Been thinking lots about relating lately. There seems to be a lot of confusion around distinctions of the universal principles of duality and gender, of the emotional “Like – Not Like”, dialectics, of the ever new experience of “I and Other”. Been looking at a quadropolar model as a means to transmute dualism creatively. Some of that in the video below. Enjoy!

Was in Chicago for a whirlwind visit last weekend. Got to have the tremendous pleasure of officiating my friends’ wedding. Was the largest one I had done so far. Great fun all around, lovely people, and from the reviews I got, they enjoyed the ceremony (checked with grandmas, too)… One of the sweetest things was that the bride and groom gave away personalized bobbleheads to the wedding party. So, I got my first philip action figure…

In general, the Chicago visit was a tremendous experience. Got to see at least some of my wonderful friends there and revisit my life and the last six years since I had last been there. Recorded a monkday on the topic.

I am a big fan of religion. In Latin, religio means anything from “Religion” (in the sense it’s typically used), to superstition, all the way to – neutrally – belief system (BS). It is related to re-ligare and re-ligens.

Now what are those words about?

Religare – Connecting with the world around us

As soon as we say “I”, we separate ourselves (sin being related to sinte, meaning separation in old German – as a side-note for those who like the concept of “original sin”). Erich Fromm in “The Art of Loving” talks about how the worst human fear is that we are completely alone. Funny enough, as soon as we say “I”, we separate ourselves from everything else, which is now “Other”, and end up completely alone. Usual ways to respond to this fear according to Fromm are conformism, orgasmic union and intoxication. All of which are dependent on external aspects to be fulfilled. He suggests that only by actively loving, by reaching out and connecting can we sustain the experience of being connected to the world around us.
In the sense of re-ligare, re-connecting (also compare yoke and yoga = union), any act that connects us to the world around us becomes a religious act. Any act that allows us to transcend fear of other by realizing our underlying oneness, experiencing ourselves in other through empathy and proper reflection, and integrating that other into our idea of self, is an act of love. In this sense love and religion become synonymous.

Religens – Paying careful attention

Religens does not translate into the English language, the antonym does: negligence -
“failure to act with the prudence that a reasonable person would exercise under the same circumstances” – according to a definition I found online.
Religens denotes the idea of paying careful attention to the archetypal experience around us. What does that mean?
Everything around us is informed by patterns. Our patterns. Sometimes they are referred to as karma. I like propensities, personally. Think about your relationships or jobs. You keep encountering the same situations, the same stories with different names and faces, not until you have solved these challenges, but until you have outgrown them. With every breakup in which you truly transform, your relationships change, your patterns change, and you suddenly meet different kinds of partners – with new challenges. Similarly with jobs, money, any other aspect in your life. Underlying each of these situations are patterns you can identify and “clean out” through awareness, forgiveness, and love.
But you have to pay attention. That is what religens is about. Listen to the world around you. Everything in your universe talks to you. You have your own myths your own archetypes, be they victim, child, saboteur, prostitute, or artist, hero, healer, teacher, knight, princess, helper, wizard (think about characters in stories that you relate to and you will know what I mean – Carolyn Myss wrote about this in “Sacred Contracts” – highly recommend it). With these you constantly create stories. Religens is taking responsibility for your stories, and realizing that you are the storyteller of your own mythology. You create your meaning. Nothing around you has inherent meaning, but for the meaning you give it. Religens is about constantly being in conversation with your reflection. As inside so outside.

Aye, there’s the rub

In our societies, driven by fear and conformism as a means to belong, we fight over whose imaginary gods are the right ones as we try so hard to find a common mythology – an impossible task. While we have common patterns in our archetypes, each one of us builds our own mythology around them. Take any two members of any religion and interview them about it and you will quickly find that each have their own opinion as to what it actually means and will bend their interpretations to fit their own personal belief system (BS).
So, why try? Why not accept that we can share stories with each other that help us see our archetypal reflections without having to feel that there has to be one right one. Delight in our differences. Only that which we don’t know yet is really information.
Maybe people misunderstood Plato’s concept of the “ideal”, the something that is behind all the appearances to mean that there is one “Truth” out there. While some things might ring true, first and foremost we each hold our own “truths”. Each of us has our own BS. Hence, the idea of organized religion is in a way an oxymoron. It is the attempt to come to one common story that denies progress and evolution and must by default have a teleological component.
By each of us taking responsibility for our own religion, we take responsibility for evolution, for forwarding growth that does not accept a predetermined end. Be the star that knows no day and night.

Taking responsibility

All this said, when I think about my “religion“, I find myself left with these components:

• Everything in this universe is my responsibility and creation
• My religion is my interpretation of my universe and my responsibility
• I assemble my mythology and create stories to produce meaning
• I rely on myself to produce faith = trust and joy in my existence
• Through loving that which I fear and experience as other, I connect to universe and evolve my identity
• Constant evolution is the aim, science the method, stories the dust I leave behind
• Attention, attention, attention

Tell me about your religion…

The same old stories…

Just a couple of months ago my friend from Germany sent me a poem about the economy. I gave it the half-interested read and thought how “cute” it was that people were making poems about the mortgage crisis and how that will lead to more war machinery. Laughed out loud when I realized the poem was from the 1930s and written in Germany. Same old story – a bunch of people creating junk money and ripping off the “little man”. Back then it happened in Germany, this time it’s happening in the US.

