"Mystics spend life times dedicated to this "one taste" that transpersonal philosopher Ken Wilber speaks of. Within animist traditions this "one taste" quite often is a given, the foundation that all other experience is built upon, a humble awareness and a simple point of view not held on high as the ultimate transcendent experience but the basis of all experience."

An animist manifesto

By Graham Harvey


All that exists lives

All that lives is worthy of respect

You don’t have to like what you respect

Not liking someone is no reason for not respecting them

Respecting someone is no reason for not eating them

Reasons are best worked out in relationship – especially if you are looking for reasons to eat someone – or if you are looking for reasons not to be eaten

If you agree that all that exists is alive and worthy of respect, it is best to talk about ‘persons’ or ‘people’ rather than ‘beings’ or ‘spirits’, let alone ‘biomechanisms’, ‘resources’, ‘possessions’, and ‘things’

The world is full of persons (people if you prefer), but few of them are human

The world is full of other-than-human persons

The world is full of other-than-oak persons

The world is full of other-than-hedgehog persons

The world is full of other-than-salmon persons

The world is full of other-than-kingfisher persons

The world is full of other-than-rock persons…

‘Other-than’ has at least three references:

it reminds us that we are persons in relationship with others,

it reminds us that many of our closest kin are human, while the closest kin of oaks are oaks, so we talk most easily with humans while rocks talk most easily with other rocks…

it reminds us to speak first of what we know best (those closest to us)

Make that four references:

it reminds us to celebrate difference as an opportunity to expand our relationships rather than seeing it as a cause of conflict or conquest

All life is relational and we should not collapse our intimate alterities into identities

Others and otherness keep us open to change, open to becoming, never finally fixed in being

Alterities resist entropy and encourage creativity through rationality, sociality (or, as William Blake said, ‘enmity is true friendship’)

Animism is neither monist nor dualist, it is only just beginning when you get beyond counting one, two… At its best it is thoroughly, gloriously, unashamedly, rampantly pluralist

Respect means being cautious and constructive

It is cautiously approaching others — and our own wishes,

It is constructing relationships, constructing opportunities to talk, to relate, to listen, to spend time in the face-to-face presence and company of others

It is taking care of, caring for, caring about, being careful about…

It can be shown by leaving alone and by giving gifts

believers in ‘human rights’, for example, demonstrate their belief in rights not only by supporting legislation to protect individuals from states, companies and majorities, but by not insisting on hogging the whole road or pavement, not insisting on another human getting out of the way on a busy street…

You don’t have to hug every tree to show them respect but you might have to let trees grow where they will—you might have to move your telephone lines or greenhouse

You might have to build that road away from that rock or that tree

Hugging trees that you don’t know may be rude – try introducing yourself first

Just because the world and the cosmos is full of life does not make it a nice and easy place to live. Lots of persons are quite unfriendly to others. Many see us as a good dinner. They might respect us as they eat us. Or they may need education. Like us, they might learn best in relationship with others who show respect even to those they don’t like, and especially to those they like the taste of.

Although evolution has no aim, life is not pointless. The purpose of life is to be good people — and good humans or good rocks or good badgers. What we have to find out is what ‘good’ means where we are, when we are, with whom we are, and so on. It is certainly wrapped up with the word ‘respect’ and all the acts that implies.

Since all that exists lives—and since all that lives is, in some senses, to some degree, conscious, communicative and relational—and since many of the persons with whom we humans share this planet have a far better idea of what’s going on than we do—we can now stop all the silliness about being the pinnacle of creation, the highest achievement of evolution, the self-consciousness of the world or cosmos… We’re just part of the whole living community and we’ve got a lot to learn. Our job isn’t to save the planet, or speak for the animals, or evolve towards higher states. Many other-than-human people are already happily self-aware, thank you very much, and if we paid attention we might learn a few things ourselves. By the way, we’re probably not alone in mistaking ourselves for the most important people in the world: hedgehogs probably think they are (but they’re spiky flea-ridden beasts so why believe them?!).

