Magic 401: Exhaustion
If there is anything vodou will teach you, it’s that it ain’t gotta be pretty, you just have to cross the finish line. You can absolutely be dragging yourself over that line by the fingernails.
Rituals, parties, initiations: ceremonies run as long as they run, and this can be days. Trying not to drunkenly stagger in exhaustion, you understand something that you cannot otherwise. Exhaustion maps the commitment you have to social appearance. It gives you the boundaries of what you spend being acceptable and presentable to others, and where you think you must uphold others’ expectations of you. Work until exhaustion enough, and it will part you from the desire to maintain those expectations when you aren’t tired.
How much energy we spend on getting along, on appearing acceptable, is often hidden to us until we are tired enough to be unable to maintain that appearance and get something more important done. What we choose to get done is what we value: what is important to us.
Exhaustion can make the mind and ego less persuasive, or otherwise temporarily weaken their hold on you.
For vodouizan, this can be a way to understand how important your growth, healing, or elevation is for you—not just in your commitment to being a part of a society (which often involves dealing with social expectations), but in your willingness to keep going when it means you’ll be growing, healing, or elevating. When we commit to those things despite being exhausted, we learn what they mean to us. Our spirits observe our commitment, and respond to it.
They also observe our social commitments, and where we choose to discard appearance for healing, growth, or elevation. We do have a commitment to each other as vodouizan, but it should not supersede our commitment to our relationship with the spirits and our spirit. Where our social life with each other becomes more important than the work we’ve been given to do, it becomes a place where some lessons need to be learned.
Those lessons will be learned, often while you are exhausted.
