From this point onwards, the Twilight posts are ones I posted but never recorded the ORDER i posted them in , so I'm just adding them here as I dig them out of my group's archives.
#TWILIGHT
Twilight’s Insights - A Very Randomly Posted Kaleidoscope Post by Rachel Dayton
So, Ethics.
Ethics and Pathwork.
One of the things a lot of people seem to not realize as they start out on their fluffy, happy, freeing spiritual journey to find the Path they are meant to tread is that it does not matter that we are a community and something of a minority, spiritually speaking - we still have bad actors. We still have people whose ethical and moral maps are skewed, or downright crooked. There are people in the Pagan/Occult/Voodoo/Hoodoo.Rootwork/ATR/Heathen/Druid/Shaman/Native communities who are there for little more than to fill their pockets with gold earned from YOUR naivete’.
There are people who say all the right things and will sell you dirty water but call it a potion.
There are people we in this group like to call vampires, who will feed on your attention, but will sell themselves to you as leaders or mentors or guides.
There are people who will attach themselves to you like a leech - claiming they want to learn from you or support you - and will turn around and try to profit from your hard earned Path knowledge.
There are sexual predators in our communities.
There are bad actors in EVERY community - be it that Instant Pot recipe group you joined last week or the Spirituality forum you have been in for years - there are always bad actors. We can’t police them all the time, and we all want to believe the best of other people.
The reason I am saying all of this is not to scare you or badmouth our communities - as I said, this is something that exists in every community because our communities are filled with humans - but because I keep seeing the effects of the bad actors. And the worst thing is that the bad actors are almost always people the community at large ALREADY KNEW WERE BAD ACTORS.
This is a problem I have seen in other communities - in the kink community, for instance, a known sexual predator will be protected by their peers, despite accusations of rape or consent violations, because they are members of the community, and because they provide something to the community they feel they maybe cannot get from anyone else. People who are the victims of the bad actor will be ostracized for speaking out against their abuser, and the community will rally around the bad actor instead of caring for and protecting the victim. I’ve seen it over and over in many different forms in many different communities.
Personally, I choose to speak out, and if I get shunned, I honestly do not care. If anyone asks, I will tell the truth as I know it or experienced it.
It is my opinion that this is something that should be broken. If someone hurts you, tell someone. If someone steals from you, tell someone. If you see someone stealing or hurting, tell someone. Stop the cycle of protecting the bad actors, stop creating bad actors out of those who were victims.
I’m not talking about going out of your way to make everyone you meet know that so-and-so is a bad person, or a thief, or a whatever - but I am saying that there are ways to make sure other people do not become a victim in the way you did.
We do not need to be silent because it makes us complicit in the protection of our abusers.
See something, say something.
#TWILIGHT
Twilight’s Insights - A Very Randomly Posted Kaleidoscope Post by Rachel Dayton
So, Ethics.
Ethics and Pathwork.
One of the things a lot of people seem to not realize as they start out on their fluffy, happy, freeing spiritual journey to find the Path they are meant to tread is that it does not matter that we are a community and something of a minority, spiritually speaking - we still have bad actors. We still have people whose ethical and moral maps are skewed, or downright crooked. There are people in the Pagan/Occult/Voodoo/Hoodoo.Rootwork/ATR/Heathen/Druid/Shaman/Native communities who are there for little more than to fill their pockets with gold earned from YOUR naivete’.
There are people who say all the right things and will sell you dirty water but call it a potion.
There are people we in this group like to call vampires, who will feed on your attention, but will sell themselves to you as leaders or mentors or guides.
There are people who will attach themselves to you like a leech - claiming they want to learn from you or support you - and will turn around and try to profit from your hard earned Path knowledge.
There are sexual predators in our communities.
There are bad actors in EVERY community - be it that Instant Pot recipe group you joined last week or the Spirituality forum you have been in for years - there are always bad actors. We can’t police them all the time, and we all want to believe the best of other people.
The reason I am saying all of this is not to scare you or badmouth our communities - as I said, this is something that exists in every community because our communities are filled with humans - but because I keep seeing the effects of the bad actors. And the worst thing is that the bad actors are almost always people the community at large ALREADY KNEW WERE BAD ACTORS.
This is a problem I have seen in other communities - in the kink community, for instance, a known sexual predator will be protected by their peers, despite accusations of rape or consent violations, because they are members of the community, and because they provide something to the community they feel they maybe cannot get from anyone else. People who are the victims of the bad actor will be ostracized for speaking out against their abuser, and the community will rally around the bad actor instead of caring for and protecting the victim. I’ve seen it over and over in many different forms in many different communities.
Personally, I choose to speak out, and if I get shunned, I honestly do not care. If anyone asks, I will tell the truth as I know it or experienced it.
It is my opinion that this is something that should be broken. If someone hurts you, tell someone. If someone steals from you, tell someone. If you see someone stealing or hurting, tell someone. Stop the cycle of protecting the bad actors, stop creating bad actors out of those who were victims.
I’m not talking about going out of your way to make everyone you meet know that so-and-so is a bad person, or a thief, or a whatever - but I am saying that there are ways to make sure other people do not become a victim in the way you did.
We do not need to be silent because it makes us complicit in the protection of our abusers.
See something, say something.
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