Um, when I said that ‘all that exists lives’, I’m not sure about plastic bags.

But I am certain that we should not treat objects as mere resources, somehow available or even given to us, or humanity, to use as we will or wish.

The same goes for words like ‘substances’, especially those that exist within plant and fungal persons. There are substances, but theyaren’t ours until they are given, gifted to us. And then we’d better find out why we’ve been given whatever gifts we get. And we’d better ask how those gifts might be best used (whether its for pleasure, power, wisdom or whatever). This is especially true if the plant or mushroom person who offers us the gift substance has to lose their life in the process.

Maybe sometimes the mushrooms just want to help us join in the big conversation that’s going on all around us. But not all rocks, fish, plants, fungi, birds, animals or humans want to talk with us:

Sometimes they want to be quiet

Sometimes they want to be rude

Sometimes they have other concerns

Sometimes they don’t understand

Sometimes we don’t speak the language

Sometimes we don’t know the appropriate gift

The precise and proper way to show respect depends where you are, who you are, who you are respecting and what they expect. Gifts, like swords and words, have more than one side. Alcohol is a gift in one place, a poison somewhere else. Handshakes are friendly in one place, shows of strength elsewhere. Kissing is respectful to some people, an assault on others. Respectful etiquette is hard work but its reward is fuller participation in a large and exciting community of life.

Sometimes we need shamans to do the talking for us

Sometimes we need shamans to do the talking to us

Animism is just over the bridge that closes the Cartesian gap by knowing how to answer the question, What is your favourite colour? Perhaps it is the bridge. Perhaps there is no gap and animists are people who refuse to collude with the illusion

Animism is often discovered by sitting beneath trees, on hills, in rivers, with hedgehogs, beside fires… Animism is better communicated in trickster tales, soulful songs, powerful poems, rousing rituals, and/or elemental etiquette than in manifestos.

[Originally published By Strange Attractor Journal Journal number three . We would like to thank Graham for giving us the permission to publish this for the first time on line!]

Eat your neighbours
by Graham Harvey
"If animism can be seen in rituals addressing living beings who we wish to eat, it is also evident in an attitude to the world as a community rather than a resource. It is not only peculiar activities but also everyday living. As members of an ever expanding family of life, we have no right to take but are invited to share, to participate, to engage and relate. Animist elders slowly teach younger animists about ways of being that negotiate the difficulty of eating neighbouring, related beings. They show others how to pay attention, to listen, to know whether permission is given to gain nutrition and pleasure from consuming others. They also indicate what is inappropriate, arrogant or insulting behaviour towards others. The precise nature of these understandings and actions varies from one animist culture to another. But the common theme is always “respect”.

There is another sense in which we eat our neighbours. We’ve become familiar with the notion of a “carbon footprint”: the effect our consumption of fossil fuels has in the world around us. In the context of global climate changes we’ve caused, we need to consider not only our carbon footprints but the results of all our footsteps. Animism has a harder edge than is implicit in the comparison of fuel-use to footprints! We are inescapably part of a world of eating and being eaten. We can only do “violence with impunity” in small scale and local ways, and even here only with considerable care. The massive acts of violence that support modernist consumerist lives have no place in any form of respect for life."
www.newstatesman.com/200703010007

