Three witches chant in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Since Halloween is nigh, let’s ponder these words. Our mind cooks up its own cauldron. An event, a conversation, a situation occurs in our life. We “interpret” the intentions, the actions or the words of another within our thought cauldron. Our mind has a witches brew there ready for our reactions and impressions to feed the bubbling cauldron. Our witches brew is an odd, secret recipe we have gathered through time. Each impression, every hurtful word we took in and every action of another that did not meet our precise recipe of how things should go adds to the brew. We then see the world not as it is but through our witches brew.
We see and sense through the filters of our mind. Those filters are painted from life events that have been particularly injurious to our tender psyche. We hold the feeling dear to use and we can bubble for a life time. When another event comes into our experience, we use our witches’ brew to decide what is OK and what is not OK with this person. We can lash out with a spray of our own poison brew or we can retreat to our witches cave to stir the cauldron in our mind.
Our witches brew and our protective cave become a part of our special self-image. We are each unique in these impressions in our mind’s cauldron. No two are ever alike. Our Life Path journey into our best self asks that we view our witches’ brew for what it is – a mind game. Since it is a game we can chose to quit playing. We can expose our dirty little witches’ for giving us false reports of what is going on here. We can ask ourselves: “what is real here and what am I making up through my witches’ brew caldron?” Is the other person really doing something or am I projecting their intentions? If someone is really being hurtful, then get out of the caldron and change this situation. Make your own new brew of with:
“Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf;
Witches’ mummy; maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark;…” (Macbeth)
That ought to give us the courage to change the situation and move to a better place in our life path. Remember: you grew these witches and you can take them out!
