Wednesday Sermon

Scientists: Maybe Animism Wasn’t So “Primitive” After All

What if the reason you’re unhappy is that you’ve been ignoring the spirits in the trees?

My own beliefs don’t matter. But I’ll tell you any way — they lean towards animism, and something I call “embracing the mythic.” I’ll explore embracing the mythic in another article, but just to give you a taste, it involves holding your own ego in the same frame that you hold other mythical, legendary and archetypical figures — Oedipus for instance. I know, Oedipus has kind of gotten “sexed up” and ruined by Freud. But the myth of Oedipus wasn’t about sex. It was about fate. Oedipus didn’t have sex with his mother because he was a sick horn dog. He had sex with her because he was cursed by fate. He also killed his father because of an accident of fate — of course, in the ancient world there were no accidents. It was considered Oedipus’s “destiny” to kill his father out of road rage or whatever caused him to lash out at the “stranger” on the road side.

The modern world has substituted personal growth for destiny. Apparently, a fully actualized self can change his/her/their destiny by doing “work on themselves.” Imagine if Oedipus did some deep exploration of his inner turmoil, et cetera. He still gets to the city and solves the riddle of the sphinx. Sorry, he just does. That’s the mythic view of things. It’s implacable. You can’t change fate, because fate was even higher than Zeus in the pantheon.

Judeo-Christinaity put God above fate, and maybe that’s why it caught on so. It’s a very attractive idea to think that — via God — you have this mechanism of changing your fate. Like if you pray hard enough God will intervene with fate and change things for the better for you.

My own view is that the earlier view of fate as the all powerful is a HEALTHIER way to live because it removes anxiety. If it’s fated, why worry about it?

Christianity brought a lot of anxiety and Sturm und Drang to the fore.

As soon as you accept fate as the implacable force it is, you begin to feel less sturm und drangy, you do.

Which doesn’t mean you become passive and stop trying to improve and so on. Far from it. Free from these anxieties, you are free to “play” with your life, and dance whatever dance you feel like dancing.

Seriousness itself comes from the wrong-sizing of ego over fate. In order to improve your fate, the logic of our world goes, you have to make a “serious” effort.

There is nothing more OVER-SERIOUS than this current mania for MINDFULNESS.

Uck.

It is such a serious endeavor. Sit in a room and try to be serious about the present moment. I mean, really serious. Stop fucking around. Stop playing and put your nose to the grindstone and find that present moment, you lazy SOB’s.

Yeah, that’s a tool of social control, a scam. A nonsense. There is no mindfulness. There is no meditation. There is no present moment, dunces. The future flows into the past and it COMPLETELY SKIPS the present moment.

It leapfrogs it like a child leaping from stone to stone over a river.

We are actually WAY behind the present moment in our brains. They have measured it. It’s something like, fourteen nanoseconds or something. Something happens, in other words, a door slams. And it takes us fourteen nanoseconds to “be present” to a door slamming. It doesn’t matter if it’s fourteen nanoseconds or some other amount of tiny time. The point is, ANY TIME at all elapsing between the time of the slamming and our perception of it means just this: it is IMPOSSIBLE for us to be present to the door slamming. All we are PRESENT to is something that happened in the PAST.

Yes, the very recent past, but so what. That’s like saying, he’s only a little dead. There is no difference between recent past and distant past. It’s all dead to us.

Fate and time are very closely related.

Just as we can’t be present to the present moment of time, we can never really know our fate either. That’s the moral of so many stories. There is that famous story “Appointment in Samarra,” where a servant in Bagdhad has an encounter with Death in the marketplace. It scares him, so he begs his Master for a horse so he can ride to Samarra and avoid death. The master agrees. The servant flees to Samarra. The master goes to the marketplace, sees Death, asks Death why it scared his servant so this morning. “Oh, I didn’t mean to scare him. I was just surprised to see him here in Bagdad since I had an appointment with him in Samarra tonight.”

I’ve always loved that story. Probably because it is short. It’s one paragraph long.

Reading is hard and a pain in the neck and so “good for you” that you don’t want to do it — it’s like eating vegetables. But there are some vegetables I like, like a carrot. I can eat a carrot. Same with really short stories. I can take those.

But I also loved it because it emblemizes this mystery about fate. You can’t fight it, right? If you try to fight it, you’re being foolish.

