Friday, November 6, 2009

Elementary, My Dear Watson

"I began waking up slowly into history, from which we do not emerge as from other nightmares.” Martha Cooley

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil for every one striking at the root.” Henry David Thoreau

We all have four elemental means of perceiving our world: spiritually, physically, mentally and emotionally. Beginning with “history” which might be seen as tracing its roots from the time of the Greeks and Hebrews, the spiritual (the masculine element of fire) has been elevated to a supreme position to the detriment of the other three elements. Monotheism, as a new spiritual tradition, arose in a decidedly masculine form (patriarchal) to eventually obliterate and dominant the earlier pantheism which represented a more balanced way of perceiving the world by honoring the sacred within all of existence: the heavens and the earth, nature, women, men and children. Monotheism represented a “new world order” which I believe was intentional established to divide and enslave the various people of Earth. Its prominence occurred not due to an innate philosophical superiority but rather due to waves of brutal subjugations of indigenous peoples throughout the world by systemically replacing their more balanced world views and cosmologies with one which could be more easily manipulated.

The pattern of oppression emanating from the most prominent epicenter; Rome, was that of militarily conquering a region, murdering the less centralized leadership and most active opposition, subjugating the remaining traumatized people, then securing the conquest by a physical expansion of the empire though the use of a religious/legal/economic system: a system that is alive and well still today.

Many of the earliest waves of colonialization emanating from Rome took place and culminated in the European Dark Ages which a study of history witnesses was a rather bleak period. It wasn’t until the return of Crusaders from the Middle East, laden with ancient manuscripts, that knowledge and beauty, long suppressed, began a significant return to the depressed European landscape.

A restoration of the intellectual and physical elements of experiencing life can be witnessed by the Renaissance which once more joined the spiritual in a newly reinvigorated amalgamation as new life and possibilities were introduced into European society. These three perceptual paradigms were all then firmly defined from a masculine perspective. It had become after all a man’s world with women long having been denied education and opportunity. The monotheistic god was masculine and as might be expected, when god become androcentric, men became as gods with obviously the elite being more godlike in their hierarchy of  the civic pantheon; the Pope, Churchmen and the Monarchies. The cosmology of the Greeks and especially the Hebrews as represented in the Book of Genesis had long ago relegated women to a lesser and dependent role and this arrangement has been brutally and/or psychologically enforced throughout history.

A newly reinvigorated Europe firmly identifying with the customs and beliefs of their centuries old conqueror’s economic, religious, and legal systems then in earnest began to subdue the rest of the world. The shift of power moved from Rome the capital of the system’s religious hierarchy to England which became the key player in expanding the Empire throughout the world commercially and economically—“The sun never sets on the British Empire.” Even periodic revolutions and uprisings against the British Crown did not ultimately hinder the spread of its reserve banking, legal and commercial systems which have defined the rules of the global economy and thus become the primary means of global control.

We’ve now been totally enmeshed in a global web of economic enslavement of which there may seem no way out. But in perfectly timed cosmic cycles the answer to our dilemma appears: we must reclaim our emotional selves thus freeing the water element in which our wisdom has been hidden all along, and integrate it with our spiritual, intellectual and physical selves. In order to truly become whole and reclaim our freedom we must embody our emotional self. This is probably the most difficult piece of ourselves which we must integrate in order to become whole. We have been well taught to repress our intense and uncomfortable emotions. Instead of seeing our unruly emotions as messages from our soul to make changes in our out of balance lives, we have learned to bottle them up and ostracize those who may live closer to their emotions.  Once we are in touch with these long dormant emotions and heed their guidance for rebalancing our lives, we are well on the way to freeing ourselves from the web in which we find ourselves entangled. 

For more on the importance of becoming aware of these emotions and tapping into their potential for healing and revitalizing our creativity and our world, please read my post “The Upside of Anger."

No comments:

Post a Comment