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Unbeknownst to most Americans, the world is full of animists. According to Professor Stephen Asma of Columbia College Chicago, “Pretty much everywhere except Western Europe, the Middle East, and North America” is dominated by animistic cultures. Animism is the belief that everything has a soul or spiritual essence; not just living things, but also mountains, fire, the sky, the sea, and sometimes even words and human-made objects.
In practice, though, it’s more than just a belief. It’s a sensibility, a way of experiencing and interacting with the world. Animists relate to their surroundings with a certain intentionality, as if constantly among old friends.
To people in the developed world, such beliefs might seem primitive and superstitious. After all, who needs a world full of spirits when we have science? Science has given us explanations and inventions that have alleviated many hardships and dispelled so much fear.
But it hasn’t made us invincible or immune to fear. We’re still afraid of death, suffering, being alone, poverty, public humiliation, paper cuts, and so on. There’s little solace in science from these bugaboos.
Its other major shortcoming is that science has sucked the spirituality out of life. By reducing everything to cells and atoms, electromagnetic waves and neurotransmitters, it puts the whole phenomenal world beneath us. This promotes a certain feeling of ownership over the world – rather than a sense of belonging to it. If we put all our eggs into the science basket, life can seem random, lacking meaning and soul.
Science and Spirit aren’t mutually exclusive. But ever since early anthropologists looked down their noses at animistic cultures – seeing them as too dumb to know the difference between living and nonliving things, and giving their leaders justification to colonize and oppress them – the developed world has favored science as the ultimate authority. As we seek to right such wrongs, perhaps it’s worth considering not just what indigenous cultures lost, but what the oppressors also lost.
To an animist, the scientist is missing out on an entire plane of reality that’s beneath the surface and accessible only through an expansion of consciousness. To a scientist, the subjective reality of the animist’s consciousness is unmeasurable, untestable, unprovable, and therefore unscientific and even unreal.
What would be possible if we stopped using science to dominate or invalidate what we don’t understand? Can we concede – scientists included – that not everything is a scientific matter? This applies foremost to consciousness itself, which is entirely beyond the grasp of science, and arguably the only thing we know for certain to be real. We also know that humans yearn for a connection that’s beyond the ability of science to explain or provide.
You don’t need to be anti-science to be open to a spiritual reality. I say this as a scientist and animist.
If you’re open to it, I have a simple assignment for you to try this week. Consider this: how might your life be different if you treated your surroundings as if you were in relationship with them? Make it a lighthearted game.
What happens when you express gratitude to your bed, sheets, and pillow upon waking? What happens when you allow yourself to be in awe of the shimmering water that flows, as if by magic, from your showerhead? How does it feel to thank it for invigorating and purifying you? Does it feel any different to bless your food before eating it and thank it for giving itself to nourish you?
What is it like to thank your home for keeping you safe and comfortable? When you step outside, what happens when you experience the earth as the ever-present stability beneath your feet, supporting you and nurturing everything that grows upon it? What do you notice when you give names to the familiar trees or rocks in your neighborhood? How does it feel different to think of the sky as a beautiful, conscious dome over you versus your usual way? What changes when you think of all the animals you encounter as non-human people, each with an equally valid reason to be here as the human people you see?
And what happens when you listen and feel as if all these aspects of the world have something to communicate back to you?
When I say, “What happens?” I’m not (necessarily) asking, “Does your pillow respond, ‘Thanks for finally saying something! It was a pleasure to cradle your head all night!’?” More importantly, I’m asking, how does it make you feel to relate to the world in this way in comparison to your usual way? And if the answer is, “good” or “better” or “playful,” then keep going with it.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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The other day a friend took out a cigarette and started smoking it in front of me. It was a bit of a surprise, and it made me reflect on how much less I encounter smoking than ever before in my life. Rates of smoking among adults in the U.S. have fallen from 42% in 1965 to 13.7% in 2018. Smoking in kids has fallen from 27.5% in 1991 to 8.8% in 2017. Both trends reflect a decline of about 68%. At the same time, smokers have greatly reduced the number of cigarettes they consume in a day.
