Rites of Passage

How Christianity cheats the Weyekin through faith

Hope is the lowest level of the awakening state.

The next step is developing a faith that your hope will produce results.

Finally there is knowing. Knowing comes from applying faith and achieving the desired results.

We are currently screwed. Forever stuck in faith—no evidence—no desired outcomes—merely a false sense of enlightenment while the world still fights—that, is strongly evidenced. Divided we stand at the exit door of beliefs, waiting for the promises to arrive. We did all those things, now we near the end of the ride bewildered.

Is it too late to trade for a different model, or do we cling to time wasted like a cherished life-lesson in mediocrity?

Religion has closed off the rights of passage by turning the middle phase to the pinnacle of religious experience. Faith is merely a waypoint, not a destination, now forever stuck in the initiation phase—and the arrival at nothing. A true religion would prepare its members to be independent, to be real men and women of accomplishment through Weyekin, a vision quest, or a meaningful journey to test their readiness.

Even our children in this western culture have no defining moments of passage. They simply sit and slowly osmose their way to adulthood by navigating hoops in a system of baseless protections in nothing but belief, accepting disappointment as their fathers did, for god is testing their faith by cheating us from the final phase.

Now the test is to believe failure is endemic of gods will for humanity.

Author: jimoeba

Alternatives to big box religions and dogmas

28 thoughts on “Rites of Passage”

      1. Ah, a purists! I loved the original, too, but I’m talking about the recent series, which was truly superb.

        They find Earth, which isn’t actually Earth, but they call it Earth, and decide to start again. No technology. The fleet is flown into the sun, and this small band of survivor spread out to make a new world.

        This is the absolute last scene.

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        1. Wow John! What a sublime, euphoric Utopia that would be!!! 🥰

          Ugh, but is there some way, some safe, impartial, egalitarian, altruistic way to REMOVE our ancient Primate DNA for aggression, hoarding, greed, and self-absorption? The blind obsessive addiction to Monism while always destroying diversity and never-ending pluralism… what the Universe and Cosmos repeatedly keep showing us at every level, every decade and century? 😟

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            1. What resonated to me most was there was no opposition to shutting it all down. Nobody is very happy but we keep on doing the same thing. Wouldn’t that just be incredible though?
              Curioso, how do you think CRISPR could manage? I think 50% of humans would suffer greatly without a good drama or misery to align with.

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  3. Some powerful and truthful statements in this post.
    Quote: “A true religion would prepare its members to be independent, to be real men and women of accomplishment through Weyekin, a vision quest, or a meaningful journey to test their fortitude.” Indeed.
    Quote: “Now the test is to believe failure is endemic of gods will for humanity.” Organized religion gives no other option, does it. If you accomplish anything “good” you never do it on your own, it is God’s spirit working through you, so what are you then? Nothing. But if you do something “evil” then or course it is entirely your fault. God takes all the credit for the “good” and you get punished for all the “evil.” What a set up, hey?

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    1. You know, maybe it’s just the way I think and forever an optimist, but I sense an awakening in the human spirit. In spite of the supreme commander of our land, we will survive this and transcend this religious mind game.
      “I studied the great religions of the world and they offered me beliefs and opinions”—Ken Meadows. Here we stand at the waypoint of faith, being the epitome of religious nothingness

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      1. You are correct on your estimation of the future. The only question is, are you ready to “wait” 6 to 8 hundred years for that to happen? I know it will happen; why and how it will happen and approximately when… but the future, as we learn from reading the Dune series by Frank Herbert, is tricky even for those who teach themselves to travel there – it isn’t subject to time and certainly not to our expectations. It is however subject to endless vagaries, or permutations over which no one has any control. I stick to what I’ve seen and sensed because that gives me something reasonably solid to work with but when that changes I am also ready to change with it.

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        1. Well, it did take 900 years to dismantle the last of the Greek polytheists. I’m fond of this progression—animism to polytheism to henotheism to monotheism. The next logical step being atheism, as long as humans don’t keep trying to put bandaids on old and healed wounds.

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          1. The new “mutant” humans of earth will have nothing whatsoever to do with any of the old things, neither material, philosophical, political nor religious. Its a clean, new beginning which knows no limits to freedom and accomplishment. Also, important to me as supporter of the concept, it is entirely non-predatory.

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      2. That’s what I call spiritual evolution, Jim. But that takes time.
        Do we have enough time?
        I once thought we did, 300 plus years was nothing compared to infinity. I knew there was a battle coming, the old ways would not give up willingly. But along came populism, and they are not fighting to survive, as I expected, they are fighting to make us devolve, or disappear.
        Given life, given time, life will evolve. Time is no longer a given. Life may not be either.

