Spiritual Dogma and the Wild

(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Science isn't supposed to have dogma in it.

Dogma is supposedly supposed to be relegated to

religion or spirituality and a lot of people

have walked away from dogma, myself included.

One of the reasons why science always kind

of amazes me and intrigues me is we

think about what we know and a lot

of times those base assumptions aren't made on

empirical data but rather what we think we

know and of course we don't know what

we don't know until we know what we

don't know.

Yeah, try figuring that out.

So once somebody realizes something, and right now

I've been reading a lot of books about

animal senses, animal emotional lives, things that I

have known for a very long time that

is very good to get actual scientific data

on, that you know these the fields change

and if we think about it the world

has changed so much in the past 10

years, the past 20 years, never mind you

know over the course of a century, two

centuries, five centuries, over a thousand or two

thousand years.

The world is constantly changing and to me

I think our spirituality and our connections that

we make should also change as well.

So I'm going to get a little esoteric

and a little philosophical on today's episode of

the Feathermane Soul Wisdom Show.

You're listening to Feathermane Soul Wisdom, a podcast

for those looking to rediscover their wild spirit

in spite of life's challenges.

If you're living with a chronic illness or

neurodivergent or consider yourself disabled and you're looking

to connect with your own inner untamed essence,

then this show is for you.

Your host is Kit Kaelstoe, Wild Spirit Storyteller.

Thanks for listening and now on to the

episode.

Hello and welcome back to this week's episode

of the Feathermane Soul Wisdom Show.

I'm Kit Kaelstoe, Wild Spirit Storyteller, yoga and

meditation teacher as well as a grief specialist

and I want to talk today about why

our spirituality should be fluid and why we

should reject dogma in our spirituality but also

reject dogma in our religion and how the

wild rejects dogma.

Just want to warn you this is going

to get a little esoteric, a little philosophical.

I also want to just put up right

up front here that it is not my

intention to convert anybody, to change anybody's spiritual

views.

A lot of my listeners, a lot of

you have a religion or a spiritual practice

that works for you and that's wonderful.

I don't want to force you to change

anything.

You don't want to or aren't ready to

change.

I do however want to examine or maybe

we can even say deconstruct some of the

more dogmatic aspects of religion and spirituality that

have been problematic and maybe think about why

those things are there and why embracing change

is probably one of the best things that

we can do for our well-being.

I want to kind of switch gears a

little bit and talk about the tarot which

is full of archetypes.

One of the scariest tarot cards in the

tarot deck to a lot of people is

the tower and in the Rider Waite tarot

deck the tower is shows like a tower

like maybe a tower that's attached to a

castle and it's getting struck by lightning.

The top of the tower which looks like

a crown is getting blown off and there

are two figures tumbling from the tower.

So if you look at the tower card

you can look at it and be like

you know that's not good.

However what the tower card traditionally represents is

having your life or a situation or an

organization basically torn down to its foundations.

So you can rebuild that foundation stronger and

more resilient than it was before and then

you can move forward coming from a place

that is much more grounded and much stronger.

So when the tower card comes up it

generally indicates rapid and sudden change which can

be scary and I want to acknowledge that.

So what does that have to do with

dogma and spirituality?

I want to take a moment even though

long-time listeners know that my idea of

spirituality is being connected to something larger than

yourself.

That could be a community, that could be

the universe in general, that could be some

nameless formless divine energy, that could be a

specific deity or a pantheon or group of

specific deities.

When we are connected to something larger than

ourselves when we are connected in a spiritual

way it has a tendency to pull us

out of ourselves and make us see the

connections between ourselves and other people.

Religion and again long-time listeners will have

heard me define it this way.

One of the definitions of religion and one

that I really liked is making order out

of chaos.

And religion is a set of rules.

We could look at Mary Douglas's work which

is purity and taboo.

We could look at you know all the

different thinkers but basically religion is a way

to make order out of chaos.

