Emergent Spirituality

I’ve been pondering our trip to the Yucatan and the ruins there, including Chichen Itza. It is so complex, I am still unpacking it all.

One thing I realized is that I always lead with my concerns about inequity. Seeing the walls that kept out the ‘commoners’ was deeply disturbing and I could not view the ruins as ‘magnificent feats’ or sources of ‘sacred divinity.’  What I saw was empire, caste/class systems and the use of religions to foster obedience.

Just as today.

And just as today, it is those elites (us) with privilege of time and resources that do get to have the time for reflection, devotion and “amazing experiences.” (Think spiritual tourism, competitive spirituality, elaborate/commodified ceremony)

And this lens has stuck with me.

Remembering nothing has changed (at least for the last 10,000 years since ‘civilization’).

Empires separate and subjugate and a few rule: nobles, priests and professionals/artisans.

The temples were literally built by the ‘commoners/peasants’ and yet they were excluded. This reminds me of how native people all over the world have their wisdom and labor extracted through appropriation and the commodification of spirituality, like cacao ceremony, plant medicine, etc., often for novelty and/or the purpose of trying to address the emptiness one feels in empire.

And I think about all the religions that had structures of inequity, whose lineages and history books are steeped in the lens of superiority/enlightenment while ignoring the wisdom of the ‘peasant’ who lived in daily connection with all of life. Hands in the earth. Eyes to the stars.

That is who I want to sit with.

All of this brings me to emergent spirituality.

Our spirituality need not be about dogma that excludes. I have always been a liberation theologist and looked for these themes.

It is about honoring our heart/corazon to guide us, to help us reach back to our spiritual guidance  as our true compass.  To break free from the programming of dominant culture/colonization and remember ourselves.

I see so many of us trying to pull the pieces back together, trying to put ourselves back together, and sometimes this looks like reaching for traces of our own ancestral sacred texts, or others…and invariably there are dogmatic questions… “how should we do that? what is the ‘right’ way?” “what do the sacred texts say?”

I think, but who wrote those? priests in a temple living an elitist life?

And beyond this, it often becomes a way to try to find our worth in externals. ‘If I do the right thing, believe the right thing, I will be okay.’ It becomes the wounded self/ego trying to control rather than open to wonder, surrender, what wants to pulse through authentically.

This is where ’emergent spirituality’ comes in.

Every spiritual path emerged from a place on earth, a culture, a group of people who felt spirit move through them and the land they were on. They developed systems of understanding and being in reciprocity with these energies.  Mesoamerican cultures were diverse tribes and not the American view that everyone was an Aztec or Maya (which remains a complex group of diverse variations). Even in longstanding and well recorded traditions like Daoism, there remain differences in lineages because the diversity of our humanity and earth and all its beings, guided people differently based on who and where they were.

And we are in a new moment now. There is sweetness in remembering our ancestral lineages, pulling pieces together. But we can release trying to ‘do it right,’ and trust the original impulse of our ancestors, to be in deep connection, gratitude and interdependence that remains in our hearts.

Simply said, it is more authentic, at times, to ‘make it up’ if it means you are expressing what wants to flow through you, the Life and longing, pleasure and play, curiosity, wonder and awe.

When we built our Temazkal, we blended ancestral remembering (knowing prayer and purification are essential) with allowing what wanted to emerge. We made a mound for the altar and I asked, what feels right here? One woman suggested 13 stones for the phases of the moon, so we did that. Then the children brought quartz they had collected in the creek and made little circles in each direction. It all unfolded, just as it does in our retreats.

There was so much magic in that moment and I think of it every time I stand at that altar.

‘Making it up’ allows us to keep it simple and avoid unnecessary appropriation and commodification.

Very few modern day ‘peasants’ are overthinking any of this. They don’t have the luxury. Ceremonies and prayer are practical, unfussy and full of heart.

It’s funny what we do with our luxury. Our wounded/survival self plays alot of mind games as we try to survive in the narratives of domination based society where our luxury comes with a price, a need to control our superiority/our rightness.

I have so much to say about this, but for now, I want to suggest that you try resting and leaning back with your guidance and open to trusting your heart to guide you toward your own authentic spirituality.

What feels loving? Is it reading sacred texts? Dancing in the moonlight? Sitting by the fire? And? And?

Trust your guidance and essence to help you remember your profound ‘commonness’.

** Beautiful art by Angie Pickman**