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      1. They are words from European languages for similar concepts to weyekin. It might be called ward, or fylgja, or luonto, or genius, or daimon, or several other things. I usually refer to this idea as “follower”, because that is what fylgja means. “Ward” referring to a spirit had the same connotation as it does in modern English. General ideas of spirits in the environment are usually just called “wights”. These ideas are found all over the world in some form.

        I may have heard of “weyekin” at some point, but if I have I did not remember the term. But when I pulled up that link, I immediately thought “Oh, a type of follower.” The rites of passage involved though, were different. I suspect that they differed across tribes and lineages. Even the natives of the Americas don’t have just one type of rite.

        Not much for detail, but they are summaries at least. There are better more detailed writings out there on them.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fylgja
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6r%C3%B0r
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_(mythology)

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        1. The reason I chose Weyekin is it is local to the Nez Perce in my area. And it wasn’t so much what the ritual passage was, but that it was completed. Not only proving to the different tribes of the young persons readiness, but to the young person himself. Only then would he or she have a baseline to understand what they were truly capable of becoming. I think this is a stark contrast to what we have today, but I would venture that most people that exude this type of leadership quality, have gone through this process whether they realize that’s what it was or not. I was 16 when I went on my journey, three weeks alone in the wilderness. I have never been afraid since.

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  5. Baseless hope is of no value. baseless hope is “God will save me” or “we can trust the corporations to do the right thing” or “it has to be right otherwise they couldn’t put it on the Internet.”

    The only hope that is valid is “tomorrow will be better because I can make it so.”

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    1. And if you don’t get the desired results (which has still failed to materialize) after so many years, maybe trying something different might be in order. Really, hell, what have they got to lose but divisive belief.

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  6. Is it too late to trade for a different model, or do we cling to time wasted like a cherished life-lesson in mediocrity?

    Jim,

    You ask some seriously profound, awkward, and frightening questions… to the general public, yes, but primarily for those who lean TOO HEAVILY, who cling too tightly to “the road always and well traveled.” You’ve put a huge smile on my face with this post. 😉 Those comfort-zones are safe, of course. The addiction is sometimes veiled in many positive terms, descriptions, but at the core it is the epitome(?) of “the path of least resistance” and the ultimate antithesis of learning. Learning not just by what is already known from the shoulders of giants, but learning further, personally, intimately what is not known by your mistakes/failures. The latter is living most alive! Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and a whole host of bold DOERS. Yes?

    Two of my own life mottos: 1) Fear stifles, courage fulfills. And 2) Learn to fail better! Do it with humility, grace, flair (eccentric?), and always with a good dose of humor and self-degradation. 😄

    But you are spot on. Religion, especially Christianity and Islam, squelch this human fire/spirit by fear, evil (them) or God’s wraths, and most of all continued ignorance and no or poor-to-shitty broad education, higher education particularly. Why? Because higher and higher education, knowledge, and thus less ignorance (faith) is detrimental to foundations of power/control in religious institutions and wealth. Higher and higher broad, fearless education and life-experiences are incredibly empowering to the individual. That is counter-intuitive to most all religions, especially those evangelical religions… or seek to expand, colonize, and imperialize so to speak.

    Great stuff Sir! 👍🏻

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  7. Well, I don’t believe in organised religion, but there is something of a spiritual awakening in the young. We are just too old and jaded to see it.

    I was on a beach today. The plastic pollution washing up out of the sea each day is horrendous. The beach staff half-heartedly scrape some of it up, and walkers pick up scraps here and there including me. But today, I saw a family of youngsters (about 5 of them) go and ask for bin bags. They spent hours doing a beach clean, filling 3 garbage bags. They even waded into the sea to get what was still floating, dragging out plastic sacks, fishing nets and old rope.
    They did this all by themselves while most adults just watched. I went to help. I said to the eldest that it will be just as bad tomorrow, but that they are making a difference and thanked him. He said thank you back for helping. Then he held his hand over his heart. He said “I just looked at the beach and it broke my heart, I have to do something!” His German accent gave away that English was not his first language, but his words were that of the new Universal conciousness on this planet. It is coming… And these kids are acting from love, not from any other paradigm.

    So bad as things are… There is a new dawn breaking and the kids are leading us where we are too curmugingly willing to go.

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    1. A very up-lifting story. Thank you for sharing. It really inspiring to see the younger generation do things like this while the “oldsters” just sit on their duffs and (seem to) ignore what’s happening.

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