A Radical Thought Experiment
A Radical Thought Experiment
We have an entire world that we can grow social bonds with and increase our capacity for internal equilibrium—especially when human relationship and comfort is inaccessible to us.
Hello Starlings1,
The past month has been overwhelming for me, and I would imagine for you, too.
Watching unprecedented climate chaos events and the lackluster systemic support frameworks to deal with them (as well as the willful continuation of certain activities that drive these climate events) can leave one feeling adrift in grief, not to mention a sense of helplessness.
Regulating my nervous system to a better baseline has been a nearly full time effort, on top of daily life demands. If you’re tired, you’re not alone.
For most of us, accessing feelings of safety so that we can feel empowered and drag ourselves out of crippling despair is a Herculean effort when we do it by ourselves.
Humans (and I would argue most other sentient beings) are not built to reach a place of internal equilibrium alone. The reason humanity has survived to this point, is due to social cooperation—and more importantly, social bonds. The idea of the rugged self-made individual is a maladaptive coping mechanism of a myth2, and one that is slowly choking us out.
In a world where there’s cultural amnesia around how to be in relation with others in their messy, complicated, brilliantly multifaceted fullness, making social bonds can also seem like an uphill battle. The act of creating social bonds requires us to have the capacity to make the effort to form those bonds to begin with.
It’s no coincidence that there’s a rising global mental health crisis3. We are desperately lonely4 and the way the world is designed right now keeps us deeply entrenched in isolation through busyness and exhaustion.
Becoming more emotionally regulated and embodied is easier to do when you do it with others—in fact it’s fundamental to our development as healthy human beings5. But finding others to do it with and forming the necessary bonds for that to be possible requires energy, time, and capacity that is often missing from our lives. Many people currently do not have the capacity for the associated risks of starting new relationships.
What are we to do? We need better capacity—but better capacity opens up much faster and easier when we have strong bonds with others—but those bonds require capacity for the risk in trying to build them… and round and round we go. What a paradox.
Can Spirituality Ease Our Distress?
The question I began asking for myself, starting a few years ago, was if spirituality in some way helped this. Specifically, I wanted to know how many of us sailing the seas of personal alternative spirituality could approach such a complex problem. After all, alternative spirituality is not organized–we do not meet in a church, we do not have an agreed upon creed or theology, often it’s counter to more popularly accepted (or acceptable) beliefs and practices, and our ritual actions are usually unique to our personal situations.
The only thing we have in common is the desire to reach out to the supernatural (or divine) and to perceive and experience the world in an interconnected fashion.
So does alternative spirituality offer us some way of comfort in times of distress when we could use some emotional resonance and co-regulation?
These questions have different implications for animists—those who have a worldview that the world is populated with sentient and responsive non-human persons, and that our task is to learn how to be in healthy, reciprocal, and respectful relationships with a more-than-human world.6
Animists have different definitions and ideas of what exactly qualifies as a non-human person.
For me, I see that every tree and plant is sentient and responsive, that every animal is alive and sentient, that we are walking through waves upon waves of beings from the smallest molecules to the largest storm systems—and that we are surrounded by spirits that are unseen in waking life—but responsive nonetheless. Spirits include gods, land spirits, house spirits, ancestor spirits, and countless other folkloric beings of various dispositions around the world.
Which brings me to a very important thought experiment.
A Thought Experiment on Spiritual Connection
I call it a thought experiment because our ability to prove that some of these beings are even “real” in a material science way—is limited at best. Though(!) material science is coming around slowly to realizing that other beings on our planet are just as sentient as human beings—for example, that trees feel fear and like to be close to their family members7 and that pods (families) of whales have their own complex and fully developed cultures8.
But will we ever be able to prove that non-corporal spirit beings are real, sentient, responsive, and interactive, in a way that will satisfy material science? Perhaps not in my lifetime. So we have a thought experiment to do.
We already know that humans can co-regulate with other beings such as pets9, or even walking through forests10.
What if part of spirituality—and more pointedly the act of spirit work—is not only a ritual act that mentally helps us, but that we are also actually co-regulating with spirit beings?
After all, material science has studied the effects of believing in a God—and found that it improves our immune function and mental health. In MRI scans have shown that those with intense faith that pray (or talk) with God show brain activity that resembles talking to a [human] friend. I agree with what the author and anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann suggests—that a genuine relationship with a spirit (aka God, for some people) is a social relationship that gives us benefits akin to having a deep social bond with another human being.11
For animists this is incredible news when human relationship and comfort is inaccessible to us. It means that we have an entire world that we can grow social bonds with—and increase our capacity for internal equilibrium.
