Faith in a Post Religious World

Ultimately unless we can conceive of the forces that are greater than any individual, and seek out and uplift those that are benevolent and positive, then the net result of a lack of faith is individualism and separation. The challenge of course barely needs to be spelled out as thousands of years of institutionalised religions have stripped the collective consciousness of the permission to find the sacred in the mundane filling the heads of the masses over the millennia with shame, guilt and fear of God.

These same institutional energies are at the root of industrialisation, capitalism and the lie of white supremacy; there is a direct correlation between hierarchical or ascension based spirituality where God is the father above us in the heavens and we are the children below and denial of that which is "lower": the Earth, our bodies, our sensual and sexual expression. Without deep and abiding knowledge of our Earth based connectedness to all things humans suffer, in our modern life, with a sense of non-belonging, non-rootedness, separation, loneliness and overwhelm.

This illusion of separation, fuelled over millennia by church and state for the control and coercion of the working classes, is also at the root of violence. The belief in the "other" and a belief in the finiteness of resources leads to an "us and them" mentality.

So the Pathways of Restoration require us to Unlearn the conditioning of the culture, or cultural void, we collectively imbibed that tells us that ascension, power over, material success at the expense of others, abuse of humans and nature as resources, is the only way to freedom and true power. What forces are there, for the atheist or agnostic mind in which we can place our faith?

The very archetypes of Connection, Community, Nature, Cycles and Seasons, Love, Honour, Integrity, Mutual Benefit, Paradox and the Mystery (simply an acceptance that there will always be things we do not know).

In creating safe enough spaces for healing to take place and building Peace we can start by grounding our practice in the universal and shared principles in which everyone present can place their faith. To recognise at the outset that we are part of nature and Nature is an ally in peace building is an amazing start, for example.

What it takes for a skilled facilitator is an internal process, which may take time of course, to weed out and shed the layers of conditioning of hierarchy and ascension. This is a process of internal de-colonisation in effect. Re-wilding oneself and embodying the knowledge of our inter-connectedness to all things. There is much resource out there for decolonisation within work and each must find their own way. A commitment to shedding the oppressive patterns of gendered hierarchy and institutional mindset is a tremendous liberation and a great place to start.