Rewilding From Religion

Its looking like the Tree Labyrinth Walk season I will offer this year is going to offer a combination of Bathing With The Sheela, and a 3 stage labyrinth garden walk to work with that, and the offered intent is personal ’re-wilding’.

Perhaps the toughest re-wilding challenge for some people is being away from their religion awhile?

I am often challenged about that suggestion as millions of people are very proud of their religion, and it also means most of those millions are also kind and loving people.

Talking to many of these kind and loving people, their more intimate conversation often brings out their stories of guilts, shame and fears. The may say their religion helps them through those life challenges.

There are over 7 billion people on the planet now. 

I remember saying a “wow!” when I was 30 years old and read of 4 billion on the planet.

Now, I imagine every one of those people probably telling their spiritual story very differently to the next person, even if they the members of the same ‘religion’. It may even be possible to identify a person by their spiritual story as much as by their fingerprints.

Now the world may have over 7 billion inspirations, 7 billion stories of those inspirations, and every one of them valuable and life flowing.

Move over instinctive inspirations, here comes religion ...

I would love to grasp the origin of why humanity seems to have always been cloaked with some kind of cloning regime set up by one or few people.

There have been the monarchies of kings and queens, pharoahs, emperors, chiefs, ideologist politicians, and more recently corporate branding.

There have been ‘hero’ warriors in service to a king or queen to battle for a land, with an enslaved army. They possessed the foreign land, and acquired it’s bounty and loot, and presented it back to the monarch they serve. All this done in the name of some god or child of god or goddess.

To keep the peace and reduce retaliation, the people angry from being looted are then introduced to this god, goddess, or their son or daughter ... and somehow they feel good about that exchange.

They may have been convinced they will be banished after death into a nasty place. Honour the god, goddess, king and queen, and its the 14 virgins for you lad, and the happy forever after handsome and funny prince lass.

The process was invade and loot a land, 
then attract the invaded people to a religion, 
then ‘convert’ them. 

They were the old days. Now it seems to be corporate kings and queens sponsoring the politicians to send mother’s sons into battles to surrender people into letting go of their treasures ... in the name of defending the country that now acquires the loot, bounty and new servitude.

Add to that the incredibly well meaning politicians who dream of national equality away from poverty ... as long as everyone clones to their thought, and their story. Mao of China even sent men away from their wives and brought them back together 9 months before his birthday to try and develop a nation all born on his birthday.

It has all been about world regimes of cloning us into being ‘told what to do’, and told how to live. It seems to have been human cloning with intent of eliminating conflict with each other ... but seems to have increased conflict within.

We just want to break out and re-wild ourselves. And I think we call this spirituality. To get there, we go on pilgrimages, adventures, and holistic journeys. 

In defence of regimes of religious, monarchies, and even some politicians, they have brought aid to people who have struggled, with no water, no food, no education, no health services. But it seems that cloning into a regime lifestyle is the cost of being looked after.

I am now going to flow this feature into suggesting how to re-wild ourselves more. How to rise more from our ‘mundane’ into the realm of our ‘divinity’, our spiritual journey.

It may well be that what we humans need and survive well on is a balance of community regime and freedom of personal re-wilding.

Some thoughts about this ...

Religion seems to be about teaching
Re-wilding seems to be about being inspired.
Balance the two and being taught may inspire?

How about being inspired by where you are, how you feel, how you sense, and by those images of mystery flowing through you?

Teaching seems to be about showing ‘the Way’, while inspiration is ‘the Way’

My own personal view is that religion always seems to have a starting point and an end, but re-wilding ourselves is a wholeness from inspiration without ends.

Religion seems to have lots of rules, and it is difficult to find out where those rules come from. Sometimes we are told stone slabs or gold sheets fell from heaven, or handed down from God, already scribed, or typed out, in our own language. Stunningly brilliant! The Great Mystery solved?

Then we are commanded to follow and live according to these ‘sacred’ scribings, that nobody has ever seen. Courts were then founded on applying these mystical scribings, and judgements upon people applied.