This is great news, and I’d like to help the remaining smokers give it up. I used to run a successful program to help people quit, and I’d like to share the approaches that worked well for the participants. Clients would get acupuncture and herbs to help with the cravings; we would do some digging and releasing to clear the underlying psychological patterns associated with smoking; and finally I would tell them this:
“You are not forbidden to smoke. Don’t feed the inner conflict by saying to yourself, ‘I shouldn’t be doing this.’ If there’s a shouldn’t within you, then there’s also “but I am doing it,” and from that, it follows that you’re bad, you’re wrong, you’re breaking the rules, you’re a failure, you deserve to be punished, etc. It perpetuates a whole mess of negative thoughts, guilt, and shame which are arguably as bad for you as the smoking itself.”
If they felt like having a cigarette, I would tell them to do six things.
Number one: Use empowering language. Instead of telling yourself, “I can’t have this cigarette,” which feels like you’re being constrained by an outside force, use verbiage that implies your choice and power in the matter, such as: “I don’t smoke anymore. I just don’t put that stuff in my body. I’m not a smoker anymore. I choose to only breathe clean air now.” And rather than telling other people, “I’m trying to quit,” which gives you an out, tell them, “I quit!” Or, if that feels too big, “I’m in the process of quitting.”
Number two: Take a minute to slow and deepen your breathing. Much of the appeal of smoking is that smokers routinely take time to step outside and do some deep breathing. Aside from the smoke inhalation part, this is a great stress management practice, so we don’t want to take that away.
Draw your inhale the whole way down to your lower belly, imagining you’re filling up the bowl of your pelvis with it. Then make your exhale very long, getting all the air out. Do this several times. (If it’s helpful at first, you can hold your fingers to your lips as if drawing through a cigarette.) If the desire for a cigarette remains, continue on.
Number three: Connect to the want-a-cigarette feeling. How do you know it’s time to smoke? Most of the time you’re barely aware of the feeling; you just respond to it unconsciously and have a smoke. This step is about making conscious the connection between the craving feeling and the act of smoking.
Drop into your body and tune in to what’s coming up. Don’t try to define it; just feel what it feels like. What exactly is the feeling? Where is it concentrated? What can it tell you about yourself?
You may tend to regard it as a yearning, but what’s beneath the yearning? The yearning is a response to something deeper. There’s some form of discomfort there and smoking is the thing you do to get the feeling to go away. But there are other ways to release it. The feeling is just a feeling; it’s not going to harm you, and it doesn’t mean you have to smoke.
There are many approaches to dealing with the feeling. A good place to start is by simply allowing the feeling to be here without resisting it. Can you feel the feeling fully? Can you invite it to be experienced by your whole self? Can you breathe into it? And can you open yourself and allow it to leave?
Just follow the prompts above and see what happens. Don’t judge yourself if the feeling doesn’t go away. If the desire for a cigarette remains, continue on.
Number four: Uncouple the act of smoking from any other activity. We don’t want smoking to be linked to anything else, especially things you do all the time. So, if you tend to have a cigarette while on the phone, a cigarette after sex, a cigarette after eating, or a cigarette while driving, choose another time to smoke. You’re going to keep eating, having sex, and driving, so we want to clear the association with smoking. Before smoking, do everything reasonable to remove yourself from other activities and positive environments.
Number five: Talk to your body. If you still want to smoke, take out a cigarette, become aware of our lungs, your heart, and your whole body. Then ask inwardly, “Do you want this?” or “How do you feel about this?” Then listen and feel for a response. If the desire for a cigarette remains, continue on.
Number six: Give all your attention to the act of smoking. Be alone, tune out everything else, and smoke that cigarette. Be completely present to the act. At whatever point the urge to smoke has dissipated, stop and stub it out. When you’re immersed in it, this point tends to come well before the end of the cigarette. And even if you do smoke the whole thing, it will tend to satisfy you for much longer than if you smoked it mindlessly. While my hope for people is that they’ll quit entirely, cutting down from ten to three is a great and worthwhile accomplishment.
If you’re a smoker I’d love to hear about your experience with these simple steps. And if you know someone else who could benefit from this article, please pass it along.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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(This is an “oldie but goodie” that went out in the Dragontree newsletter 15 years ago.)
