Thursday 22 September 2011

No Gods, No Masters


Now there's a concept which makes me wrinkle my nose in distaste - mastery.

It's very much a part of the Wetiko culture - a core concept, perhaps.
Mastery over the planet, 'nature', women, children, workers, fields of study, animals,instruments, feelings, thoughts, ideas...yourself. Somehow this culture has embedded in it the principle that a true human exhibits, or at the very least aspires to domination over some subject. Which turns everything into objects.

The only real sin may be thought of as just this - treating others as objects. And that's precisely what thousands of years of patriarchally-driven culture has inculcated into us all - the need to master, to control. To subjugate something or someone else to yourself is, I submit, to miss in large part the point of being Here.

For standing in the flow is not to block it. And Being in the Tao is not to oppose it. it all flows, and you with it. Unless you have bought into the Wetiko culture completely, you need to swim with Life rather than try to command the tides. To allow your entire soul to enter into participation with the mystery and ecstasy of the rush of water, the swirl of waves, the swell and fall of gravity.

Even our gods are not our masters. Hecate Herself is not in charge, even when She overshadows me: She merely has access to more dimensions than this human does at present. But She and I are co-Being. Together, making and shaping and creating and destroying...For all Time.

So no, my fellows. No gods, no masters. No gurus, no saints-in-charge, no over-demons and no control. Just Being, now and always, to the very ends of the Cosmos.

1 comment:

  1. Totally agree - excellent way of putting it. Semantically however, I ascribe very different meanings to the words domination (power-over, as you describe) and mastery (of self, used in the warrior sense). I guess I would use mastery of others to mean power-over, and mastery of the self to mean power-within (that we wield together with others as power-with). In other words, to me mastery is similar to power, in that it can be healthy or toxic.

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