense of self love, and not a self rejection. Not just an acceptance of who I truly am, but a real sense of taking joy in who I truly am. This is the reality of "know thyself" - seeing oneself free from the effects and the necessary accoutrements gathered from living this life.

So, again, it's about believing, believing who and what I truly am, from the perspective of the One Divine Life, not from the reflections of others, or more importantly, not from my own intra-actions. I am a Magickal Being, and that's not about ego, not at all, and it's deeper than some kind of 'mind over matter' self belief, it's much more than that. It's about accepting the word of the Lord and Lady and acting in accord with their word.

Balance

"Yes, you just have to be balanced Andy, don't you?" snapped a staff member a few years. I was trying to explain why I had written his reference in the way that I had, and he wasn't at all pleased. I think it meant that he didn't get the job, but I had to provide the reality, the balance, in his reference, not to have done so would have been pretty reckless.

This all came back to me this morning as I turned two tarot cards that seem to be polar opposites, one speaking of the need for action, and the other speaking of the need for rest. As I first looked, I was confused, but then the truth of the situation soon became apparent. As a Hedge Witch I am called to 'stand between' - between the world, between light and dark, day and night, justice and injustice - I am called to bring that balance, and sometimes to actually be that balance itself.

I find it incredible that I turned these cards in the week that is taking me to the Solstice Point! That place of perfect balance.

We've been talking a lot recently on our blogs about perhaps thinking too much when we should be actually doing something, and I agree that if we all do is think, then nothing will ever get done. However, I am convinced that what we do, especially when we're talking from a spiritual perspective, should come from a place of rest, a place of calm, a place of deep conviction, experience, knowledge and spiritual power.

I was once involved with a local Goddess movement, and I really thought that this group had something. I soon became disappointed when I began to look closer at the centre of this group, because what I found was not a powerful spiritual centre at all, but a core of questionable motives and general mistrust, suspicion and fighting. The ceremonies and rituals conducted came not from a spiritual centre, but from this fractured centre, there was no place of rest at the core, so things began to falter.

This is what the two cards were saying very powerfully to me this morning. I can be so reactionary, I can leap before I think, speak before I think, move into a place of stress and lose perspective, when at my core what I need is this place of rest. This rest isn't passive and it isn't inactive, it's proactive. It brings growth and it brings action, but it brings these things from a hub, from a centre that is at peace with self and with the One Divine Life. It comes from a place of connection that is aware of that connection, living in that connection and experiencing that connection. Not from a spiritual neurosis, but from a spiritual centre - a reservoir of spiritual energy.

There are echoes here of 'the essence of me' being at the core of all I do, and this isn't about rushing and doing, it's about a sincere knowledge and awareness of self, true self, and of my own true will, and this comes from a deep and personal relationship with the One Divine Life as revealed to me by the Lord and Lady.

So many opposing factors vie for my attention and place demands upon me on a daily basis, but I can choose to operate from this place of calm and this place of calm is a place of strength. I can set the scene as opposed to being ruled by unfolding events, I create my own reality. I do not have to operate from a place of turmoil and angst, I can move from a place of calm that inspires growth and development.

So it is all about balance. Yes, I have to move, there's action to take, I cannot be inactive, but I move from a place of calm, a place of rest, and this is a place of assurance and confidence in who I am, who I am called to be and the tradition in which I have my roots.

This balance is a place of personal power.