Part of The Dragontree’s mission statement is, “To seed our community with centered, peaceful, and healthy people.” For those who wish to actively pursue this goal, one of the most challenging and life-changing assignments is a “drama fast.” We suggest you try it for single day to begin.
Our social programming, through family, community, and media, teaches us some useful things – such as how to relate to other people and be productive in the world – and some not so useful things – such as how to generate and spread drama. The world tells us in many ways that there is something to be gained by dramatizing our life circumstances. You can feel the energy in it. So, the idea of a life without the drama might sound boring or even inhuman. But in most cases the dramatization of reality (which often means focusing on conflict) degrades our experiences.
The true and rich facts of our lives are rendered into black and white through dramatization. We lose resolution and gain resistance and negative judgment. Perhaps more detrimental than the negative judgement is the way our dramas disempower us by causing us to surrender our vision and power of choice.
Our greatest, most fundamental power is to choose our point of view about life. Our lives, no matter how great or tragic by society’s standards, are ultimately only ours to judge. If you’ve ever met a person who is simply imperturbable, who’s able to stay hopeful and positive no matter what, you’ve known someone who fully embraces their power of choice.
For any given situation, we can choose a wide range of viewpoints. The situation doesn’t dictate our response. These viewpoints can be distilled to three basic categories:
- A point of view that acknowledges the facts and remains completely neutral
- A point of view that degrades our or others’ experience of the situation (e.g., by subtracting personal power and adding blame, resentment, shame, victimization, guilt, etc.)
- A point of view that enhances the situation for oneself and/or others (e.g., by spotting opportunity, expressing gratitude, remaining open, etc.)
The purpose of a drama fast is to promote the choice of viewpoints that fall into categories one and three.
Every human has the ability to regard whatever life brings us in an inner atmosphere of light – meaning, illumination, weightlessness, and clarity. This isn’t to say we should never experience sadness or anger, but that we can experience these emotions without shutting down or letting them override our power of choice. Experienced in our inner light, negative thoughts and emotions don’t damage us, and the natural impulse of contraction they tend to cause is usually brief and followed by an expansion.
Taking a fast from drama is about responsibility (not blame) – owning the way you shape your own experience of life and the effect you have on others. We don’t usually consciously intend to degrade our experiences, but the urge to be dramatic is sometimes so insidious we don’t notice it. It frequently arises when things don’t go the way we want them to (whether it’s simply the flow of our day or the overall socio-politco-environmental trajectory of the planet). While disappointment feels like an energetic slump, turning it into a drama – even if it means we’re the victim – brings a certain dynamism to it and makes it a better story that enrolls us and others.
During a drama fast, try to catch yourself falling in this habit and focus your attention instead on being a master of cleanness (stick to the facts, don’t share dirt), focusing on the good, and finding solutions. Though it may not always seem possible, the simplest solution is to just let it go. Letting go of an upset isn’t always a matter of saying, “I’m letting this go,” and then you’re done with it permanently. You must be committed to letting it go. If you notice you’ve picked up the upset again, just purposefully let it go again without analyzing it. It’s not just a benefit to you; it’s actually a valuable community service.
Drama is often used to identify unfavorable things about others to either help us feel superior by comparison, or to distract others from noticing our own flaws. But have you noticed that the folks who never engage in drama tend to exude calm and confidence? While one might think that the calm and confidence are a prerequisite to not being dramatic, it’s really a choice anyone can make at any time: “I choose not to degrade my own – or others’ – experiences.”
Fasting from drama means changing your inner conversation, noticing when you're indulging in drama, and choosing cleanness again. The same goes for outer conversations. Before you share, you can always ask yourself, is it true? is it necessary? is it kind? And finally, what is my purpose?
What can you do when conversing with someone who is “revving up the drama”? If you feel you can’t be in their presence without getting wrapped up in it, you may just have to excuse yourself. While it may feel unsupportive, staying and validating or even feeding their drama won’t really serve them.
If you’re up for staying, you can enhance the situation compassionately. Here are some approaches to try:
- What happens when you become a neutralizing container for their experience, listening without feeding it?
