Spirits in Animal Bodies: The Habitat Is on Fire.
The flow of energy that the universe is made up of may be infinite, but what we call the planet’s resources — as if the planet were here to serve us — are not.
And we live in both relative and absolute worlds.
The two worlds are twisted up together in everyday life, and capitalist ideology twists them up further, in the interests of the few, and to the absolute detriment of the rest of the people and the ecosystems of which humans are a small part.
The pursuit of endless and relentless economic growth, with no consideration for the cyclical nature of existence, or for the finite nature of natural resources, treating things as if they were in infinite supply, and people with their infinite supplies as if they were things, has created the current system of structural exploitation and abuse, within which people are turning on each other now as the conditions for life are literally running out.
Capitalism has mixed up the levels by awarding to profit the sacrosanct place of the infinite flow of energy. It’s true that money itself, as a material for exchange, is neutral and not finite. Energy is in infinite supply, and love and money are two of the ways in which it travels. Money can be used as energy to fuel all kinds of values and ways of life.
But that’s not the way it’s gone.
The enemy isn’t money. It’s greed, selfishness and ignorance.
Ignorance keeps us in denial of some basic facts. Air to breathe, water to drink and our material bodies, although also forms of energy, are not infinite. They run out, they get poisoned, they die.
Caring for the planet and reacting to the very real danger we’re in as physical forms isn’t a sidetrack from spiritual growth, it’s just taking care of the relative, material level.
There’s a mental fear state, a self-perpetuating machine in which you can get trapped — it drains your energy and renders you unable to see what’s really going on. I call it the mind-clench. It’s hard to stop, and the harder you try to pull your life out of its grasp, the more ferociously it digs its teeth in and hangs on.
This is not a good state to be in, and diverts all your resources and energy away from the actual situation at hand.
That’s not the only kind of fear there is though. There’s also fear as a healthy reaction of the organism to danger. A signal that action is required. While we can’t in an absolute sense be threatened by anything, including death, we don’t live only in this dimension. If we think we do, we may just not have been challenged yet.
To recap, there may well be a fear mentality programmed into people at the moment to block awareness, but there’s also the instinctual fear of an animal who smells the fire coming and sees no way of escape. Let’s not block that with concentration on the infinite at the expense of our bodies, the bodies of our children and the body of the earth.
Our animal bodies can be threatened, and are. We are alive on all levels at the same time, as plants, animals, humans and spiritual beings. They all need care, we can’t leave any of them out. The trick is to function on all the levels, and keep them distinct, so that you can interpret things appropriately and apply the right level of logic.
Let’s hold the awareness that while on the absolute level we may be expressions of an infinite energy flow, as are money and power and freedom and love, we’re also parts of a collective, most of whom are oppressed by a system which has made endless, linear gain into a religion, and money, as it exists on the material plane, into a god.
We are the arsonists.
And we’re also animals whose habitat is on fire.
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Sarah Luczaj (PhD) is a counselor/therapist, Reiki master, writer, poet, originator of the Creative Regeneration process (which brings together meditation, focusing, free-writing and intuitive painting) and co-founder of the terrealuma healing refuge, on a wild and secluded permaculture farm. She facilitates Creative Regeneration in various ways, from live group sessions, through month-long online courses, to 6-month intensive one-to-one activations, to get people plugged back into their natural state of bliss and power. Sarah is mainly based in Glasgow, and has two daughters.