On Being Under the Influence
On Being Under the Influence:
We often observe people who are consuming substances as being “under the influence” of drugs or alcohol.
And
From an animism perspective, we are spiritual creatures animating form, and all beings seen and unseen are spirits also. (Consider, ‘hard’ liquor has long been referred to as ‘spirits ‘). From this worldview, we are constantly dancing with influences, because there are no hard edges. Creation is a luminous dance of dimensional light, and we collaborate to create greater spiritual influences we sometimes call ideology, manifested as culture.
The collective spirit, to which we all contribute and animates our current colonialized culture, is a very hungry ghost. We are under the influence of such desperate starvation and poverty… on many many levels, both seen and unseen.
And
Everything eats. This hungry ghost we inhabit can only consume and yet feel devastating starvation. The anger of our collective hunger keeps us from empathizing with other individual and collective spirits. We gotta feed that beast, and we are under the influence of so much fear such that other folk and creatures can starve so we can stay fed for one more day.
And yet, we are obese, inflexible, immobile, impotent. And we blame each other all the time, we project our spiritual starvation in anyone who looks to be fed by the nourishment we crave.
And when it gets too much, we consume things that numb the relentless pain of starvation.
For a time.
And, everything eats.
These spirits that numb and sedate us consume us just as we consume them. We give opportunity for them to animate form within us. And these spirits consume our bodies, peace, wellness, empathy/connection, pleasure, joy, ease, TIME. This is true of substance as well as ideology. We animate that which fills the emptiness, the lack, the less than… and this is how we relate to our power. We call this “self image” but let’s pull the mask off of that media savvy terminology and call it what it really is… fragmented spirit.
Everything eats. Everyone eats.
And humans used to know and respect this basic truth. We sometimes call this ‘nature’.
We used to be highly attuned to the practice of respectfully harvesting from the Earth Creaturehood only what is needed for our prosperity, and investing back into the fertility of the land with our prayers, tears, sweat, ceremony, moon blood, placentae, sacred grief, passages, and all that the Earth thrives on. Because everyone eats.
Now we grow food on depleted land, we plug, contaminate, and sanitize all of our sacred moon blood, choke on our tears and grief, and watch serial programming instead of sharing in the rituals of ceremony that nourish life.
We would come, gifts, nourishment, and tobacco in hand to become learned from Elders and wise ones. We received our teachings while we fed and supported all wisdom keepers. Because everyone eats. Now we plug into the internet and proclaim entitlement to consume and appropriate free teachings without any development of palate or digestive potency to metabolize true knowledge.
Many Indigenous Peoples are, with continually imposed devastation, recovering their hearth space of culture. They have kept that fire burning while our cultural spirit of consumption keeps throwing smallpox blankets on the flames. Our hungry ghost cannot even imagine that it can be fed by living in balanced relationship, it believes it will die if it stops eating for even a moment.
Millennia of colonial and religious spiritual intoxication has distilled a focus group of consumers. All that is required for us to be controlled, compliant is the mere whisper that we won’t get our crumbs from the table.
When we decide to focus our collective will, our power, our potency to nourishing life, rather than staving off death, we will sober up…and then recover.
I believe we can be under the influence of the spirit of compassion, love, prosperity, generosity, kindness, and these spirits deliver deep nourishment, and they eat away only the rotting, obscure, and dying parts of our animus.
May it Be So.
Photo skillfully captured and artfully edited by Ace Hicks www.acehicks.com
Photo by Ace Hicks www.AceHicks.com