Spiritual Anarchism

Spiritual Anarchism

  Anarchism is the unspoken philosophy that all beings are created equal. That without any vocal law, the world is at balance much like a forest is at balance despite the movement of life, the changing of seasons, or the evolution of species. It's for that reason, that anarchism does not really need to be described, just experienced. And its experience exists in every wilderness.

A lie is a separation from the truth. And since the wilderness is the absolute truth, anything that separates us from the wild is a lie. So without even using words, we can lie to the world by living in an environment that separates us from the culture of our origin. We can lie by adopting a mindset composed of cosmopolitan ideas of wealth and power. We can lie by pouring pesticides all over a stretch of land we consider ours.

  The thirst for this separation is as natural as dust collecting on a mirror. Its impetus is a subtle flame behind our fear of uncertainty. The flame alights because of our need for knowing, for control, power, fame, until we build a comfortable abode with four imaginary walls, completely surrounded with pictures of ourselves, our achievements, and views of the world. Suddenly, everything becomes a lie. And consequentially, we barely notice our friends, the change of seasons, the cycle of the moon, or the welfare of our drinking water let alone our own beating heart and breath.

  Alternatively, it is just as inevitable for us to wipe the mirror alight. But it requires intention to accomplish this. Intelligence to realize a hammer exists right in front of our very eyes. Right within our glass prison called apathy. If we can develop a taste for higher consciousness, we will likely shatter those walls we are surrounded by. This action requires no written words, no dogma, or meaning. What is understood is yours and yours to hold. This is the roots of spiritual anarchism.

  The only thing the wilderness shares in common is the space between. Words are space. Meaning is space. We share them like trees share a breeze. But meaning is not the trees just as our truths are not each other and therefore can not be shared. What our real truths are are indescribable and irrelevant to a world outside of ourselves. The greatest teaching the Buddha ever taught was when he smiled at his student, Ananda, twirling a flower between his index and thumb. His truth was not his student's, and his student's truth would never be the Buddha's. Because truth itself is merely a shadow of itself. Just as a statue of God is only its shadow. Just like our naked self in front of the mirror is just a three dimensional shadow of a multidimensional being.

  And yet humanity has a history of pointing at these shadows and tracing them with chalk, and lining their border with candles and incense, and eventually walls with majestic windows that splinter the sun. Until the temples themselves obstruct the shadows, and all that's left is the memory of a shadow that once was. Then generations later no one really believes the shadow even existed. And so they abandon the building and its upkeep, and they let the candles go out, and they stop buying the incense. As we see all too often; the dust covers its integrity, but its power still remains.

  For those that still believe it was there, they naturally start retracing their steps. What came before the majestic windows, the mile high walls, the incense, the chalk? What came before a hyperreality where  flavors are named after colors, old people are cordoned off to retirement zones, and children are inundated with advertising via education; a world where a few parasitically thrive off of the many? The answer is simple. It's just outside your open window, down the road, past the subtle bridge on a private lane, in the dark drain pipe with the quiet drum of water inside. Where it trickles out into a swampy recluse tucked away from the suburban sprawl and passing cars. It is there waiting in the algae floating beside the humble moss. Just as it was always there; a shadow from the sun.

  The answer is the blank stare of a wild animal perched in the gallows and boughs of our last remaining forests. The answer is as it always was; empty, wordless, and without meaning. The same answer the Buddha twirled between his fingers. The answer is in the emptiness that was our beginning.

  The closer our lives are to the context of that beginning is how meaningful our soul is. And we can watch every world religion and their footprints leading to the path we came from. We can retrace those steps all the way back. All the way back to the source that every spiritual seeker ever pointed at, cried, and chased after until they're bleeding legs and callused hands put their bodies to their final rest. 

  Their churches, and monuments are milestones to their greatest attempt. To generations of attempts made at finding the source. But for the advanced seeker, they will have to abandon those relics, abandon all the "ologies", all the religions, the teachings. They will at the top of the mountain have to eventually relieve themselves of even their shoes, their clothing, then their flesh. Once their flesh is gone, they will have to remove every bone one by one, then the memories others had of them, and when that is all gone and forgotten, they will lastly have to abandon their own soul.

  Eventually, we all have to wander into the wilderness.