Spring Equinox is here and with it a new journey. I dissolve an association I've had for 22 years and leave behind an organization that has reached a point where small mindedness prevails. After years and years of making excuses for the behaviour of so-called "Adepts," I leave behind what was once an important part of my life. Understand that I have no issues with the WORK of FLO, at least as it pertains to the written course materials both inner and outer, but the personalities which make up the organization. Behaviour patterns that I once thought were the exception seem to be the rule, and far too many people I've truly respected have left over the years due to problems within the structure.
I feel sad for the students of the Outer Court though. It was, in fact, standing up (once again) for our students who belong to minorities that I didn't watch my back and discovered exactly how petty certain, supposedly enlightened, people can be. I'm no longer angry about it though, because I see how it has shown me the underlying MO which I thought was unique to certain individuals is, in fact, very wide spread indeed. I do not know what the cause and effect relationship is there, whether the work makes people like that, or whether people like that are attracted to this work, but I do not want to become that, and so I move on.
No longer will I have to make excuses for bigoted, rude or insensitive posts, e-mails or videos. No longer will I juggle damage control and try to protect people's public image from their own behaviour. No. Now I can focus on the Work in new ways, with new freedoms. It also means nothing stops me from working with Covens in various Wiccan traditions, nor does it stop me from initiating people myself for I no longer am bound by their rituals, nor do I need their permission.
I will persist in the mandate given to me when I died in 1997 though: I will not refuse any honest question from a sincere student, nor will I refuse to help them should they ask. That goes for the Probationers of FLO as well as for anyone else I encounter. I see how promoting the FLO Outer Court had become a crutch to me, absolving me of the responsibility of taking on students of my own by using the Fraternity as a buffer. I don't even know how many people have approached me in the past and I simply handed them an application for the Outer Court somehow thinking that this was the same thing as accepting their desire to learn. Now I can write my own lessons, take on my own students, and simply teach them.
Still, handing out that application and working with the international students over the last decade has taught me SO much and been unbelievable experience. Perhaps I needed that, just as a professor needs to work as an assistant or a craftsman works as a journeyman. I have so much more confidence when I think of working with students than I would have had otherwise. When I think of how clumsy I was 15 or 20 years ago I gain a new appreciation for the experience I've gained as a Director of Probationers.
I want to thank all of the people who have given me positive feedback since I made this decision public. I've had such wonderfully supportive messages from both current and previous members of FLO, as well as non-members who I have known through other venues. It galvanizes the rightness of this move, and later today I will be posting my official resignation to the FLO-Probationers Group, even though they have done everything in their power to try to stop me from doing so. Perhaps that speaks even greater volumes than anything else.
I'm feeling good about this though, as though a huge weight has been lifted from me, a chain removed from my soul. The Light I carry was not meant for an Ivory Tower to flicker alone in a dark room, it was meant to shine, to be a beacon, to light the Path and banish the darkness. My only regret is that there will no longer be anyone to stand up for the minorities in the Probationer's Yahoo Group. There will be no one to sooth the sting of unkind words, harsh replies and offensive comments from the "Adepts" of the order. There will be nobody to encourage them to walk the path regardless of the ignorance of old men.
So fare well those who few good people in the Fraternity. Good luck to all students of the Outer Court. Try always to focus on the printed work, some of it was written by the very best of us. Try to avoid politics at all costs, and never judge anyone by their baldric, for not everyone who claims a high grade is enlightened, and not everyone who sits in the low grades is truly a neophyte.