A society that doesn’t accept this about fate is doomed to being a society of loneliness. Everyone is separate in their own little personal growth universe, where they are being very serious, mindful, trying to do deep work and change their fate.

In a society where fate is accepted as master, the society is at least theoretically collective. There is the possibility of a collective feeling. A united, togetherness thing that we all share as we are ALL collectively subordinate to fate.

No matter what we do! No matter if we’re very serious and pray hard or any of that.

We’re subordinate.

And since we are subordinate, we can play together. We can enjoy. And what do we enjoy? That dreaded present moment.

We can’t see it or hold it or know it, but we can LIVE it and ENJOY it and THRIVE on it.

Time, like fate, is above us. So much more powerful than us. We are akin to flies on the carcass of a dead cow. And time is the landowner.

Time owns everything and everything belongs to time.

It’s not selfish or miserly with its possessions. Time spends everything it owns, every moment. And is immediately enriched again.

I like to see time as this rich, noble, very high born, royal benefactor. We all exist at his discretion.

Time wears the crown and rules the whole of the universe, not just us. Time rules just as completely here on Earth as it does on the other side of the galaxy. Everywhere omnipotent is time.

It is a very “feminine” experience to realize these things about time and fate — that we are the passive receptacles and they are the penetrating “masculine” force.

I think that’s why men have more trouble with accepting it than women do. Women have been trained by patriarchy to be more passive.

But there is of course great power in that feminine “receivership”. It was a woman’s willingness to “receive” that brought you into this world, all of you.

When you are ready to “receive” time and fate this way, you too will bring something beautiful into this world.

It’s called “right-sizedness.”

The majority of human beings are horribly oversized, wrong-headed, egoistic and neurotic beyond belief.

When you accept time and fate this way as the true powers a zillion times more powerful than our puny self, you become right sized.

You become beatific in your acceptance of truth.

You begin to stand out, because you radiate peace.

Imagine a crowded train station — Grand Central station — and everyone is rushing madly to get their tickets and board their trains. But you know there is no train and there is no boarding.

You stand among the stampeding throng radiating peace. And every so often someone passes you with the same radiation of peace in their face. And you nod at them. A fellow traveler, a fellow right-sized human.

This is what I mean by embracing the mythic.

Your ego and your identity itself are stories themselves — just like the story of the ancient Greek heroes and heroines of mythology.

Your name is Jeff. OK. But Jeff, you are not just Jeff. You are also Jeff of Lorraine Avenue. Jeff of Jeff House. Jeff of the House of Jeff. You are Jeff the Strong. You are Jeff the Good.

Those all sound kind of egoistic. But they are tongue in cheek, see. It’s humor that brings playful enlightenment to ego.

When I invented the Post-Ego movement, it wasn’t in order to banish all egos everywhere. It was to place our ego in this mythic realm, where we relate to it lightly, where we play with it, where you use it for heroic good, but never where we suffer the pain of deluded, lonely, individual separateness.

We dance and play with other mythical beings — our neighbors, our friends, our families. They are all equally legendary, mythic and extraordinary.

But there is nothing as majestic and powerful and awe-inspiring as time itself.

Here is our hymn to time. Please enjoy.

And now:

Animism — Get Back to Where You Once Belonged

The only reason people use drugs, drink alcohol or engage in mass hypnosis spectacles like national sports or politics is that these activities momentarily suspend our “reason”. We become more animistic, primitive and connected to nature.

Animism is the belief that was held by most indigenous cultures and holds that the trees harbor spirits, and the sun is a spirit, and the earth is a spirit and that the animals represent different spirits and that the whole world is enchanted, meaning there are major and minor divinities everywhere, fairies and sprites and demons and devils, dakinis and naiads. The river himself is a spirit. He has daughters who swim in his waters who are spirits too. The ocean is a grand spirit, full of many minor spirits. The animals we kill and eat are also spirits, to whom we are very grateful, et cetera.

Yeah, that way of thinking went away a long time ago, with the invention of the “individual”, which I guess can be traced to the Enlightenment, right around the time of the founding of the United States and the writing of the Declaration of Independence, which guaranteed us all the right to pursue something they said was “happiness.”