And in many cases this was done through

a dividing line between the sacred and the

not sacred, the sacred and the profane.

And there are some groups and some religions

that have very stark lines between the sacred

and the profane.

Personally I tend to be drawn to traditions

and towards ways of thinking about spirituality that

tend to see the sacred and the profane

as almost co-existent.

That you could be doing something very mundane

like eating a meal and that could be

a very sacred very spiritual act just as

that could be a very mundane act.

An idea talking about mindfulness and meditation is

if you're loading the dishwasher or if you

do dishes by hand be in that moment

feel all the senses of that moment the

dish in your hand maybe the water running

over your hands the squeak against of the

soap and the rag against the clean dish

or how you place the dish into the

dishwasher rack and place it in an orderly

way with all of the other dishes the

different ritual motions you go through that is

a case where something very ordinary and some

would say very profane because dirty dishes sometimes

get gross can be very sacred and can

bring that sacredness into our life.

To me a fluid sense of of spirituality

allows that sacredness to imbue our lives even

in the most mundane of moments.

In order to do that a lot of

times we have to actually examine the rules

that if we are following a specific religious

tradition that we need to look at the

rules and the practices of that religious tradition

and find out where they came from do

they hold meaning for us today and just

like science if we discover that something no

longer holds meaning for us today we need

to be willing and open-minded enough to

explore new possibilities and the question that will

inevitably come up is why if what we

are doing is working for us now if

what we are doing was okay for our

parents our grandparents our great-grandparents so on

and so forth then surely what we're doing

is okay for us now why would we

even want to think about changing and this

is where we get into the concept of

lived religion and lived religion is different from

a dogmatic type of religion and that lived

religion is how we express our religious or

spiritual beliefs in a day-to-day basis

as we live our lives hence lived religion

and I think this is important because a

spirituality a spiritual practice a religion that we

cannot do and incorporate into our daily lives

is going to be one that is very

difficult for us to follow and I'm going

to use a cause that's near and dear

to my heart which is disability or autistic

liberation to kind of explain this so if

part of your religion is to have a

very physical practice and you can define that

however you wish let's say you are going

door to door to talk to people let's

say that within your religious practice there's a

lot of movement maybe some dancing maybe some

standing maybe you all line up and go

to the front of your holy or sacred

building to receive some sort of blessing maybe

there's a receiving line this could take any

number of forms and I'm sure you're recognizing

some of the different aspects of different religions

I'm talking about in a pagan sense it

might be standing in a circle maybe dancing

clockwise or counterclockwise around the circle it could

be you know performing various ritual movements whatever

it is if you are somebody who cannot

do this for any reason that is going

to separate you from your religion if you

cannot do this with a group of people

it's going to isolate you it's going to

make you feel like you're not welcome it's

going to make you feel like you're not

wanted and if it continues it could actually

cause a spiritual crisis it could cause a

very painful deep spiritual wound that will take

a lot of work not just on your

part but also on the part of the

religion or people within that religion to actually

heal so if you tell somebody you know

well we have always done it this way

you know we can't make accommodations for you

because you're in a wheelchair or because you

can't stand for long periods of time or

maybe you can stand but you have a

condition such as POTS which might cause you

to need to sit down or else you're

going to like fall down and hurt yourself

due to blood pressure and heart rate irregularities

whatever is going on you know chronic pain

I could go on and on it and

I've done some other podcasts talking about that

if if your religion isn't a lived enough

religion that people can say hey here's how

we can include you in this practice then

that's not going to be beneficial for you

that's going to isolate you from the religion

and that's going to indicate that that's a

religion of dogma so that is a very

brief overview but then the question becomes why

am I talking about this now and what

does this have to do with the wild

let's tackle that first question why am I

doing this now and that's an easy and

yet not easy question to answer the kind

of top line answer to that is I'm

doing this now because I've been doing a

lot of thinking about how religion serves us

how religion doesn't serve us how religion or

a dogmatic type upbringing really has driven a

lot of the current polycrisis on the political

front and I would say that the global

polycrisis the climate the economics the fascism the

everything that a lot of that is driven

by a we've always done it this way

and so this is our culture and if

you're examining the culture or asking us to

try something different then you're trying to take

that away that's a very dogmatic approach and

that has been on my mind lately as

far as what we need to do additionally

and I'm going to be addressing this in

another podcast possibly the next one we'll see

how things go is I've been thinking about

my own religious beliefs how I identify with

my religious beliefs and what that community has

done and has not done to help or

to hinder my religious beliefs and my sense

of spirituality and community and plus there's you

know the fact that I've been a graduate

student for religious studies I'm currently studying to

be an animal chaplain and all of this

really comes down to thinking about what we

want out of our religion how our religion

or our spirituality and they're not the same

thing you know how our spiritual beliefs should

actually help not just ourselves as individuals but

the wider global community and that would include

the community that we don't know about the

community that we don't interact with on a

basis you know on a regular basis and

a good example of this is like the

AI use in the pagan community there's been

quite a spirited discussion I am anti-generative

AI there are assistive uses of AI that

doesn't require taking somebody's intellectual property and generating

something new about that for example can you

look at this photo and tell me what's

in it because I have vision difficulties can

you take what I have said and type

it out into text because I am unable

to type and I need a text version

of this there are ways to use this

technology generating funny memes generating a whole bunch

of pictures that ain't it and when you

do the generative part and as a publisher

this has been something or as an author

and publisher this is something that I've been

really following because for example there's I've got

a list of non-fiction books I want

to write and several of them have been

quote-unquote banned by one of the biggest

distributors supposedly because AI has oversaturated the genre

now that is a whole nother podcast probably

taking a couple hours to discuss and that's

not something that I would be discussing for

this audience but rather for my writing audience

but the truth of the matter is like

these sort of technologies are interfacing with our

religious and spiritual lives causing problems and I

think it's up for us to think about

on a religious or spiritual basis how these

technologies should or should not be used do

they go against our ethics do they go

against our religious beliefs in my case yes

I believe that the earth is sacred the

planet is sacred the creatures the plants everything

on the planet is sacred and so anything

that acerbates the current climate crisis is not

good because it's harming the sacred earth and

so you know dogma religion all of that

goes into that because we should be having

these conversations about okay how should our lived

active spiritual lives spiritual beings as we are

or our religion actually react to this so

that's kind of why I'm having this conversation

now although admittedly in speaking about dogma I

am talking about a much broader situation and

something that affects us far beyond our religious

lives the more important question the second half

of that is what does this have to

do with the wild and I had started

this podcast by talking about how the wild

rejects dogma I also wanted to touch base

on why we should be flexible why we

should have a fluid spirituality rather than a

spirituality that is rooted in must do should

do needs to do type dogma they all

go hand in hand and we only need

to look at the world around us to

start seeing some of this in action so

we have seen what happens when our pets

get used to certain routines things have always

been done this way you will have anxious

separation anxiety you may have an animal that

is disruptive while you're trying to sleep or

while you are trying to do other things

you know this morning I am kind of

changing up a little bit how I'm feeding

my horses because we had the loss of

matriarch of our herd this week I will

talk about that later when it's not so

raw because there was some really beautiful expressions

of grief by the sacred herd but that

has caused me to change things because the

way that I feed my horses really I

mean sure I could still do it the

I always did it but I have a

horse who is the lowest ranking member of

the herd and by making this one slight

adjustment bringing her into an enclosed area rather

than keeping her just on the other side

of it I am able to ensure she

gets a little more time with her food

she doesn't get pushed off her bucket and

the horse that the horse that always ate

with my heart horse which would be actually

be her filly you know that horse now

instead of eating by itself even though the

herd is well within eyesight so it's not

like somebody's isolated they still see one another