Our Nervous Systems' Call for Entanglement
Now this may seem very human or self-centered, but I would also suggest (another unprovable thing) that the benefits are symbiotic. We already know that the way you behave with your beloved pet dog totally affects their emotional equilibrium—and that cuddling with our dog helps us to regulate our nervous system, but also their nervous system, too. Heck, science has said for some time that there’s complex of genes related to the belief in God or practice of spirituality (though I’d be wary to take the flat pop-science explanation of how that works)12.
In fact, perhaps we need to understand that as humans we are more of an ecosystem than we are an individual.
“Everything touches everything else in the Anthropocene—an observation that is supported by, say, current thinking about ‘holobionts,’ assemblages of bodies within bodies within bodies, or intersecting communities that toss out notions of separable individuality. We are holobionts. We live and are lived through; we are composite beings, companion species, emerging within and among assemblages.” - Bayo Akomolafe
Perhaps it is not just that the identity you consider your “self” craves intimacy with the “supernatural” or divine, but the many other beings that make up the physical composite that is you.
So what is to say that our bonding with even non-corporal spirits, is not something the spirits crave and seek, in return? What if it is more than the “you” that you identify with, that needs this for wholeness and health?
What if our nervous systems are simply trying to communicate with us that we only ever feel whole when we are an entanglement of many different relationships and interactions–and that it’s vitally important to acknowledge and acquiesce to this vital animal-need passed down through countless ancestral lines of many different species?
After all, it is co-regulation. Not “I find my regulation with you and you get nothing out of it”.
What if it’s not simply that you are coming before a “greater power” and submitting to them in your time of need… But that there is a true bond of love and reciprocal care, and that our spirits want to hold us AND be held in return?
What if we don’t just mourn what is happening in the world by ourselves… But that it is our love pouring out into the world, that we also hold the world in it’s grief and anger because we are one part of the ecosystem that is the world…
That we do this in a ritual dance together in order to create better emotional resonance and equilibrium—and perhaps even finding a place of safety where we can deeply imagine new possibilities in the age of the Anthropocene?
“The term [Anthropocene] means “Age of Man”; but it spells trouble, because it tells us of all the havoc we’ve caused by presuming ourselves lords over the earth, by not listening to the pollination songs of bees and the sermons of roots. Stories have consequences; ideas have bodies. And today, the idea of Man—phallic and independent—is in crisis.” - Bayo Akomolafe
What if that is the point of any form of spirituality, and especially spirit work? To relearn the art of listening to the songs of the bees and the sermons of the roots and the stories that spirits tell about us in myths and folklore and fairy tales.
That we grow closer in bonds to one another, human to non-human, so that we can begin the process of imagining repairing our world to being more equitable for all beings?
And that it all starts with the beginning of co-regulation which allows us the capacity to become wholehearted in the face of tragedy.
Listening to the Stories the Spirits Tell About Us
When I ask the question, “What is the point of myths and folklore and understanding them in times like these?” These are the answers:
To give voice to emotions and situations that seem so wildly horrific that contemplating them directly as they are occurring is too great a task and throws me into a freeze state of despair. Seeing the parallels of such crises in myth and folklore allow me to process and understand these times so that I can come back out of that freeze state—so that I can access pleasure, joy, and strength. If this helps me, then it might help you, too.
To hear the stories that the spirits have told about us, and to know that somehow we pull out of our own self-destructive spirals when we accept the multitudes of help and relationship available to us at all times.
To learn the language of non-human persons so that I may better know when the more-than-human world is communicating to me, and what it means. Non-human communication is primal and most often non-verbal. Signs, epiphanies, and symbols are language that crosses barriers and times–and takes artful listening and discernment to understand. If I want to feel less alone, speaking this language can reanimate my life with countless encounters and relationships I would otherwise miss.
To be introduced to helping, wise, cunning spirits who have much to teach and much to give—including relationships where we co-regulate and then co-create together.
To initiate the imagination into non-linear ways of thinking that help us dream up—and then CREATE—a different world than the one we are currently living in.
The mythopoetic is a gateway to deeper embodied animism—and it is the key to direct spirit work, the original embodied animistic praxis of all of our human ancestors around the world.
Information Without Soul: A Descent into Nothingness
The literal practice of ecstatic, embodied, and ongoing relationship and communicating with non-human people both seen and unseen is your ancestral birthright.
It is the singing of the souls to one another.
It is our mythopoetic roots in action, a continuation of tradition that entangle and ground us into deeper webs of connection–yes, even in our hyper modern world and time.
The denial of this birthright is a huge reason that despite the technological progress that’s developed through the Age of Reason, we are seeing apocalyptic events at a dizzying speed.
Information without soul is not the fuel of life–it is objectification and a slow, horrific descent into nothingness.
Objectification strips the soul out of some(one)thing so we can justify utilizing it at all costs for our own benefit.
When some(one)thing isn’t a person, we don’t have to worry about what happens to it.
A river is just water for us to drink13. Animals are just food for us to eat, or sport for us to kill, or pests for us to get rid of whenever it is convenient for us, or pets for us to pick up or abandon at our leisure14. Plants are just machines for making oxygen15. The Sun is just a star that keeps our planet appropriately warm16.
They don’t have rights17–because rights are the privilege of sentient beings (which are now being articulated specifically as “sapient” beings as we continue to expand our ideas of what consciousness may look like outside of the human paradigm; how’s that for a lame attempt at continuing anthropocentrism).
They don’t deserve courtesy or compassion because that is a privilege only for other sentient beings.
And you can imagine when you adapt a worldview like this, how easy it becomes to dehumanize and therefore objectify other humans. To cut us all into little peices of information and categorize worth and “levels of humanness” based on “objective” (cough, objectifying and soul-destroying) measure.18
Soulfulness is inherently relational, while objectification is anti-relational because it says only certain beings are people and others are objects.
Objectification wants to deny a mythopoetic worldview–because information without soul allows us to make destructive decisions.
Denying the soul–the spirits–of everything around us not only disenchants our personal worldview, but it is ultimately self-destructive.
Who are you without the soil beneath your feet–created by the hundreds of thousands of dead ancestors,
who were broken down by parliaments of worms and insects and bacterial colonies,
to then feed the countless plants who love and respond to the sound of birds,
who drop their seeds where new forests will emerge,
who will continue propagating and circulating oxygen,
that the wings of birds glide on as they look over the waves of life giving rivers and oceans,
who are pulled by the magnetism of the Moon,
who is embraced by the gravity belt of the Earth
like a lover?
Mythopoesis and related praxis isn’t frivolous–it’s the foundation for intercommunication between us and the more-than-human world we are constantly in relationship with—whether we acknowledge and respect that relationship, or not.
Why Not Participate in a Soulful World?
Even so… let’s say I’m wrong.
Let’s say that trees really are just inanimate objects growing for unknown reasons and that your dog doesn’t actually feel anything, and that the whales are too stupid to create culture and language and are only instinctually driven by biological needs like hunger, sex, and sleep.
Do you enjoy the results of the soulless worldview we are living out as a global human culture?
Do you like the outcomes of believing and then treating the world like it is dead, unresponsive, and only good for whatever it does to materially resource our human existence?
Do you enjoy the loneliness of the age of reason?
Do you miss enchantment?
If my belief that the birds that live around my house are my friends and they have preferences for certain snacks and will play games to get my attention when they want something and then warn me when they think I am in danger—that they value our relationship and that it is reciprocal and responsive between both of us— is not harming anyone and produces better outcomes in my life (and generally speaking, in the survival of this planet as a whole, including the survival of the human race)…
Who cares if it is “real” by the standards of material science?
If this is all a mass delusion we are sharing about the world actually being alive, sentient, responsive, SOULFUL and full of SOULS…
But it gives us (and every non-human around us) better outcomes for long term survival, thriving, and general existence…
Why wouldn’t we want to participate?
If mythopoesis and spirit work helps us become wholehearted people with the capacity to do something about these tragedies, who cares if it is recognized by material science or popular culture as real?
If you can’t tell, I’m utterly uninterested in the debate about whether an animistic worldview will ever be fully validated in a mainstream way. I’m counting on it not happening because it’s not profitable.
If I can, I want to help you drop the need for this outside acceptance—because you deserve to feel the depth of love and safety non-human relationships can provide when nothing else is available, and you deserve the inspiration and hope of a mythopoetic worldview.
You deserve an enchanted existence.
The Spirits Want to Know You
I am deeply interested in convincing you to have a relationship with this heartbreakingly enchanted, beautiful, living world—and to engage with it in more imaginal ways that help empower all of us to love both the human and non-human peoples around us, in both action and emotion.