More legislation formed to apply these scribings in different situations. All of this so we are directed to follow a course of morality living.

When we re-wild ourselves we seem 
to become aware of unconditional rules, 

...and sense of morality arises from our consciousness. We have entered the language of nature, and it speaks to us.

Rules seem to always take a lot of figuring out, and nobody seems to agree on them. Re-wilding is simple, it’s instinct.

Re-wilding is infinitely flexible, it’s living the moment, while religion remains conservative, and change is slow.

Re-wilding is flexing our courage and feeding our confidence. Religion holds us together through fear, and tames us to do as we are instructed.

Religion, monarchy, political, and corporate regimes, can do our thinking for us, and many of us seem to like that. It seems to keep our lives easy and safe.

Re-wilding includes questioning things, but when we do, can be interpreted as violence, by those uniformed by authority. For example, at school some religious instruction teachers refused to teach a class with me present in it.

“This is the way we do things” 

... is a common mantra put upon us within a regime community or nation

To re-wild is a personal exercise in courage-based liberation from the prison of fear based church and state instruction.

To sum up, it seems Re-wilding ourselves means compassion and morality coming from our inner consciousness truth, and natural instinct. We are not driven by the rigid legislation calibrated from a minority of human decisions.

My uncle Cecil used to say to me, “Morality is doing the right thing, no matter what you are told, but Religion is about doing what you are told, no matter what is the right thing to do,”

It is interesting that stories of Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, 

... and even the ancient Zoroaster, tell them as being rebels who challenged the religious and monarchy dogmas of their time.

Then is was monarchies that became patrons of religions framed around the deeds of these ‘rebels’ and even ruled through using some quotes from them.

Its a bit like Banksy the artist suddenly becoming Taoiseach of Ireland and getting a salary of over €200,000 a year pumped into his bank account. Would everyone still love Banksy.

The big obstacle against people re-wilding is that it is an ebb and flow lifestyle. There are ups and downs of pain, joy and dreaming. Religion can be comfortable and much more stable. Which of these is two choices of living is artificial?

Religion keeps us wonderfully pampered and contented. It’s teachings may prompt a warm, fuzzy, meaningful experience inside. It is the easiest lifestyle choice, living a life following the laws created by other humans.

No matter how outdated or ridiculous those laws seem, the comfort is that none to little personal thinking is involved, once we learn them. Obey and not question, and life seems easy.

The “this is what we do around here” morality is chanted.

Re-wilding sometimes seems to be a revolt against this blind obedience. Re-wilding involves questioning outdated laws, and sometimes this cannot be done without initial consequential pain.

Re-wilding becomes fiery 
from the sparks of consciousness.

When we re-wild ourselves our inner spirit becomes very fluid. We take all things into consideration and then easily let things go.

When we re-wild, we live with questions and those questions become our guide. With religion, it seems that their answers to questions are enforced upon us to guide us ... or else!

Religion seems to cling to answers it believes are right. When we re-wild we surrender to what could be healthy, and that does include questioning everything, and always remain curious.

Religion is us being codependent with the establishment. Re-wilding is being interdependent with others, towards a flexible interconnectedness. The freedom of this is transcending regimes of power over humans constructions.

Religion is a set of commandments. It’s a lifestyle built on words. Re-wilding is indulging in a language older than words, the language that nature applies and communicates.

I believe that through poetry and music we can can learn and understand a bit about what this Great Mystery is. But poetry and music is what I do. Your own created expression may be different and very connected to that ancient unworded language.

Its as if a religious person fears God, 
but a re-wilding person dances with God.

Re-wilding is about holding the Great Mystery all through us, but religion seems to convince us that this is handed out to the chosen few

Re-wilding is the dumping of the middle men and going right to the source.

Re-wilding is moving on from trying to follow someone else’s experience but feeling our own experience.

I invite you to rewild with at our Tree Labyrinth at our sessions, but that is just one space of many, many spaces.

Do find your re-wilding space, find you, and how you are connected to it all?

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