- What happens when you practice being the embodiment of calm clarity?
- What happens when you remind them of their power to choose their perspective?
- When happens when you gently ask them to give you the facts without any interpretation?
- What happens when you simply see them as their highest Self, rising above this story?
- What happens when you remind and redirect them to the path they were on before the drama derailed them?
Imagine how the world could change if we practiced this. Let’s all do this for a single day. If you like how it goes, consider devoting another day.
Be well,
Peter
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Unbeknownst to most Americans, the world is full of animists. According to Professor Stephen Asma of Columbia College Chicago, “Pretty much everywhere except Western Europe, the Middle East, and North America” is dominated by animistic cultures. Animism is the belief that everything has a soul or spiritual essence; not just living things, but also mountains, fire, the sky, the sea, and sometimes even words and human-made objects.
In practice, though, it’s more than just a belief. It’s a sensibility, a way of experiencing and interacting with the world. Animists relate to their surroundings with a certain intentionality, as if constantly among old friends.
To people in the developed world, such beliefs might seem primitive and superstitious. After all, who needs a world full of spirits when we have science? Science has given us explanations and inventions that have alleviated many hardships and dispelled so much fear.
But it hasn’t made us invincible or immune to fear. We’re still afraid of death, suffering, being alone, poverty, public humiliation, paper cuts, and so on. There’s little solace in science from these bugaboos.
Its other major shortcoming is that science has sucked the spirituality out of life. By reducing everything to cells and atoms, electromagnetic waves and neurotransmitters, it puts the whole phenomenal world beneath us. This promotes a certain feeling of ownership over the world – rather than a sense of belonging to it. If we put all our eggs into the science basket, life can seem random, lacking meaning and soul.
Science and Spirit aren’t mutually exclusive. But ever since early anthropologists looked down their noses at animistic cultures – seeing them as too dumb to know the difference between living and nonliving things, and giving their leaders justification to colonize and oppress them – the developed world has favored science as the ultimate authority. As we seek to right such wrongs, perhaps it’s worth considering not just what indigenous cultures lost, but what the oppressors also lost.
To an animist, the scientist is missing out on an entire plane of reality that’s beneath the surface and accessible only through an expansion of consciousness. To a scientist, the subjective reality of the animist’s consciousness is unmeasurable, untestable, unprovable, and therefore unscientific and even unreal.
What would be possible if we stopped using science to dominate or invalidate what we don’t understand? Can we concede – scientists included – that not everything is a scientific matter? This applies foremost to consciousness itself, which is entirely beyond the grasp of science, and arguably the only thing we know for certain to be real. We also know that humans yearn for a connection that’s beyond the ability of science to explain or provide.
You don’t need to be anti-science to be open to a spiritual reality. I say this as a scientist and animist.
If you’re open to it, I have a simple assignment for you to try this week. Consider this: how might your life be different if you treated your surroundings as if you were in relationship with them? Make it a lighthearted game.
What happens when you express gratitude to your bed, sheets, and pillow upon waking? What happens when you allow yourself to be in awe of the shimmering water that flows, as if by magic, from your showerhead? How does it feel to thank it for invigorating and purifying you? Does it feel any different to bless your food before eating it and thank it for giving itself to nourish you?
What is it like to thank your home for keeping you safe and comfortable? When you step outside, what happens when you experience the earth as the ever-present stability beneath your feet, supporting you and nurturing everything that grows upon it? What do you notice when you give names to the familiar trees or rocks in your neighborhood? How does it feel different to think of the sky as a beautiful, conscious dome over you versus your usual way? What changes when you think of all the animals you encounter as non-human people, each with an equally valid reason to be here as the human people you see?
And what happens when you listen and feel as if all these aspects of the world have something to communicate back to you?
When I say, “What happens?” I’m not (necessarily) asking, “Does your pillow respond, ‘Thanks for finally saying something! It was a pleasure to cradle your head all night!’?” More importantly, I’m asking, how does it make you feel to relate to the world in this way in comparison to your usual way? And if the answer is, “good” or “better” or “playful,” then keep going with it.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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