Then Darwin hammered the final nail into the coffin of enchanted thinking by proving that we are all just a weird accident of something called evolution that happened automatically and materially without a jot of interference from any supernatural or spiritual entity. We are, in other words, automatons. Individual machines who have the ‘right’ to pursue happiness.

Great. How’s that working out for you all, my fellow machines? Has the pursuit of happiness gone well?

It’s Not Your Fault

I think it might not be going well, not because of anything you are doing wrong, but because these events and others of the past few hundred years have greatly transformed our world from one of enchantment and mystery and joy to the lives of quiet desperation so beautifully diagnosed by Thoreau.

But all of us, from time to time, have had our moment of epiphany, as James Joyce called it, when we, for a moment glimpsed beyond this veil of material blandness into the transcendent wonder of the cosmos.

Maybe it is when we first fall in love, or when we go trekking in the Himalayas or when we play the harp. But life does have its moments, one must admit.

Only, there are long stretches of everyday life when these moments of joy seem fewer and farther between, quite rare, in fact. Whole months go by and we don’t once feel wonder or astonishment or great aliveness.

We look at ourselves in the mirror and we seem dead in the eyes.

This, I claim, is not our fault. We have slipped through a portal and left the real, enchanting, marvelous and miraculous world and we have succumbed to the mighty every day.

The common, the banal, the deadly dull, and the torturous.

Once There Was A Way to Get Back Homeward

The good news is, the real world is still there. It hasn’t gone away. It’s you who went away. All this time that you’ve been living in this alternate, crappy world, with its so-called meritocracy and fight to the top and dog-eat-dog and compete, compete, compete, lean in, lean further in, come on lean in! Shatter that glass ceiling. Win! Win! Winner takes all!

Winner takes nothing, more like…

In this alternate, crappy universe that was set up by capitalism, science, materialism, industry, “education”, media, literature, everything that you hold so dear, yes, even “religion” — in this universe, nobody wins. Because everybody loses their sense of wonder.

It’s all a terribly predictable chore, this business of “succeeding” here in the last days of planet earth. Sure, we might only have fifty-odd years left what with climate change and everything, but meanwhile, you guys all just keep on chasing that imaginary rabbit around the track because we will whip you and ostracize you and call you a fool if you ever dare to pause and see for yourself. Really, see!

But luckily, I have called forth an elfin sprite, a fairy spirit, a girlish girl, with daisy chains and golden hair. She has come to lead you out of this hell. Take her hand and follow her through the hole in the sky.

Welcome to the Animistic Wonderland

Now you have entered an enchanted land. Do you see the zipper in the sky where we just entered? Don’t worry, if you ever want to get back to the alternate crappy world you just left, you simply need to find this spot, near the gnarly old oak tree, next to the waterfall of tears. And you can go back at any time.

Now walk with the elfin sprite, hand in hand, up the creek from this waterfall and just enjoy for a moment the enchanted realm. Here you see the greens are greener and the meadows are meadowy-er. The sky is bluer and the clouds are puffier. And the trees have faces. These are the ancient ones, in the trees. And the sun has a face too. The face of a God. The Gods are not hidden in this realm, in fact, look there, a half-man, half-goat figure is calling us into that forest. Do we dare go in?

Oh dear, I promised you this wouldn’t happen, but now we have come so far into this land of enchantment that actually it will be hard, almost impossible, to ever find our way back to that gnarly oak tree and that waterfall of tears to that little tear in the sky that was the portal, so that we could return you to the dead land.

Never mind. You are lost here forever, pilgrim. Lost in enchantment. But in this forest, this forest of your future, adventure lies.

I suggest you parade through this forest like a royal caravan. I suggest you gallop through this forest like a knight. I suggest you fly through this forest like a bird of prey. Take wing now, pilgrim.

Yes, in this land, flight is possible for humans. Why? Because you are not human any more. You are half-human. You are a demi-god. That’s what you always were, but you forgot, in that every day. You forgot your divine essence, your Mother Earth, your Father Sun. You forgot your grandfather spirit. You forgot you were cousins to these other spirits which dwell in every living thing in this animistic world. You are cousin to the squirrel, you are cousin to the acorn, and cousin to the great tree spirits. You are cousin to the earth itself, this dark blanket that warms the earth.

You are cousin to all things. You are cousin, and connected.

You are not alone.

