Six Core Dimensions of Eudemonia
Eudaimonia is a philosophical concept that can, in simplified terms, be translated as living a good and meaningful life. Based on this, Sonnex et al. (2022) highlight six central dimensions: Personal growth, Self-acceptance, Positive relations with others, Autonomy, Environmental mastery, and Purpose in life. I recognize much of this within my Lokean practice, although some dimensions are more prominent than others.
Before discussing these dimensions in greater detail, however, I have a broader reflection regarding eudaimonia as a concept. I experience that many forms of modern spirituality place a strong emphasis on harmony, positive energy, loving vibrations, and “light work,” sometimes almost at the expense of everything that creates friction, challenge, or discomfort. In its most extreme forms, I believe this can lead to toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing. However, this is not the “love and light” understanding that I personally associate with eudaimonia, nor do I interpret Sonnex et al. in that way. For me, eudaimonia is instead about self-awareness, authenticity, the integration of contradictions, and embracing my whole self – both strengths and flaws. It is from this understanding that I approach the six dimensions.
The first dimension, Personal growth, is something I have recently recalibrated my relationship toward. For a long time, I was shaped by a culture of self-optimization and self-improvement focused on performance, eliminating weaknesses, and amplifying strengths. This is also reflected in the ideals and virtues promoted within various traditions that encourage people to strive toward particular forms of perfection. The more I have come to know Loki and deepened my Lokean practice, the more I have realized that personal growth, for me, is not about this. Rather, it is about understanding oneself more deeply, learning to navigate one’s strengths and weaknesses within a complex and changing existence, and finding balance between different aspects of oneself. From this perspective, Loki and my Lokean path have been profoundly significant. Loki invites self-reflection, exposes blind spots, and demonstrates how challenge and friction can lead to insight and transformation. My practice has also helped me develop a greater tolerance for ambivalence and complexity, both within myself and in the world around me. For me, personal growth is therefore not primarily about optimizing away my flaws, but rather about developing resilience, self-awareness, and radical acceptance. It is about becoming better at navigating change, uncertainty, and contradiction without losing myself in the process.
The reasoning above leads into the next dimension I want to highlight – Self-acceptance, especially the idea of not needing to be perfect. Accepting myself is something I struggled with for a long time. Even as a child, I was somewhat of an outsider and functioned socially differently from the majority, which led me early on to feel that something was wrong with me. I will not go into the entirety of my upbringing within the scope of this text, but those experiences contributed to poor self-esteem and feelings of alienation well into adulthood. The fact that I also transgressed norms regarding gender and sexuality intensified this even further. At the same time, there has always been something within me that caused me to continue listening to my inner self rather than fully conforming. The older I have become, the easier it has been to embrace the norm-transgressing aspects of myself. Above all, this became possible after Loki entered my life and showed me that outsider experiences and gender transgression are not only painful but can also provide perspectives and forms of understanding that otherwise would have been lost. Working with a god who reflects these experiences feels incredibly powerful to me, and it has contributed greatly to my self-acceptance.
Autonomy is the next dimension I want to discuss, because it is also very evident in my Lokean practice. Even before Loki entered my life, I struggled with dogma and with people who wanted to tell me what I should believe. I became involved in spiritual circles that claimed to encourage free exploration and autonomy, but in practice I often felt that there were still expectations that one would eventually arrive at a particular “truth.” Even within heathenry, I have reacted strongly to people who express certainty despite fragmentary sources and who claim interpretive authority over what constitutes “authentic” seiðr or rune magic, despite the fact that we actually know very little with certainty. The desire to shape my own practice and trust my own experiences was something I already sensed within myself before Loki came into my life, but my relationship with him has strengthened this tendency and helped me live it more consistently in practice. Through his tendency to question norms, categories, and power structures, Loki has inspired me to trust my own judgment more deeply. This does not mean that I dismiss the perspectives or experiences of others, but rather that I always try to feel whether something genuinely resonates with me and my path before accepting it.
The three dimensions above – Personal growth, Self-acceptance, and Autonomy – in many ways form the foundation for the fourth dimension I wish to discuss, namely Purpose in life. Meaning in my practice does not come from feeling that I have a predetermined purpose or some cosmic mission. Rather, it comes from the fact that my Lokean practice, through many of the aspects described above, helps me create coherence and direction in life. Through self-reflection, transformation, and my relationship with Loki, I experience that even hardship and friction can become meaningful rather than merely destructive. I do not see my practice as escapism, comforting dogma, or something that offers ready-made answers, but rather as a way of understanding myself and life on a deeper level, and that in itself creates meaning for me.
Environmental mastery does not, for me, mean control, but rather creating functional frameworks for myself. My practice helps me find ways to ground and center myself, both in ritual and in everyday life. Step by step, I am developing different tools for creating dedicated spaces for ritual and reflection, while also learning how to integrate my practice into everyday life beyond those boundaries. In relation to Loki specifically, I do not actually believe such boundaries and tools are necessary for him, but rather that they primarily help me become receptive and assist me in both integrating and distinguishing different parts of my life. This can involve how I create physical spaces of my own, such as my altar and blot site, but also how I work with and relate to already existing places of power in forests and nature. On a broader level, it also means accepting that the world is complex rather than attempting to control everything.
The dimension of Positive relations with others is the one I saved for last because it is the dimension I experience as most absent from my practice. One reason for this may be that, as I mentioned earlier, I have always been – and still am – something of a social outsider, and I do not have much interest in engaging in social games surrounding conformity and group belonging. However, I also think the Lokean path I follow may contribute to this, because it can be difficult to find contexts in which there is a deeper understanding of my path. Many heathen communities tend to focus more on reconstructionism, exoteric expression, conformist community structures, and finding the lowest common denominator that creates safety for as many people as possible, which means that an explicitly Lokean practice does not always fit comfortably within them. At the same time, many communities focused on more esoteric, occult, or mystical paths may instead perceive a Lokean path as too specific, relational, or non-universal. I want to be clear that I am generalizing and simplifying here, and that there are naturally nuances, but I have nevertheless perceived these broader patterns in different contexts. This does not mean that I cannot have positive relationships with others because of my personality or practice, but rather that I may find it easier to form deeper relationships in smaller and more specific contexts than in larger communities.
In summary, at least five of the six dimensions highlighted by Sonnex et al. are clearly present within my Lokean practice, even though they are expressed in different ways and to varying degrees.
I arrived at these conclusions through personal reflection on what eudaimonia means, by considering my Lokean practice thus far and how it relates to the various dimensions discussed above. It is also intertwined with questions I have reflected on previously, such as my understanding of what a spiritual life can entail and how I view self-development. I believe that the process of organizing these reflections within the framework of eudaimonia has helped clarify for me that my Lokean path is both legitimate and valuable. This feels especially important because there are currents that prefer to portray a Lokean path as something solely destructive and exhausting. For me, working with these dimensions has instead clarified that my practice can contribute to meaning, growth, and a more sustainable way of relating both to myself and to the world.
Sources
Sonnex, C., Roe, C.A. and Roxburgh, E.C. (2022) ‘Flow, Liminality, and Eudaimonia: Pagan Ritual Practice as a Gateway to a Life With Meaning’, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 62(2), pp. 233–256. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167820927577.