What our world really needs are completely new stories. We know how to wage war, kill each other, rape each other, screw each other over. Super. Boring. Let’s do something new. Completely new. Let’s not even address our current global challenges. Let’s invent a future in which they don’t even exist.

Shift happens…

One big piece of that is the necessary shift from Economics to Ecology. Economics is the science of scarcity. It is a collection of games and rules around how to distribute a limited amount of resources. It is about how to split up the pie… From the getgo there is an assumption of scarcity and a bias toward anaylysis (from Greek cutting into pieces) vs. integration. There are limited resources, only one pie, and we need to figure out how to must “justly” cut it into pieces.

This is not what is really happening in nature. There is no pie. There is a beautiful fruit tree which needs watering, light, some love, and will provide plenty of fruit for everyone. There is human creativity which has solutions to problems we haven’t even encountered yet. There is abundance in all kinds of ingenuity, of which we have at best scratched the surface.

In an Ecology based model, there is no waste. Every single output becomes nutrient for another process. There is no lack. No need. No conflict. No unhealthy competition. It is a system based on each individual part doing what they came here to do and sharing that with each other.

Into the 21st century we go…

As we progress into the 21st century, we have a shot at shifting into an ecology based model – especially as the economics based world is collapsing (which seems like an appropriate teleological end-game for scarcity). The interesting part will be to see how the shift happens. For now, the assumption I am banking on is that we can begin to build ecological models, prototype them, and hence make economics-based thinking obsolete altogether.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – as Bucky Fuller put it…

“What we once did ‘for the sake of God’ we now do for the sake of money…. This is what at present gives the highest feeling of power.” -  Friedrich Nietzsche

For whose sake, shall we do anything then???

If you wish to create, achieve, build anything, the very first thing that needs to be done is to imagine it. Without creative imagination, we would have never attempted to go around the earth in 80 days or less, go underneath the sea, have chairs in the sky…

Without the arts, we are blind. Without creative imagination all the engineers of the world would not know what to build. And this is not only true for physical objects, but also for ideas. Because of artists we can imagine different ways of relating to each other. Because of artists all across the world showing us their realities, we can now see ourselves as one human race across this planet.

And even more… Artist have always been about authentic self-expression (at least the ones that were actually making art and not trying to please their audience). Artists lead the way in showing that – in spite of prejudice and ridicule – it is worth living a life dedicated to one’s own creative energies and expression thereof.

As the materialist systems are collapsing – and with it the idea of a life spent in consumption -, the idea of a life spent in pursuit of creative expression is becoming more and more important. My friend Barry once said you can live your life as a consumer or as a producer.

Consumption is death. Once you consume something, it is gone. Production is life, giving existence to something that was not there before.

Economics is the science of scarcity, it is about how to distribute a limited amount of resources for consumption. This is a model that cannot survive any longer (the premise is fucked to begin with if you actually take a look at nature). We now are shifting into a model of ecology, where each member produces what they are here to produce – because they love to do so -, consume only what is required to produce, and where each product and any waste become immediate nutrients for other systems.

The latter model is actually sustainable – and if we wish to survive as a species on this planet, it might behoof us to adopt it sooner than later. Even the governors seem to get it on some level…

Now it’s time for a new level of devotion to my life. Devotion comes from love and makes discipline look like childrens play. Let’s kick some monkeybutt! Day number 1 sees the premier of mon(k)day. Will keep you posted on how it goes.

Growing up in public sucks and is so wonderful at the same time… Ahhh nothing like committing to an unknown quantity of strangers…

Spiritual warriors have always been part of the human archetype all across this planet. Maasai, Samurai, Hashishin, Templars, King Arthur’s round, Native American warriors, we can discover them across the world. My friend Pamela surprised me years ago when she told me about her work teaching myth to the US Army. But it made sense…

In a way, soldiers today, whether they join the military because of social and financial reasons, to get a college education, international experience, or just to get the fuck out of whereever, soldiers are the few who today are upholding the idea of the pagan hero death, a death – and consequently life – spent in the pursuit of a worthy cause.

We find similar tendencies in firemen, policemen and others, but nowhere is it as apparent as in the military that you are signing up to be willing to die for a belief or system of believes (even if you get drafted and used as cannon fodder or join a different spiritual war without uniforms).

In order to be a soldier, you have to face death, your own, and the death you might be inflicting. This forces you to really appreciate life, your own, and the life you might be taking. While some eighteen year old kids might not get that when they sign the dotted line at the draft office, at some point in the career of a soldier this understanding will set it.

Many of the former soldiers I have met have confirmed this. Can think of two in particular (both medics, curiously enough), who I have met lately. Both of them have a passion for life and an appreciation for it that is infectious. Thinking of the two of them inspired me enough that I decided not to join the army in spite of their great ad on facebook. Instead, I will do some death yoga, remind myself to die after every breath, and focus on being a spiritual warrior of a different kind.