Animism is a simple idea, and like a great many simple ideas, it’s meaning tends to elude many people.
Animism is related to the word animate, and what it means is that everything that exists has the ability to exist because it is animate.
The idea seems easy to dismiss when staring at a rock and not seeing anything we associate with life, but in fact, all the materials that go into making your body have no more life than the rock does. In modern thinking, there is no reason you are alive, no clear reason that is. Now of course, it’s natural to reject such an absurd notion that people aren’t actually alive, but people don’t really go into what that means. If there is no real difference between my body and the body of a pencil, then where does life come in?
In medicine, there is a whole study in ethics on defining when a person is alive or dead. There are very grey areas. I myself just trust my experience, and I see life. So, whatever makes things exist is alive, and since there are many things, doesn’t that mean there are many forms of life?
In animism, you have relationships just as in common thinking, but the relationships are broader and deeper than common models. We tend to see people as objects in today’s world. The cashier is a vending machine, and we often get quite unpleasant when we think they are broken, not giving us what we want fast enough, but the truth is the reverse. Even a vending machine is not a machine as we understand them, and when they break, it’s because it’s in their nature to break. It is their way to break.
Built in obsolescence. Yes, but it goes deeper than human spiteful engineering. The materials that were used to make the machine are just as alive as our teeth and skin, and they may or may not like how they are existing in their current state.
Everything has a life span. The life span is defined when engineering anything. This is very true, and everything has an afterlife as well, but perhaps it’s important to understand something at this point. The living world is all inclusive, and the spirit world is this world. It‘s not some other place, though it doesn’t exclude other places either. Mars has its own spirit world as well.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~