Bioregional animism is by definition relating to the land/bioregion as the source of ones religion and culture. It is a form of Personalism where other then human persons including the whole bioregion itself is related to and communicated with as a person, not as if it was a person but as a person. Animism does not personify other then human persons, animals forces of nature, plants, the land and sky, it gives up human dominion over the designation of who and what a person is. Bioregional Animism does not treat animals, plants, forces of nature, or the land and sky as tools, or symbols, for humans to use but instead views these other then human persons as just that… persons who can be communicated with, who relationships and partnerships and allegiances can be formed with for living in mutually beneficial and reciprocal ways; In both the physical and spiritual world. Bioregional Animism sees that ones larger self is the eco-region one lives within and that animist spiritual practice, cosmology, ontology, culture, and life practices are all expression of that larger ecological and transpersonal self.
In a way Bioregional animism is a response to the need for the rediscovery and rebirth or earth embracing traditions, and attempts to embody the ideal slogan of thinking globally but acting locally. Many people are drawn to shamanism in an attempt to find this way of relating to self and earth just to find that there is no shamanism in reality, shamans are healers and spiritual leaders designated by an animist tradition or culture, in other words all shamans of the world are animists not shamanists. Bioregional animism attempts to assist others in discovering the spiritual tradition which is an expression of the land under their feet and the sky over their head which fills their lungs and moves through ones heart. Bioregional animism attempts to show us that the spirit of the shaman as well as the animist is derived from and is an expression of the bioregion, of the land itself and forms from deeply intimate relationships with the life and spirit of those around us.

Bioregional animism works with a base inspiration from the work of Graham Harvey’s New Animism www.animism.org.uk/. As well as with modern concepts of bioregionalism by such authors on the subject as Kirkpatrick Sales, www.schumachersociety.org/publi...3.html
Please read His book Dwellers in the Land: A Bioregional Vision. As well as Harvey’s revolutionary work on new animism titled, Animism: Respecting the Living World.
For more information on bioregional animism please read our blog.
bioregionalanimism.blogspot.com/
If you would like to meet other bioregional animists as well as discuss bioregional animism with Little lightening bolt and other bioregional animist our online forum can be found at tribes…
tribes.tribe.net/bioregionalanimism

Bioregional animism is the Life vision of Little Lightening Bolt of the Cascadia bioregion and the Tumwawa eco-region. It is not an idea or concept or philosophy it’s a vision that he carries and offers as a gift to all who may need to carry such a vision themselves. Little Lightening Bolt can be contacted via the tribe’s bioregional animism forum. He is currently writing a book entitled Bioregional Animism: Finding the spirit of the shaman in your back yard... with out haveing to culturaly appropriate....

"everything man does, coyote did first...." Apache saying...

"Consciousness is the positive charge of the atom." ~Nobuoni +

"While the firelight's aglow, strange shadows from the flames will grow,
Till things we've never seen will seem familiar." -Robert Hunter

''The Spice extends life
The Spice expands consciousness
The Spice is vital for space travel''
~Dune

A SHORT HISTORY OF MEDICINE:
"Doctor, I have an ear ache."
500 A.D. - "Here, eat this root."
1000 A.D. - "That root is heathen, say this prayer."
1850 A.D. - "That prayer is superstition, drink this potion."
1940 A.D. - "That potion is snake oil, swallow this pill."
1985 A.D. - "That pill is ineffective, take this antibiotic."
2000 A.D. - "That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root!"
~Ron Lawrence, MD

"When you find your place where you are, practice begins."
- Dogen

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
-Buckminster Fuller

"All forces, all elements, all life forms are the biomass of the tree."
- Bill Mollison

We are the land dancing.
We live a life of prayer, of reverence for the land,
a life of ceremony,
so that we may stay alive
and connected to god.
God is present in the land:
the soil, the sky, the clouds,
the seasons, the climate.
And we are part of that design.
-Joseph Rael

"Dividing the universe up into living and non-living things has no meaning. Animate and inanimate matter are inseparably interwoven and life, too, is enfolded throughout the totality of the universe. Even a rock is in some way alive,... for life and intelligence are present not only in all of matter, but in 'energy,' 'space,' 'time,' the fabric of the entire universe." - David Bohm

"you are what you eat."
-mom
"You are who you eat drink and breath!"
-Bioregional animists
"Food is people."
-Bioregional animists

"The universe is composed of subjects to commune with, not objects to be exploited. Everything has its own voice." "Some how we have become autistic. We don't hear the voices."-Thomas Berry

"The defense of the Earth is not Lord Man protecting something less than himself. Rather, it is a humble joining with Earth, becoming the rainforest, the desert, the mountain, the wilderness, in defense of itself."- Dave Foreman founder of Earth first!


" The box is full of salmon, and a man sits atop of this box. Long ago man hired armed guards to keep any one from eating his fish. The many people who sit next to the empty river starve to death. But they do not die of starvation. They die of belief. Everyone believes that the man atop the box owns the fish. The soldiers believe it, and they will kill to protect the illusion. The others believe it enough and they are willing to starve. But the truth is that there is a box, there is an emptied river, there is a man sitting atop the box, there are guns, and there are starving people."

Low synergy cultures or "aggressive cultures reward actions that emphasis personal gain, even when and especially when that gain harms others in the community."
"Nonagressive cultures eliminate the polarity between selfishness and altruism by making the two identical: In a "good" culture, the man atop the box from the parable above would have been scorned, despised, exiled, or other wise prevented from damaging the community. To behave in such a selfish and destructive manner would be considered insane. Even had he conceived such a perposturous idea as hording all of the fish, he would have been absolutely disallowed because the box was held at the expense of the majority, as well as at the expense of future generations. For him to be a rich and influential member of a "good" ( high synergy culture) culture, he would have had to give away as many or all of the fish. the act of giving would have made him rich in esteem. But he never would have been allowed to strip the river. There would have been no fear with the regard to the "gift" of fish, for social arrangements would have made him secure in his knowledge that if his next fishing trip failed his more successful neighbors would feed him just as this time he had fed them." Derrick Jensen A Language Older than Words...


From the teachings of Lao Tzu:
There was an old man in a village, very poor, but even kings were jealous of him because he had a beautiful white horse. Kings offered fabulous prices for the horse, but the man would say, "This horse is not a horse to me, he is a person. And how can you sell a person, a friend?" The man was poor but he never sold the horse.
One morning, he found that the horse was not in the stable. The whole village gathered and they said, "You foolish old man! We knew that someday the horse would be stolen. It would have been better to sell it. What a misfortune."
The old man said, "Don't go so far as to say that. Simply say that the horse is not in t he stable. This is the fact; everything else is a judgment. Whether it is a misfortune or a blessing I don't know, because this is just a fragment. Who knows what is going to follow it?"
People laughed at the old man. They had always known he was a little crazy. But after fifteen days, suddenly one night the horse returned. He had not been stolen, he had escaped into the wild. And not only that, he brought a dozen wild horses with him.
Again the people gathered and they said, "Old man, you were right. This was not a misfortune, it has indeed proved to be a blessing." The old man said, "Again you are going too far. Just say that the horse is back. Who knows whether it is a blessing or a curse? It is only a fragment. You read a single word in a sentence- how can you judge the whole book?". This time the people could not say much, but inside they knew that he was wrong. Twelve beautiful horses had come.
The old man had a son who started to train the wild horses. Just a week later he fell from a horse and his legs were broken. The people gathered again, and again they judged. They said, "Again you proved right! It was a misfortune. Your only son has lost the use of his legs, and in your old age he was you only support. Now you are poorer than ever." The old man said. "You are obsessed with judgment. Don't go that far. Say only that my son has broken his legs. Nobody knows whether this is a misfortune or a blessing. Life comes in fragments and more is never given to you.
It happened that after a few weeks the country went to war, and all the young men of the town were forcibly taken for the military. Only the old man's son was left, because he was crippled. The whole town was crying and weeping, because it was a losing fight and they knew that most of the young men would never come back.
They came to the old man and said, "You were right, old man- this has proved a blessing. Maybe your son is crippled, but he is still with you. Our sons are gone forever.
The old man said again, " You go on and on judging. Nobody knows! Only say this: that your sons have been drafted and my son has not been drafted. But only God, the total, knows whether it is a blessing or not."

"We not only live on this planet, but this planet lives in us, in our minds, our imaginations, our dreams, and in our genes."- David Orr

To Gaea, mother of all of life and oldest

of gods, I sing,

You who make and feed and guide all

creatures of the earth,

Those who move on your firm and radiant

land, those who wing

Your skies, those who swim your seas, to

all these you have given birth;

Mistress, from you come all our harvests,

our children, our night and day,

Yours the power to give us life, yours

to take away.
To you, who contain everything,
To Gaea, mother of all, I sing.
—Homeric Hymn to Earth

"The further one travels, the less one knows." Lao Tzu

"If there’s a path that means someone has all ready been there." Eric Zvonchenko
"If there’s no path, no one has ever been there…." Marc McCoy

"Listening not to me but to the Logos, it is wise to acknowledge that all things are one. "
-Heraclitus, fr. 118 (p. 102)

"We carry the heart of the world within our own heart, and through living our destiny we nourish the heart of the world."

"May we be those who shall renew this existence."
-Zarathustra

"For those who are awake the cosmos is one."
- Heraclitus

"God enters the soul through a wound."- John Bunyan

"Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have."
- Doris Mortman

"A real shaman is just the universe knowing itself as a human for a reason, a good reason... and expressing that." -Marcus R. McCoy

"The owners of these plants are really like gods. They are the Maninkari. It is them who help us. Their existence has no end or disease. That is the reason why they tell the Ayahuasquero to put his head in the very dark house: 'If you want me to help you, do it well, then. I give you this power not just for you but for everyone.'" -Amazonian shaman

"I have never seen any evidence of evil in nature out side of the dellusions of man." -Chen Cho Dorje


"That which blossomed forth as cosmic egg fifteen billion years ago now blossoms forth as oneself, as one's family, as one's community of living beings, as our blue planet, as our ocean of galaxy clusters. The same fecund source -- then and now; the same numinous energy -- then and now. To enter the omnicentric unfolding universe is to taste the joy of radical relational mutuality." --Brian Swimme

"Reality is better then it seems."
~Huston Smith

"Shaman are born, not made, in every culture, even the declining west." ~Chuchuhuasi

"in bocca al lupo" italian saying...

"while the medicine people take their work very seriously, they never take themselves seriously."~ don Manuel Quispe

"with out friction there is no traction."~Fred Kofman

"Being singular plural means the essence of Being is only as coessence. . . . . if Being
is being-with, then it is, in its being-with, the “with” that constitutes Being: the with
is not simply an addition."
~ Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural

"All shamans are engulfed by demons. Those that free themselves are the medicine people."- ucandoit

"oh absence of love
so lovingly unloving...
thank you for showing
in your face
your true nature
i will walk blessed
form this day
until ever..."
~chicho dorge

"Life is living up to the expectations of your own prayers..."
~ chincho dorge

"One lantern, many sides of multicoloured glass, different lights, but the same source. you don't follow the light, but the source of the light, the flame. " ~ Woorama

" Imagine what it was like before we had traditions before we had cultures and "people" that primordial time when all that we know now was being born... that time is still right now..." ~Chencho dorge

"Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd.
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can
tell"
~ Walt Whitman

The problem is the solution
• Transform challenges into opportunities.
• Match the output of a component with the needs of another.
~whole systems design philosophy....

"The greatest challenge the teacher faces is not teaching what they know, the greatest challenge is teaching how to learn."
~ ChenCho Dorge

"If Source brings you to it - Source will bring you through it". ...... and you are that source... thats whats so amazing...

"The highest truth cannot be put into words.
Therefore the greatest teacher has nothing to say.
He simply gives himself in service, and never worries." -Lao Tzu

"If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space."

~Dr. Alan Zimmerman

"all plants are carnivours... they eat you in the end."
Bill Mollison

" I if you cant find truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?"
Dogen Zenji, circa 1250

"the way to the world of the sacred is through the place of our dwelling"
Thomas Berry

'You dont have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundered miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.'
- Mary Oliver

"with out the pointy hat the wizard is just an old man witha beard..."
terry pratchet

"Necessity knows no law."
-Irish proverb

" Its right to be wrong."
-chen cho dorge

Sylvan sharpness,
untangle the knots,
go like the flame,
that draws the moth,
guided by instinct,
not what your eyes want,
mean what you say,
if that's what your heart wants,
see how things grow,
fed by their roots,
use up all you know,
so you can renew,
a seed in the dark,
from it comes every thing,
root stem and leaf,
its essence in everything.
-test dept. Zazen

"Civilizations are not terminals but wayside camps, pitched at sunset and broken at dawn so that they can travel on again."
--Laurens van der Post

In the West-African language of Akan, there is a word, Sankofa, which means “returning to the past in order to move forward.

“The principles on which the universe functions are three: differentiation, increasing subjectivity, and communion. A truly human intimacy.... is needed. We are returning to our native place after a long absence, meeting once again.....” -Thomas Berry

"Our old ways are mostly memories, but our ideas march to their beat."
-Squaxin tribal elders...

"We're all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively.
Life is just a dream. And we are the imagination of ourselves."
- Bill Hicks

WHAT IS THE NEW COSMOLOGY?

In 1543 Copernicus announced to a startled Europe that the Earth was not stationary, but was sailing rapidly through space as it spun around the Sun. This was difficult news to take in all at once, but over time the Europeans reinvented their entire civilization in light of this strange new fact about the Universe. The fundamental institutions of the medieval world, including the monarchies, the church, the feudal economic system, and the medieval sense of self, melted away as a radically different civilization was constructed.

We live in a similar moment of breakdown and creativity. The cosmological discovery that shatters nearly everything upon which the modern age was built is the discovery that the Universe came into existence 13.7 billion years ago and is so biased toward complexification that life and intelligence are now seen to be a nearly inevitable construction of evolutionary dynamics. Our new challenge is to reinvent our civilization. The major institutions of the modern period, including that of agriculture and religion and education and economics, need to be re-imagined within an intelligent, self-organizing, living Universe, so that instead of degrading the Earth's life systems, humanity might learn to join the enveloping community of living beings in a mutually enhancing manner. This great work will surely draw upon the talents and energies of many millions of humans from every culture of our planet and throughout the rest of the 21st century.

- Brian Swimme

This is essential Brian Swimme...from The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos:

"You've seen pictures of yourself as an infant; when you look at them, you're looking at yourself. The baby then becomes aware of its own beauty. Aren't you the further development of that baby? Well, of course, and yet the baby seems somehow other than you.

Brian Swimme"So, too, with the star. We know we are the further development of the star, and yet we know that we are somehow different from the star. The star emerges into self-reflexive awareness of its beauty and creative work through the human mind.

"The universe is a single multiform event. There is no such thing as a disconnected thing. Each thing emerged from the primeval fireball, and nothing can remove the primordial link this establishes with every other thing in the universe, no matter how distant. You and everything you do and become are further articulations of the primal fireball...

"We were there in the distant, terrifying furnace of the primeval fireball. Not as mere witnesses, either, but as central to the event. Our bodies remember that event, exulting in the majesty of the night sky precisely because all suffered it together. The planet is a rare and holy relic of every event of twenty billion years of cosmic development.

"When we deepen our awareness of the simple truth that we are here through the creativity of the stars, we begin to feel fresh gratitude. When we reflect on the labor required for our life, reverence naturally wells up within us. Then, in the deepest regions of our hearts, we begin to embrace our own creativity. What we bestow on the world allows others to live in joy. Such a stupendous mystery...!

"Think of it. This supreme dynamic of love, of allurement and evocation, in action since the beginning of the universe, after billions of years becomes aware of itself. Life-enhancing and being evoking allurement knows itself, the magic of creating life and being now reflects upon its own mystery! What creatures, what living beings, what persons will follow us, entering life and the great mystery of love precisely because of our work!

check out swimme video here...
meaningoflife.tv/video.php