The Transgressive Path: Giving Yourself Permission

So let us return to the topic of taboos and conformity in cultures that lean toward the authoritarian rather than permissive.

There are so many proscriptions and taboos among the righteous.  What a good girl does, what a bad boy does, how an upstanding citizen behaves. Some common ones: clean cut, monogamous, hard working, follows traditions, doesn’t step outside the norm too far. Has an acceptable quirk or two to give one ‘personality’. Something tame: be a fan of old vinyl records or an astronomy freak or a great ballroom dancer. 

One should drink enough to be socially fluid and not a stick-in-the-mud, but don’t be an alcoholic.  Be wealthy but don’t appear greedy. Be pretty but don’t appear vain. Be Christian, but be the kind of Christian that spends his weekend on a driving mower or golfing or coaching baseball; not the kind that pushes for radical social justice and turns the money changers away from the temple; not that kind that seeks to experience a direct, unmediated connection between oneself and god; certainly not the kind that’s into the black metaphysical Jesus, or the Jesus of the mystics, the Jesus of Meister Eckhart or Hildegard von Bingen. 

If you do yoga, make sure it’s just for exercise, combine it with rap music or chocolate so you don’t go too deep into the well of power you possess.  So that you don’t really wake up, just down-modulate the stress chemicals and get some muscle tone.  

Get an education, but not too much. That is to say: get enough of an education to get a good paying job, but not enough to make you question the culture you live in. Especially don’t question the following: capitalism, structural systems in American democracy, the morality of guns or the ethics of the extensive use of taxes for military rather than humanitarian purposes. Don’t question the pharmaceutical industry. Don’t question your doctor. Don’t question the chemical agriculture or fast food industries, or the pain and suffering of factory farms that infuses your meat and cheese. Don't question the oil teat. Don’t question the credit and consumer culture, just go shopping. Don’t question the cult of the individual or the self-made man. Respect your elders, your teachers, elected representatives and the police, even if they have totally fucked up. 

What else? Don’t do drugs, show up like a traditional straight male or straight female, have decidedly not-kinky sex, don’t show too much emotion or vulnerability.  Don’t be too fat. Don’t be too skinny. Don’t be too loud. Don’t be too meek. Don’t be too dirty. 

All in all, the conformity that is requested of you is extensive. 

Toe the line, citizen. And teach your children to toe the fucking line.

The actuality of this is that it’s an impossible and unneeded set of rules, but it keeps us wiggling around making micro-adjustments to be just right according to some set of always shifting standards, instead of finding our own authenticity. And most of the people preaching these “standards” don’t conform to these standards themselves. They just engender shame, which causes one to turn on oneself, and self-police, and also breeds judgment of others.

What I want to say is this: the cost of toeing the line in a deeply broken culture is no less than your own deep freedom, happiness, authenticity, soul emancipation and enlightenment.

The denial of your own unique expression, your weirdness, your one-pointed perspective holds all of humanity back, not just you, because we are evolving each other all the time. Becoming a conscious chooser, shaking off the implanted trance, is not just for you, but for all of us. You being in your essence moves the needle for human evolution in the direction of authenticity.

Collectively, the cost of toeing the line is perpetuated suffering. The suffering that is the fruit of the current system manifests in illness, anxiety, suicide, substance abuse, hatred & violence, poverty, planetary degradation, animal abuse, waste  and the countless other ills of modern culture in the west.  

It results in a feeling of separation from the interconnected web. 

Incidentally, the root word and true meaning of sin is separation. Because only when we are separate can we behave in ways that harm others.  When we see others as ourselves harm is not possible.

We have been taught that some things are off limits. That good people don’t do them. Good people don’t try them. Good people don’t ‘find out for themselves’, instead they take the words of experts, of their elders, pastors, lawmakers and other authorities to heart, and fall in formation.

These taboos may include things like trance states, energy play, somatics, meditations, sexual freedom, entheogenic drugs, or even beliefs like socialism or spiral leadership.

We have been told these acts and/or practices are dangerous for us as individuals, that the state must protect us from ourselves, but I’m here to bear witness: almost everything that has been labeled as a taboo or transgression is instead a tool for waking up; for our own mental, physical and emotional liberation; for living a fearless life.

These are the transgressive pathways to liberation. These are not the only ways. There is of course grace, and practice, and many more.

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