Do you hear that music? Take out your keys, those important keys that open your car door and your work office door and your house door. Take out that keyring and jangle it with me. Hear the jangling bells of this sacred sound? This is the music that calls you to enter deeper, deeper into this enchanted realm.

Don’t forget, when you look into the eyes of all the spirits that dwell in these grasses and these waters and these sacred enchanted spaces, that these spirits are overjoyed by your presence here. They welcome you. There is no sense of trespasser in this realm. All belong. All are cousins and children and family. See how all the spirits of the bushes and the leaves smile when you look at them — see how overjoyed they are?

Now lie down here, in the shade of this mountain. And see how the yellow sun smiles as he waves goodbye and sets over the horizon. And then you sleep, the most peaceful, relaxing, deepest sleep you’ve ever known. Here in the land of enchantment.

Now Wake Up

When you wake up, you will find that you have come home, to a world that is no longer insipid and grey and dead and dull. How will you know? Go outside and take the three tests. You will see.

• Test #1. The flowers? See how they smile back at you when you look at them? See how gladdened by your presence they are?
• Test #2. The trees? Do they greet you like old friends. Old, old, dear friends? Do they sway in happiness at this greeting?
• Test #3. The sun. How does the sun look to you today?

Welcome home, cousin. Look for me. I look forward to greeting you someday in this blessed world.

In the meantime, as you live your everyday life, take a moment each day, and close your eyes, remember how in our journey, how the sun smiled and was overjoyed at your presence? How you were loved by all the spirits and sprites of the land. How you gave joy to every living thing, cousin?

Take a few moments to remember that each day, and you will never, I promise you, fall back into that world where you believed, quite wrongly, that your presence made nobody glad and made utterly no difference and that you had naught to give.

You do. You have the world to give. The whole world. Now give it.

My Animistic Walk Down Second Street:

I told you the trees on 2nd streets had become Greek statues

Nymphs and goddesses

Heroes Monsters

Every tree took the form of a statue

Animism?

Nature is a person

Druidism.

Nabobism?

I dunno

If nature is alive

And personified

In each form even the forms not alive like rocks have faces

The mountains aren’t just places

The mountains are homes ancestral

Beyond realms

Nether regions

The city streets paved by man

Are in face paved by nature

Nature had us build this way

Nature had something it wanted too say

As the roots press up on the sidewalk

And you trip up as you will

Nature is speaking to you

In the puddles left by the rain

I read a name

In the puddles I splash through

I read the name of you

Universal power strange power

Strange universe

As the sun peaks through the clouds

I am warmed by you strange power

I’m warmed by you every hour

Every minute every moment every Planck length of time

The wind that moves the branches and the leaves

Isn’t weather

No it’s something better

The wind that moves the leaves and the trees

Is strange tickling fingers of the strange stranger power

Strange strange power

That’s with me every hour every moment every second every Planck length of time

The strange power is mine

It’s yours and it's mine

And we are its spies

Mere flies

We come to life and we die

In less than a blink of eye

Strange power we fly around

In this world on this road this second street

With its avenue of statues greek

Nymphs and naiads and dyads goddesses gods

Titans sorcerers villains and heroes

Second street

Houses?

With 90-degree angles not found in nature

Nature created us so that we might show it the 90-degree angle

So it might know it

The geometrical forms of squares and cubes the trapezoids

The geometry that we discovered or invented

Nature is pleased with us

Don’t let the climate people fret and fuss

Nature knew exactly what it was doing when it created us

The architects of our own undoing

Maybe nature wants us to be undone

Ever think of that human?

Strange power, stranger power

With me every hour

Every minute

Every second

Every plank length of time

Second street belongs to it

Second street is not mine

Stop sign

Hexagonal

Vibrating red

Street light

Greek light

In my head

Pedestrian in sneakers

Crossing my path

I won’t say hello

I won’t

Why say hello so someone who’s not there

I don’t know

I don’t care

You tell me I need to be more present

Well, this is what I’m present to

Strange power

Greek statue

It could be the beginning of a mental illness

It could be not right to feel or speak of this

It might be better off left unsaid

As I walk around I feel somehow that I’m already dead

I’m part of a great big period piece

Set in 2023.

Simulating 2023

Stimulating me

Blessed be.

Read the Scientists series so far: