Now you may be saying to yourself:
"Gee Bob, that animism thing sounds swanky and I'd sure like to give it a
try, but just one problem. At this point, it is like every other religion
out there in that it is asking me to accept something I cannot myself
perceive. I cannot perceive that nonhuman persons are persons nonetheless,
for instance. You may talk to trees and go into altered states at the drop
of a hat, but I don't do that. How do I get to the point of experiencing
some of this personally?"
Now first off, the very last thing you should do is take anyone's word as the last word for anything. If Jesus H. Christ himself materializes out of thin air, steps off the cross in front of your very eyes and hands you the keys to a brand new Lamborghini Murcielago, check his effing credentials and kick the tires.
And, um, maybe check yourself into a hospital man. ;) "Nurse, we need 100mg of Thorazine here...."
STP is not the racer's edge, brother. ;) ;) (You are probably an old acid head if you understood that joke.)
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| Rumors that the Messiah of 2 billion Christians is handing out free lambos is unsubstantiated as of last report... |
Second thing you should realize is that your culture very much affects what you can perceive. Your brain gets set up to arrange things in a certain worldview, and once that grid is in place your brain pretty much puts everything it sees into that framework. As is shown in various optical and even tactile illusions, your brain will see things that aren't there if it is led to expect that it is in fact there. Do a Google search for brain illusions, you can even feel pains that have no physical source if your brain believes completely enough that you should be in pain. So if your brain is set up in a culture that discounts certain experiences, it can be very difficult to experience such things even if they are totally real.
There is a third thing you should be aware of, which is that if in contrast you are highly motivated to experience something and have engaged in potentially mind-altering rituals or practices, you may believe in the validity of that experience even though it has very little to do with anything outside your head. Think of all the Christian saints who have seen super weird ass shit and reported it with a straight face. Were they all lying or insane? I very much doubt it. What probably did happen was, they had a flexible perceptual grid to begin with and then started whipping themselves (sometimes literally) into a religious froth. I am perfectly convinced that in such a state, you could see things that would make a 300mcg hit of Owsley at the Trips Festival seem like an average day at the accounting office. Yes, hard as it may be for someone who has not experienced it, otherwise sane people can absolutely trip out of their gourds without any drugs whatsoever. I've done it. Some of my most extreme experiences of this sort actually did happen when I was a Christian. This flexible perceptual grid is what makes people in other cultures shaman material, but simply having it doesn't make you one, and probably to some degree you can open up a relatively closed perceptual framework if you set your mind to it. Most people don't want a loose perceptual framework for several good reasons, and others rely on hallucinogenic drugs to shake up the grid. The drugs are a tool, you don't have to take them, and if you have any natural gifts in this direction maybe you shouldn't take them.
So, I am asking you to shake up your fundamental perceptual system, and then realize that you can abuse such a shook up perceptual system to trip yourself out like a Grateful Dead groupie, which you probably should try to avoid doing more or less. Sounds a little scary and you probably don't want to have a damn thing to do with it. In a different world, I would say that this is just as it should be. ;) In a different world, one that had people whose culturally sanctioned job more or less was to deal with this stuff, I would totally say that most people shouldn't go there. Problem is, we not only don't have many such people, we don't have a social place for their role or even culturally acknowledge that they exist. Under these circumstances, we need as many people who are capable of understanding this stuff as we can possibly find. Given a choice between you juggling a perceptual firecracker and our society juggling an existential atom bomb of total alienation from nature and reality, I'd rather you juggled the firecracker.
You do have an ally in shaking up your perceptual grid in an animist direction however, which is that you were probably born an animist. You had to unlearn animism, which means that you can re-learn it. Ever look at the illustrations in old children's books and fairy tales? Illustrations that have animals wearing clothes and living in cottages and walking around under waving trees under a smiling Sun? Ya, animism. There is a reason why the stories are written and illustrated that way.
Most young children do view animals and plants and other things as possessing agency, I remember vividly that I did as a child. Part of this is no doubt a child's inability to understand other things as being different from themselves, so that if the child hides when they are shy, they might think that the sun hiding behind a cloud is also being shy. Part of it however is that the Western perceptual framework that only people are subjects and everything else is an object has not yet closed around the child, so that the child can identify agency in non-human things sometimes when adults cannot see such an agency, and that this does not necessarily indicate a cognitive defect in the child but in the adult.
You have another ally in your own body, which may be snoozing away unhappily in the shadow of your left-brain dominance but which is just waiting for the right moment to throw off the jacket and tie, rebel, and act like a living animal again. Even non-shamanic people in animist societies have much more direct experience with animism as a part of their everyday life because that is something that is part of THEIR perceptual grid, and it really shouldn't take that much trouble to incorporate it into your own grid too. Millions of completely non-spooky and non-shamanic people do it all the time in places where animism is more a part of life.
So this is my first lesson in animism for you.
1. Go get a chair, wear loose comfortable clothes, and sit outdoors somewhere where you can see and hear plants and insects and squirrels or whatever.
2. Set aside like 30 minutes in which you fully expect to be doing absolutely and completely nothing. Do not think about what you were doing before this, don't think about what you are going to be doing after this, I want your attention 100% focused on the present. I don't want you to think at all whatsoever, I only want you to experience without thinking.
3. I do not want you to expect anything, I do not want you to not expect anything. I don't want you to believe anything, I don't want you to be skeptical. In so far as is possible, attend completely to your senses and your body and do not think at all. What I do want you to do is to pay full attention to the songs and activities of birds or bugs or plants in your immediate environment. Are the birds or insects paying attention to you? Are some curious and some going on their oblivious way (like commuters on our own streets perhaps). If you happen to be lucky enough to have a jumping spider nearby (there are lots in this area), see if it is checking you out. They are often intensely curious about humans, there is no need to be afraid of them.
4. When the 30 minutes is up, or "when you think you are ready", I want you to attend fully to a single plant nearby, preferably a tree though I realize that some people live in deserts and grasslands. A tree is optimal however. Place one hand very close to but not touching the tops of some leaves, and put the other the same way except underneath the leaves. Do you feel anything? Touch the trunk of the tree, and place your hands various distances away from the trunk. Smell the tree, examine the stems and leaves. Stand at its base and look upwards. Attend to what you experience, but don't think about it. Only experience, don't judge.
If the only thing this exercise achieves is momentarily plugging you back into your own body, I will consider it a success. You may experience more than this, you may not, but even if it gets you to pay attention to your own and other bodies it is worthwhile for this purpose. Do this a few times a week, see what happens. That's pretty much the first step for most people, learning how to live in their actual senses instead of just in their heads. There are other things you can do to de-alienate yourself from your actual senses and body: dancing, chanting, extemporaneous Tai Chi. Breath and voice are especially powerful, many animist traditions and also Eastern religions view breath as a sort of manifestation of spirit. Even in the Old Testament we see signs of this. The more time you spend getting back into your body and senses, the more you will be able to validate animism in your own experience, not as an abstract principle.
So throw the chalk and clipboard away, burn your necktie, lift your hands like a monkey and dance. ;)
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