Magic 101: Duty and Resentment

Duty is one of those things that people often view as unpleasant, something you get over with so that you can have fun somewhere else. It is a to-do list that one does because one must, resenting it the entire time.

Duty certainly can be a resentful to-do list. But the duties we are given as priests or spiritual workers are also a privilege, reserved for people who are ready to learn certain kinds of lessons. People who are ready to be adults or who are working on being an adult, spiritually, often end up in a position where they care for others, as a part of those lessons. The position requires, among other things, the ability to do what needs doing to meet the needs of the people you care for, no matter what state you happen to be in.

Examining the resentment people often greet duty with is an important part of learning to care for others—resentment will be communicated in everything you do, to everyone you are caring for. That resentment is not an inherent part of duty. In fact, it makes everything harder, adding resistance to things which could be done more quickly.

Often, what’s under that resentment is important for the priest or spiritual worker to understand. A feeling of the situation being unbalanced and not in your favor; feeling trapped by the needs of the people you care for; feeling trapped by your spirits; feeling exploited or disrespected; etc. All of these indicate that something needs to change, likely both in the understanding of the priest or spiritual worker, and in the situation or behavior of the people the priest or spiritual worker is caring for.

It is also the case that sometimes the pivot of that balance is not between the priest or spiritual worker and the person they’re caring for. Sometimes, the situation is unbalanced or asymmetric because some other situation is where the balance is happening—for instance, where a priest or spiritual worker needs to learn a lesson about themselves, or where larger dynamics (the environment around the situation, the lessons that person is working on, etc) are being managed in whatever situation is frustrating the priest or spiritual worker.

Sometimes, balance is not possible for the situation in front of you because another situation needs balancing, etc.

The scope of resentment always seems personal. It seems as if it is limited, reasonable, and specific. When we’re angry about our duties, we talk about a specific person, a specific situation. And yet, the insult—or whatever we’re upset about—is not personal. The person acts poorly because that is the best they know how to do, or at least the thing they think they must do (and therefore the best they know how to do.) To resent someone is to mistake their behavior for personal, and to resent duty toward someone is to confuse their behavior with something that has anything to do with the priest or spiritual worker.

The priest or spiritual worker knows better, and after awhile the misunderstanding that person is having of us becomes a little funny: wildly disparate, as if they are flailing about in the dark trying to hit a target that does not exist. Whatever they’re trying to assert about you with their assumptions or motives, it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.

It also, not coincidentally, has nothing to do with sense. Priests and spiritual workers are, often as not, dealing with people whose grasp on sanity is just enough to allow them to be employed but not enough to allow them to consistently recognize reality. Taking the behavior of people struggling to grasp reality as if it describes reality is not a particularly useful thing to do.

Duty is, fundamentally, an agreement between the priest or spiritual worker’s spirit and consciousness, and the spirits to whom they made the commitment. That commitment might involve dealing with the person or situation that inspired that resentment, but it is motivated elsewhere, in the character of the person and their relationship to the spirits to whom they made the commitment. If that relationship is founded in love and respect, there’s not a lot of room for resentment.

Resentment is something that is added to duty, not something that has to be a part of duty. Duty and the agreements we are permitted to make with spirits are a privilege.