Gods of the Mountains

What do you do when you feel that there is nothing you can do? What do you do, when you feel completely without foothold in the world, feeling helpless and entirely arbitrary in the lap of the gods? The gods of the mountains who send the storms, the floods, the droughts, the lava

Cause and effect. Conjure up a cause, no matter how convoluted: it is better to feel like you have some control after-all, rather than be an arbitrary play-thing of Mother Nature. We create our own list of sins and crimes, that we believe elicited the events, and for the child this could be mother's tears, or daddy's anger. 

We convince ourselves of the direct connection between the crime and the reciprocal punishment; the cause and the effect. So convinced, that we believe this is Reality, that this is the Truth. But, there is a con in the act of being convinced; and we lose something in the exchange. The exchange of the messy, mysterious truth, for the simple, reassuring Truth.

Scapegoat, or self-sacrifice? We will either choose to blame ourselves for the uncontrollable familial events, or find someone else to blame, like the inadequate mother, or the critical father. Any story and ritual, just to feel like we have a modicum of control.

All these rituals are kept in tact by the superstition. The superstition is reinforced by a story. The story tells us, that we are not arbitrary, and that we mean something. In fact, the story tells us we mean everything. The story we tell, reminds us that we are at the centre of a universe that is spinning uncontrollably around us, that gravitates ominously around us. Geocentric self-importance. A Ptolemaic universe, where we are the earth, around which the bodies of the heavens revolve. We conjure up a story of connectedness that gives us a place and role, and a purpose. We convince ourselves. It is better after all, in the absence of understanding what the hell is going on, to be convinced of something. Isn't it!?

All that is left now, is maintenance, keep it going. Like a spinning plate on a stick, or a hypnotised hamster in an exercise wheel, entranced by the ritual; a priest hooked on the smell of the incense. We become addicted to our rituals. We depend on them for stability in our worlds. These stories and rituals of thought, feeling, and behaviour, can stay with us far into adulthood. In someways, there is an adulthood that can only truly exist once we have broken the tablets and the commandments. These are the very things that prevent us becoming the fullest version of ourselves, free from the puppet strings of co-dependency; free from the illusory cords of control.

For the co-dependent, it can seem that every word or deed has some sort of metaphysical consequence. A foot out of place, might upset the fabric of the universe, and all hell would break loose. So they learn to edit out any potentially offending behaviour, any word that may be misunderstood, behaviour that might be misinterpreted, or action that might be punishable or cause anger; policing themselves out of true being and freedom.

Guessing, like a detective on the trail of a murder that has yet to happen, developing a sense of what might happen, what people might be feeling, might be thinking. Reading the future in the tea-leaves of other's gestures, and expressions.

And so, if it is the priest who maintains the status quo, and if this is the case in our inner life, it is vital to invoke the prophet to upset the status quo of sacrifices, rituals and incantations. However, we are both the priest and the prophet, and we wrote the story that gives them both meaning.

The prophet comes to untie the invisible knots that we used to connect ourselves to the world around us. To loosen the ties that bind us, yet let us feel at least a little bit more in control. Controls, which we can be at the mercy of, like puppets on strings, yet, can also use to manipulate the world around us. 

We must learn to let go. 

This is of course terrifying. It is terrifying because you will no longer be in the centre of your system, and because you will be cut adrift, and because you will have to learn who you truly are while you are not busy being-for-others. We have to face up to the narcissistic nature of our thinking and feeling. We will no longer be able to blame everyone else for our feelings. We will no longer be able to play victim.

And so, we will face the greatest amount of inner resistance to this change, to the overthrow of the old system, the old regime, the old ways and laws. The ego will try to suppress the revolutionary movement; silencing it, giving it no room to express its desires for something else. The crackdown could lead to overwhelming inner conflict, or depressions. 

There is no question, it is a long road, and psychically we may not survive the journey, but there is something that looks more like freedom at the end of it. For some, that freedom is far too terrifying, and so they will continue to police themselves, and continue to embrace the propaganda of the state. They will continue to pledge their allegiance, and maintain their devotion to the old gods of the mountains, at the expense of their own personal liberation.