There is a strange unintuitiveness to reality that once you get it into your perception makes most people and collective society look insane, as though you're looking at the world through a funhouse glass and everyone is walking around all twisted and out of joint.

I remember when I was at graduate school, there were incessant marches, protests and demonstrations outside the parliament building. The university students were very into changing the world through I guess what you could call non-violent anarchistic displays. Here's an example; the student union wanted to freeze tuition, but instead of setting up a program or campeign which targeted individuals in the university administration to try and change policy through the established channels, they interrupted administration meetings, disrupted traffic patterns into and out of the university and on several occasions were so disruptive that the police were called in to physically remove the protesters and some were even arrested.

I was stunned to read in the student publications that these arrests were seen as great victories. They were described and advanced in the same rhetoric as the communist protests of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I was certain that, like most conflicts, this particular show of force or chaos or whatever would only highten the resistance from the university administration. Sure enough, this was the case. It was a perfect illustration of what many are calling 'the law of attraction'.

What you focus on manifests in reality.

It's that same idea that the energy you put out comes back three-fold, though now, having seen it in action, I believe that it comes back seventy-two-fold. I am a great believer in this process and have been trying to get my head around and my feet into it for months now - almost a year - with perfect success but imperfect direction, if you know what I mean. I have manifested everything that I have focused on but I have not gained such self-awareness and balance that I have been able to manifest what I specifically want to manifest. I have manifested disrespectful neighbors, a probelm student or two and ... a couple other things that I won't lend more energy to here. On the other hand, I have also manifested three new job opportunities, a publication (my book comes out in less than three months), a new, greener automobile (now to work on the horses and land) and completely healed my infant daughter who was scheduled to go in for a biopsy in a month.

I have absolute faith and knowledge that the law of attraction works, but it has led also to some unexpected results. Over the past month or so since the equinox, at least since I started my process of faith examination, I have been glancing through some of the various druid-oriented blogs that are around. I was initially shocked and perplexed to find so many of them focusing on the depredations of commercial society on the environment, oil issues and other topics that targetted the destruction of the natural order. Then I had to shake myself and remember that for most people the way to solve a problem is by fighting it head on, and not focusing on the solution so as to manifest it.

I think I've posted on this before in a thread somewhere, but as pagans I think we need to focus on Natura Victoriosa or Gaia Triumphans - I don't know, Herne the Conqueror or something. Our world should be a world of aggressive, unstoppable nature reclaiming her world and teaching us exactly how to live in it. This frankly Saxon idea of nature as a force to be feared as an enemy and thus fought and tamed needs to be released from our minds (those of us with a Celtic focus at least) along with the frankly Roman idea that the best defense is a good offense .i. fight the problem rather than glide past it - you know, the Taoist way (if you're reading this, John Shaman, I thank you for some great posts on the not-doing philosophy).

I can hear my shadow CR's claiming that to fight is Celtic. Absolutely, but I regard the Celtic form of warfare as a lot more fun that what I see most days. I wonder if the Celts actually hated those they fought. I don't think they knew enough about them. I don't think that a lot of the fighting was necessarily or intentionally to the death (I think Cú Chulaind's actions should speak to that, but perhaps that is a discussion for another time), else how could so many come away with battle scars to show off later? Why else would the Romans find the Celtic manner of fighting so weird? The Celts were engaging almost in social warfare, while the Romans were paving the way for Latin Freedom.

But I digress ... hopefully I've made my point ...