The Self

"To thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night, the day, thou canst not then be false to any (one)." Caring for, loving, and nurturing oneself is the foundation for not only our relationship to the other three Worthies, but also the foundation for life itself. Only when a person cares for him/herself - body, mind, passions, emotions, and spirit - can s/he go on to care for community, earth, or the Divine. We therefore encourage our members to care for themselves in these ways:

• Body -- Care for one's body starts with giving that body proper nutrition, as opposed to the junk that passes for food at most eateries today. It means eating animal products (meat, milk, eggs, etc.) that have been produced without cruelty to the animals, and buying and eating foods that have been produced organically (without herbicides, pesticides, or genetically modified organisms). It also means keeping the body fit with healthy exercise, not fouling it with useless pollution like tobacco smoke and debilitating drugs, and taking responsibility for its care and maintenance in partnership with - not subservience to - appropriate health care practitioners.

• Mind -- Care for one’s mind means never to stop learning and never to stop teaching. We encourage everyone to read, take classes, discuss with one another, and do whatever else we can to continue expanding our knowledge and our understanding throughout our lives. Since there is no better way to learn something than to teach it, and since everyone has some knowledge and experience that others can use, all of us share what we know with others, expanding both the students’ and the teachers' minds.

• Passions -- "Passions" have two meanings for us. First, they mean those things about which one is passionate - for example, one's political, ecological, or social beliefs. People who have no passionate commitments live shallow lives, and we do our best to live to the deepest level we can. Second, they mean our sexual passions. Gaia Wicca recognizes and celebrates the force that Kahlil Gibran called "life's longing for itself," but understands that in these overpopulated times those longings need to be used primarily for their other purposes, communicating joy and establishing connections and bonds among people.

• Emotions -- Care for one's emotional well-being means first of all to recognize and honor that we have emotional feelings, and then to provide healthy, appropriate, productive - and mature - ways to express our emotions once they are felt. We sometimes forget that we are emotional beings, as well as physical, mental, and spiritual; our society is biased against people who are "too emotional." But without feeling and expressings our emotions, and honoring that feeling and expression, we become automatons, not persons. And without maturity, emotions get expressed in ways that disrespect both oneself and others.

• Spirit -- Care for one's spirit involves paying attention to the inner self and its connection to other selves, both corporeal and not. The "spirit" is a very elusive concept; it includes the innermost parts of ourselves, that about us that most truly defines who we are. Our emotions are intimately involved with our spirit, and we - along with other philosophies such as the Tantric from India and the Chuluaqui-Quodoushka from Native America - are aware that our spirit is also associated with our ability to love and our sexual self.

  Spirit is the aspect of self that crosses all boundaries, and is found in all four of the categories we call "the worthies" - it is at the core of each person's being; it is found in our loving relationships with others in our community; it permeates the meta-being we revere as our mother, Gaia, the earth; and it forms the heart of our relationship with the Divine in the forms of the Goddess and God.

Because our emotions truly define who we are, and because of the importance of our emotions to our overall health, we associate the self with the western direction and the element of water, the element of the emotions.