Spiritual Practices: A Perennial Course in Living Druidry

[Explor­ing Life] A Peren­nial Course in Liv­ing Druidry is intended to pro­vide process for learn­ing that is designed to endure for an indef­i­nite period of time. In this sense, a course inte­grates ele­ments of a prac­tice or rit­ual. The Peren­nial Course in Liv­ing Druidry con­tains no infor­ma­tion:

Tak­ing that under­stand­ing, this course offers the sim­plic­ity of reminders, guid­ing and direct­ing through ideas and ques­tions. If the course is worked well, it will be the nat­ural world (human and non-human) that pro­vides any infor­ma­tion about what Druidry truly is. The course, then, aims to teach by point­ing out where and how the real teach­ing can be found.

Spir­i­tual learn­ing often reverses many of the com­mon assump­tions about edu­ca­tion. The learn­ing envi­ron­ment of spiru­tu­al­ity is the inte­rior class­room of the mind, not an exter­nal room. The teacher of spir­i­tual learn­ing is ulti­mately the essence of the spir­i­tu­al­ity itself, rather than a human mes­sen­ger. The teach­ing of spir­i­tu­al­ity is there­fore exclu­sively achieved through direct expe­ri­ence, while receiv­ing sup­port and guid­ance from a men­tor. The pre­scribed con­tent is not really con­tent at all; what is pre­scribed are the nec­es­sary qual­i­ties of mind such as aware­ness, atten­tion, and con­cen­tra­tion that allow access to spiru­tal teach­ing.

The course is not about the specifics of rit­ual, mythol­ogy, cul­ture or her­itage, but about the sim­plest steps that make Druidry a deep, real and utterly nat­ural spir­i­tu­al­ity. It doesn’t go into magic or alchemy, but pro­vides a foun­da­tion of rela­tion­ship that is con­sid­ered essen­tial for the deeper mys­ter­ies of Druidry. As a result, giv­ing guid­ance, sug­ges­tions and encour­age­ment, rather than a defin­i­tive body of Druidic knowl­edge, the course is designed to be of value to everyone.

Learn­ing is ani­mated by active explo­ration and dis­cov­ery, not by pre-determined chunks of infor­ma­tion. The goal of learn­ing is to embrace active engage­ment and to inspire the cre­ation of rela­tion­ships. The process of learn­ing is guided by guid­ance, sug­ges­tions, and encour­age­ment.

It doesn’t mat­ter how many times the course is repeated. Nor is there any end point when all that can be learned from the mate­r­ial has been learned. Nature encour­ages us to carry on learning.