B.E.N.D.

Child of Power of a Word

Boundaries - What you will tolerate in your presence? What will you do when your tolerance is exhausted?
Expectations - How you expect things to go, what you expect from others and from yourself.
Needs - What do you need?
Desires - What do you want?

Next Steps I need to start seeing what here can be turned into an article and what an article title might be, as well as where it might go - Blog, Medium, or Substack.

Potential Article title: B.E.N.D. Your Life Into Shape

B.E.N.D. evolved from my dissatisfaction with the "Law of Attraction" as a spiritual framework.
I struggled to articulate that dissatisfaction based on what I'd observed in my own practices as a witch of many years, but also as a woman who had struggled with lifelong poverty and interpersonal trauma from relationships.
Over time, I was better able to articulate that the Law of Attraction and similar teachings are rooted in privilege - they "work" based on pre-established networks, pathways, and economic circumstances.
If your basic needs aren't being met? Manifesting will be hit or miss. Sometimes it'll work, most of the time it won't, but it'll work just often enough to create a trauma bond with the teachers/teachings of Law of Attraction-style manifestation, focusing solely on yourself and your thoughts as the "reason" the manifestation didn't work for you.
Under this thinking, everything that ever happened to you is because you "attracted" it. Which is complete and utter bullshit of course, but still a common line of thinking, direct from the Patriarchy and Christian purity culture. "Look what she was wearing..."
From this we get things like "poverty mindset," the idea that if you're poor, it's because you have "poor habits" not because of things like Capitalism and systemic inequality.
Even before I came to understand all of this, I was deeply uneasy with the Law of Attraction and similar teachings, particularly when I came across what was essentially the same thing named Prosperity Gospel within Christian churches. Capitalism with a spiritual mask. Avatars of the Trinitarian Deity of Oppression - Patriarchy = The Father, White Supremacy = The Favored Son, and Capitalism = The Holy Spirit.
Early in this process, noting that uneasiness about LoA in myself, I started to formulate what I called the "Law of Expectation". It's not just what you "attract" aka your Desires, it's also your Expectations with Desires and Expectations creating a tension of balance where if you can find the sweet spot, magic can happen.
That worked.
For a bit.
I'd get clear on my Desires and work on my Expectations. And I found this applicable not just to my magical practice, but also to interpersonal relationships, my relationship with myself, and my relationship with reality in general. If I had unrealistic expectations, it shaped how I behaved and how I responded to the world. I did lots of work on identifying and modifying my expectations across the board.
And then I hit the limits of it.
I puzzled over what was missing - why had my ability to "manifest" aka make things happen by magic stalled out? WTF was going on?
It was around this time where I was developing a much deeper class consciousness.
I had been born in poverty. I had never not been poor. But I was not an academic. I'd dropped out of college a few times because I couldn't bring myself to focus on core requirements - once I'd finished every class I could in a specialized field, I got bored and quit, until I realized that college just wasn't for me.
I like to learn. I do not like to learn under such restrictions.
But somewhere around 2014-2015, I realized that another missing piece was Needs.
At this point, I'd dropped the "law" part completely. The law part of "law of attraction" annoyed me because it was New Age people wanting to seem more scientific than they really were - science and mysticism have different purposes, they are different ways to view the world, the insights we get from each are different, and they aren't always compatible. Trying to make mysticism scientific takes away from the mystery, which takes away the magic, which is just no fun.
If your Needs aren't consistently met, it will shape your Expectations and impede your ability to fulfill your Desires.
From this came what I called the Psychic Bitchslap - a set of three questions that can be answered with oracles like Tarot, Runes, etc. or can be answered as simple journaling prompts, or with deeper practices and exercises that connect you to your Shadow, your Future Self, and other aspects of your Self that you might have forgotten or ignored.
I sat down one day, pulled out a Tarot deck, drew three cards and it felt like a punch to the gut. It wasn't the Desires or Needs that got me - it was the Expectations, but the whole thing together was a bitchslap, too. I expected someone to rescue me - not consciously, but the Tarot card had allowed me a peek into some of those unconscious expectations around my desire to make more money (that's what the reading was about). I didn't want someone to rescue me, but I expected someone to, and that mismatch was fucking all sorts of things up.
For a couple of years after that, I did Bitchslap Sessions, and in 2017, I wrote Bitchslap Journaling a book of journaling prompts that probe tender bits in unexpectedly sharp ways, which leads to intense and rapid life Transformation.
And then came a point where I realized another missing piece. Boundaries. You can be super clear on what you want, your expectations, and your needs, but if you have shit boundaries, you'll end up minimizing your expectations in toxic ways, sacrificing your needs, and foregoing your desires, all for the sake of people who are unlikelty to reciprocate.
And thus we have the B.E.N.D. Framework.
Clarify and communicate your Boundaries.
Clarify and communicate your Expectations.
Clarify and communicate your Needs.
Clarify and communicate your Desires.
In every situtation in your life.
Clarify and communicate.
Boundaries are lines with consequences for crossing them. No consequences? It's not really a boundary, just a line. Boundaries define what you are willing to tolerate in your life, as well as what you will - and won't - do in order to get what you want in life..
Expectations are beliefs about what will happen in the future or as a result/consequence of actions and behaviors. If I expect to fail, I probably won't try as hard. When I expected my ex to change, I was constantly disappointed, but also entirely too forgiving.
Needs] are holes, voids that impact our well-being and even our survival. A "need" is not a "thing" it's an absence of a thing. Hunger is a need, food is how we fulfill that need.
Desires are things we want. We have intrinsic desires - specific ways in which we prefer to have our needs met - and extrinsic desires - things that we want because we have been conviced to want them. If hunger is the need and food is the fulfillment of that need, McDonald's versus homemade soup comes down to the complexity of our Desires and the interplay between our intrinsic desires, our extrinsic desires, our motivation and energy levels, our values, etc.
These interconnect in interesting ways that I encourage you to explore on your own. Read articles and watch videos on each of these things.
Personally, I turned B.E.N.D. into a four-week repeating cycle as one of the words in my An Algorithm for Personal Development
During Boundaries week, I'm paying closer attention to my boundaries, how I feel when someone pushes a boundary, how I'm responding, etc. After my divorce and my ex moving out, I had less interpersonal boundaries to worry about, but then I started exploring those parasocial boundaries with my small Village/audience as well as boundaries with myself aka Discipline, which is my yearly word for 2022.
Same for Expectations week - but instead of paying attention to Boundaries, I'm focused on my expectations. Expectations are beliefs about how we think reality should be, so how in alignment with reality am I? Am I finding myself surprised or disappinted by reality? Then my expectations are unrealistic. In Buddhist terms, you might say I have attachments that need to be resolved.
And then Needs week where I'm focusing on my Needs, basic survival needs, emotional needs, as well as what is needed for me to fulfill my Desires, which I focus on the following week.
Over time, my boundaries got stronger - and I broke free from an abusive marriage. My expectations got clearer, leading to less disappointment, as well as more Serendipity and Joy. I began to focus on getting clear on and meeting my Needs - as well as asking for help where I couldn't meet my needs on my own. And as I did, I learned to get more in touch with my intrinsic desires, and am working on releasing the extrinsic desires, which leads to more ease and allows me to live more and more in alignment with my Vows and Values.