That is the point of the work I do: to give voice to the spirits, to help you say hello to them, to create a world that openly embraces the enchantment that is around us all the time.
The spirits have been calling us to deeper relationship in louder ways for some time now. They want to know you. They want to be close to you.
And if you look inside of yourself and how you’re feeling right now, you want it in return. You want an enchanted life.
Enchanted living begins with acknowledging and proactively co-creating enchanted relationships.
Maybe your relationships will be with the spirits of nearby trees, or perhaps with a well-known and recognized God, or perhaps with a folkloric spirit that others believe is just a fantasy.
If it is helping you live a soulful life, a more co-regulated and connected life, a more WHOLEHEARTED life… then that’s what matters and that’s why we do it.
A Final Radical Suggestion
So let me pose this radical idea as a follow-up to our radical thought experiment: part of what will help all of us come back to a sense of safety, is deeper relationships to the other-than-humans around us.
We can co-regulate with non-human beings, especially in times where it’s hard to access relationship with human beings.
Spend time with your favorite myth, folk, or fairy tale while you sit under a tree or look out over the sunset or take a bath and feel the warm embrace of water. Have a conversation with your God(s), spirit(s), ancestors, beloved furry family member, or a house plant.
Take a walk in the woods and give that moss covered tree a big, lingering hug and breath in deep. Remember the tree has a heartbeat just like you, even if it doesn’t look or operate the same way. That they have also experienced loss and elation. That they crave the company of birds and butterflies–and humans too. And they love to be sung too–so give them your lamentation and dirge, or your silly folk rhymes and ballads, or your most heartfelt opera.
Maybe you find an acorn and decide to make an oak rosary for the days you can’t sit under the tree but you crave the company of the woods. Maybe you do it by candle light while you listen to the wind blow and realize it’s the transmitter of tree song across the world. Then the next time you feel despair, you pick up your humble oak rosary, inhale the scent of forest, recall the song of the wind, and realize even when you’re far away you are still in a web of relations–and love.
In the coming months, I hope that I can help you access the place where imagination and your local ecosystem blur, and the spirit of the trees and the spirit of the mermaid are equally communicative and available for you to relate with.
If you feel like sticking around, I hope you’ll join me and we can interact and intertwine through the shared co-regulation of mythopoesis and spirit contact.
Anything that I fail to cite in a footnote is entirely my fault—though I will confess that I was really trying to test the upper limit of this feature 🤠
https://prospect.org/economy/myth-rugged-individual/
https://www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/a-crisis-of-our-time/
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/nov/16/who-declares-loneliness-a-global-public-health-concern
https://www.theottoolbox.com/co-regulation/
This is the core of animism, as defined by Graham Harvey [my additions are in the brackets]:
“Animists are people who recognize that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human [or seen], and that life is always lived in relationship with others. Animism is lived out in various ways that are all about learning to act respectfully (carefully and constructively) towards and among other persons… Animism is more accurately understood as being concerned with learning how to be a good person in respectful relationship with other persons [both seen and unseen].”
The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben
Countless evidence in this regard especially for Orca whales (my pal
writes about this beautifully), but for a general overview: https://us.whales.org/whale-culture/sentient-and-sapient-whale-and-dolphins/https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/polyvagal-perspectives/202303/four-reasons-why-interacting-with-a-dog-makes-you-feel-good
https://environhealthprevmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12199-019-0822-8
How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others by Tanya Luhrmann
https://www.nature.com/articles/ng1204-1241
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/these-rivers-are-now-considered-people-what-does-that-mean-for-travelers
https://theconversation.com/how-the-world-might-look-if-animals-had-legal-rights-215924 as well as https://aldf.org/article/ecuadors-constitutional-court-rules-wild-animals-are-subjects-of-legal-rights-under-the-rights-of-nature/
https://imagine5.com/articles/what-if-trees-were-people-too/
Is the Sun Conscious? by Rupert Sheldrake https://www.sheldrake.org/files/pdfs/papers/Is_the_Sun_Conscious.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/10/give-legal-rights-to-animals-trees-and-rivers-say-experts
This is essentially how theories of race started in the 1800s and continued to be perpetuated into our modern scientific paradigm.
Amaya, I love where you're going with this, and it's very similar to some thoughts that've been bubbling in the back of my mind, too. And thank you for providing references!!!
Amaya, I am deeply touched this morning by you and your spirits! Thank you.