they can still communicate with one another but

this horse gets companion so you know I

could have looked at that and said well

I've always fed you at these buckets and

you will you know eat at these buckets

forever and that sort of dogma first of

all doesn't make sense to the horses I

mean yeah they they know where they go

and they know kind of where they get

fed and that kind of helps everybody guide

you know who who goes to their buckets

first who comes last the order in which

I feed but we're not so stuck in

our way of being that we can't adjust

that when necessary and adjust that for the

better of the herd so like that's a

really local really domesticated example of this but

I think you could see this for example

in the wild so if you have an

animal that knows that at this time of

year it can always find food at this

location we're in the middle of a drought

right now in the Ozarks the Europe was

extremely hot this summer there's a lot of

changes happening to our climate which means that

there's a good chance that a wild animal

could go to an area not find the

food that it's waiting for well it's not

going to stand there and demand the food

show up for because this is how it's

always been done no it's going to change

its plans it's going to be flexible and

going to go search for more food a

lot of this is driven on instinct I

want to be very clear here that dogma

is a very human concept and so applying

this human concept to the wild comes with

some problems it is not without issues because

we do not know and have no way

of accessing the internal lives of our animals

even a situation in our house you may

have a couple of cats one of the

cats is sleeping in the other cat's spot

you can pretty much see what's going on

but you don't know how the cat's thinking

about that how the cat is changing where

it's laying down in the case of my

office it means they steal my chair when

I'm not here but that's okay because I'm

not here and they find that comfortable but

you you know that applying concepts like this

to the natural world is very difficult we

cannot fathom the internal lives of our domesticated

companion animals horses cats dogs let alone you

know the internal lives of a tree we

there's no way we can comprehend that so

much because humans are very much driven by

things that we get through our senses and

we find it hard to put ourselves into

other people's shoes um or other people's roots

as it were so I guess that's why

it's important because if we're going to connect

with the wild if we're going to learn

from the wild and we're going to discover

those wild places inside us we need to

think about what is a human construct dogma

how does that human construct show up in

our lives how is it harming us how

are we adhering to that in a way

that is not beneficial and when we do

that we start to reconnect with our wild

nature we start to reconnect a little bit

more with the wild animals and it helps

us be flexible it helps us be resilient

you know so many of us really don't

like the word resilient but yet releasing our

dogma releasing our human constructs and reconnecting with

our wild nature with a fluid nature with

an understanding that everything changes nothing stays the

same just look at the weather you could

take a piece of paper and chart the

chart the weather for 10 days I mean

you don't even have to go a whole

month you could start with 10 days a

week chart the weather and even if you

have three or four days in a row

that feel like they're the same they're going

to be different there's going to be different

nuances especially if you really start looking at

things like wind speed wind direction temperature barometric

pressure there's so many variables that if we

just simply gloss it all over and say

oh yeah it was sunny and warm this

week you're going to miss the variance that

each and every day had when it was

sunny and warm some days were warmer than

others some days had more breeze than others

some days maybe had a bit more humidity

some days maybe had a bit less all

of these things come together to create an

ever changing experience in our lives and I

feel like one of the best things we

could do especially my community my neurodivergent community

my chronically ill or disabled community the queer

community one of the things that we could

do is start embracing the fluid and ever

-changing nature of the world of the wild

of the wilderness around us the wilderness inside

us and when we start embracing that we

can start to see that one by one

those human constructs and the dogma is going

to eventually fall away I want to thank

you so much for listening to this show

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next thank you so much for listening and

as always the wild in me sees the

wild in you you've been listening to the

feathermanesoul wisdom podcast hosted by Kit Kaelstow learn

more about feathermanesoul at feathermanesoul.com as a

wild spirit storyteller kit is passionate about helping

those who are neurodivergent disabled or living with

chronic illness rediscover their own inner wild spirit

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